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It had been roughly four years since Lucia had last seen Dante. The last time they met was that one lucky day of waiting, where he returned once again to that office on that motorbike like the macho brick-head he was.
“Kept you waiting, huh?” he said, like some action hero. She hugged him and cried, then moved back to Vie de Marli like nothing had happened. Dante never visited again, though he occasionally called. Something about flight costs, or how he didn’t want to encroach on her own devil hunting business. It wasn’t a business, it was her obligation, but he ignored that talking point.
Lucia loved her hometown, more than anything. It wasn’t just the place where she lived, it was a part of her identity. Despite this love, though, she still yearned to leave, just for a change in scenery. Nobody in her hometown was stopping her, in fact Matier encouraged her to take a vacation, but the trip to the airport a few cities over felt so impossibly long and far that for four years she hadn’t once considered flying out to Capulet City halfway across the map to visit Dante.
But things have changed in those four years. She grew her hair out, it reached her hips now and curled out and up. She got new hobbies, tried new fashion, learned how to ride a motorbike, and one night, as she gazed longingly at the world map tapestry she had hung up on her room’s ceiling, she decided that tomorrow would be the day she made good on her promise to herself to travel into foreign territory. She wanted to go over to that far away city and show that negligent, red coat-wearing brute how much he had missed in her life.
And so, with a surprised yet warm goodbye from Matier and her neighbors, she hopped on the bike that she managed to buy a year prior and rode all the way two cities over with nothing but light luggage and a vague, undefined grudge.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t been at an airport before, nor had she never seen modern technology. She had a passport and a (somewhat archaic) cell phone and everything, but a slight oversight was made. Namely, the fact she didn’t order tickets in advance. It took her far longer than it should’ve to even get to the airport gates, nearly missing the departure of her plane.
The instant she stepped into the boundary of that plane, however, the sudden terror of the situation sunk in. Despite being surrounded by people, she was alone in this airplane. There would be nobody to greet her once she departed, or anyone to take her through the city once she arrived. She had been at the office before, but that time a black-haired girl deliberately invited her over and drove her over. What was she supposed to do when she got there?
Before she could chicken out and rush out of the plane, the doors closed and the winged vehicle took off, making her ears pop. Beside her in the aisle seat was a businessman, she assumed, with headphones on and his gaze fixed on the seat in front of him. In fact, most of the passengers seemed to be on some sort of job. Not at all surprising, as that man’s company industrialized many of the surrounding cities of her hometown, drawing a lot of workers. She looked severely out of place in her hand-woven poncho and worn jeans and faded turtleneck, almost like the subject of a gag comic.
The plane ride was awkward, if not, anxiety riddled. By the end she simultaneously felt like throwing up and like she was starving. Her body settled the contradictory feelings by giving her an awful stomachache. Wading through crowds of people over to the tourist information made her feel even smaller and more isolated, despite the head-per-square-meter increasing by a factor of ten. Thankfully, once she exited the building, the clear, blue, sky alleviated some of the suffocation.
Even though Lucia had seen identical cities ad nauseam in her own country, the entire process of getting to Capulet made the similar looking skyline completely foreign. Sitting at the nearest beach, she cracked open the city map she nabbed and skimmed the contents for anything familiar. To her luck, one particular landmark stuck in her head, even now. Namely, the massive metal statue in honor of the Dark Knight himself.
Overall, it took about an hour and a half to reach that statue on foot, and Lucia was a particularly fast walker. It took even longer to find her way through the convoluted alleys and streets to that office she came here in the first place for. The sky was orange, and she was properly starving and exhausted, but she stood before the imposing double doors more than half her height with renewed vigor. Since the moment she stepped foot in this city, she had planned out what she wanted to say, to Dante, how she wanted to look, how she would enter. She even started practicing the greeting out loud like a maniac in the streets. Composing herself, she gathered the nerve and kicked the doors wide open, ready to announce herself…
…Until the words died in her mouth. At that desk was not Dante, lazily reclining in his office chair, but an unfamiliar blonde woman. No, she was definitely familiar, after a second of thinking. In fact, she was identical to the portrait on Dante’s desk that Lucia had spent much of her wait there gazing at curiously, though with a different outfit and makeup. As of right now, that girl was mid-bite of a slice of pizza, looking at her with mild curiosity as Lucia froze like a deer in headlights.
