Levi stands at the Gate again. It’s the same as always, musty and sad and smelling kind of like wet dog. With paint peeling off the walls, the place is looking more and more run down every time he comes here and he doesn’t even know how that’s possible. The whole vibe of the place is meant to be shitty, and it’s just getting shittier for seemingly no reason at all.
Anyway.
He isn’t here for the carpet or peeling paint or to visit the snakes in the fridge though he’s sure they’re friendly enough.
He’s here for The Gate, and he’s here for the Guardian.
Levi steps on the pentagram graffiti circle and ignites it. As always, same old same old, the fire runs around the circle and rises up slowly until the room is no longer a room but is instead just white.
“Ugh,” says the Guardian. “What do you want?”
“Well mainly to get back into Hell.” He wants to get back. He needs to get back. Why else would he be here?
“You know, it’s usually the opposite?” She waves her hands in the air confusedly. “People want to get out of Hell. Not in. And then here you are, all like, let me in.” She drops her hands and stares at him. “No, Levi.”
“But-“
“Go and enjoy this time! Do you really want to be stuck in a castle for the rest of your life? You’re gonna be. Make the most of your freedom while you still have it.”
“But I’m lonely,” says Levi. “I only have one friend. And he wants to kill me all the time. Well, not really. But he will want to kill me when he finds out about the whole King of Hell thing.”
“Which is why you should go out and enjoy it while you can!”
Maybe he should. It’d be a good idea. After all, she’s right. When he gets back he’s going to be doing the same thing every day, over and over and over again and it isn’t usually that fun. It’s kind of fun not being in Hell.
But no. He wants to go back.
“Which is why you should let me go back before I hurt his feelings and get mine hurt at the same time.”
“Gotta face a little risk to have a good life, bro.” She lies back and stares at the- the sky? The roof? Can you even call it that? “Why should I let you back in, anyway? How have you changed from last time?”
“I can do magic better now.” He stands up and creates a fire that goes from the ground to his head.
“Ooh, scary.” She glances over to him. “But scary enough for the King of Hell? Fuck no.”
“Oh, come on, you know I’ll get better if I-“
“Nope.” She looks back at the white, white sky again. “Listen. You tell me what my name is, I’ll consider letting you back in.”
Alright. A name. He can do that, right? Names. Girls’ names. If he just keeps going through a list he’ll get it eventually.
“Anne?”
“No.”
“Brittany?”
“God, no.”
“Catherine?”
“Oh my god you guessed-“ She puts on a face of mock surprise. “No. Stop. You’re nowhere even close. Just stop. Please.”
“Fine. But I’ll get it one day.”
“No, you won’t,” she says. “Done wasting my time?”
Wow. Rude. Okay. He’d been planning to hang out here for a bit and make friends with her again but apparently that isn’t going to happen.
He’ll just.
Go then.
He guesses.
“Yep,” says Levi, trying not to cry, and the whiteness zips away like the static when you turn off a TV remote.
That could have gone worse. Probably. He thought he’d be crying more by this stage. But he isn’t. He’s only crying a bit and that’s an achievement, honestly.
Right. This is good. This is progress.
He’s finally getting somewhere.
Levi walks out of the Gate and back to his apartment.
He didn’t have plans for the next couple of days but he guesses he does now. Gordon Ramsay’s new TV show ad flickers on the TV screen.
Have you not had enough of Hell?
Now that’s just a whack in the nuts. Why does everything keep reminding him? Even Gordon isn’t safe.
The new season of Hell’s Kitchen, coming on Channel 3 soon…
Then comes a montage of Gordon Ramsay screaming at a bunch of different contestants, his mouth open in rage every time as he wears his signature chef’s outfit.
God. Gordon. Levi loves Gordon. Gordon Ramsay is the only person who makes this god awful life worth living. Gordon Ramsay is the one that shines Levi’s path into the future. Gordon Ramsay gives Levi hope to continue living.
Oh. And Shep too, he guesses. Some of it is Shep.
But mostly Gordon Ramsay, a beacon in these dark times.
The next ad comes on and Levi sees someone from his high school maths class eating a burger.
Alright. That was someone he didn’t want to remember exists. That’s enough TV for tonight.
Levi switches it off and throws his head back. Life is suffering. Why is he even here? What’s he doing? He should go out and have fun. He needs to hang out with Shep more. The Guardian chick was right, he needs to give up on going back to Hell for a bit and just fuckin’ chill for a bit, man. He should get a hobby, maybe. He doesn’t have many hobbies, aside from watching Gordon Ramsay and playing video games for hours on end.
Epic gamer moment.
