Jonathan Clark sat on one side of a wide, rectangular table, staring down at it. Across from him sat a woman dressed like a maid, poking and prodding at the same table. Her touch caused the tabletop to ripple like it was water. To be fair, this woman is an omnipotent reality warper. She could technically cause anything and everything to happen. Jonathan sat in silence, unsure of what to say. When his superior told him he was to interrogate someone, he wasn't expecting this. What was he going to say to her... Or are they an it? A he?
"She," the woman spoke as if she were answering a question. Jonathan looked up from the tabletop with a confused look on his face.
"Hmm? 'She' what," Jonathan questioned. "Who are you talking about?"
The maid put a hand to her chest. "I'm talking about myself. You may refer to me as a she. You were wondering how to address me, correct?"
"Uh..." Jonathan stared at the maid, now genuinely more confused than he was just a minute ago. The maid chuckled, ripping out a chunk of the tabletop to use as a piece of putty to fidget with.
Jonathan readjusted himself, realizing that he should probably answer the question.
"Aah-- Yes, yes, I was wondering that," Jonathan stuttered. He paused, trying to figure out how to phrase the questions he was to ask. His superior handed him a slip of paper with specific topics to ask the maid about written in it. Before he could finish formulating the first question, a thought occurred to him.
"Hey, wait a minute," Jonathan blurted out, smacking his hands on the tabletop. "How'd you know I was thinking about that?" The maid responded by reaching over the table and pulling Jonathan's head and neck off of his shoulders. She compressed him into a ball, then bounced him off of the floor a few times. The rest of Jonathan's body remained in the chair, holding the exact same position it had before the maid removed his head. After the seventh bounce, the maid threw Jonathan's head at the wall behind his body. As he bounced off the wall, his head and neck popped back into their proper shapes, then landed right back on Jonathan's shoulders. The impact threw Jonathan onto the tabletop.
The maid lifted Jonathan's head by the chin. She looked directly into his eyes.
"Need I remind you that I am omnipotent? I could suck your brain out of your ear using a piece of straw, should I desire to do so," the maid hissed, her closed-mouth smile turning into a devilish, toothy grin. "Among many, many other ways of turning you into my personal entertainment. Do I make myself clear?" Jonathan hastily nodded yes.
"Say it," the maid commanded, coiling her fingers around Jonathan's neck. She squeezed it tightly, crushing the middle of his neck as if she were gripping a towel. Jonathan, despite that, gulped.
"Y-yes, ma'am. I u-understand," Jonathan croaked, thankfully avoiding choking on his own words. "May you p-please let g-go of my n-neck, now?"
"Thank you," the maid cooed, releasing her grip on Jonathan's neck. "Now, I was told there would be questions. May we get to those, please? I have business to get back to." Jonathan nodded, rubbing his neck. He took another look at the list, sweating. He just hoped the maid didn't use her powers to alter the list without him knowing. He didn't have the list memorized.
The maid rolled her eyes, smiling. She found this human... rather adorable. Respectful, too, even before she threatened him. She stared intently at him, listening into his worries about her changing up the list on him. The maid, however, was not lying when she said she had business to return to, so she decided to try and get things moving along. Well... "try" in the metaphorical sense. If she couldn't calm him down just using words, she could easily snap her fingers and be done with all this in any number of ways. Hell, she wouldn't even need to snap her fingers.
She rose from her seat, pushing it in. Jonathan looked away from the list and back towards the maid.
"H-hey. Where are you going," Jonathan asked. "I thought you wanted to get to the questions." The maid walked over to Jonathan's side of the table, sighing.
"I do," the maid huffed, impatiently. "But it would seem you're worried about me tampering with that list of yours." The maid poked her finger to the slip of paper. "So, let me help you out with that." The maid stood completely straight, her left hand crossed behind her back and her right hand held up in front of her heart, like she was taking an oath in a courtroom.
"I give you my word that I have not tampered in any way with that list, nor will I do so in the process of this meeting of ours," she declared, using the most official tone she could think of. "There. Did that calm you down?"
