Chương 57: [1.57] At a Crossroads (Part 3)

Again with the gun?! Gelic internally groaned when Grahj whipped out the pistol and pointed it at the door. She guessed that since he'd come this far, he intended for nothing to stop him now. So she took a bit of a drastic, potentially dangerous and stupid action herself. She leapt at his hand and opened wide. With a good chomp, she swallowed the weapon whole, storing it in her intestinal pocket dimension.

"You, hide!" She gave a quick order, flipping the role and bossing the Summoner around for once. Maybe it was the shock of being disarmed, but her master obeyed, ducking behind some boxes. A quick bounce later, and Gelic was perched up high near the door, just waiting for it to open. Airstrike! As soon as the man stepped inside with a shotgun in hand, the Puffball acted. From not too high, since there was a ceiling, she came crashing down.

Instead of the usual Stab, she activated Bash to combo into the Skill, using her round rump as the weapon. Her fluffy butt crashed straight into the back of the man's head, knocking him down to the ground with force, immediately rendering him unconscious, and likely leaving him with a concussion. She then picked up the gun and hurled it away, into a mess of more boxes, so no one would get any crazy ideas.

"Ah, so this is Brankie." His nametag was a dead giveaway.

"Let's get out of here before he wakes up …If he wakes up." She didn't really want to think about it. Hopefully, that hadn't killed him, especially because getting thonked on the head by a pudgy posterior would be a pitiful end. But she also didn't have time to stick around and play medic, not that she'd ever been properly trained.

"I found some portable containers." Grahj came out of his hiding spot with something useful.

"We'll have to be very stringent about keeping it cold, because we'll be solely relying on the insulation. But you're right, even with that, getting it there is troublesome. Without being a licensed paramedic, I doubt they'll let me board a flight with it. We'd need to hire someone to take it for us on short notice. I'd researched a few options beforehand, but without actually having the heart, it never felt sure enough to act on."

"Okay, well where's your son at? And, uhhh, where are we?" Gelic still hadn't confirmed that bit.

"We're in Zidebar." Damn, that was genuinely on the other side of the planet, across an ocean. Explained the decent time difference.

"And I'm from Ottopa. My son is at a hospital in the northeast, Tarcer State Hospital." Oh wait, that was kinda close to Palamyth! Well, not, like, close-close, but on the same continent, at least. Which meant… it was within bouncing range.

"Well, why don't you leave it to me, then?!" she offered with whole-hearted enthusiasm.

"I can poof over to that side of the world and make my way to the hospital within… probably a few hours. Safe and sound, delivered by the morning!" For whatever reason, the crossroads Summoner eyed the Puffball suspiciously.

"Sorry, but no. You've gotten me this far, so I should trust you. Yet with my son's life on the line, I can't take any chances. Now that I have it, I'm not letting the heart out of my sight."

"I mean… we totally have a Contract that would prevent me from betraying you," Gelic grumbled.

"But fine, I get it. At least let me hold onto it until we get there, since I have a way to conceal it from airport security, AND make it so we don't have to regulate the temperature. Gonna need a minute to prep, though. You go ahead and get it packed up to your satisfaction."

"Mmm, fine." Grahj accepted at least those terms, likely because he had no better options on such a tight timeline. So he began his work, and Gelic began hers. Obviously, she planned to cart the heart using Second Stomach. But one glance at the carrier told her there was no way it would fit with the current available space. So how much room could she make? First thing to do was have a second dinner; or early dinner, now that it was mid-afternoon.

And really, it was, like, six dinners, since she dumped as much of her poisoned food into her actual belly as would fit, feeling bloated instantly, then dumped it again with Starvation. Then she repeated it until no food remained. It sucked to waste her stockpile of potentially life-saving nourishment, but she could replenish it easily now. Plus, this was all for replacing it with something definitively life-saving, and for a kid, no less, so she could stomach the loss. Still, though, that hadn't made enough room.

Ultimately, she'd have to spit something out and leave it behind. She could give her master his gun back, but it felt best to still hold on to that for a while, until the tense grump wasn't so upset with the world. Fortunately, the Skill kept a tally of what was in her virtual tummy, along with a general report of how much space each item took up. Gelic upchucked the biggest thing, setting it aside. Yup, that'd do it. She had enough vacancy now, except… she didn't wanna.

It was a sleeping bag that she'd just regurgitated, a brand new sleeping bag that had just arrived that morning along with Cherub's auto-feeder. It was fancy too, designed to keep her warm out in the wilderness even if she had no real shelter, something she'd bought just in case she found herself out on a Summons for a while, and it had cost more than she'd like to admit. But most importantly, she'd gotten it on a good sale that was now over. For all those reasons, she didn't want to leave it behind.

Could she ask Grahj to take it with him as part of his luggage? Perhaps. Would that raise questions as to why an Imp was keeping a sleeping bag stored in her body? Absolutely. She could possibly explain it away, but that sounded like a pain. Really, it'd be best if she could just keep holding onto it herself. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Wait, what if…? Gelic quickly pulled up her DGS screen with Scrying Eye. 84% to next level. Yes, I can work with that!

