It's Your Life: The Sleeping Demon

A Little Enemy

So, things have been pretty different around here.

It's been about a year now since Blake and Light first met. Between now and then a lot of things about these two have changed: Andrea and Roger have become very over-protective after the supposed 'break in' on Halloween. Hailey and Mariam were especially smothering, both as a way of worry and to steal their brother's stuff (their own teddies were destroyed during the aforementioned 'break in').

Blake still remembered their looks of relief and joy mixed with sorrow and grief when he knocked on the door at 4am. He claimed he "Scared the bad guys away" but for some reason nobody seemed to buy that this now five year-old managed to freak out burglars. He instead opted with the "I don't remember" followed by crying so his parent's would get off his back for an explanation. It took a lot of months of re-modelling but it seems like the house looks semi-normal now.

There has been little sight of the real source of the house's destruction. After taking all the angels, Blessed was barely around, even when Light called for her. Mayhem came by briefly from time to time, not because he was checking on Blake. Definitely not. He was only here to whack the shoulder demon over the head and scream at him to do his job.

Ah, speaking of which, the biggest change of the year.

Blake's new little friend.

Or enemy, perhaps.

His shoulder demon Flare.

Flare had slept through his first year as a conscience, causing Blake's curiosity to sky-rocket. In an innocent attempt to wake him up, Blake ended up summoning an omen who kidn*pped Flare. That lead to a whole other level of drama. Long story short; Flare is here now, doing the job of getting Blake in trouble and generally being annoying. But recently the little imp has just been lazy, like he didn't get enough sleep.

Which made no sense, since he slept on Blake's shoulder for a whole year.

Whenever this happened, Mayhem would swing by and say something like: "What do you mean 'not enough sleep?' You got three-hundred and sixty-five days worth of sleep!"

"Yeah, but it wasn't enough..." Is usually Flare's response as he drifts off, leaning against Blake's breakfast bowl. Like he was doing right now.

Mayhem whacked him again, causing the demon to flail and stand up. Mayhem just glared at his pupil. "You realize you haven't spoken a word to your human right?"

Blake ignored them, like Light always told him to. Those two had nothing nice to say, so why should Blake say anything at all. That IS how saying things goes, right?

"I barely know him!" Flare argued.

"Get to know him!" Mayhem yelled. "Know his hopes and fears, and twist that knowledge as your own crutch."

"Sounds like work." Flare went to lean against the bowl, but Blake had already gotten up from his seat and went to put it in the sink. He wasn't going to just stand around and take this man-man...

Light had said this word before during her lecture last night...MANIPOLLUTION? 

Eh, close enough for him.

He opened the door to leave when something jumped on his back and climbed up to his shoulder "Hi there..." Flare said, plastering a smile across his stupid face "I would love to get to know you."

"You are my conscience. You should already know me."

"Well to be fair kid I have been conked out for a few...weeks. But yeah I know a thing or two...kind of."

"What is my name?"

"...Tell me so I can get to know you!"

"Ugh." Blake pushed the gremlin off his shoulder and slammed the door behind him. The boy had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with someone that wants nothing to do with him.

"What was that?!" Mayhem hauled Flare off his feet and blasted a tiny hole in the door to follow Blake.

"I was doing the thing you told me to do!" Flare answered drowsily. "It's not my fault the kid's a little brat."

"A brat he is," Mayhem agreed, lifting Flare off the ground by his arms as he flew the pair upstairs. "But a brat you're stuck with. You realize because of your lazy behavior that angel has a hold on him now! Talk about giving the competition an advantage."

"Now you know I didn't mean to do that."

"Then tell me junior, what WERE you trying to do?"

"Get a good night's rest."

Mayhem flung Flare onto Blake's bed after they reached his room. The boy was on the toilet in the room across. Flare looked around the room and backed up by the foot of the bed immediately. "What the hell is that thing?!"

Mayhem looked and saw a pillow and stuffed animals. He face-palmed "You cannot seriously be high right now."

"I'm not, there's a weird...rat thing sitting by the pillows! EW it's waving!"

Mayhem simply did not know. Mayhem did not WANT to know. He glided down over to Flare and put a hand on his shoulder "Flare, I have really tried to get you this job. I literally had to jump through hoops of fire to get you off my couch for the next twenty-something years. But those years aren't enough. When you come back after that boy is all grown up. You better be back with your WINGS. No matter what way you have to do it, understand?"

Flare averted eye contact. Mayhem gripped him by his other shoulder and shook him "I said: Understand?"

"Understood."

"Good. Now complete this job. And don't lose and let me down...not again."

