*Bang* *Bang* *Bang*
Thomas thumped his fist on the door to Hubert Plaid’s home, the wooden door doing little to dull the reverberating echo inherent to such a metal container.
The door opened shortly afterwards as an annoyed and intoxicated elderly man in his sixties revealed himself.
“Huh, watcha want? I’ve already paid up this month so why are you fucking…”
Hubert trailed off as his eyes focused on Senna, a blatant lascivious desire within his gaze along with a trace of madness.
“We want to have a chat about some events 30 years ago.”
“…I’ve already done my time. Fuck off.”
Hubert tried to shut the door, but Thomas stuck his foot in the door and blocked it.
“I insist~”
Thomas and Senna forcefully entered, Hubert unable to resist. He tried to fight back, but his body was that of an ordinary old man, unable to resist even a powerless Thomas.
“Motherfuckers! I will have your head, and that girl!”
Thomas planted a fist in the pit of his stomach, causing him to keel over, before kicking him back and onto the ground. Senna merely watched as a spectator, inspecting the living space that stunk of sweat and cigarettes butts with a scrunched up nose.
Thomas dragged the old man who was struggling to breath and placed him on a wooden chair from the kitchen breakfast counter. Senna then found some rope and handed it to Thomas to tie the old man up.
It was a rough job, but Hubert was restrained.
“Shall we have our discussion now?”
“You… pieces… of shit… Attacking out of nowhere…”
“Well, I have enough experience that people who have done the wrong thing will lie through their teeth, or so the modern euphemism apparently goes. You need the proper motivation to answer my questions truthfully.”
Despite his calm and nonchalant expression, Thomas was displaying the dominance he once had as a member of the Inquisition. There was no heretic who would answer truthfully, each and every one claiming innocence, leading to a lot of innocents becoming victims as well.
“You hadn’t even asked any questions.”
“I didn’t need to~”
Whether Hubert was conscious of it or not, his gaze kept turning to glance at Senna, particularly her breasts, hips and thighs.
Senna knew that there were humans who did this and it wasn’t something she was unaccustomed to. She didn’t feel any shame or discomfort from this, her hatred towards humans and abysmal opinion of them leading to constantly looking down on them from a detached position.
“Laurie Hudson.”
“Who?”
“Oh, perhaps this will help you remember.”
Thomas pulled out a picture of the school girl from over 30 years ago. When Hubert laid his eyes on it, the hunger and longing in his eyes could not be mistaken.
“Don’t know her.”
“See~ this is what I mean by people being dishonest~” Thomas punch the old man in the face without consideration for his physical condition.
“Your not afraid he will just die if you hit him like that?” Senna asked curiously as blood dripped from the tied up person’s mouth. “He seems pretty old and frail.”
“Huh? I thought he was actually pretty young though, only 60. He is actually in really good condition.”
Senna rolled her eyes and didn’t rebut him. She was technically over a hundred years herself, but even that couldn’t compare to Thomas’ estimated eight millennia existence.
What Thomas was judging however was Hubert’s soul. Whilst his body, or vessel, was in the waning period, his soul was fully nurtured and extremely healthy.
“Cough…HEL-”
Hubert desperately tried to call out for help, but was interrupted by a prompt second punch.
“You’re right, Senna, maybe he won’t hold out,” Thomas stated as the gray haired man’s head hung limply.
“Can’t you just interrogate his soul or something?”
“No, no, that’s pure fantasy material right there. Memories are stored in the vessel, not the soul. Sure, there is some influence or imprint from the vessel onto the soul, but not enough to get any sort of answers.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I have plenty of methods to get people to talk, but they aren’t really accepted in the modern day. Let’s use some of the simpler ones. Say, Hubert, you just have to answer my questions truthfully, okay~?”
With his head still hanging low, Hubert opened his mouth a spoke through gritted teeth.
“…What about the girl?”
“We just want to know what happened those 30 years ago.”
“I’m sure it’s all in the police report… you didn’t need to come here.”
“But none of that is to do with Laurie, now is it. She vanished two years prior to that.”
“What are you accusing me of? I went to prison for rape, not murder.”
“But you knew her, and didn’t want me to know that~ What was your relationship? Given her beauty, I suspect it was something illicit~”
Hubert sat there in silence before eventually muttering, “We were in a relationship?”
“…What?”
“We were in a student-teacher relationship, okay!?”
“Really~?”
“He’s lying,” Senna added on, her ears tweaking as she listened to his breathing and read his body language.
At the fae’s words, a sense of dread fell over Hubert before Thomas grabbed one of his fingers and mercilessly snapped it back before twisting and crushing it in his hand, shattering the bone in multiple positions.
“AARGHGHHHH!!!”
“You raped her, just like those other girls, didn’t you.”
“…”
“She was seen again the other week.”
“!! Impossible!”
“I am going to start on your other fingers if you don’t tell me the truth.”
“…It’s not my fault. I was just a normal teacher before she became my student. I only wanted to do a good job and pass on knowledge to the next generation.”
“…?”
Hubert’s voice was faint at first, but increased in volume as his words became more and more fanatic, or desperate, it was difficult to distinguish between the two from how he was talking.
