Chapter 257:
"Here you are, Layla." Artemis placed a mug of freshly brewed coffee on the table. Artemis had been acting a lot less 'Tsun' and a lot more 'dere' ever since I had agreed to go on a date with her in the future.
I picked up the mug and took a sip. "Mmmm, that's good stuff. Thank you, Artemis." Artemis always made the best coffee. I'm pretty sure the reason for that was because instead of adding cream she added ambrosia. The nectar of the gods. It definitely lived up to the hype.
"You're welcome," she told me before heading back into the kitchen to help Hestia cook breakfast for everybody.
As I was sipping on my coffee, Carol sat down next to me at the table. She let out a yawn. "Good morning. The bed was so comfortable I almost didn't want to wake up."
"That's probably because of Hestia. All of the furniture in our home becomes much more comfortable and homey thanks to her presence," I pointed to Hestia over in the kitchen. She was in the middle of cooking breakfast for everyone. Of course, she could have simply conjured up food easily with magic, but where was the fun in that?
"Thank you, Hestia," Carol said with a small wave.
"You're welcome!" Hestia replied without turning around.
"So, what's the plan for today?" Carol asked me.
"I thought we could have some fun. We could go shopping, and explore the city," I told Carol. "How long will you be able to stay for?" I asked her. I was interested in taking some time to get to know her more. She was definitely one of the busiest women I'd ever met though.
[I think she gets into fights more often than you do. Now that's saying something!]
"I should be fine for a few days," Carol replied while brushing a stray hair behind her ear. "I don't expect the Galaxy to fall apart that soon without me. Would it be just the two of us?" Carol asked me curiously.
[She's asking you whether or not you're asking her out on a date.]
'I obviously know that, System!'
[Alright, sheesh. Just trying to be helpful…]
'Thank you, but your help is not needed…'
[I'm gonna give it anyway! You have a thing for blondes, tell her you love her long blonde hair. Don't let her cut it like she did during the Avengers. That looked absolutely horrible!]
'I agree, but I'm not going to say that out of nowhere! It would come off as weird!' I berated the System.
Sometimes, the System could be extra annoying. Like now, when it was trying to give me romantic advice.
"Yes, it would be just the two of us," I told Carol. "The rest of my family will be busy for the next few days. Rias and Sona are preparing for a visit from their families. I'm not sure what Nebula is up to, but I think she wants to explore Earth on her own for a bit. If anyone asks her, I told her to tell them that her blue skin is because she's a mutant and not an alien," I explained to Carol. The people of Earth had mixed feelings about aliens at the moment. They loved the Asgardians, who have been completely peaceful with us all, but they don't trust other aliens. To be honest, that was probably for the best. Most of the other races in the galaxy sucked…
…
After enjoying a delicious homemade breakfast, I took Carol out into the city on an impromptu date. It had been a long time since she'd been caught up with Earth fashion, so we started there. We visited clothing store after clothing store for an hour straight. I bought her whatever she was interested in. Carol initially wasn't comfortable with me spending so much money on her, at least that was until I pointed out how I could literally create gold anytime I wanted with Creation of all Things.
Following that, we went to go and look at high end sports cars. We visited the most expensive dealership in the city. The kind where the supercars they sold started in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Carol liked driving fast cars almost as much as she did flying. We took a few test drives but didn't end up purchasing anything. It wasn't like Carol could drive anything in space, and I wasn't that interested in owning a car myself. When I could run faster than even the fastest race car, driving fast wasn't enticing for me anymore. I was much more interested in my Warship sitting up in orbit.
Despite us not buying anything in the end, the salesman and the dealership didn't seem to mind us wasting their time. The fact that I showed up at the dealership in person was guaranteed to boost their business for the foreseeable future.
"That was fun!" Carol said with a grin as we left the dealership. The two of us were both floating in the air, dozens of meters above the streets. "Technology has come so far since I left the planet!"
"It definitely has," I said. "Our world is full of geniuses who've propelled our technology forwards by a few decades. If you thought driving those super cars was fun, you should try the Iron Woman suit! Andrea let me take it for a spin once, now that was exhilarating!" I gave Carol a brief rundown on Andrea and Tony Stark. She hadn't heard of Iron Man or Woman and was very impressed by my descriptions of them.
"A suit that can turn an ordinary human into a near unstoppable force? That's amazing! Do these two live in New York?" Carol asked me.
"Sometimes," I shrugged. "Tony and Andrea have properties all over the world. They kind of live wherever they feel like at the moment. Most of the time they are in New York, but they also spend a lot of time at Tony's Mansion in Malibu."
