Clusterbomb
She was well trained, deadly efficient, capable of anything. But damn, she never pictured picking a lock through an ajar window would be so difficult. She found an unoccupied apartment, but it was locked from the inside and the keyhole had been sealed to stop squatters from picking it open. So Reze resorted to clinging to the side of the building, using three stolen wire coat hangers to make some long poles, and attempting to pick the lock from a tiny crack in the window. Sounds easy enough, it wasn’t. Not to mention she had to stay on constant lookout for mice or rats, which is nobody’s idea of fun.
She threw her bag of hastily collected supplies next to the bed and started to case the interior, looking for anything useful to steal, or any of that evil woman’s tiny spies. After a thorough sweep, she finally allowed herself to rest. Of course she knew she wouldn’t sleep for more than an hour or so at a time, her training made sure of that. But the encounter in the alleyway had really drained her, not to mention how much her thoughts were racing because of that devil girl. She’d need to unpack that at some point, it was making it hard to think. She was making it hard to think.
No matter how hard she tried, Reze couldn’t sleep. Everytime she shut her eyes she felt that red haired demon watching her. And whenever she looked around to see if she was there, she saw nothing. It was maddening. So she tried to think about something else, and all she saw was that devil, Power. Was it some kind of devil magic? A curse that made her always think about her contract? It couldn’t have just been her, right? She smelled terrible, she was rude, she was a liar, there’s no way she was actually attracted to that. But, she did save her, she tried to hold off Makima, sure, but she also tried to heal her even before offering her the contract, it seemed more like an afterthought to her.
These swirling thoughts were interrupted by a tapping on the window. Her eyes widened with horror, she grabbed the knife from the nightstand and turned to see nothing but the night sky and the city’s skyline. Then a hand! And horns? Was that Power? Did she climb the side of the building? Reze opened the window and pulled the girl inside, absolutely bewildered. “Ah! Power wins again! Your scent was hard to follow, but I found it! I am the world’s greatest detective after all!” Power shouts triumphantly.
“What the actual fuck? How did you know where I was? Is it magic? Is this part of the contract, that you always know where I’m hiding? That you’re always showing up in my thoughts? What the hell did I agree to!” Reze questions, she’s at the end of her rope and a scare like this is the last thing she needed.
Power was not aware she could do magic, but maybe she was the world’s greatest sorcerer on top of all of her other accomplishments? “Well, it’s only natural you would always think about me, I am the best! And you have the honour of claiming me as your girlfriend. I’ve been thinking about you a lot too, actually. I’ve been trying to figure out how human dating works, I found out that humans like gifts. So I searched through the city and found things that humans like!” Power says as she puts down a decently sized and very expensive looking handbag.
“A handbag? It looks expensive, sure but I can’t use this. I’m a fugitive, remember? It’s not practical.” Reze responded, the bag looked fine, but she needed to prioritise fast movement.
“No, fool! The bag is just to carry the things I got, look inside the bag.” Power scoffed, why would she get her girlfriend a simple bag. She was a far better girlfriend than that!
Reze looked in the bag, she saw a collection of random shiny objects. From fake gems to precious stones to actual jewellery. But on top of them was something that immediately caught her attention. It looked like a leather knife pouch. She pulled it out and felt an unexpected weight, there was a knife in there too. It was a karambit, and it looked like it was very good quality. Well weighted, sharpened, sturdily constructed. The grip was moulded, and her fingers fit into it perfectly. The handle was made of a dark, treated wood, the grip was metal, painted to look purple. She liked purple, it was one of her favourite colours. It was why she dyed her hair purple for this mission. The metal of the blade itself was covered in swirling, engraved patterns. It was beautiful, and it fit her preferred grip style. “This is… actually really nice. Way better than the stolen kitchen knife I’ve been using. Thank you.” She said, sincerely.
“I knew you would like it! I had to ask a civilian if they’d seen a girl with purple hair, they said you were holding your knife backwards, so I got you a knife you can actually hold properly!” Power was very proud of herself for this one.
“Well, it’s nice. I like it.” Reze said with a smile, maybe this was Power being thoughtful (in her own way)?
“Did you see the other stuff?” Power asks, happy that she was doing dating correctly.
“I did, but again, I’m on the run, I don’t really have the space for all these. Some of these look really expensive, how much did you spend on this?” Reze asks, curious as to where she’s getting all of this money from.
“Oh I just took it. What were the humans gonna do? Arrest me? I’m the president!” Power beams at her accomplishments. Reze laughs, a chuckle at first but then full on laughter. Power liked when she laughed, it made her feel happy, like when she hears meowy hissing at Denji. “And it’s not just that, I got a bottle of that weird liquid stuff in the fancy glass bottles humans like too! I tried drinking some and it was terrible. But maybe it’s a human thing.” She added, hoping that her girlfriend likes it more than she did.
