My back presses against the metal wall. Adrenaline and panic make my thought processes blurry and incomprehensible.

Every minute or so, the Mole stands up and paces around Damien's healing corpses.

Then I sit back down and return to rocking back and forth and staring at him.

The cold numbs my bare arms and legs. I have to keep reminding myself to blink. The only thing that keeps me from flipping out completely is the fact that Damien's definitely healing. I watch as flesh appears on his skull. It's been almost six hours and he's still only about a third of the way through.

The angel bastards stripped me down to just my jeans. I shiver. The cold forces me to huddle as close to Damien's corpse as possible. I end up stealing his coat from him, figuring if he can grow his head back he doesn't need it that much. It dwarfs my body, but it's warm and smells like him.

The wind slices through the cloth. I pull my knees up to my chest.

Then the Mole stands up and leans over Damien. The antichrist still doesn't move.

The Mole looks over at the sword the bastard angels gave him. It won't cut through the metal walls of the Fridge (he's already tried). But they told him Sky Metal is the one material that can well and truly kill a High Heavenfilth or Hellspawn with full use of their magical abilities.

Lethal and perfect.

The Mole sucks in air.

It would be easy. Just kill the antichrist and the angels would let him out and make him fight in their damn war.

He fingers the collar around his neck.

That easy and he wouldn't have to go through any of this 'morality' bullshit anymore.

That easy and Damien would finally get a reprieve from all the bullshit life keeps throwing at them.

Just one cut. One slice.

I sit back down on the snow. "Please wake up," I tell Damien's corpse.

His eyes crack open about eight hours later. I'm blue and numb next to him. My own eyes are half-closed as I try to sleep. He jerks up into a sitting position and grabs me, hugging me to him.

There's a collar around his neck, too. The angels put it on him after they chopped his head off.

"We're fucked," he breathes into my ear. Not even going to try to lie to me anymore.

"Oui," I mutter back.

"We fucked up so bad. That didn't work at all. We failed. They killed them. They killed them all. Why am I still alive?"

It's hard to work my lips, hard to move my tongue to force out the syllables.

"Zis is kind of like zeir fucking deaz trap," I mutter. "Eet's ze one last test zey're giving to me, I suppose, since I always managed to pass all ze ozzer ones. And I suppose zose zree monzs where I actually did zeir bidding made zem zink zere ees some 'ope for me."

"But why am I here?"

"Ze last time I was in ze Fridge wiz anozzer person," I say, "I ended up killing zem in order to get out."

He doesn't say anything.

"I'm cold." It's a stupid thing for me to say.

He complies to my unspoken request. His arms tighten and he pulls me until I'm leaning back against his stomach, his hands laced over my chest, my legs on top of his. I tip my head back and he warms my lips with his own.

"Zere are only two options," I say after a few seconds of indulgence in comfort. "Eizzer I kill you or I die 'ere wiz you."

He still doesn't saying anything.

"Last time, I made ze choice to get myself out of 'ere." I swallow hard. "I don't zink I can make zat choice again. Last time, I left part of myself in ze Fridge. And you – you've 'elped me get it back. And I know if I left you in here, I would be loosing the part of myself zat belongs to you."

"Oh, Christophe," he teases, his voice a guttural growl over the roar of the wind. "You're such a hopeless romantic."

I elbow him and his grip on me tightens.

What are you waiting for? the Mole inside me screams. Kill him!

It would be so easy to let that side of me take over. I'm already hungry and exhausted and freezing cold. Outside, I'm sure Heaven and Hell are fighting and killing. They're going to have their fucking war whether we like it or not.

"We've come too far," Damien says.

I glance up at him, his face shadowed by the dim light.

"We've come too fucking far to give up now."

My heart rate starts to pick up.

"The Yardale School gave you two choices. This might be their fucking game, but I'm sick and tired of playing by the rules. They want you to choose to side with them or Hell. But we're not with Heaven or Hell."

"When you don't like either side," I echo out, "zen make a zird side."

"Yeah," he says, his eyes narrowing. He starts to clamber to his feet and I stand up with him. My muscles groan from being in one position for too long.