This standoff continued for two seconds before the woman finished her bite, setting the slice down and wiping her face before casually regarding Lucia, as if she had not nearly kicked the doors off the hinges a moment before.
“You looking for trouble?” she asked, a barely perceptible smirk crawling onto her face. Lucia blinked once, then twice, before quickly clearing up the apparent misunderstanding.
“No, not at all! Sorry for intruding, it’s just, uh…” Lucia stuttered, all her bravado and nerve converted into humiliation. The blonde audaciously laughed at this, covering her mouth as if to stifle it.
“I get it, I get it, you’re here for Dante right? Lemme guess, a spurned ex?” she questioned, a lightly mocking tone seeping into her voice.
“Our relationship wasn’t like that! We simply… worked together a few years back and have mainly been keeping up through phone. I wanted to pay a visit here, since he can’t seem to find the time to come to me,” Lucia rushed to correct, her face slightly flushed.
“An entrance that violent makes me think there’s a little more to that story, but I’ll let you off the hook for now,” she teased with a wink. Lucia pointedly looked away, trying to hide the scowl brought on by such a simple statement.
The blonde suddenly hopped off the table, sauntering her way over and sizing her up like a fresh cut of meat at the deli. Lucia averted her eyes even further, trying to ignore the immense judgement in the woman’s piercing eyes.
“I do remember something of a business partner of Dante’s that Lady told me about forever ago, though. Someone named Ru…Ru…” she pondered with a slightly more serious tone.
“Lucia. My name is Lucia,” she corrected, turning to look the woman dead on.
“Ah, that rings a bell. I’ve heard quite a bit of you, from both Lady and Dante. Pleased to meet you, I’m Trish,” the woman greeted, extending her hand, to which Lucia politely shook.
“And what’ll you know, I happen to be one of Dante’s ex-business partners too! Wanna start a support group?”
“…” Lucia wasn’t really sure how to react to this woman, she wasn’t quite sure if she was being made fun of or sympathized with. Something about the look in Trish’s eyes made her squirm, and she wasn’t entirely sure if it was a good look or a bad look.
Regardless, as her heart settled, something else became immediately clear about this woman. That being the distinctive scent that clung to her, originating straight from hell. Her exhaustion and momentary panic must’ve dulled her senses, so when she came to the realization, her hair suddenly stood on end.
“Wait, are you…” she blurted, stepping back.
“What, a demon? As much as you are, dear,” Trish replied with no obvious change in demeanor. Had she known from the start?
“Ah, uh…” Lucia suddenly found herself very unable to speak. Unfortunately, her stomach decided to speak for her, loudly voicing its desire for food. At this time, Trish’s eyes moved to the luggage behind her, then back to her face, sizing up her condition. Donning a bright smile, she shifted attitudes, suddenly jovial and welcoming.
“The trip here must’ve been pretty long, no? Why don’t I treat you to dinner, as an apology for Dante’s absence?” she suggested, patting Lucia on shoulder with a hint of pity. Though, out of pride, she felt inclined to turn her down, the pang in her stomach urged her otherwise.
“If you insist,” she said with an air of resignation, and Trish dragged her out of the office with a wide grin.
…
It turns out Trish ate pizza for nearly every meal of the day, and was intent on making her try it too. Lucia had eaten pizza once before, and found that she was completely neutral on the food. Her guide insisted that she just hadn’t had the good kind yet. Instead of eating what was already at the office, which Lucia really would’ve been fine with, they went to this fancy, candle-lit Italian restaurant. They even had waiters in suits.
Lucia knew plenty of Italian, but not the fancy kind that Trish spoke to the service. It was smooth and fluent from each word, not at all like her choppy speaking. When the waiter came back with a menu, it was all in that same Italian as well. Her brow furrowed as she tried to discern some of the items, which Trish picked up on.