Reze sees that what she meant was a bottle of perfume. The bottle was very pretty, and Reze sprayed some on her wrist to smell it. It was floral, and reminded her of a flower field she sat in on a previous mission. “Why don’t you keep this? It’s a perfume, you spray it on yourself to make yourself smell good. You could use it.” Reze laughed, remembering how bad Power smelled and also how funny the image of her drinking perfume is. But then she realised she didn’t smell like that right now, and that she was wearing nothing but a towel. “Power, did you take a bath before coming here?” The shock in her voice was genuine.
“Of course! You said if I wanted to do that holding thing again I needed to bathe more, so I did it! I compromised, or whatever that stupid human word is for doing things you don’t want to.” Proudly posits Power.
“Well, great timing. I can’t sleep, so if you want to cuddle me while I fall asleep I wouldn’t be opposed.” Reze says, willing to take advantage of the particularly cuddly devil to suit her own ends.
“Perfect! Exactly as I planned!” Power lies, running over to the bag and opening a side pocket. “Humans have clothes they use just for sleeping, which I find foolish, but I tried to find sleeping clothes that had your favourite number on them!” She beams with pride as she pulls the now very creased clothes from the handbag’s side pocket.
“My favourite number?” Asks Reze, confused.
“I went to the apartment where I bravely defended you against Makima, and you weren’t there, but you left some clothes and they all had the same numbers on them. So I deduced they were your favourite numbers with my world class detective skills!” She explained.
“Power, that’s just the size of the clothes.” Reze laughed again. Power was dumbfounded, had she been out-deduced?! By a human?! Still laughing at the confused look on Power’s face, Reze looked at the clothes. There was a standard set of a shirt and pyjama pants with some overly cutesy character emblazoned on them. But there was also a long, silk, nightdress, Reze had never touched real silk before. “You stole me a silk dress?” She asks, wide eyed.
“Of course! I hear silk is the best fabric. And as my girlfriend, you’re the best girlfriend, so you need the best fabrics, obviously.” Power prattled on, but Reze wasn’t listening…
She was only 13 when she was called on that mission. She had used the bomb devil’s power to down a plane flying out of China. She’d received no other details other than that the family inside were wealth-hogging bourgeoisie pigs and her orders were to kill them. There was a young girl on that plane, she saw her in the wreckage. She was no older than Reze, dressed in a silken cheongsam. Reze thought she looked like a princess, like she’d been told about in storybooks. She wanted to be a princess, then she’d never have to fight, or kill devils, or anything like that. She could make sure no little girls have to do training like she did again. But that was a dream for children, and she wasn’t one of those. She was a soldier, a weapon. Weapons don’t get to dream.
“I’m gonna go into the other room to put this on. If they fit, you can wear the other ones. Then I’m gonna go to sleep, I’m really tired.” Reze left the room and shut the door behind her, permitting herself to shed a single tear. She wasn’t fearless, she knew what the soviets would do if they caught her, and that whatever Makima was planning wasn’t gonna be much better. So she let herself cry, but then she looked at the silk dress in her hand, and thought about Power, and it got a little better. Maybe she could make a life here. With her…
She changed into the silk dress and it was just as comfortable as she hoped. She looked at the reflective surface of the nearby window, she knew people found her attractive, but this was the first time she’d ever felt pretty. She walked back into the room and saw Power sat on the bed attempting to put on the pyjama shirt without stabbing through it with her horns, and then immediately getting her head stuck in the arm hole. She was turned around, so Reze didn’t see anything indecent. But she cleared her throat to announce her presence. “Do you want some help with that?” She chuckled.
“Reze help! Some kind of shirt devil has possessed this fabric and it wants me dead!” Power yelled, growling at the shirt over her face. Reze sat down behind her and boldly rescued her girlfriend from the shirt devil, by just putting it on her normally. “So you’re not just a pretty face, you’re funny too. Now get in bed, I’m tired.” She said as she pulled back the covers and clambered into bed. The shirt barely fit, but Power was just glad she had avoided being killed by it. She did as instructed and climbed in after Reze, wrapping her arms around the sleepy girl’s waist. Reze did the same, and then Power put her leg over Reze’s legs. “You’re really clingy for a devil, you know?” She teased, Power simply nuzzled her head against the woman’s neck and said nothing.
The two women held on to each other tight, as if both of them were scared the other would slip away. Reze slept a lot longer than two hours that night.