Alright, that’s it, he has to get out of the house. Sometime, somehow, somewhere, and he’s taking Shep with him.
Maybe he should learn to cook.
Levi shoots Shep a text.
“Cooking class?” Shep looks down at his hands. “I’ve…never cooked before.”
“Exactly,” says Levi. “Neither have I. Let’s go do it.”
They walk into the building and go up the elevator. They wait inside the elevator. The elevator is air conditioned and playing smooth jazz.
Levi prays that the elevator does not stop working.
“What inspired you to take a cooking class, Levi?”
“Uh, just-” oh, fuck, he doesn’t want to admit that it’s Gordon Ramsay- “An old friend. Thought I should finally do him the favour back and learn to cook myself.”
Oh god. Yeah. That isn’t entirely a lie, he guesses.
They step out of the elevator and into the top floor of the building where the class is being held. It smells like food. It’s also smoky. Like…really smoky. Someone’s set something on fire.
But hey. That’s Levi’s entire life, man, if something is smoky then he can deal. And this is a kitchen. People burn shit all the time.
They walk in and someone guides them to a table. They both hand over 20 bucks.
The table has no chairs.
“Hey, dudes!” says the instructor. “How are we today?”
Levi is too choked up at finally being called a dude to answer the question. This man, this chef, this professional human being just called him a dude. This is the best day of his life. Someone thinks he’s a man. Finally.
“I’m good,” Shep answers. “Levi’s good too. I think.”
“I’ve never been happier,” he says, crying.
“He’s good.”
“Cool stuff!” The instructor pulls out a knife and a cabbage. Levi doesn’t know where the cabbage came from but he pulls it out and it’s there and now there’s a knife and a cabbage on the table. “How do you feel about noodles?”
“They’re wonderful,” says Levi, still sobbing.
“I enjoy eating noodles,” says Shep.
The chef magics two more cabbages out of thin air and tosses them on the table in front of Levi and Shep. Levi isn’t sure if this guy is like, legit good at magic, or if he’s just a cooking dude who has clever hiding spots for cabbages.
“Let’s chop up this cabbage, baby.” He pulls out another two knives. “We’re making stir fry.”
God, he’s so enthusiastic. And also has a terrifying number of knives. Levi does not want to get in a fight with this dude. It’d be terrifying. You’d just disarm him and then as soon as you’d done that he’d reach behind his back and pull out three more knives. Imagine going up against that in a fight.
The chef hands Shep and Levi a knife each, and then shows them how to chop it properly. Make sure your fingers aren’t under the knife, extra careful, and then do it. He then demonstrates this at lightning speed which makes Levi even more afraid for his fingers than ever before.
Imagine fighting that. You’d be out of fingers in no time.
…this dude’s just a normal chef, if not a little over enthusiastic. Levi needs to stop imagining what it would be like to fight him, because it’s just making this whole class terrifying.
Once the chopping is done, they are left with an entire chopped cabbage each. It seems like a lot.
It is a lot. Who the fuck puts an entire chopped cabbage into stir fry?
“Next we’re gonna chop more vegetables, so get your knives ready.”
He holds up his hand and several carrots appear between his fingers. He throws the carrots at them, and the carrots land on the boards in front of them.
“Chop time,” he says. He throws more vegetables, landing them perfectly on the board each time, neatly arranging them without having much direct involvement.
Who is this dude? What is this dude?
“So what are your names?” he asks sociably while pulling more vegetables from thin air.
“Levi,” says Levi.
“Shep,” says Shep, and now Levi’s regretting not using a fake name because that would actually be funny as hell.
Once they’ve cut the vegetables, the chef brings out several pots that are probably optimal for stir-frying. He has to actually go and retrieve them, rather than pulling them out of thin air.
They pour all the vegetables into the pots and then they stand and watch and wait while The vegetables cook. They smell nice. Every other time Levi’s tried to cook something it’s just smelled like burning garbage. It’s good to have it actually smell like food and not like. You know.
Garbage.
“Alright, misters Levi and Shep, we don’t have the time to stand around! Can’t watch vegetables cook all day! Time to get onto the meat.” He lifts two slabs of meat and hauls them onto the chopping boards. “Go for it!”
Then they chop the meat, and then they get in trouble for doing it wrong, and then they do it right and they toss it on the pan.
They go through a lot of other stuff, all those techniques and the things you can’t just learn by yourself. It’s useful. Levi never would have known any of this, they don’t say it in recipe books or in cooking shows and in the end the food tastes good too, which is the best Levi’s ever done. Usually the most he can do is instant noodles and even then he burns those too.