“It’s all just pizza, by the way. They’re sort of a speciality place,” she noted, pointing at the pencil etched depictions of the various types beside every label.
“Oh… I’ll just have whatever you’re getting then,” Lucia replied.
She was certainly out of her element in the restaurant, but Trish looked perfectly natural. Her-golden, silk-like hair matched the decor, and her expensive looking getup gave the impression she could buy the whole menu if she wanted. Even her posture was befitting of a high-class socialite, or something to that extent.
When their order was delivered, Lucia found it difficult to comprehend that they even made pizza this elaborate. Instead of the greasy chain restaurant type food she’d had last time she’d eaten the dish, this was clearly made of expensive and fresh ingredients, complete with fancy plating and the works.
For a moment she struggled with how to even slice the piece (which was resolved through Trish cutting one slice out for her). Once it was on her plate, she took the route of least mess— cutting the slice up into bite sized squares. Across from her, Trish stifled a giggle.
“Am I doing something wrong?” she asked, half out of cluelessness but with a bit of irritation. It wasn’t like they posted instructions on how to eat pizza on the front of the restaurant, and the last time she had it was in a much less formal setting.
“No, not at all,” Trish responded. She’d rolled her own slice up lengthwise and ate it like it was a hand roll, which Lucia supposed was also a reasonable way to approach eating. Even as a string of the cheese lingered in her lips, Trish’s face remained poised. Huffing lightly, Lucia returned to her plate, picking a square up with her fork and placing it in her mouth.
All things considered, the pizza was pretty good— although Lucia wasn’t a fan of the texture of melted cheese. By the time she finished one slice, Trish had taken a fourth of the circle somehow.
“You sure eat fast…” she found herself muttering, which Trish responded to with little offense.
“Human food is pretty light. I find myself eating half a pie in a second if I don’t restrain myself,” she said in a tone so casual that the strange wording went over Lucia’s head for a moment.
She was right, though. In the human’s realm food was portioned so small that Lucia would need to eat two pizzas to feel satiated. This wasn’t an issue on Dumary, where she was expected to eat large spreads of food every day, but even then she found her appetite was much larger than her peers. Instead, undistilled demonic essence was the perfect form of sustenance, but that assumed she had an unending pile of demons to devour whenever. Did Trish have the same issue?
Soon, the entire pie was gone, Trish having eaten most of it, but Lucia was content with the four slices she had.
“Pretty good, right?” Trish interviewed with a grin?
“It was… nice, yes,” she softly replied.
“So, where are you staying? I’ll walk you over, if you’re ready to leave.”
“Oh, I’m not really staying anywhere. I was figuring I’d just camp around.”
“Camping? In the city?”
“There’s a forest here, isn’t there? I’ve probably slept in worse places.”
“Hardly a scenic camping spot, in my experience. Why don’t you sleep at the office instead? We’ve got a bed and AC and everything. Well, at least I think we still have AC.”
“Are you really sure? I feel like I’ve been kind of intruding, and I don’t know if Dante is okay with that…”
“If Dante has an issue with me letting a pretty girl sleep at his place, then he’s probably been kidnapped and replaced with a doppelgänger.”
Despite her better sense, she felt her face heat up at Trish’s casual denotation of her as a “pretty girl.” She had no idea where this sudden feeling game from a pretty offhand comment, but it hit like a brick. The only thing she could muster out saying was,
“Well, um, if you insist…”
…
The city was nice and empty at night, a cool breeze sweeping across the streets. Trish idly recounted her own meeting with Dante as they walked, at Lucia’s request. The story was really vague, to the point where she felt like she wasn’t really getting information at all. She knew the gist that Trish was sent by an enemy demon lord to Dante and in the end turned on the same demon lord. Lucia could relate somewhat, servitude wasn’t her favorite occupation.
“What about you then?” Trish suddenly turned to her, pausing in her steps.
“Me? Well, it’s… a little personal.”
“Aw, keeping it mysterious? I get it, I’ve been pretty scarce on details too. It’s just that Dante never bothers letting me know where all these girls he keeps finding are coming from.” She paused for a second, contemplating some memory she had stored away.
