Hell was composed of a cluster of island-rooms, suspended in the pit of the chasm like glimmering pools of light. The Rowdyruff Boy's room was simply one of the dozens buoying in the abyss: there was a tiled and gleaming kitchen, several bathrooms, a dining room that always stood vacant, the laboratory from which Mojo Jojo rarely ever emerged, the living room with the shudder-worthy fuchsia carpeting, the 'front yard' filled with grass and the trickle of the fountain…

Brick had lost count of all of the rooms, despite having lived in Eternal Damnation for eleven long years. He had a TV. He had a bed. He had his comics. He had his stereo. He didn't need anything more.

"Yo, Red-" Butch muttered to Brick, his eyes fixed on the TV and his face paled by the screen's flashing gleam. "Hand me a Coke, will ya?"

"Get off your lazy ass and get it yourself."

Butch didn't reply, shoveling his popcorn but missing his mouth as he did. Puffs of corn rolled off of his cheeks and tumbled like clouds onto the carpet.

Clouds.

It had been so long since Brick had seen a cloud.

"And I just remembered," continued Brick, slapping on his signature red baseball cap and huffing. "We're all out of it anyways, bonehead. You fed it all to the friggin' spirits."

"Yeh," sneered Butch, a smirk spreading over his face. "And they sure LOVED it, didn't they?"

"Drunk it all the way up!" piped Boomer, catching Butch's eye and beaming. Boomer and Butch knocked triumphant fists and turned back to the TV. Brick rolled his eyes and leaned away, dragging himself upright like a vampire from the grave.

"I'm leaving."

"Okay," said Boomer.

"Whatever," mumbled Butch. "Come back with th' Coke."

Brick gathered himself and shot out of the room, his ribbon of scarlet spearing the black chasm of Hell. After he had ascended above the highest of the island-rooms (the living room), Brick slowed into a downward drift, sinking silently past the 'house' and past his own bedroom, his superhearing catching the passing garble of the TV as he fell. He didn't want his brothers to know where he was headed. He didn't want anyone to know where he was headed.

Brick kept his eyes locked on his sneakers as he sank, the dark clogging in his throat as the pools of light slid up and out of his field of vision. Only remnants of their glow remained, tiny stars glittering from far above him. He could no longer see his hands in the dark in front of him. Locks of his long hair fluttered up by his face, tickling his skin.

I should really get that shit cut, Brick thought, practically sniggering as the idea passed through his brain. He'd been saying that ever since he'd been reborn here, over a decade ago. His hair had only grown longer since then.

Up above his head, the remaining pinpricks of light began to wink out, choked by the expanding flow of shadow towering over him as he fell. Brick puffed into his palm, his breath flickering on his hands and sparking into a tiny flame that threw trembling shadows into the gloom around him. He felt touches of heat on his cheeks and on the soles of his feet, heat radiating from a fire much larger than the one that he clutched in his own small fist. He had to be close.

He was right.

A few yards beneath him Brick caught a glimpse of the murky ground, a patch of it touched with the golden glow of his flame. He planted his sneakers onto the solid surface, ashes billowing at his feet as he righted himself and peered into the blackness, holding his tiny fire aloft. A blackened wasteland stretched before him, the warped stone hills tumbled with piles of stones and carpeted with cinders that swirled as he tread over them. Hellfire blazed in the distance. The cries of the damned pierced the shroud of silence. Brick strode until he found himself standing in the middle of the hellfire's angry maw, his forehead glistening as he squeezed his own speck of a flame into smoke.

There was already plenty of fire to go around.

Brick was surrounded by agony, the souls of Earth howling as they twisted in the mighty inferno, flames licking hungrily at them in their struggle. The tortured shadows flocked around him, circling his waist and hovering over his shoulders and flitting through his ponytail. They clouded in his face, moaning as though they were begging for salvation. He couldn't offer it to them and neither did he care. He wasn't here for them anyways.

He pressed ahead, hovering over the heaps of roasting embers and rotting souls as he entered the core of Hell. Squinting through the pulsing radiance, Brick distinguished three particular souls that were walled away from all the others by a curtain of magma. The lava rumbled like earth as he marched on through, the fiery cascade parting over his head to grant his passage. Once he was inside the heart of the Den, the three souls quieted at once, their screams subsiding into a throbbing silence. He could almost feel their nonexistent eyes tracing his every move. They bobbed in the air before him, barely shadows, cinders twinkling at their feet and magma writhing all about them—the most egregious of punishments.

Brick's bloody irises flared as he stared at them. He wondered vaguely how old they'd be if they were still alive.

Sixteen…just like us.

He couldn't picture them as sixteen-year-olds, no matter how far he stretched what little imagination that he had. In his mind they would remain forever kindergarteners, their youth preserved in his memory and in the high-pitched screams that usually came pouring from their chamber.

But now they were utterly silent.

Staring.

Staring at him.

A shiver racked his spine and he turned away from them, his temples pounding with fury.

"Goddamned Powerpuff Girls…" Brick snarled, the unholy quiet dragging after him even as he stomped away.