FEAR ME PUNY MORTALS!

Just as Grant took a step forward, a strange, high-pitched voice echoed through the corridor, but this time it wasn't in Emi's head. It was a physical sound, a shrill, amplified squeak that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Verdant Green, in a split-second decision, abandoned all pretence. The pink cloud burst from Emi's side, expanding rapidly to fill the entire elevator doorway and spill out into the corridor. It was a wall of shimmering, furious magenta.

And then, it spoke.

"PUNY MORTALS!" the cloud roared, its voice a bizarre, terrifying mix of a helium-fuelled squeak and the guttural growl of a demonic beast. "Succulent mortals! I will **** you to **** and violate your very souls! RRRARRGH!"

Grant and Naomi, confronted with the screaming, ****-threatening pink cloud, did the only logical thing. They dove for cover, instinctively scrambling away from the elevator doors and back into the relative safety of the corridor. Emi didn't hesitate. She lunged into the lift, mashing the 'close door' button with a frantic finger. Verdant Green kept up its barrage of completely depraved threats, its voice rising in a crescendo of absurd fury.

****

The elevator descended, a smooth, silent capsule of steel carrying a woman and her newly-verbal, sexually violent cloud. The air was thick with the lingering echo of Verdant Green's tirade and the faint, acrid scent of burnt adrenaline. A slightly awkward silence settled in, punctuated only by the soft hum of the lift and the frantic thumping of Emi's own heart. She stared at her reflection in the polished doors, a disheveled mess in a bikini, her face pale, her eyes wide with a cocktail of shock and relief. The pink cloud hovered beside her, having shrunk back to its usual, more manageable size, its vibrant hue now a calm, placid rose. It seemed almost... embarrassed.

"Thank you," Emi said, her voice barely a whisper. She risked a glance at the cloud. "Do you think you needed to have been quite so sexually violent in your threats, though?"

The pink cloud pulsed, a faint, guilty ripple passing through it. 'Well, you know,' Verdant Green's telepathic voice was back, its tone now sheepish and apologetic. 'I was improvising. I find a bit of imaginative sexual **** really helps to focus the attention.’

“You can’t actually do any of that stuff can you? **** souls and…”

“Oh no no no. I am a Familiar not some kind of Tyrant Demon. But next time I'll try and be more truthful in what will scare mortals,' Verdant Green projected, its chipmunk voice now tinged with a new, almost scholarly curiosity. 'I should have threatened to reveal their browser histories, or expose their secret collection of erotic fanfiction. That's the real soul-destroying stuff. The soul-violation thing... it's a bit old hat, isn't it? A bit... 14th-century demon.’

The elevator dinged, the doors sliding open to reveal the underground car park. The exited and Emi's heart missed a beat when she saw the perverted Trevor approaching her with a Breeding Pass.

Verdant Green expanded again and roared

"Your elections are a sham and your politicians don't care about their constituents only about their corporate donors interests. Your votes are barely even a means to an end!!!" Verdant Green roared, its amplified shriek bouncing off the concrete pillars and the parked cars.

The pink cloud swelled, a roiling mass of furious magenta that filled the sterile air of the car park with its indignant presence. Trevor froze, his Breeding Pass held aloft, a look of utter bewilderment on his face.

Trevor, a man whose entire worldview for the day had been built on the simple transactional nature of the Breeding Pass, could only stare. He looked from the screaming pink cloud to the half-naked woman, his brain struggling to process the sudden political commentary. The sheer, unadulterated weirdness of it all was more terrifying than any physical threat. He took a hesitant step back, then another, before turning and fleeing, his Breeding Pass forgotten on the greasy floor.

The cloud deflated, its anger dissipating as quickly as it had erupted. ‘Better?' Verdant Green's smug telepathic voice chirped in Emi's head. 'Truthful. And far more terrifying.'

"I feel you're not taking my predicament entirely seriously," Emi stated, her voice a flat, weary monotone. She stared at the discarded Breeding Pass on the oily concrete, then back at the now-placid pink cloud hovering beside her. The adrenaline was wearing off, replaced by a deep, bone-tired incredulity. She was a fugitive in a parking garage, half-naked, after seeing her colleagues be threatened with a cosmic soul-**** and a lecture on civic apathy, all from her own newly-acquired, gaseous sidekick.

'What? I took it very seriously!' Verdant Green projected, its chipmunk voice dripping with wounded innocence. 'I deployed a highly effective, psychologically targeted verbal ****. Did you see him run? That was a textbook tactical retreat. I am taking your predicament with the utmost gravity, mistress. I am a font of gravitas.'

The cloud zipped over to the fallen Breeding Pass, nudging it with its vaporous edge. 'Besides,' it added, a sly, mischievous tone creeping back into its mental voice, 'this is all part of the chaos, isn't it? A little bit of danger, a little bit of weirdness.’

Emi picked up the Pass, a second couldn't hurt and headed to Keiko's car. In the confusion Emi had still remembered somehow to take all her possessions and Kieko's car keys.