This is the introductory post to the story about Maya and Alexis! That Doll, demonic! As I've dubbed it! I'm ready when you are Dex!:)

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The dust flew in the air as the teenage girl labored, a light sweat sprinkling her brow as she rummaged through the storage room. It was secluded to a different part of the house, so it would take her family a while to find her.

Using her hand to push her bangs back, the dark brown grey from dust, she smiled triumphantly. "This has got to be it," she muttered to herself.

Sitting before her was an ornately carved chest. If it was anywhere, it had to be there! She'd searched the storage room before on her current quest, but the chest had remained locked to her. But now...

Alexis pulled the old key from her pocket. She'd found it when she was helping her father clean out an old desk that had been passed down through the family. He was going to put it in his study and while she cleaned out a drawer of papers, a key had been sitting on the bottom. And when she saw the key, she knew it had to belong to the chest!

Smiling to herself, she thought about her older brother's face when he saw that she had found it! Playing the scene in her head with glee, she stuck the key into the lock and turned.

The lid popped open, a sigh of musty air puffing out. Pushing it back with a renewed vigor, Alexis smiled at the wrapped bundle. Sticking out of the cloth she could see a perfect honey colored ringlet.

"There you are," Alexis stated in triumph.

She carefully unwrapped the doll, taking a moment to marvel at the skilled craftman ship of the wax skin, the perfect pigtails and the black, maid-like outfit, complete with a little apron and lace up boots.

About to stand, Alexis stopped as a faint glimmer caught her eye. At the bottom of the chest was a black choker, the jewel shining in the light. She stopped to stare for a moment, almost mesmerized by the facets, but then she shook away her awe and reached in to pick up the choker.

She smiled. "That's what you were missing," she told the doll in her soft voice. "You'll be absolutetly perfect with this, and Father will know that giving the company to Mark is a mistake!"

Alexis sat back down, putting the doll in her lap. Faint footsteps were reaching her ears, the unmistakable click of her mother's heels, but she needed to do this first! Putting the choker into place, she did the latch as her mother opened the door and looked in.

The first thing he felt was the air. Air? After so long, air breeched his body, reviving him. He gasped, opening his mouth and feeling the air, but also feeling… skin? Cloth… Cloth that was not his own, and something soft. His gaze was stricken, staring up at a dark ceiling, not the sky, not a canopy of trees. And footsteps on wood floors, someone very near him, breathing. Someone… holding him?

Mayao closed his eyes for a moment, then struggled away from whoever was hanging on to him and struggled to stand. “What’s this?” He huffed, standing in an offensive position. “Where…?” He paused, suddenly aware of the strange things that had presented themselves almost immediately. His voice. It was… high. It was oddly high and feminine, girlish, like the many girls he would see in the villages, the young ones yelling to their friends or families, playing in the streets.

But he seemed smaller, heavier in some places but lighter in others, oddly placed in his body. Which was not his body. He didn’t look down, or care to see anything but what was presenting before his eyes. A cluttered room, and what looked like a teenager and older woman. It was the younger one he had scrambled away from, and he couldn’t see her face well. His eyes were still adjusting.

“What…” He tried to speak, but his mind was still foggy. “Wha…?”

Alexis stood where she was, staring at the doll that had suddenly jumped away from her. It tried to talk, started to ask questions, but then blinked its eyes instead. It looked... Confused? Dazed?

Her first instinct was to reach out, to try to comfort this strange living doll, but she halted, her arm outstretched in front of her staring at it with wide eyes. "It moved," was all she could think to say.

She knew her mother was standing stiffly beside her. She'd seen her face when she'd glanced up to where she stood in the door as her fingers latched the choker securly around the dolls neck. Her mother had been startled, and she thought she even saw fear in her eyes.

But her mother was pushed to the back of her mind as she stayed seated, staring intently at the doll. "What are you?" she asked it, able to keep her voice calm. "And who are you?"