"We're not with Heaven or Hell. We're La Resistance, and we will never give up."

We talk in hushed voices, in cryptic whispers, in the deep-down freezing blackness of the manufactured night. Snowflakes tapper down and coat our hair. We cling to each other for warmth. We plan our escape.

"They won't let you out of here unless they think you've killed me," Damien says decisively, finally. "So we have to make them think you killed me."

"What? Cut of your 'ead wiz ze sword? Zat actually would kill you, and zey won't buy eet eef I do it any ozzer way."

"Maybe you could pretend to do it through my heart or something."

"But zey would notice eef I d-d-didn't really stab you." A violent shiver runs through me and makes me stammer over my words. He hugs me closer. Even with the collar on him, he still gives off massive amounts of body heat.

"Zey can tell you're alive because of your vitals," I say. "What eef we convinced zem your 'eart 'ad stopped? Like, you were covered in snow and very cold."

"They still wouldn't buy it if I didn't have the sword stuck in me or something."

"You wouldn't be able to survive zat."

"I'd have to," he says grimly.

I grit my teeth. My fingers slip over the cool sky-metal of the sword. "Zis ees fucked up," I mutter.

"Yeah," he says, planting a kiss on my cheek. "It is."

I glance up at the videocameras, then flip them off. The microphones won't be able to pick up our voices over the roar of the wind, but they can still watch our facial expression and make a guess at reading our lips.

"But what eef we do get out? What zen? We'll still 'ave ze collars on us."

"They'll take the collar off me if they think I'm dead," he says.

"I don't know eef zey will. Not unless zey're sure."

"Make my head look all damaged or something. Or make the collar look all damaged. Make them think you went into, like, berserker mode after killing me."

"You definitely wouldn't survive zat. Wounds from zis kind of metal don't 'eal ze same way-"

"Then make them with your own fists," he says, rolling his eyes.

I stare at him. "Are you fucking crazy?" I hiss. "I can't beat you up!"

"You're going to have to," he says.

"I can't! You're my . . ." I pause. "My . . . antichrist! Zat's what you are. You're my antichrist, I can't beat my own antichrist up!"

"Christophe," he says. "We have to do what it takes to get out of here."

We plan our dramatic farewell for the cameras. It will take place earlier in the morning, when the light still messes with the visuals, but they'll get a full view of me killing Damien and won't suspect foul play.

It's supposed to be dramatic and angsty. And an act. Oh, yeah, it's supposed to be an act.

The wind has died down, so I press my mouth up to his ear like I'm whispering a sweet goodbye to him.

"If zey figure out we've tricked zem, zey'll kill you zemselves."

"I'm dead if we stay in here anyway. We both are," he whispers back. "Haven't we had this conversation before, back before we escaped from Yardale for the first time? You have to stop hesitating, you can't be so fucking afraid."

"Ze last time I did somezing as rash and as stupid as zis," I mutter, "I ended up killing a lot of innocent children just for me to escape. I don't want you to be ze fucking sacrificial lamb, okay? I'm sick of people dying just for me to live."

"I'll be fine," he says, and I can see the fear in his eyes and I know how fucking scared he is. He traps my lips with his, captures my breath, urges on my heart rate. When we pull back, his face is white from cold, but splotched with red.

"You have to do it, Christophe," he says loudly, and I know it's time. "You have to get out of here alive. I don't want you to die."

"No, Damien!" I cry, grabbing at his arms. He reaches around me and latches onto the sky-metal sword. We're kneeling on the ground, facing each other, close enough to smell each other's breaths.

"You have to live," he says, and I don't think he's acting anymore.

Then he places the hilt of the sword in my grasp. I take a deep breath, tighten my grip, and shove the blade forward.

It's surprisingly difficult to move it through his flesh. He lets out little whimpers of pain but keeps his gaze steady on me. I ignore the sounds emitting from him and managing to keep pushing forward. Blood splatters out from the wound and stains my arms and face and clothes. His blood smells like him, like copper and sulfur and Hell and my own personal Heaven. My exhausted muscles scream from the effort. My exhausted heart screams from the effort.