“Now that I think of it though, I did get a little exposition. You’re from Dumary, right?” Lucia nodded. “You and Dante got caught up in that thing with Uroburos then. What a meet-cute.”
She would describe it more like “the thorough destruction of all that she knew,” but meet-cute had a nice sound to it as well. Trish had such a lax way of describing things. She might’ve taken offense from them too, if she didn’t already figure out that Trish just talked about everything like this. Her description of the Fortuna invasion as “one wild mass” tipped her off.
“I guess you could call it that,” Lucia found herself agreeing. Without thinking, she giggled slightly at the concept of that disastrous event being a sweet moment to look back on. It was then that Trish stopped in her tracks, causing Lucia to pause as well. For a moment she thought she’d done something wrong, but a foreign pulse of energy clarified the issue.
“Look at these brutes, interrupting girl talk on this fine night!” taunted Trish, who looked to the rooftops. Gathered in a small crowd were some fiends, Mephistos from the looks of it along with one or two Faust.
Lucia’s hands flew to her waistband to grab hold of her blades… only to find nothing but air. Of course, the airport wouldn’t let her bring such things on the plane, so she had to leave her sickles at home. It didn’t worry her, since she came packed with wards for when she slept, but she didn’t count on being out on the town so late. Trish noticed her panic at the loss of her weapons, it seemed, as she pulled a pair of guns out of who knows where.
“Don’t worry,” Trish murmured just loud enough for her to hear, “you can sit back while I take care of these pests, doll.”
The way her escort’s low voice uttered that pet name sent blood straight to her face. For some reason, she physically sat down on the concrete. She knew “sit back” was just a saying, but her body ended up taking it as a command. She wasn’t sure why she did that, but it garnered a soft chuckle from Trish, who then sprung into action.
Similar to Dante, Trish used two black and white pistols in each hand. However, that’s about where the similarities ended, for where Dante relied on absurd rapid fire to turn targets to dust, Trish went straight to the point and vaporized holes through the demon's cloaks with powerful rays of lightning. The guns were more a conduit than a weapon themselves for her electric charge. Once all the Mephistos were disoriented and fried, with bare hands, she reached into the holes of the dark shawls and grasped the chitinous insects within, forcefully crushing them in one go.
It was terrifying and beautiful to watch how the crowd was pulverized in an instant, leaving only a Faust. Perhaps it was smart enough to start trying to run away from the now thoroughly bloodstained demoness, but it didn’t get much ground before Trish ripped away its shroud of darkness in a flash. The exposed demon scrambled uselessly in her grip, but she did not immediately crush it like the others. Instead, she jumped to the ground and dragged it along until she was standing a little bit in front of Lucia.
Trish struck an intimidating figure, towering above Lucia with bloodied hands and a writing creature in her clutch. Her gentle smile betrayed the situation, though, a soft curve gracing her red lips.
“You didn’t eat much at the restaurant, so I imagine you’re still pretty hungry. How convenient that some free meals just walked in our direction?”
This should be revolting. The thing in front of her was unearthly and clearly still alive, the very act of eating it would clearly distinguish her as a demon. Not just a demon, a gluttonous and monstrous one who happily ate its own kind. But Trish offered it to her so casually, like she was giving chocolates. There wasn’t anyone else in this alley besides her and Trish, and nobody would ever know this happened if she didn’t want them to. In this moment, then, it didn’t feel too strange to just go along with the offer and sink her teeth into what she didn’t doubt likely would satiate her hunger completely. For its kind, the Faust looked meaty and delicious, with a white exoskeleton that looked easy to bite into.
“I-If you insist,” Lucia responded, unable to properly control her conflicted emotions in her voice.
Wordlessly, Trish lowered her hand so that Lucia could easily sink her teeth into the creature from where she sat. Slowly, she opened her mouth, sharp fangs hovering over the devil’s flesh, and tasted the sweet blood within.