All Mayao could do was give a nervous laugh. “Wh-who am I?” He demanded. “Who are you!? And why do I sound… like this…?” He looked down, and his eyes grew wider. “Wh… What…?” He pulled at the dress, felt his waist, and with shaking hands, raised them to his chest. The shock had built to a bursting point, and it escaped in a high scream. “What did you people do to me!? I’m in a dress! I’m… A woman. What did you do!?”

He glared at the two before him, the older woman and the girl who slightly resembled her, possibly the daughter. “I can’t believe this… I can’t…” He stepped back, putting his hands to his neck. “This… thing. This thing put me in this body!” He tried to rip it off, but it seemed stuck. “It won’t come off.” He was talking more to himself. Mayao’s breaths were short and shallow, coming quickly, almost as quickly as the anger. “I won’t let you get away with this!” He hissed, cursing his light, feminine voice. “Come to me, children of night!” Waving one hand, he cast it around as though ushering someone through a door.

Wind filled the room, slightly scented with a sweet, flowery aroma. It was a bit off-putting to Mayao, but his mind was focused, and in a series of light pops, a humming filled the air as twenty flitting hummingbirds began flying about the room. Mayao’s mouth fell open, humiliation rising as fast as shocked tears burned in the corners of his eyes. “What…? M-my babies! Where are my wolves, my bats and demons!?”

Alexis stared on as the doll got angry, touching it's small bust in surprise before "summoning" a group of hummingbirds. That seemed to upset it even more.

"Creatures of the night?" she repeated. "These are humming birds." She ushered to the small flitting birds before casting a glance at her mother. She was staring on, a pinched look on her face.

It seemed she'd get no answers from her... Rolling her eyes, Alexis scooted forward. "I'm Alexis Hughes. This is my house." She cocked her head. "And I didn't do anything to you! You're a... Doll."

As she looked at the frantically angry doll she blinked, something it said striking a cord. "That necklace, why do you want to get rid of it? I thought it matched with your outfit." She shrugged at it.

"Alexis, that's enough," her mother demanded suddenly. "Stay with...that while I get your father. And don't touch it!"

With that, her mother strode stiffly from the room. Listening to her receeding footsteps, she sighed, before turning her eyes back on the doll. She scooted a bit closer, peering closely at the dolls face. "Do you have a name?" she inquired stoically.

“I know they’re hummingbirds! That’s not what I wanted! That’s… Not right.” Mayao waved one away angrily. “And damn it, I’m not a doll! I’m not… A…” He stopped. Hughes? That name was a familiar one. He hardly noticed the older one speak, then stomp away. Hughes rang a bell in his mind, but it was not enough of a distraction to what he was.

He glared at Alexis. “My name… It’s Mayao.” He sighed, looking to the floor. “Mayao! And I’m not a doll! I’m a demon! I’m a demon, one of the most feared for my abilities, my power over the darkness and the night-based creatures! I’m a demon, not a doll! I was sealed away in 1608, my last breath of fresh air! I don’t know how much time passed, but it’s certainly been a while.” He looked at Alexis. “And you. You just had to put the necklace on this doll and force my soul into it!”

He bit his lip, then fell to the floor and hid his face. His voice, his body, even his powers were changed. His summoning only brought on delicate hummingbirds, which were still flitting about the room, and a sweet flower smell, he detested knowing how else his powers had changed and altered.

Staring at Mayao, Alexis felt a surge of sympathy. If what he says is true, then he must be humiliated, going from a feared and powerful demon to... Well, cute.

"I'm sorry," she replied. "If I'd known that you were in that choker, I wouldn't have put it on the doll! It's not like I did it intentionally!" Now she was feeling defensive! It wasn't all her fault! "And what was something like that lying around for..." she asked herself. "I didn't think we had any demon souls in the storage room, they should have been taken care of decades ago."

Glancing at Mayao, she held out a hand. "Well, Mayao. It's nice to meet you," she told him. "And as for how much time has passed... Um about four hundred and three years."

