The job was simple enough, jump through the portal and bring back something interesting. Truthfully, Nikos suspected Hades only gave him the order to get Nikos away from the Underworld versus having him attempt to fix the hot water heater again. Po was busy so it wasn’t like he had any Christmas plans anyway. Besides it wasn’t like Nikos had a say in it either way. The portal lead him to a snow covered alley with tall bricked buildings and he could hear voices rushing past speaking in a language he didn’t recognize. There wasn’t much for an interesting artifact, just some burnt out matches, and it was beyond freezing especially to Nikos in his demon form so he just grabbed a handful of the matches and left.
However, that’s when the easy bit ended because when he returned to Fableton he didn’t turn back to his human form. No, no that would have been too easy. Nikos looked down at his hands (his usual indicator) and saw not his normal lanky fingers, but short scaly ones with long talons. His mouth was sharp with razor teeth. The town was dark, but he was pretty sure it was Fableton since that was the courthouse. “ Gamó...” he grumbled in a guttural voice. What was worse besides the sudden onset of ringing in his ears was that he could feel another change coming on and he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be human.
He spotted the shadows of people going about their business in the square either in a panic or calmly. Nikos had one goal, get to Hades and hope that people would think that this was just part of whatever mishap was happening. At least that’s what he went with when he stepped out into the street right in front of someone. “Uh....” Nikos growled. “Merry Christmas.”