Jonathan did feel a little bit calmer. About the list, at least. The possibility of being turned into an entertainment puppet for the most minute slight? Yeah, he was still internally panicking over that.
"Yeah... I guess," Jonathan mumbled.
"Well, that's good," the maid said, pressing her hands together in a triangle shape. "Any other worries I can qualm for you?" She smirked. "You know, minus that whole thing about being turned into my entertainment."
Jonathan went pale. "Did you really need to tack on that last part?"
The maid giggled like a small child. "No. But I did anyway. Oh well!" Jonathan rubbed his temples in annoyance.
"Please, sit down," he grumbled, rather exasperated. He gestured to the other side of the table.
The maid gasped, putting her hand to her mouth. "Oh, where are my manners? I completely forgot about that!" The maid quickly moved to her side of the table, forgoing walking around it in favor of phasing through it. She sat down, feigning sheepishness. "My apologies."
Jonathan sighed, feeling a mixture of annoyance and uncomfortable fear. He took another look at the list. Eying the first question, he decided to finally get on with this.
"First question," he stated, blankly. "Why did you come to earth?" The maid raised an eyebrow, staring at Jonathan for a few seconds. Then she burst into laughter. She calmed down quickly.
"Really? That's the first thing you ask?" The maid was still smiling a little.
"That's the first thing it says to ask on this list, ma'am," Jonathan said, holding the list out to the maid. She took it and looked it over. After a bit, the maid shrugged and tossed the list up into the air. It slowly fell back into Jonathan's hands. The maid looked as if she was ready to answer, but before she did, she put the piece of the table she had ripped off back into its place. Apparently, she had held onto it even when she was... "demonstrating" her powers to Jonathan.
"Well, I don't know why anyone would possibly need to know that... but since you asked..." The maid rolled her chair over to a wall. She stood up on the seat and kicked the middle of the wall. A massive crack appeared and soon fell away into a square hole, where a projector screen was. The maid glanced back at Jonathan.
"Don't worry, I'll patch the wall back up," she assured. The maid snapped her fingers, prompting the projector screen to display a picture of the Milky Way. "This, as I'm sure you're aware, is a picture of your galaxy." Jonathan nodded. With another snap of the maid's fingers, the image changed again. This time, it displayed several galaxies.
"This, in general, is your entire universe." The maid turned to Jonathan. "I don't come from any of these galaxies," she said flatly as if that wasn't extremely unusual.
"Then... then where do you come from," Jonathan asked, justifiably confused. The maid sat back down in her chair and rolled back over to the table. The projector screen vanished, and the wall patched itself back together.
"I come from outside your entire universe," the maid laughed, finding Jonathan's confusion humorous. "Before I came here, I just sorta... floated about out there. Occasionally I would warp a human or two over to entertain myself with. But it got boring seeing nothing but a black void." The maid paused for a moment. She pulled a straw out of nowhere and jammed it into the table. The maid began to drink the tabletop, closing her eyes. Jonathan decided to take the time to ask a question.
"If you got bored seeing a black void all the time, couldn't you have just... I dunno, magicked a new sight into existence," Jonathan suggested, cracking his knuckles idly. The maid opened her eyes halfway, looking right at Jonathan. She stopped drinking the tabletop.
"I could've done that," the maid said, pointing at Johnathan. "I could've, but I didn't. I could've done a lot of things, actually. I could've warped over the entire human race. I could've created humans to play with. But I didn't." The maid took another sip of the tabletop, before continuing. "My mind works weird, like that. It mostly avoids easy solutions in favor of unnecessary actions. I noticed that there was this planet with a good load of humans on it, so I thought that would be a good place to hang out from then on." She finally put away the straw. "Er... plus..." The maid looked off to one side of the wall. She seemed... embarrassed?
"I... I was tired of being the one in control," the maid muttered under her breath. Unfortunately for her, Jonathan still heard her.