Mayao glared at her. “You shouldn’t meddle in what you haven’t found out yet! Sometimes it’s not a good idea.” He crossed her arms, rather uncomfortably. “Strange you’d have demon souls in storage. Not often you would find one in someone’s house.” He was muttering to himself now, but jumped unintentionally when Alexis put her hand out.

He stared at it for a moment. Something was playing in his head. It wasn’t Alexis’s fault he was stuck in the situation. Not the girl’s fault, at least, that he had been sealed away without a reason. He chuckled slightly at the number he heard fall from her mouth. With a pained, odd half smile, he put his delicate female hand in hers to complete the gesture. “Four hundred years.” He repeated. “That’s… A lot of time.”

"Yeah. You could say that." She gave the little hand a shake when she heard the familiar tapping coming back down the hall. "Oh, great," she muttered, the corner of her mouth turning down. "The tyrant returns."

As if on queue, her mother stuck head head in the door, pointing to the hall with her finger. "Come on, Alexis. Bring that with you," she commanded. "And I thought I told you not to touch it!"

Alexis scowled. "Not 'it'! His, er... Her name is Mayao!" She gave Mayao a shrug of apology as she stood, dusting herself off. "So where are we off to, hm?" She turned to her mother. "Main living room? Oh... No, you wouldn't want a demon in the main living room would you?" Alexis gave her mother a crooked sneer. "Minor livingroom it is."

Looking down at Mayao, she managed a tight smile. "Well, shall we?" she asked, holding out her hand again. "Or if you're uncomfortable on your new legs, I could carry you."

Mayao looked to the door, snatching his hand back when Alexis’s mother barked at her. He almost felt like he was being battered around between them, and at being called ‘she’, Mayao growled a bit. He stepped a bit closer to the door, a little hesitant to even leave the room he had been awakened in. The rest of the house would be big, big in his small body, with new… everything. He had no idea how much changed since he had been asleep and imprisoned.

He glanced up in time to see Alexis’s smile, but shrunk away from her hand this time. “I can walk by myself!” He assured her, and put his small hands in front of him, holding the front of his dress down and stepping toward the door, unsure if he should go before the pinched older woman or to wait until they let him. The knowledge that he had to wait for someone to let him do something burned in his heart, if he even had one. He felt something beating in his chest, but was unsure if it was only his imagination.

Wincing, Alexis muttered an apology. She wasn't handling this very well...

Looking at her mother, she ushered, "Well, lead the way!" Her mother hesitated before she started down the hall, Alexis slowing her steps to walk in sync with Mayao's pace. Following after her mother she brushed more dust from her clothes while keeping a careful eye on the demon/doll as they headed to the more used part of the house, past the kitchen and then down a long hall with hardwood floors. There her mother knocked lightly on a closed door before opening it and entering.

Alexis followed, expecting to see her father when she came in, but instead stopped still at the crowd that sat in the room. She took a little step back. Everyone was there, her brother, mother, father, and an ample amount of her father's side of the family. "This must be worse than I thought," she muttered, glancing down at Mayao. Then she glared up at her family, taking another, careful step toward him.

"So." Her father's voice rang out clear and commanding, his eyes narrowed and on Mayao. "This is the demon?"

Mayao was silently grinding his teeth as he stepped in tune with the others, in the middle of the two and glaring at the floor. He could hardly believe where he was, and even when he was. The lights in the halls and rooms were oddly still, not flickering as would a flame at one’s passing, but coldly unmoving. It still didn’t make him look up. The floors, those which didn’t have carpet, were wooden and oddly glazed as though ice were over it, but it didn’t make him slip.

When they stopped and the mother knocked on the door, he made himself look up. Through the veil of hair halfway over his eyes, he saw the door open into a rather well-furnished room and a huge group of people. His breath caught, but he stepped inside. A group. One of his worst fears. Someone spoke, then, and his eyes flicked over to the speaker. The face rang a bell, almost, but what he said outweighed anything else.