I make sure to stab him three inches above the heart. He said he would be fine; he assured me of it. Somehow, seeing all the blood gushing makes me doubt him.

His eyes roll back in his head. I release the sword, leaving the blade in his body, and press my ear against his chest. Blood coats my cheek and ear and mats in my hair. He still has a heartbeat.

Funny. Sky metal doesn't look or smell or feel like any other metal. But his skin doesn't immediately start knitting back together like usual.

Something inside me feels hollow.

I start to spread snow over his body, like I'm burying him, although what I'm really trying to do is numb him enough to fool the Yardale guys into thinking he's dead. Soon there's a layer of slush over his skin. I close his eyes, letting his lashes tickle my thumbs.

He looks dead. I can barely hear his heartbeat and I'm this close to him. His skin isn't healing.

I have to constantly remind myself that he's still alive.

Now comes the tough part. I have to beat the crap out of his collar and make it look damaged.

Now the dramatic act, just for the cameras.

"Damien?" I cry out. "Please. Damien. Please say you're not dead. Please. Please, Damien, please."

Then everything goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Lilac looks like the same delicate, broken seven-year-old she was all those years ago. She stands on the ground next to Damien's corpse and stares at me.

"You killed me," she said.

I stand up and start to back away. She starts to tip-toe towards me.

She still has the bashed-in head. I remember the way my shovel felt in my hands when it connected with her skull. Blood trickles down her neck.

"You killed me."

"I was trapped," I stammer out. "I had no choice, I had to get out, somehow-"

"There's always choices," Jorge sneers, next to me.

I let out a whining sound and back away from them until my shoulders hit the metal wall.

"The fact is, Christophe," Xander says, "you didn't have to kill us. You could have just suffered like the rest of us."

"You were ze ones making me suffer!" I snarl.

"Were we?" Lou asks, his accent thick. "Huh." He shrugs. "Details."

"You still killed us," Jonas says.

"You killed us," Alec says.

"You killed me. And you killed me. You killed me. You killed me. -"

"Shut ze fuck up!" I scream. "I 'aven't 'ad any 'allucinations een years!"

"You haven't?" Jonas asks. Then: "Well, we must be real, then."

"No, we're not, dumbass." Alec elbows him. "Stop lying."

"You stop lying! We're totally real!"

"Amigos, amigos, it doesn't matter," Jorge chastises. "Either way, little moley here was the one who killed us." He grins at me. "Right?"

The six of them surround me. Lilac is crying now, scrubbing at her eyes with her hands.

"Why did I have to die?" She refuses to look at me. "I wanted to die so badly. Why did I have to die?"

"Zat doesn't make any sense!" I scream. "You're fucking crazy!"

"Mole, you're the crazy one," Jorge says. "You're the one who's talking to us."

"Fuck!" I slide down to sit, hunched over at the snow, staring at my hallucinations. "I'm not crazy," I mutter. "I'm not. I'm not. I'm really not. I'm not crazy. I-"

Damien clamps his hand over my mouth.

I blink once and stare up at him. Then I realize he's my imagination, too, because this Damien is clean and fresh and new, and the real Damien is still a corpse in the snow.

"Snap out of it," he says. "And it's going to be okay, I promise. Yeah, I know I'm lying, but I promise it anyways."

I wave my hand up at him and he disappears. The rest of them disappear. I blink again.

Then I stand up and go tear into Damien's collar.

That's where the soldiers find me, pounding against the collar, even managing to dent the metal a little bit, even as I bruise my fists. They drag us out of the Fridge. My body stings as it defrosts. Someone takes Damien's coat from me and throws a fresh uniform jacket around my shoulders.

I don't even start to argue until they lay his corpse on the gurney and start to roll him away. They pull the sword out of his torso and wipe off the blood and take his corpse in the opposite way.

I start to scream. I'm still shrieking as they drag me away, even as I see one of them unfasten his dented collar from around his neck and drop it into a trash can. The ice crystals on his chest are tinted red.

I keep screaming.

The soldiers keep their grips on my shoulders firm, ignoring my pathetic struggling attempts. Even after just a day and a half in the Fridge, I'm exhausted and numb. Someone drags me into an interrogation room and deposits me in a chair. Another soldiers wraps a blanket around my shoulders and hands me a mug of coffee while an angel soothes my frostbite within just a minute of intense healing.

