Serenity Hills

Admiring the house in front of me I waited for a realtor to show up and try to pitch a sale to me.
I had a list of special requirements.

Off in the distance I could see my sis Susan looking at a overly pretty house with flowers.

After a very strange, yet fun conversation with Miki, Victor found a house that reminded him of his house growing up.

He walked in and started looking around. A note out front said the realator would be at this particular house shortly.

Dear Weirdbard:

We would like to inform you of a magnificent housing community located in the nexus. Your belief in community and family values make us believe that you are a perfect candidate for our development. And please don't be concerned about your ex-demon status as the founders of our development are aware of your past and in no way hold it against you or your 'children'. We will be having an open house for you and a few select others that we would like to encourage to move to our development this weekend. We hope to see you there. A packet of information and an address is enclosed. Thank you again for your time.


Weirdbard sourly looked at the paper in his hand one more time before glancing at the crowd he was currently sharing space with as they examined open houses at a gated community.
It wasn't the fact that the letter found him. With Washu's mail forwarding system he was used to letters finding him where ever he went. Although it was unusual to have any directly addressed to him personally. Most of them simply said, to the founder of Weirdbard Academy and were sent to the school.
No this letter had been addressed directly to him and with his real home address. And that was impressive in itself.
The last time he had received a letter addressed directly to him and with the correct address had been a letter from Ed McMahon telling him he might have already won millions of dollars.
A remarkable feat but considering it was McMahon, not so surprising. The ability of that man to find someone to send them junk mail like that was legendary throughout the multiverse and was only rivaled by agencies tracking down people with overdue student loans.

No, someone not only knew of him and where he lived but also that he was a demon. And that concerned Bard but what worried Weirdbard the most was the fact that his imps 13 and Susan had also been singled out to receive almost identical letters as well.
That they, whomever they were, knew Weirdbard and that he was a demon was worrying. That they knew his imps and what they were as well was deeply troubling.
And of all of his imps why send letters to just 13 and Susan?

Still Bard was more likely to ignore the offers and shrug off the who and why of it, if it hadn't been for Susan.
She was enamored of the idea of having her own place. Susan was hundreds of years old in demon terms but in human terms she was just reaching what could be considered 18 or 19 so the idea of her own place was highly appealing to her.
Bard didn't really understand why Susan wanted a whole house to herself though. She had her own room back at Cragmore Mountain so why could she want a place away from it?
But Susan with much tears and blatant manipulations on her part had finally convinced him to at least accompany her to the open house and keep an open mind about her getting her own house there.
Susan could afford her own place with the wages she made working at the Academy and various other odd jobs she held and although Weirdbard himself couldn't understand he accepted her pleas that she wanted to live above ground, with room for a garden.

And 13? He was around here somewhere too. In his case he didn't care one whit about gardens or open air but Bard had heard him muttering something about desperate housewives and Wisteria Lane, any more after that Bard had to admit that he had tuned out.

Weirdbard discretely sniffed the air once again. He was currently in his human form and to deeply breath in the air to sample it as he wished to do would have looked out of place on a human so he resisted the urge. There was something about this housing complex that set his nerves on edge. The grass was cut a little too perfectly and it was a little too perfect a shade of green. The houses were all beautiful with classic lines. A little too beautiful. Everything humans or humanoids did always had a tiny flaw to them but Bard's eyes he could find no such flaws with the houses or grounds of this gated community.


Weirdbard having been one of the 'true fallen' as in an angel kicked out of heaven had memories of the perfection of heaven and like anyone who had been there, he yearned for such perfection again but having experienced Hell and having lived among mortals, he knew the adage of something looks too good to be true, it probably is. And this place looked far too good to have been created by mortal hands, yet there was nothing of it that Bard could detect as being divine or even demonic either.

Bard's wanderings were interrupted as Susan, also in her human form came running up breathlessly to him. She was wearing a skirt that Bard felt was far too short and a blouse far too tight to be decent but having discussed it over and over again with Mavra and Reiko he had been informed he was being too overly protective of her and finally agreed not to comment on her clothing.

"Isn't it gorgeous here?" Susan gushed. "Look at the flowers! Have you ever seen more perfect flowers?"

There was that term again. Perfect. The only problem was Susan was right. Demons, even in human form, had eyesight much better than a human's. Flowers had colors that humans simply could not see. Those vibrant colors were usually reserved for bees, some birds and demons to see, but these flowers were as vibrant and alive to normal human vision as they were in 'bee or demon sight' and frankly that should have been impossible.

"You don't like it here?" Susan asked almost pouting when she noticed the slight frown that cross her 'father' demon's face.

"I cannot find a single thing to find fault with." I honestly answered her.

She was going to kill Egon. (Not that Egon was her friend’s real name, but it was what she had dubbed him since they were kids.) Miki had no idea how he’d discovered this place or even how he’d managed to get her an invitation to an open house event. All the young private investigator knew was that she was here to find out why a few of her and Egon’s contacts had vanished from existence. Running a normal investigation firm was hard enough, but Egon just had to have the bright idea of going multinexus. Or was it multiverse? Miki couldn’t remember. It was all the same to her. She was still getting used to the whole thing. (And one day she’d force Egon to explain how the hell he’d discovered this stuff in the first place.)

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