“What do you mean, ‘this is the demon’? You don’t know your own family you have to ask!?” He got bolder. It was too humiliating to be a male demon in a female doll body, to have summoned delicate birds instead of his bats and wolves, to be half his height and dressed as a maid. What could they do to hurt him any more than he already was? Kill him? It would only be a relief.

Alexis raised a brow, glancing down at Mayao. "Well dad. I think that answered your question," she supplied. She couldn't blame him for being angry and walking them into a group ambush like this when her mother had made it seem like they would be talking to her father only. "His name is Mayao. And don't blame any of this on him. It's all my fault."

Randall turned his gaze on his only daugther. "Your fault?"

"That figures," muttered Mark.

Alexis threw her brother a cold, but calm stare before turning back to her father. "I was looking for the doll... It is supposed to be the most well made doll by our family right? I thought the choker was part of the outfit." She didn't move, didn't acknowledge the many eyes that turned her way.

"That choker's been missing for a few hundred years," Randall admitted. "We never figured it to be in the storage room." He scrutinized Mayao for a moment. "Demon." He began, but stopped when Alexis's head flashed his way. "Mayao, what do you plan on doing now that you're in that form?"

Most well made doll? Mayao stared a little harder at Randall, the one who was obviously Alexis’s father. He resembled so much the exorcist that had sealed him away, the one he had tried to avoid most of his life. Hughes! That name was so familiar, the man Randall Hughes so much alike to that exorcist! Mayao’s blood boiled, or seemed to, if he could even have blood in his doll form. This family was the descended bloodline of the man who had destroyed him so long ago! Mayao narrowed his big, blue eyes, but said nothing at first.

When Randall addressed him, Mayao glanced around again. “Plan on doing!?” He squeaked. “What the hell does that mean? Obviously I’m not human, and I’m not in my demon’s body! What can I do? Are you just screwing with my head or something? Or do you think I’m about to try and strike a deal like the devil? Hell, I’m stuck here, aren’t I? Stuck with you idiots, whose bloodline trapped me in this necklace, waiting for you to make up your mind!” He clenched his small hands, stifling a growl and glaring at the man, then the one who had spoken before, a kid who looked around Alexis's age, if not a bit older, then around to those present.

"Wait!" Alexis declared. "Wait, wait! We did this?" She looked around at her family and then down at Mayao. "Our family put his soul in a necklace?"

When her father just gave a curt nod she exhaled, standing rigidly. Randall glared at the demon, stating curtly, "I'd rather not be talked to that way from a demon! From what I hear, you can't do anything to hurt us in that form. And if you did, I could easily destroy you!"

Alexis looked around in outrage. "You will not destroy him!" she argued. "And he could do plenty of damage! Mother and Mark are allergic to pollen! He could easily make their lives unbearably irritating! I'm willing to let him, too!"

Mayao took an offensive stance, much like before. “You do what you want to me!” He growled, cursing how useless his threat sounded without his real voice. “You’ve already degraded me too much for me to care about anything you do, especially destroy me!”

He stomped. “And I could easily just kill you, stab or gut you with any weapon I so wished to find at random! But I’m not that kind of demon! I would never kill a human or anyone else just out of spite or vengeance, not like most humans!” He stepped forward, but only to emphasize his words. “I’ll never stoop so low.”

With that, he crossed his arms, a bit awkwardly again. "And I shall speak any way I wish to speak, to anyone I wish to speak to! The last time I checked, you are better befitting a shopkeeper, rather than my mother."

Randall glared at Mayao, throwing his daughter a glare when she hid a smirk behind her hand. "Well, then maybe I should just destroy you..."

"I don't think so!" Alexis stated, standing in the middle. "This is my mess, and I'll handle it! And to threaten anyone when they've had such a horrible time! You're awful!" Turning on her heel, she looked down at Mayao. "Do you have anything you want to say to them? If not, you can just come with me."