With that the senior demon conjured a portal and disappeared in an instant. Flare tried not to let Mayhem's words get to him but he could already feel them linger in his mind. Yeah sure Mayhem. Treat me like a chore. Like your incompetent pet that can't use the litter box. If that's the case with me then it's because of you and your constant, pathological need to put me down-

Flare snapped out of it quickly. That was a rabbit hole of thoughts he didn't want to delve into right now. Instead he focused on the blue racoon wearing a tinfoil suit and tin can top hat. He was Flare's size, meaning the size of a grown man's middle finger. But boy was he weird to look at when he shape-shifted. In an instant he fluctuated in size, becoming life sized, the height of an eight year-old kid.

He waved again with a buck-tooth smile "You must be the formerly sleeping demon we accidentally sacrificed to Jinx. Pleasure to at last meet you."

"You did what?" Flare almost fell of the bed with how much he was backing away but the freak show caught him and brought him close. "Listen it wasn't my choice!" He said "Well, okay it was. I was in on it, but I didn't do it! It would have never happened if Light just agreed to pull a sleeping beauty on you."

"Sleeping beauty? You mean-"

"K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"

"Okay, who the hell are you, who is Light, where is Blake and could you please let me go so I can fall asleep again?"

The monster took a deep, highly unnecessary breath and answered "I'm Tobias the tinman I'm Blake's best friend in the whole wide world maybe even the universe actually and Light is our other friend, aka Blake's shoulder angel that helps him be a better boy and is currently teaching him how to wipe-"

"Didn't need that-"

"Blake is in the bathroom LEARNING how to wipe and if you fall asleep that scary demon might come back and wreck our house again and injury me so for that reason I'm keeping you awake at all costs-!"

Tobias took another deep breath once he was done explaining. Flare was just as confused as before now, but it was worse because now he's being babysat by some blue, tinfoil wearing freak and he's found out too much information about Blake and Light and their dynamic.

He still had one question though "What do you mean you were injured? That why you're missing a foot?"

Tobias looked down to his left leg. His foot was just not there, like he was an amputee. He probably was after being attacked by Mayhem "Your buddy crashed on top of me while I was playing 'I spy' with Blake and Light.

"Oh, lovely." Flare now wondered something else: If Mayhem inflicted that injury on the freak show, why couldn't he see him when Flare was freaking out earlier.

Just then Blake burst through the door and greeted Tobias "You healing well buddy?"

"Better and better everyday thanks to you and Dr. Light's help."

A woman appeared on Blake's shoulder. She wore a doctors coat and stethoscope around her neck. She got all flustered and said to Tobias "Aw, Toby, we're happy to help."

Flare hid himself within the duvets of Blake's bed. Any kind of role-play game these dorks were gonna play he wanted no part in it. He just wanted to safely fall asleep for a few more days, then he'd be caught up and less drowsy. But then stupid Toby had to mention.

"The demon's here too!" A blue paw blinded Flare's sight for a second, and when it uncurled he was face-to-face with his estranged toddler. The angel freaked out and popped back into her mind. He intended to do the same but Blake started getting angry.

"I thought I told you to go away!" He yelled.

"Listen I will. Just thought I'd tell you that you're friend here is a freak."

"He is not!"

Flare wasn't gonna argue with a child any longer he was ready to pop out and leave but something stopped him. Like something, physically stopped him. He couldn't move, and when his eyes nailed to Blake, the kid was was partially floating with enormous green, raging eyes.

"What the heck?" Flare said.

Tobias backed into the wall "Blake, Blake! It's happening again! C'mon, we've got school in ten minutes."

"YOU," The child's voice came out layered suddenly, like one was his and another was a deeper, darker entity speaking for him "You are the reason for my imprisonment in this child."

"What- Who ARE YOU?!" Flare was more confused than scared, but DEFINITELY still scared.

Light popped back out and tried getting Blake to calm down. He grabbed her and rocketed her at the wall beside him and the raccoon. Black and green mist darkened the room as Blake ascended even more, his tone growing harsher and so deep the child layer in his voice vanished completely.

"YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS!" Blake vowed as he swung his back-hand. A whip of energy almost crashed into Tobias, but he ducked quickly, protecting Flare and Light under his paws.

With the moments they had under there, Flare observed Light. It's what he does during jobs like these, inspect the angel's features (which were rather plain, at best she'd look like a puppy dog) the angel's stature (She's lying down and barely conscious from that hit, so..) and at last they're body language (again, knocked out with eyes rolling to the back of her head)

I've got nothing to worry about Flare decided.

Tobias at last removed his paws and went over to Blake, the boy looked dazed and on high-alert, but he was fine anyway. "What was that?" His father called from downstairs.

"Uhh, it was my...rocket going off! It has a speech addition so..." Blake lied.

"Oh okay." The dense father replied. Seriously, how do you hear all that and decide 'oh it's just a toy I got my son?'

Blake sighed "It happened again, didn't it?"

Tobias and Light nodded, as did Flare like he had any idea what the hell was going on.

Blake flopped onto the floor. Y'know earlier when it was mentioned that Flare was the biggest change this year?

You can make that the second weirdest thing.