"Well about that…"
I stared up at the clear, blue morning sky now visible through the massive, diagonal slice running across the Sunny-Side Diner. The Waffle Devil's last, spiteful blast of syrup had performed architectural surgery, cleanly shearing the entire roof and upper wall away.
"Chron. Don't waste my time, what happened?"
"Well, the building is fine, when you really think about it...on the atomic level."
"The building got destroyed didn't it?"
"Its not my fault! If I hadn't dodged, I wouldn't even be alive."
"Argh, for fuck's sake, Chron!" Ivan rasped and the line went dead.
"Fluffernutter," I sighed, holding the cat up so he could see the devastation. "I think our bounty just got canceled out by the property damage fee."
Mister Fluffernutter, now awake and attentive, was buzzing with excitement. The despair radiating from the scene, the terrified people, the crushed heart of the business owner, the misery that the Waffle Devil let out before it died, was clearly a five-star meal for him.
"Don't get too fat, buddy," I muttered, tucking the core into a small, zippered pocket in my tattered windbreaker.
I stepped over a beam, pushing aside a hanging tangle of wires and insulation.
Outside the Sunny-Side Diner, chaos was attempting to organize itself. Yellow tape was already snapping in the breeze, and the flashing blue and red lights painted the ruined façade in a frantic, strobe-like pattern.
A couple of Sanitation worker were at the corpse from afar with professional dread. It was gonna be one heck of a job collecting the Waffle Devil's corpse. Of all the devils, carb-based devils were the hardest to dispose of.
I took three steps past the police line before a familiar voice cut through the din.
"Hold it right there, Chron."
I sighed, pulling out my dented Intern Devil Hunter ID badge. This was routine.
Patrolman Dave Johnson, a man whose mustache deserved its own separate badge, and his partner, Officer Miller, whose expression always suggested she was currently tasting something sour, blocked my path. They looked tired, but not surprised.
"Dave. Miller. It's good to see that you haven't died."
"Almost, Chron. Tuesday," Dave grunted, not smiling. "We got a call about some disturbance. Imagine my surprise when I get here and find the diner looks like it was filed in half by a giant pair of safety shears."
"It was the Waffle Devil," I stated simply. "High-pressure syrup. It had a kinetic coating that allowed it to pierce—"
"I don't need the science lecture, kid," Miller interrupted, adjusting her utility belt. "I need to know if we need to call the Feds, or if this is just another one of you devil hunter's screwup."
I took a deep breath. "Listen, officially, this was a successful neutralization under Protocol 7 Delta-Prime, minus the containment failure on the structural stability."
Dave pinched the bridge of his nose. "You bagged the monster, but the collateral damage is going to bankrupt the city's quarterly 'Act of Devil' fund."
"The bounty from the core should theoretically cover the cleanup, but yes, the structural integrity of the building is... compromised," I admitted.
I held up my badge. "Look, my agency is fully licensed and bonded under the City Charter, Section 4-B. Which means the city government, specifically the BOCAR will be in contact with your precinct within the hour to deal with the fallout, the paperwork, and, regrettably, the demolition," I finished. "You don't need to worry about the logistics. Just focus on crowd control."
A young Fire Marshal, his face pale, jogged over. "Excuse me, Officer, but what is that?" He pointed a trembling finger at the still-steaming waffle corpse.
"First time?" I asked.
The Fire Marshal nodded.
"That," I announced, "is a carb-based Devil corpse. It is highly volatile, prone to spontaneous combustion, and needs to be sealed off properly before Sanitation takes possession. Make sure you use Cryo-Containment Foam only. If you use standard foam, we'll have a explosion that levels three blocks."
The Fire Marshal gaped, looked at the police officers, and then started yelling orders into his radio.
Dave leaned close to me, his voice dropping. "Cryo-Containment Foam, Chron? Really? We haven't had that since the time the Rice Devil caused chaos in Arizona."
"It's true! I learned it from a poorly dubbed instruction video," I insisted. "It's vital. Also, make sure that slab of batter is treated as Category C Bioweapon. I don't want to hear about some unfortunate newbie deciding to try a bite of the 'giant pancake monster.'"
Miller rubbed her temples. "Okay, we'll seal the zone. But you need to get out of here before the BOCAR people show up. You know how they are with witnesses."
"Roger that." I started to turn away, then paused. "Hey, you guys see a scrawny kid with bright orange hair and a face full of acne? Probably yelling about his dating prospects or something. Name might be Finn. He was stuck to the floor."
Dave shook his head. "No teenagers. Just a couple of customers being scraped off the floor by the Fire Department."
I looked over at the diner entrance again. Finn and the other guy he was with were gone. Smart kid, I guess. At least he didn't stick around to get interviewed by BOCAR.
"Alright. Thanks, Dave. Thanks, Miller. I'm going to take this mess back to the agency." I patted the zipper pocket where the core rested.
"Be careful, Chron," Miller said, her tone suddenly serious, the fun completely gone. "This is a Category 4 structure failure. That's serious jail time if Ivan doesn't cover your ass. Your agency is already on thin ice."
"It's fine," I lied smoothly. "Ivan will send me to the basement where the Spongemonster lives before he lets me go to jail. Worse fate, trust me."