“But… she kept enticing me! You don’t understand. The way she looked at me, teasing with her gaze, the way she would casually raise her skirt to see more of her legs, how she would lean in when asking a question…”
“… I pushed her away at first, telling her to be mindful of her actions, but she didn’t stop. She skipped class one day, uncharacteristic of her, and requested to take an after school remedial lesson to make up for it. I should have said no… but…”
Thomas leaned down to look at the man’s face that was looking into his lap, seeing that rather than a remorseful expression, he was grinning with fervor.
“It was then, when it was just the two of us, that my morals collapsed. She wanted it… she wanted it, not even resisting, but afterwards, she cried.”
“And then what?” Thomas asked with a cold gaze. “You killed her?”
“…No… I took photos. I told her we were now in a relationship, and she wasn’t to tell anyone else. And if she did…”
Senna’s patience was running thin at the lengthy backstory, so she abruptly stated, “I don’t care. Hurry up and get to the point.”
Once he begun talking, the elderly man didn’t stop. It was like the flood gate had opened and now all the water was gushing out.
“Our relationship continued, but I had to discipline her so she knew not to talk about it. One day, she said it was over, that she was going to the police. I don’t know what overcame me, but I couldn’t let that happen.”
“You didn’t want to be caught, and that is when you decided to get rid of her. Before you got arrested.”
“HahahaHAHHAHAH!!” Hubert laughed manically. “Arrested? No, she wanted to leave me! I was not going to let her leave. I had to discipline her more, but she went limp… She… she died… she wasn’t supposed to!”
“Sigh, Senna, we are done here.”
“Mmhmm, I told you she was killed, not getting mysteriously dragged in.”
“Hey, she could have been dragged in on the verge of death, he just thought she was dead.”
“Stop clinging onto that vain idea.”
Thomas turned to Hubert one last time and stated, “If you had stopped there, you may have gotten away with it. That school had a habit of covering up things like this, albeit usually not as serious.”
“…How can one stop…”
Hubert’s voice had softened, but the passion in it didn’t leave. He raised his head and stared intently at Senna as he continued talking.
“Once you have broken that moral principle, you can’t go back. I was going mad, turning insane. Just one more time, one more time to stave off the madness. But they weren’t the same, they weren’t Laurie! That’s right, my fate, it’s all her fault!”
Even as Thomas and Senna left, leaving Hubert tied to the chair beaten and with a broken finger, he continued to stare in lust at the demi-fallen fae, whose appearance was similar in age to his victims.
Thunder rumbled across the sky just moments before the rain began bucketing down in a torrent. Senna reached into her jacket and pulled out a mechanical parasol that extended itself before opening above the two, creating a small area of reprisal from the downpour.
The sky was dark an menacing and rivers of water were rapidly forming on the ground. Any residents in the community who were still outside quickly fled to nearby cover or lifted their coats, or any item, over their head while rushing to their home.
“Sigh, he was staring at my daughter’s chest so intently, I should have been harder on him,” Thomas spoke with a sense of regret while sighing exaggeratedly, paying no attention to the rain.
“I am not your daughter,” Senna rebutted while being seemingly unperturbed by Hubert’s actions. “Why would I care if a human stares at me? That’s nothing unusual.”
The duo exited the community and Thomas sent a quick request to the ride share company before giving the blonde-crimson haired fae a look of shocked disbelief.
“Where is your modesty?!”
“What does modesty have to do with it? Do you expect me to rip out the eyes of everyone who stares at me like that?”
“Eh… I guess that’s a bit extreme.”
Senna looked down at her body pensively before shaking her head and stating, “To feel lust over a monster such as myself, humans truly are disgusting. In saying that, even I can tell he was unusually extreme in his thoughts.”
The duo found a haven in a worn and graffitied bus stop with a purple neon sign on the side and dim yellow lights inside. Senna closed her mechanical parasol just Thomas pulled her over and hugged her from behind, his arms wrapping around her shoulders.
“Ridiculous, my daughter is so beautiful, a madonna. There is no way she could be a monster. As for why he was… like that… I think I understand.”
“I had forgotten, you are also a giant pervert.” Senna sighed before tilting her head to look up at Thomas’ face from the corner of her eye. “Do you want to touch them?”
“What? No, I don’t want to feel up my own daughter!”
“I’m not your daughter.”
“You are my daughter. A daughter with no modesty that clearly needs protecting.”
Senna pinched Thomas’ arms and effortlessly freed herself before standing beside him.
“Exactly who is protecting who here?”
As the two were bantering among themselves, a large humming sound broke through the veil of rain as the bus associated with the stop they were seeking shelter inside of pulled over on the side of the road.
“Oh, the bus is heading in the right direction too. Let’s just take that,” Thomas nonchalantly said as he ducked through the rain and climbed aboard the bus, swiping his phone over the ticket reader to log his entry and pay his fare.
Senna followed him on afterwards before asking, “What about the rideshare you booked?”
“I will just cancel it and state the driver was rude and the car messy. See?”
“You are going to get your name blacklisted.”
“No worries, I used your name.”
“…”
The man who had picked up Thomas and Senna previously had moved to a different area for work today. He driving through the rain to pick up a ‘Senna’ when the order was cancelled all of a sudden.
He didn’t care that the customer cancelled the request, but the rideshare administration service automatically forwards the reason. Seeing the blatant lie, the only thing he could do was shout aloud in the car, “What the fuck!? Which arsehole was this!?”
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