So she picked up the sleeping bag, and back down the hatch it went. Then up the hatch, down the hatch, up, down, up, down. Clearly, she was breaking some sort of world-record here. But she didn't know what record or who would keep tabs on such a gross thing.

"The hell are you doing?" Grahj turned back to her when she was in the middle of swallowing the sleeping bag for like the tenth time. Gelic had lost count.

"I'm mmfbfsh," she attempted to speak with her mouth full. Realizing it was fruitless, she swallowed her food before trying again. [Second Stomach Lv. 3] [Vigor increased] [Famine Attunement increased] [Famine Attunement has improved from Touched to Embraced]"Ah, there we go!" she proudly reported to the still confused man.

"I was, erm, reorganizing things to get ready for travel. It's a Demon thing." Hopefully that would do instead of trying to properly explain Skills and Second Stomach to a layman.

"Okay, gimme." She held out her arms like a greedy child waiting for a present. As soon as it was within her grasp, she applied a bit of Frost Touch to the exterior.

"Just to make sure my quick handling doesn't increase the temperature inside." And them, hompf. The portable organ cooler was swallowed whole.

"W-what did you just do?!" Grahj reached for his pistol that wasn't there, wanting to threaten the Imp.

"Relax," she tried to assure him.

"It's fine, see." Spat up and opened quickly, the heart was fine. Then for good measure, she swallowed it and retrieved it a handful more times until he was certain. Gelic wasn't going to complain about the extra Skill experience. Though her mouth was getting a bit tired from being held open wide so much.

"If you're satisfied, let's head to the airport!" Things were quiet again on the shorter car ride, until Gelic raised another issue with the plan ahead when the airport was in sight.

"We need to discuss my travel accommodations."

"They can't see you, right?" Grahj didn't seem to understand the problem.

"So can't you just sneak on board?"

"I could, but then what?" she argued.

"I may be small, but not that small. What if it's a full flight? No way could I fit in an overhead compartment even if there's space. And for the cargo hold, well, I've heard bad things about pets not doing well there. That said, I could turn into a cat and have you bring me into the cabin with you, but I can't stay that way forever. At some point, I'd have to go back to being a Demon, which if I was invisible, would be fine once we're in flight and no one's paying attention.

On the off-chance that someone could see me, that'd be a problem. It'd be best if I became a human, since I can hold that form basically forever."

"You can turn human?" The man raised an eyebrow as they pulled into the rental-car return.

"Yep, see?" Gelic waited until the man was parked, not wanting to spook him, before turning into a child version of herself, one that shouldn't be recognizable. It probably would have been fine for her to turn into her normal self in front of him, but she randomly chose to age herself down. Maybe she thought that the guy with a soft-spot for kids would take that change easier.

Since it wasn't her true self, there was some minor MP drain, but barely enough to make it tick down at all, lasting for weeks at its current rate, assuming she didn't need to expend it elsewhere.

"Well, that's a problem." Grahj gave her a single glance.

"A middle-aged man walking around with a young girl who looks nothing like him will get us pulled into secondary screening very quickly. Besides, do you have an ID for that form?"

"Ah, well…" Honestly, she had completely forgotten that ID was required to fly. It had been so long since she'd been on a plane that it had slipped her mind. And no way in hell was Angelica Hallow about to board a one-way flight with no record of her taking a previous one to get there in the first place.

"Nope." She lied to keep it simple.

"Hmm, hey, what about your son? Do you have his ID?"

"Err, yes, I do, actually." The father checked his wallet to confirm, then pulled out the card, showing it to Gelic.

"Aww, a cutie." Well, it was hard to honestly gauge based on an unflattering ID picture, which they all were, but it felt like what most people said. Might be weird coming from a Demon, but that was more of a human reflex.

"Gah." As soon as the Transfiguration was activated, Grahj immediately winced and looked away, occasionally glancing back at the girl, or rather, the spitting image of his own son. Eventually, he threw back his head and had to move a hand over his eyes, to try to suppress the tears that were coming.

"Sorry," the man muttered.

"He, uhh, doesn't really look like that anymore."

"Oh, should I change something?" Angelica didn't really catch the clue.

"No," the dad refuted.

"That's just, it's how most people know him, what he looked like back when he was healthy. It feels like it's been so long now that I'd almost forgotten." Gelic did something almost definitively stupid then. Maybe she was trying to be nice, maybe it was just downright cruel, but her Impish impulses pushed her over the edge. She held out her arms to the man, as if waiting for a hug, and said with a big smile on her face while altering her voice to that of a young boy, "Papa!"

That made the man only glance at her with ire and annoyance, the wet streaks on his face ceasing immediately.

"Yeah, he doesn't call me that. And you don't sound like him at all, either."

"Well, sorry," the fake-boy apologized then went to exit the car, and yet, she found herself grabbed.

"I know it's not real, but…" Grahj's words lulled.

"Thank you."

"Yeah, yeah, okay." Angelica squirmed her way free.

"Let's go give your son this heart, and then you can hug him for real."