Carol sighed wistfully when I mentioned the beach house. "A mansion on the beach… Now that's the high life right there! How come you don't live like that, Layla?"
"I actually prefer city life," I explained. "Angels and Fallen Angels were both very social beings. We like to live around large groups. Heaven and the Grigori were both crowded, but nobody minded. We all preferred it that way actually." That was also one of the reasons I probably felt so at home on Asgard as well. Their entire population lived in one mega city.
Since it was approaching noon, the two of us decided to land and get some lunch. We spotted a small cafe underneath us.
"Oh my God…" The hostess trailed off and stared at me in silence. I let out a small cough to snap her out of it. "I'm so sorry! W–Welcome L–Lady Layla, w–where would you like to sit?" The hostess sputtered when Carol and I both landed directly in front of her. Her eyes were practically locked onto the wings on my back. As soon as we'd landed, we'd obviously started drawing attention from people on the street as well.
The woes of being internationally famous…
[And worshiped…]
"Somewhere towards the back and away from the street would be nice," I said while gesturing to the small growing crowd outside the cafe. It hadn't even taken more than a minute for it to form.
"O–Of course. R–Right this way…"
"Does this happen to you often?" Carol asked with a raised eyebrow as we took our seats at the cafe table. She gestured to the people in the street staring at us.
"We love you, Layla!"
"Oh my god! It's actually her!"
"She looked at me! I can die happy!"
I let out a chuckle at the people's exuberance. "It happens occasionally," I replied to Carol's question.
"Why didn't this happen when we were clothing shopping?" She inquired.
"My family shops at those stores a lot, so they know to close down whenever one of us visits at this point. We always spend a lot of money so they dont mind," I explained and she nodded. "Does this ever happen to you in space? I imagine that you should have quite a few admirers as well with all of the civilizations you've probably saved," I said.
Carol sighed again when I mentioned her admirers. "Don't get me started on them!" She said in exasperation. "There was this one planet that I saved a couple years back, it was on a collision course with an asteroid that would have ended all life on the planet. With my powers, destroying the asteroid was a simple task. It was actually one of the easier world saving missions I'd ever had. It barely took me a few minutes of effort. Despite that, the people on the planet threw parades and parties in my honor for weeks on end! They even gave me my own national holiday!" Carol blushed and covered her face with her hands.
"Awe… That's adorable!" I said with a teasing smile. I was thankful that I didn't have any official holidays of my own…yet.
Carol and I spent some time in the cafe exchanging stories with each other and eating small desserts that we ordered.
"You know, this might be the most normal first date I've ever been on," I admitted. It was a nice change of pace.
"Really?" Carol asked in surprise.
"Yeah, now that I think about it, a lot of my first dates ended in violence and explosions…" I trailed off with a small chuckle.
[A lot of them ended in sex too…]
'That too,' I thought fondly.
Carol chuckled as well. "Let's try not to jinx it then."
I nodded at her. "Good point. We've still got plenty of time, what do you want to do–"
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
"…Fuck," I muttered in exasperation. Outside the cafe, I could already hear people on the streets screaming in panic.
"What happened!?"
"Oh my God! A building blew up!"
"What's that green light in the sky!? There's a bunch of red flying things coming out of it!"
Carol stood up and gave me a deadpan expression. "Explosions, huh? You just had to jinx it…" she laughed.
I blushed at her accusation. It wasn't my fault! How was I supposed to know something crazy like this was going to happen!?
[Because you're a Gamer and this is pretty much how your life works…]
I rushed out of the Cafe with Carol following right behind me. Thankfully, the people crowding the doorway moved out of the way and made room for me. A few blocks away, a skyscraper I recognized as the Baxter building was missing a few of its upper floors.
In place of them, was a giant green portal. And what was currently spewing out of the portal in droves?
Demons…Legions of bright red winged demons. Horns and pitchforks included.
"You have got to be shitting me…" I muttered while observing hundreds and thousands of demons spill into the skies of New York. I could sense all of their foul magics. My instincts were screaming at me to destroy them all!
There were a lot of them though…
The demons were all pouring out of that portal like a swarm of locusts! Their numbers were growing by a few hundred every second. I was going to need some backup if I wanted to take care of this random demonic invasion before they did any significant damage to the city!
I held my hand above my head and a purple portal of my own manifested a few meters above me.
"What the…? Oof!"
"Eeep! Ouchy!"
Two beings ended up falling out of my portal and landing on their butts. They both quickly stood up and playfully glared at me while rubbing their behinds.
"What was that for, Layla? You didn't have to kidnap us from heaven if you wanted to talk to us!" Gabriel scolded me.