"I'm sorry, WHAT?" Jonathan was struggling to hold back laughter. "You, the omnipotent being, was tired of being the one in control?" The maid glared at him, and for a split-second, Jonathan could feel his brain begin to transform into several cats. The maid restrained herself, taking a few deep breaths.
"Well... Yes. That's the main reason, mostly." Predicting what Jonathan was going to say, the maid quickly added: "I couldn't have even magicked up an entity to control me. To do so would, by definition, make me not omnipotent. There can't be two omnipotent beings. So I had to plant myself in a situation where I wouldn't be the one in control, without creating a being to control me." The maid paused, to allow Jonathan to take in what she was saying.
"That's where my employers, the Waltz family come in. You see, they were originally a homeless family. One reality rewrite later, they became this nation's most powerful entity, tied with its government. I was assigned to take care of their now-toddler son, Alan, as his maid, along with the rest of the family." The maid gave a laugh. "That's where this outfit came from, in case you wanted to know."
Jonathan chuckled. "That's quite the story," he laughed. "You took a homeless family, and made them a group of haughty billionaires just so they could order you around as a maid?" Jonathan was now openly laughing at the thought of this. The maid didn't seem to mind, as she was laughing along with him.
"Yes, yes, I know, I know," the maid said, making a "calm down" gesture with her hands. "Could've just made up a new family out of the blue. But... well, the father, Mr. Waltz, was a very handsome man. I've made him have an affair more than once. Sometimes I've even had his wife get in on the action."
Jonathan blinked in confusion. "I don't get it," he asked, crossing his arms. "Aren't you still the one in control then? I mean, you've made Mr. Waltz have an affair with you. That seems like being in control to me." The maid giggled, and stared at Jonathan inquisitively.
"Am I in control, though? The Waltz family still gives me orders, and I follow them," the maid pondered. Jonathan began to feel like his brain was being squeezed, like a treasure hunter grabbing a treasure in preparation to swap it out with something.
"Well... um," Jonathan stammered, trying to sort out who would be in control in this situation. "Well, in the context of this maid role-play you have going on, the Waltz family is the one in control, but... in terms of the whole picture, you're the one in control."
"Ooh, good answer," the maid cooed, using a tone one might use to talk to babies. Jonathan felt the squeeze on his brain fade away. "But, I do believe we've spent a tad too long on this topic. You have other questions, don't you?" Jonathan scratched his head.
"Not really," he mumbled. "The only other questions on there were 'Why did you decide to live with the Waltz Family', and 'Is there a cap to your power'. We covered both of those already." The maid beamed in response.
"Oh, goody goody," she squealed, bouncing up and down in her chair. "Perfect timing! I've got to get back to the Waltz family. Mr. Waltz is expecting me to always be at the house when he returns from work." Both the maid and Jonathan stood up at the same time.
"Well, I wouldn't want to keep you waiting. G'bye, now," Jonathan said, walking towards the door. Instead of his hand reaching the doorknob, he found the rest of his body bumping into the maid.
"What, no handshake? C'mon now, that's rather rude of you," the maid snarked, crossing her arms.
"Don't you have to get back to the Waltz family? Or have you decided to pause time for Mr. Waltz?" Jonathan smirked. If he was being honest, he felt more comfortable being snarky towards the maid than he did before. The maid laughed.
"No, no. I haven't paused time or anything," the maid whispered, wrapping her arms around a surprised Jonathan. "I just wanted to say; I quite like you. You're a very respectful young man. I like that." The maid flicked a few loose ends of Jonathan's hair. Jonathan's cheeks went slightly red.
"Well, goodbye now," the maid giggled, releasing Jonathan and opening the door. Instead of the beige hallway he had come in from, Jonathan found that the room on the other side of the door was a very, very fancy foyer. The maid walked into the room, and with a small wave, shut the door.
Jonathan blinked in confusion once again. When he opened the door, it once again led to the beige hallway it usually led too. He left the room and headed to his superior's office. He had a report to give now.
