The Stakeout

Slowly but surely, the sun began to sink beyond the distance. The rays of afternoon light gradually becoming the rays of dusk, casting the skies into an orange tint.

What was it, like - 5pm right now? Vampire hunting sounded like a colossal task you had to prepare for. I mean, our lives hung in the balance here.

We should have been preparing, discussing tactics and whatnot. Making contingencies within our contingencies. We should have been… and yet we aren't. Why?

Because the succubus got hungry.

Fast forward to present time, there I was in the passenger seat of her car again, while she ordered up some burgers at the take-away driveway.

"16.50, please," said the cashier by the drive-through window.

"Oh, gimme a sec," Irene said.

Bored out of my mind I was, I failed to notice Irene's hand stretching out at me, not until I heard her fake a cough to attract my attention. Once I did though, I was quite taken aback.

"I'm paying?"

For an answer, she stretched her hand out even more, her eyes growing sterner with each second her palm was left cashless and empty.

"Fine…"

Before I could even have time to offer her the 20 I fished out from my wallet, she already had plucked it from my fingers faster than you can say 'your welcome'.

As thanks she flashed a not-so-sweet-sweet smile at me, briefly though, her priorities right then were to pay the cashier and get the food, to which she did both at a record pace.

Pulled over by the parking lot, it didn't take long for her to start wolfing them down like some kind of animal. Big bites, little chews and a lick of her lips.

Begs the question though…

"Where's mine?"

Irene paused mid-way through licking ketchup from her fingertips to turn over at me, a look of bewilderment on her face.

"You didn't ask," she said.

"My money."

"My car," she retorted, delving a hand into the paper bag. "You're welcome to the fries, though."

Guess I can settle for that.

For a moment, there was this sense of normalcy as she handed me the carton of fries, only for a moment though, before the utter bizarreness of the situation - eating food with a succubus when we should have been preparing for a vampire attack - had me snapping back to the task at hand.

"What are we doing here?" I asked.

Irene took a big mouthful. "Eating," she said through bulged cheeks.

"Wow, you must be a detective or something."

Irene rolled her eyes and nudged her head at the windshield. "Look there, don't say anything and keep a close eye at it."

"Wha - "

"Do it," she urged while chomping down another mouthful.

So there I sat, eating some fries in silence, watching people and cars go about their day from the passenger seat. It was obvious we were staking something out, but whatever it was, Irene wasn't telling. Not like she could either, every time I turned to look at her, her cheeks were always bulging with either fries or a burger, maybe even a mixture of both.

I complied for about thirty minutes, before that sinking feeling of guilt started acting up again. Clearly it'll never go away until I choose to confront it, so I did, turning my eyes to a recently stuffed and drowsy Irene with her arms wrapped around her knees.

"I really was trying to get some info, you know. I wasn't just messing around in the game. It's just… y'know how games are, they take time."

"I know," she said, yawning. "You're fine. I'm not upset."

"Seriously, the prologue took longer than anything else. If it wasn't for that I'd probably would have gotten more info. But no, instead I had to learn all about 'Leonardo the Hero' and 'Terestra the Vile'... really, there's gotta be a better way of introducing - "

"Say that again."

I stopped, paused, and blinked. "What?"

"Leonardo and Terestra. The game really has them?"

Irene was wide awake now, sitting upright, eager as all hell to hear what I have to say. She was so close to me, in fact, I had to roll down a window just to not spoil the mood with my own 'mood'.

Still, I was unknowingly sitting on info this whole time that peaked her interest, I wasn't letting a little arousal stop me from explaining to her.

"You play as Leonardo and follow his story as he attempts to kill the demon queen Terestra. Along the way you meet up with party members and fight the six servants of Terestra, one of which is apparently Ash herself."

She was soaking up all this info like a wet sponge, constantly reiterating everything I said in mutters under her breath, stopping only after she had comprehend everything.

By the end of it, she was looking quite troubled. I took a guess over what it was.