Mayao returned the glare at twice the intensity, and turned away from him. Coincidentally, he turned to face Alexis, who had turned her gaze to him. With that, he glanced over his shoulder, shaking that annoying hair out of his way to see Randall a little more clearly. “I’ve met a million dogs.” He said. “A million fools, devils, lower than dirt, lower than the most disease-riddled, useless, street-crawler. Of all I’ve met, you, all of you, are the lowest creatures I’ve ever encountered. To obviously blame me for your problem now? For being forced into this body, I’m making your life hard? Oh, you poor babies!” He turned again. “Well, Alexis says I’m the best-made doll your family has ever created. Now you don’t have her anymore! You have me. A demon. A demon in disguise.”

He sighed. “But, I guess I’ll be your little freak show. Have fun staring at me all the damn time.” He turned and stalked out of the room, not waiting for Alexis or anyone to speak to him.

"Nice job, dad!"

With that, Alexis left the room too, looking for which way Mayao had gone. Luckily it hadn't been that far. "Hey! Wait!" she yelled after him. "I'm sorry. If I'd known they were going to be like that, I wouldn't have brought you there!" Long legs falling in step with Mayao's shorter ones, she glanced down at him. "I am sorry though... This is my fault. I'll try to help you as best as I can."

She looked forward, her eyes narrowing as she thought. If her father knew about the choker and the demon soul housed in it, and how to destory it, then he should know how to release the demon. But he wouldn't tell her that. Buisness went to the oldest son in their family, and that included the Exorcism buisness that the Hughes family had been involved with since before Mayao got trapped in the choker.

Glancing at him again, she wondered how she'd be able to find out...? She had to, she owed him that much for sticking him in that body. And it was her family that trapped him in the first place. Not to mention the awful treatment her family had subjected him to and he'd only just woken up from a four hundred year sleep!

"Do you want to see the house?" she asked him. "Or would you like me to get you set up in a room. Or my room, if you want. I won't mind the company. Plus my room is pretty far away from my families."

Mayao had gone halfway down the hall before coming to a stop. He had no idea where to go, and the odd sights had put a damper on his anger. Some sconce was on the wall, its light hard to look at for more than a moment. It was like a candle, but brighter, and oddly still. Curious, to Mayao, as he squinted at it, but the light was still too bright. Alexis had startled him, coming up behind him.

She was the kinder of the family, someone he could, almost, rely on in a way. He wanted to figure out how to get out of that body, if only for a moment, but had no way of knowing how to. Various exorcists had various ways of banishing demons and bringing them back out into a different body, or into the original bodies, but they also had the ability to give the demon or its banisher, or even the one who awakened it, an ability to bring the demon out of whatever host it’s in. But those ways were far between, and could be anything. He hardly thought Randall or any of the others would be happy to help.

“I’d rather just… Go outside.” He glanced up at her, blinking away the spots in his eyes. “I don’t even care where I sleep. Maybe I’ll have… a job or something. I don’t care.” His voice was low then, and he shuffled off. “I’ll just go figure out what all this stuff is. These stiff candles, and this shiny floor…”

"Stiff candles...?" Alexis looked around, before her eyes landed on the lights lining the walls. "Oh! Those are lamps. They're electricly powered. And the floor..." She cast her gaze on the hardwood that shined so perfectly. "It's hardwood. I don't know exactly what kind, but it's shiny because of the stuff they put on it. It's supposed to look more dignified then a non-shiny hardwood floor, I guess."

"But if you want to go outside, that's this way," she instructed, leading Mayao down the hall and toward the wide double doors that served as the entry way to the house. Stepping out into the warm air, she went down the few steps before looking around, the gravel moving under her feet. "There's nothing really out here, but if you want to see the back, that's a lot bigger. We have a pool too."