I walked away from the chaos. The immediate adrenaline was fading, replaced by a cold, stomach-clenching dread about Ivan's inevitable fury.
I walked about five blocks away from the diner, Mister Fluffernutter quietly digesting his meal of panic. I needed to call Ivan back and spin this into a minor success. But the thought of hearing that abrasive rasp made me want to jump into a sewer drain. I knew exactly how this conversation would go:
Ivan: "You idiot! Do you know how much a new building costs?! You know the insurance doesn't cover something like that!"
Chron: "But Boss, I got the core intact! And I only got slightly burned!"
Ivan: "You are fired! Go clean the Spongemonster cage for the rest of your pathetic life!"
I stopped by a dumpster, pulled out my phone, and typed a quick text instead. Deniability. That was the third-rate Devil Hunter's most important tool.
After explaining the situation, I didn't wait for a reply. I powered off the phone and slipped it into my pocket, breathing a small sigh of relief. Ivan could blast my voicemail all night, but I wouldn't hear it. I had bought myself twelve hours of temporary safety.
The Pastrami Sandwich was still impossibly far away.
Forget luxury sandwich, at this rate, I will need to get out from my cramped apartment and sleep on the street. The future greatly worried me.
But oh well, thinking ahead isn't really my strength.
I just need to make it to tomorrow.
I just needed to sleep.
And when I wake up, my dread would have either disappeared or decreased so much that it didn't matter anymore.
But as I rounded the corner onto my street, something felt wrong. I wasn't even staring ahead, but there was something unfamiliar about my surrounding. I looked ahead to see a sleek, black car, parked directly outside the entrance to my apartment building. It looked aggressively expensive, completely out of place next to the rusted-out relics usually littering the curb.
Standing beside the car, looking perfectly calm in a charcoal grey suit that must have cost more than my entire apartment's deposit, was a man. He was looking at me, tapping a manicured finger on the polished hood.
Why am I getting goosebumps?
…
..
.
Ivan read the message. He stared at it, not with fury, but with a bone-deep, exhausted resignation. He looked, perhaps for the first time in his life, older than forty-five.
He crumpled the disposable cup he was holding, his third black coffee of the hour, and slammed it onto the scarred desk in the back office. The desk was somehow even cheaper and uglier than the one Chron used.
"He cut the building in half," Ivan rasped.
"Yes, Boss. The police scanner confirmed it," a cheerful voice replied.
Jax was standing by the perpetually sputtering water cooler, meticulously polishing a small, antique silver teapot. Unlike the beige-clad, singed Intern Chron, Jax wore a crisp, dark blue uniform, his hair neatly slicked back. He looked like an exceptionally reliable waiter. He was, in fact, Ivan's sole reliable field agent and a recent graduate of the elite Whizdevian University.
"Though not in half, Boss," Jax corrected, holding the teapot up to the light to check for smudges. "Diagonally. It's much worse. Cuts the building's resale value to absolute zero. They can't even tear it down easily, they have to deconstruct it."
Ivan pinched the bridge of his nose until white spots appeared. "I specifically told him to capture it! But he forgets everything when he gets to use his machete!"
"Ah, the machete. Yes. Chron's enthusiasm is certainly persistent," Jax mused, placing the teapot back on its stand. "Though, to be fair, he did get the core intact. Most newbies panic and liquify the target. Chron, however, maintains structural integrity on the core while utterly demolishing the host environment."
"It's a gift he needs to return," Ivan growled, running a hand over his tired face. "This agency is on its third warning from the Bureau this quarter. They don't care about enthusiastic amateurs. They care about balance sheets. A Category 4 structural failure on a low-level Waffle Devil? That makes us look like... amateurs."
Jax walked over, placing a fresh, still-steaming cup of coffee on Ivan's desk. It wasn't the usual caustic black sludge. It was a rich espresso, perfectly frothed.
"Don't worry, Boss. I've already called the BOCAR contact, Agent Blueno. I used my 'polite but serious' voice. I told her we are conducting an internal audit."
"Did she laugh?"
"She did not, Boss. She sighed audibly for a full ten seconds, then told me that the agency is now subject to a Mandatory Financial Review, and that the core's bounty will be immediately sequestered to cover the demolition permit fees."
Ivan leaned back, the cheap office chair protesting with a painful squeal. "The bounty... it will fetch no more than seventy-five hundred. Gone. And I already received the deposit from The Client."
Jax's face remained placid, but his eyes narrowed slightly. He knew exactly who "The Client" was. It was the shadowy operation that kept their third-rate agency afloat by buying specific, low-level cores for... purposes Ivan didn't want to know about.
"That's the real problem, isn't it?" Jax said quietly, dropping the humor. "The Client paid seventy-five thousand for that specific Waffle Devil Core. They wired the funds minutes before Chron even engaged. That's an unusual premium for such a minor Devil."
He rubbed the stubble on his chin. "By now, the news of the structural failure is probably all over the occult channels. They don't like loose ends."
"Do you want me to go?"
Ivan placed the cup down. "They are gonna be a pain in the ass. And, I fear for Chron's safety." He stared at his most reliable agent. "But most importantly, I need that core back, Jax. It's the only thing that will keep us out of debt and out of jail."
"I will get it, that is, if they haven't already found Chron. If they have, alas, only God can save him."