That’s probably one of the benefits of using a wok instead of ‘hand’ and ‘magic’.
“Thank you so much for this class, Mr…”
“Chef.”
“Mr. Chef,” says Shep, not questioning at all why the fuck a guy would be called Mr Chef. But hey, it’s not Levi’s problem if this guy wants to use fake names.
“We’d best be going. But thank you so much for this class.”
Levi heads back into the elevator. The doors close, and with them, Levi’s last moments of being with Mr. Chef also come to a close. He was a fun guy. Shame they’re never going to see him again.
It’s got dark outside since they walked into the building, a cloud cover has rolled over the cityscape and hovers ominously behind the skyscrapers. Threatening them. Mocking them. The sky gloats at them, look at me, I’ve stolen your sunlight.
Fuck you, clouds. He should put up his middle finger at the- no, he shouldn’t, Shep is here and that would be really weird if he just started flipping the bird at the sky. So. He’s not going to do that.
Thunder rumbles and lightning dances across the clouds. Shep quickens his pace toward the bus stop. They’re almost there. They won’t get wet.
Levi breaks into a run as the thunder goes again and only just steps into the bus shelter before the rain pours down.
“Good timing,” Shep says, still catching his breath.
“Hey. Look.” Over in between two buildings, there’s an alleyway. Levi can see a glimpse of that familiar white hat. “Is that Mr. Chef?”
“Why would it be-“ Shep squints to see him better. “That’s Mr. Chef.”
He’s kind of hiding behind a pipe but he really isn’t hiding well, his hat sticks out from behind it and so does his face.
Shep waves to him. “Mr. Chef! Hi!”
Mr Chef recedes into the darkness of the alleyway.
That’s weird. But hey. Mr. Chef is a weird guy. It’s probably nothing. Maybe he’s just hallucinating it.
The headlights of the bus cut through the gloom of the weather. Shep signals the bus driver, and they step into the relative safety and warmth of a public bus.
Levi steps off the bus. There’s something wrong. There’s something different. The sky is still dark. The rain has not gone.
Also, he’s getting the feeling he’s being watched.
“Back to your place?” asks Shep.
“Back to my place,” says Levi, cautiously, and heads back home the long way just in case.
The long way is actually unpleasantly longer than the short way and after about two minutes he’s regretting his decision to go the long way because nothing evil seems to be showing up and the rain’s about to make its way over here too. He should have just grown some balls and gone the short way and then if a rabid chef turned up to his apartment? He’d fight them off.
Not to say that a rabid chef is a legitimate threat. Mr. Chef was weird, but he wasn’t rabid, and he wasn’t a murderer either. Levi is pretty sure that if they were to ever meet Mr. Chef again it would be on good terms and not on murder-y ones.
And so they keep walking, past the Costco and the Ikea and through the unnerving, ever-present feeling they’re being watched.
He’d. He’d better check. Just in case. Just to make sure, you know? To prove to himself that no one is following them.
Levi turns around.
Oh, fuck.
“Shep. Run.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.” Levi breaks into a run and Shep quickly follows behind. Levi doesn’t really want to tell him why they’re running, and he doesn’t really want to acknowledge it himself, either. It can’t be true.
He looks over his shoulder.
Yep. Mr. Chef has a knife. And he’s hot on their trail. He’s power walking. And his power walking is somehow faster than the running that Levi and Shep are doing.
“Mr. Levi! I know you know I’m coming for you!” Mr. Chef opens his arms wide and a massive fucking pumpkin grows between them, confirming to Levi that yes, this dude has food magic, yes, food magic exists, and yes, they’re about to be Indiana Jones-ed. Mr. Chef rolls the pumpkin like a bowling ball and sets it on its course, picking up speed toward Levi and Shep. Levi grabs Shep’s arm and pulls him out of the way, only just managing to get them both behind a tree before the pumpkin rolls past where they had been standing seconds ago.
That would have been a shameful death. Especially compared to his others.
King Leviathan of Locria, murdered, assassinated, shot, killed in battle, and squashed by a rolling pumpkin while running away from a rabid chef.
Mr. Chef doesn’t cease his attack. He runs to the tree they’re hiding behind.
Well. That was a nice rest. Back to running for their lives, he guesses. Levi jumps to his feet, not even bothering to tell Shep to run this time, because honestly, if Shep hasn’t worked out they need to run by now, then he’s not going to survive this fight much longer anyway.
But Shep has worked it out because he’s not stupid. He’s running by Levi’s side, back on the sidewalk, and it would almost be a nice moment if.
You know. Rabid chef and all.