“Electricity?” Mayao gave the lamps a stoic glare. “The lamps when I came from had fire in them and ran on oil. And the wood on the floors looks fake! I’ve never seen a tree shine like glass. The term ‘dignified’ must have really changed over the years.” He sighed, and looked up, quick to follow Alexis as she led him to the outside.

He immediately took a deep breath of the air, but nearly choked on it. “Ah! The air smells so dirty. There’s something there I’ve never heard of before.” He stepped out a little more, and almost slipped on the ground. “Busted rocks? You just spread these around like seeds?” He stepped back, shaking his head slightly. “I… I’d rather see the back. I do hope you have trees?”

Alexis sniffed the air subtly, trying to indentify that odor that Mayao described as 'dirty'. "Yeah, maybe this was a little to much for you," she decided. "Okay, lets go around back. And the trees we have might not be like what your thinking of, but they're trees."

She started to walk around the side of the house, admitting, "This is my favorite part of the house. My mother doesn't come out here because of her allergy, so neither does Mark." She smiled crookedly. "When no one's around, I usually come out here to work out. And you'll probably like it, there's grass and regular stone walkways, no more gravel."

As they stopped around the back of the house, Alexis crossed her arms over her chest. "Well, this is it," she declared, the great expanse of green grass before them. There was a stone patio attached to the back of the house with a set of table and chairs. The pool was set in the stone, the water shining in the sun. "There are the trees." She pointed to the trees that had been growing near the back of the lawn, the stone walkway she'd described to Mayao earlier leading to the flowers and shrubs that had been planted underneath them.

Leading him that way, she smiled. "I like this tree best!" she told him. It was a mighty willow, the long thin branches hanging down and shielding a bench set at the trees base like an umbrella. "It's a nice place to go if you want to get away."

She took a seat, tapping the bench next to her before looking him over. "So Mayao. What was your life like before all this happened?"

Mayao wrinkled his nose at the smell. It wasn't kind to his lungs, and made it a little difficult to breathe. Almost like the smoke from an oil lamp, only everywhere and thinly laced through the air. He almost didn't catch the mention of trees, but the promise of shade and a break from the directness of the sun was enough to get him to move, catching up with Alexis.

"Allergies to plants?" He asked. "How odd. I've never heard of anything like that before." He looked around the back yard when they stopped, and his eyes widened. It was oddly lovely, trees nearby, casting shadows and leaning their heavy, drooped branches low over grass and light flowers. The scent almost covered the dirty feel to the air, the expanse of concrete nearby holding a group of chairs and a table, but Alexis went past it, and without an idea of what to do, Mayao simply followed. His tense nerves slightly unfurled, and decided to take the offered seat.

"I... Was the strongest demon of my time." He said at last, rearranging the layers of cloth that made the bell of the skirt. "But I just minded my own. Others feared me only because they knew I killed, and killed easily, but without the knowledge that I only killed to save others, they saw me as an evil creature. I decided to live my life in forests, making the night my friend almost as quickly as a cat-based demon. You realize, there are different forms of demons, those who resemble simple humans, and those who resemble animals in small ways. He was my only friend, really. Kind, caring, would give you the last penny he had. I wish I knew what happened to him." Mayao stared at the leaves clinging to the bowed branches in front of them. "He's probably long dead. Demons last a long time, but he was never fit to survive. He couldn't hurt anyone, he wouldn't."

Alexis stared at him, wishing that she could give him an answer to fate of his friend. She couldn't imagine what it would be like, to wake from a deep slumber to find that all her friends and family are gone. It was a crushing blow to the positive attitude she'd been showing him. Leaning forward on her knees, she looked at the ground.

"You don't seem like a bad sort to me, so don't worry," she said, turning to look at him seriously. "I won't let my father destroy you. And I'll do everything in my power to help you return to your body. I've been studying up on all aspects of my family's business and that includes exorcism and demons. So I'll try to get you back to normal and hopefully you'll find out what happened to your friend." She smiled at him. "Okay?"