"It's good to see you again, sister," Michael said as he gave me a hug. It had been a while since I had seen my oldest brother in person.
Unfortunately, we didn't have time to do any catching up. I gently pushed Michael off of me and pointed up into the sky. "A portal to one of the hells opened up above New York! Demon's are invading!"
Gabriel and Michael both gaped at where I was pointing. A second later, they both snapped out of their shock and took on looks of determination. Bright halos bloomed above their heads as they spread out their majestic white and golden wings. "The forces of hell are not welcome to set foot upon fathers creation! How dare they!" Gabriel's innocent expression vanished.
"We shall drive them back together, Sisters!" Michael had the same look of determination. He flapped his golden wings and rocketed into the air. A golden sword of Light formed in his right hand. With a single swing, hundreds of demons were erased from existence! Gabriel rocket in the air right after him, she was dual wielding Lightspears and immediately joined the fight.
"W–Were those the Archangels Gabriel and Michael!?" Carol sputtered at me in shock. "You can just casually call on them!?"
"I smirked at her, I sure can! Are you up for killing some demons with us?" I asked her. My fourteen wings appeared behind me as I summoned a purple spear in each hand. The crowds of humans nearby started to cheer for us!
A Cosmic aura of power surrounded Carol as she levitated off the ground. "Do you even have to ask?"
We both rocketed into the sky and started laying waste to the hordes of imps. They picked the wrong city to invade!
…
–Heather Potter–
Heather stared at the New York skyline in shock. Thousands of demonic red imps were pouring out of the portal into the air above the city! It was an invasion!
It didn't take very long for pandemonium to ensue. People everywhere started screaming and running in every direction to escape. It didn't help that the Baxter building happened to be closed to central park. It didn't take long for the invading army of imps to notice all of the terrified humans below them. They dove down to start attacking everyone in sight!
"There was actually a portal to hell…" Asia pointed out.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
"Who the hell is this guy!?" Heather asked out loud in shock. In only a few seconds, dozens of imps had already been slain. The green armored man didn't even hesitate to start killing them all as they swooped down…
"He's r–really good at killing demons…" Asia trailed off. She looked a bit green. She had never seen the levels of violence being displayed in front of them.
"John", or the Doom Slayer, was tearing through hordes of demons as if they were nothing. To Heather, the man was an absolute unstoppable force of nature. Imps were blown to pieces with his shotgun, and when that ran out of ammo, he started ripping them apart with his bare hands and using their very bones as impromptu weapons to beat and stab them all to death…
"Graaahh!"
Heather watched the man tear the horns off of a demon and use them to gouge the hellspawns own eyes out!
"W-We need to help him!" Asia said nervously, but with a look of determination. She wasn't a fighter, but a golden Lightspear formed in her hands regardless. Asia threw it towards a demon that was trying to attack the Doom Slayer from behind!
Puchi!
Her blow struck true and impaled the flying red imp from behind. The Light purged it from existence as it disappeared into a pile of ash. The Lightspear cluttered to the ground next to the Doom Slayer. To Asia and Heather's surprise, the armored man picked her Lightspear up and started using it as his next weapon!
"He can actually hold a Lightspear without being burned!?" Heather asked in shock.
"That must mean that he's a good guy!" Asia cheered. "I was right about him! Cmon!" Asia flew down and landed next to the Doom Slayer. Another Lightspear was already in her hands. She did her best to fight off the swarm of imps attacking them as they continued to push their way towards the Baxter building.
Not wanting to be outdone, Heather pulled out her wand and started raining lethal spells on the hordes of hell! "Bombarda, Diffindo, Reducto, Incendio!"
She landed next to Asia and the Doomslayer and started fighting alongside them.
"Never fought with other people before, much less Angels…" the Doomslayer said. "This spear is a pretty good weapon though." He grabbed an imp out of the air right before it could stab him with its black pitchfork. The Doom Slayer shoved the golden spear up the imps ass out of spite. He let out a chuckle at the demon's horrified look before it turned to ash. "The portal to hell is on the roof." He told the two angels next to him.
"We have to get up there and stop this!" Heather exclaimed as they finished purging all of the imps around them. They had a momentary reprieve.
The Doom Slayer nodded at her. He gripped Asia's Lightspear in his hand as they all made their way towards the Baxter building. "This spear is nice, but I prefer guns…"
"There's a hunting and fishing shop down the street," Asia said helpfully. "I think they have shotguns for hunting…?"
"That'll have to work for now," he replied as they took a quick detour for him to load up on weapons and ammo.
XXX