…
She didn’t realize how ravenous she was until nothing remained of the Faust. In the heat of the moment the experience was heavenly, but regret started seeping in as she did the bloodstained walk of shame back to the office. Of course, Trish was also awfully bloody but not in such a way that made it exceedingly clear what she’d been doing. The messily wiped away viscera around her mouth was not as subtle.
Dante still wasn’t at the shop when they returned, to Lucia’s silent relief. She was hardly presentable as is. Trish didn’t seem to have the same reservations, because of course she didn’t. There was something about the woman’s impulsive and chaotic nature that sucked her in like a Whirlpool and left her dazed once the calamity ran its course.
“Do you want to shower off? I’ll take care of your clothes,” offered Trish, who’s eyes lingered at her lips.
“…That would be nice,” she quietly responded, slipping into the door which hid the bathroom.
After disrobing and discretely leaving her clothes outside the room, she stepped into the running cold water. Though she usually liked her showers boiling, she hoped a frigid wash would help her get back to awareness in her somewhat floaty state. The tile below was obscured by the fresh blood coming off with the water, relieving her face of that irritating and sticky texture. For a while she just stood, not bothering to use the sparse amount of soap on the shower racks.
Her heart, to her dismay, still pounded even after all the blood washed off from her body. Was she hexed or cursed with something? She couldn’t get the image of Trish offering the squirming demon to her out of her head, the moment replaying in her eyes over and over. Why did she think of it and get flustered? She hadn’t felt so stupidly out of control with her emotions since… well, Dante.
A knock on the door of the bathroom thankfully pulled her out of her thoughts.
“Your clothes are in the wash, I brought you some of my own for the night!” Trish called. Lucia turned the shower off, wrapping herself and her hair in a towel.
“Thank you,” Lucia lightly murmured as she stepped out of the bathroom. It seemed Trish had already washed her hands and changed into what she assumed was her pajama outfit: a plain bra with some loose pants. With her luxurious personality, Lucia was expecting some silk two piece getup. In her hands was Lucia’s nighttime clothes, a tank top and shorts. Pretty much what she already wore to sleep, so she didn’t mind.
Slipping back into the bathroom with the clothes, Lucia realized something about Trish. She was a good deal taller than her. Shorts that likely would’ve fit a lot higher on Trish came down further along on her thighs, and what was probably a shorter tank top was more like a dress on Lucia. As she stepped out of the bathroom, she could see Trish hide a smirk behind her hand.
“You look comfortable,” she said.
Unable to think of a witty remark, Lucia only said, “Thanks for lending me clothes…”
“So, do you want the couch or the guest bedroom? Assuming Dante’s room is already out of the question.” Indeed, it absolutely was.
Lucia agonized for a moment, taking a glance at the office’s couch. To say it had seen better days was… an understatement. In fact, it was a little comical how out of shape it looked. Ambiguous stains made the already off-color red leather look pink and she could see parts of spring peeking out underneath the torn fabric. Who knows how many demon attacks that thing had survived. Obviously Lucia didn’t want to sleep on it, but the prospect of forcing Trish to was even less appealing. The woman had been nothing but kind and generous with her the whole night, and making her sleep on the broken down thing seemed like too much. She was already planning to sleep in the forest if necessary, so an uncomfortable couch wasn’t the worst thing to have to spend the night on… but what if Dante showed up and saw her in her less-than-presentable state?
“There is a third option,” interrupted Trish, bringing her running mind to a stop.
“You could always just share a bed with me. Unless you’ve got reservations about that kind of thing…”
Lucia couldn’t see herself, but she imagined she was looking a little incredulous. Sharing a bed with a woman she just met? That level of intimacy should be saved for someone special, shouldn’t it? She thought she was being messed with, but Trish’s flat expression told her the offer was genuine. With this arrangement, neither of them had to sleep on the couch, and Lucia didn’t necessarily distrust Trish enough to not sleep in the same room as her. All things considered, it was a perfect compromise. It wasn’t like the night was going to go anywhere, she rationed, Trish hadn’t overstepped any of her boundaries and it wasn’t likely she was going to start now.
So, swallowing apprehension to the best of her ability, she answered.
“I’d… like that.”