"I'm thinking the Matriarch isn't the only thing Asteria and Kronocia have in common, am I right?"

A hand on her head and her lips in a frown. "Kronocia had a Terestra. She wasn't just a demon queen though, she was Kronocia's God. Everything moved according to her will. Nobody could stop her. Nobody except well… you guessed it, the great hero from the past, Leonardo himself."

"Too similar for it to be a coincidence," I said. "Something is definitely going on here."

"I don't remember this six servants thing though… she never had any, certainly no Elves either. They're downright despised in my world."

"Asteria hated Elves too, though. Ash mentioned it to me."

"As you said then," said Irene, stretching her arms and back. "This is way more than just coincidence."

"There's one other thing…"

"What's that?"

Something was bugging me. Throughout all this time, as we rambled and discussed on and on… that thought always stayed with me. I simply had to know.

"Why do you talk about it as if you were there yourself?"

Whether she anticipated the question or not, she didn't show. Instead she closed her eyes, and let out a sigh.

"I was. From the summoning of the great hero to Leonardo's and Terestra's initial confrontation. I was there for it all. Why, I must have been around your age when it happened."

"How old are you now?"

She smiled faintly. "I stopped keeping track at a 146."

"So what happened? Did Leonardo manage to kill Terestra?"

That smile of hers faded away.

"He died. I didn't even think he stood a chance. That, I wasn't there for. By the time the final battle came, I had already changed worlds. But from what I've heard, the realm of Kronocia is no more. The people, the races, the culture, the history - Terestra had reduced it all to nothingness, along with Leonardo."

She finished, leaving in her wake, a profound silence that none of us dared break. Unknown to her though, there were pieces in my head that were starting to connect.

That dream I had in particular… a barren desolate world crumbling to ruins, two people standing across from each other. Leonardo and Terestra. Was that world I saw Kronocia? Or was it Asteria? More importantly though, why did I dream of it then, when I knew nothing of it at that time?

From the way Asteria's story was going, could the ending really be that too? No matter what Leonardo did in the game, Terestra would reign supreme regardless. Was that it?

There was one thing I had to confirm now, given everything that had come to light.

I turned my eyes back to Irene. "So that means… Terestra is dead as well, right? She destroyed the world after all."

"That's the thing…" The moment I saw her gulping, I felt my heart sink in my chest, confirming the one fear I had over all this. "I don't know."

"Oh no…"

She gave a tired sort of chuckle. "Oh no is right... going by her powers, I know full well she couldn't have died from such a thing, I also know she is also fully capable of changing worlds on her own, no external forces necessary."

"So you're saying she could be here? Right now? In this world? Just wandering around like some kind of ticking time bomb?"

"Like I said… I don't know. But with all the recent happenings lately - an Elf from a video game, a Matriarch appearing and abducting people - there's no denying that something is definitely happening here."

It's just one thing after another, isn't it? Half of me felt like it was so much better before when all I had to deal with back then was money troubles and the mob.

No one said anything about any impending apocalypse during my mid-twenties period. Those bastards in school lied to me.

Just when I thought things couldn't get weider, it did. I saw it. Down across the street at a sidewalk, almost hidden among the wandering crowds.

But there was no mistaking it. My pants, my jacket, draped over by long locks of ashen-colored hair. Ears, long and pointed. I choked on a fry just trying to utter her name.

So I pointed at the windshield and said to Irene in a strangled voice, "It's… Ash. She's… she's right there."

She instantly looked over to where I was pointing at, and froze upon catching sight of her.

To my surprise though, there was not a hint of shock on her expression. Irene looked… pleased with herself, smiling wide.

"I thought so!" She said, her eyes locked on Ash's position.

"Thought what?" I asked, also watching as Ash wandered into a shambled building at the end of the street.

"That building your Elf friend just entered," Irene started the car, the engine rumbling to life. "That's where we'll find the Matriarch."