“Why are you doing this?” Levi calls. A cabbage grows in front of Levi and his foot catches on it, barely regaining his balance as he continues to run. Fuck. Shit. That was close.
“Excuse me, Mr. Levi? Do you know what it’s like for your magic to be food? While everyone else is out learning how to destroy houses with tornadoes and torrential rain I was making it rain cabbage! I was the fool of the class! But they’ll see, Mr Levi.” He threw a carrot at Levi. Levi ran faster, something he didn’t even know he’d been capable of until now. “They’ll all see, when I kill you, they’ll all see what the Vegetable Boy can do now.”
He could have made like. A meat tornado. Or an egg tornado. Why did he have to be like this? Why was he hell-bent on killing Levi?
Also, why wasn’t he out solving world hunger or some shit instead of trying to kill Levi? Surely ending a famine is just as respectable and reputable as killing the King of Hell? Oh god, none of these questions would matter if they couldn’t get out of this dude’s line of fire.
“Fuck, Shep, we have to do something.” Levi tries to run faster, but he doesn’t think he’s even capable of doing that. He’ll have to lose the guy. “Follow me.”
Levi turns into every alley they can find, every street they can go down, anywhere he can go that will make it harder for Mr. Chef to find them.
When he’s sure they’re out of Mr Chef’s line of sight, Levi pulls Shep into an alley. This will buy them, what, like half a minute? Dude’s fast. “Can you kill him?”
“I don’t want to kill him!” Shep says, not shouting because he doesn’t want Mr. Chef to hear them but still stressed out. “I know he’s a demon or whatever but he’s- he’s not heartless or ruthless, he’s human.”
Oh, well, thank god for that, maybe Levi isn’t as fucked as he thought. Maybe when Shep finds out who he is, instead of trying to murder him, he’ll just hate him a lot instead.
“But we have to do something, Levi, I can’t kill him but I can’t have him killing you either.”
“Can we…talk to him?” Of course they can talk. The problem would be talking diplomatically. Getting the guy to listen and pay attention. Levi’s no good at that.
“We can try?”
Alright. Good enough. Trying is better than nothing. Trying is better than constantly running. “Ready?”
“Yep.”
Mr Chef is nearby, Levi can see him looking around with an eagle’s eye, trying to find them. He looks in their direction a few times, but he hasn’t spotted them.
If he has the eyes of any eagle, it’s a blind one.
Levi looks at Shep, just to double check, and then calls to Mr. Chef.
“Hey!” He wants to add a nickname like ‘dickhead’ or something but that would probably make this whole thing worse, so he’s not going to do it. But it’s a good way to get someone’s attention.
Mr. Chef’s head swivels around and he runs at Levi at Shep.
If only they’d thought of a way to stop him.
Levi holds his foot out. Mr. Chef doesn’t stop running before he reaches Levi’s foot.
Mr. Chef trips and falls to the floor.
Shep approaches the downed cook cautiously.
“Mr. Chef?” Shep asks. “I know you’re angry but could you just stop and think of the good you could do with your power?”
Mr Chef stops running and drops his hand to listen to Shep.
“There are people- so many people, everywhere, roaming the streets, here, and in other countries who need food. Imagine how much help you could give them.”
“I- I never thought about it like that.”
Really? Really?
The guys who makes food with his bare hands never thought of maybe, you know, feeding people with it?
“There are so many people you could help, Mr Chef.”
“My name is Abazel,” he said, crying. “You’re right. You’re so right.”
Levi watches Abazel cry and he doesn’t really know what to do. Should he…console the demon? This dude was trying to kill them only moments before. Maybe it’s a front. Maybe he’s lying.
But the crying does seem pretty legit. It’s probably not a lie.
“I’m going to travel the world,” he says. “I’ll feed everyone who needs it.”
And ruin the economy while he’s at it. Levi can’t wait.
If Levi could just round up a few more people with similar powers, he could ruin all the economies. That would be fun.
Abazel wipes his eyes and waves off Levi and Shep. He walks into the distance.
Should they trust him? Levi isn’t entirely sure they should trust this guy not to murder everyone ever, but it’s not like murdering people with food is easy. At least, with the shit this guy’s pulling.
And he did genuinely seem like he wanted to change. It entirely could have been that he’s just never thought about helping people before.
Not many demons do.
“That felt good,” says Shep. “Even if he’s a demon. He’s going to help people, too.”
Okay. So. Maybe Shep doesn’t want to kill all demons. Maybe Shep isn’t some coldblooded maniac who can’t see past species.
Shep didn’t kill Abazel today when he’d have every reason to do it.
Levi can only hope that Shep gives that same mercy when he finds out.
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