When I finally look up again, Purple is sitting in a chair across the room from me. The ice in my hair is starting to defrost. Water melts down my back. I'm shivering harder than I've ever shivered in my life.

"Well," Purple says. "That was certainly not a very fun venture. I'm so sorry about your husband, Christophe, but it really was quite necessary. For the good of humankind and all that."

I don't say anything, just stare down at the mug of coffee warming my crimson-stained hands.

"You see, Damien was pure evil. When it comes down to it, we're the good guys, and he's one of the bad guys. There's no in between, none of this 'La Resistance' mess you keep coming up with. Yes, he might have been nice to you, but that doesn't mean he wasn't one of those slimey, disgusting Hellspawn."

My numb tongue and cool anger keep my mouth shut.

"Now that you've got all those ridiculous emotional bonds out of the way, you'll be able to focus fully on your position as one of the lead fighters in our war. If you would just let yourself use all that filthy magic you stole, you'd be a splendid fighter. You would win the war for us. Why, all your celestial friends are fighting in the war right now. You wouldn't want them to be fighting on your own, would you? Wouldn't want them to die, too, hmm? There's really no reason for you to fight for any other side but Heaven's-"

"Fuck. You."

She blinks. "Excuse me."

"Fuck you. Fuck you and fuck your cocksucking beetch of a God." I watch as her expression changes, the color of her face deepening to match her eyes. "I won't fight in your war. I will never fight for you again. I don't care what you do to me, I will never fucking break."

There's a booming sound down the hallway.

She blinks. "What the hell could that-"

Then Damien bursts into the room.

He's wearing only the ragged remains of his jeans, fire pouring from his hands and blazing in his eyes. The deep wounds in his skin fade as magic pumps through his body.

He hauls me to my feet and pulls me into his arms. I hug him back with just as much force. I hear Purple splutter and gasp. Damien stretches an arm out and shoots a puff of fire at her. She screams and throws up a shield.

He grabs the collar around my neck and starts to pulse magic through it, his brow furrowing up in concentration. I feel the metal heat up and close my eyes.

The collar explodes outward, bits of hot metal scraping out skin. My own magic rushes through me. The collar was a damn, and now my veins are being flooded. I take a deep breath, and Damien and I turn to look at Purple.

She glances back and forth between the two of us, then jumps up and melts through the ceiling.

"Shit!" Damien grips my wrist. I gasp out in shock as my entire body half-disappears. We follow Purple through the ceiling. I can't feel anything but Damien's hand. We're translucent and blurry as we pass through the floors.

We float upwards. All the rooms are empty; all the soldiers must be out fighting in the fucking war. It's eerily quiet.

"We're never doing anything as goddamn stupid as that again," Damien says, breaking the silence.

"You just cursed us. Now we're definitely going to end up doing eet again," I mutter, but I still feel so alive, so freaking alive, my heart beating rapidly and the freezing cold lifted from my bones, and-

We reach the ground floor, and there's Purple, and there's Gregory. He's covered in black demon gunk and red human blood and blue angel blood and bowing before her, like she called him in from the war or something. He looks incredibly unsurprised when he sees me and Damien float up through the floor.

Purple whispers something into Gregory's ear, then turns and stalks out of the room. We watch her go, our fists clenched and teeth gritted.

"I'm afraid I can't let you pass," Gregory says.

Damien lets go of the spell keeping us surreal. He pants hard, sweat rolling down his face. "Sorry," he mutters down at me. "That spell's kinda hard. And I'm exhausted."

I nod, keeping my gaze locked on Gregory.

"Damien," I say. "You 'ave to go find your fazzer, you 'ave to stop 'im from letting zis war go on. Find Maria and Chase, zey'll try to stop ze ozzer side eef zey zink zey 'ave 'elp."

He tenses next to me. "You-"

"I'll stay here and deal with Gregory."

"I'm afraid," Gregory says, in a dry, half-amused voice, "I'm not supposed to let either of you pass."

I roll my eyes and lunge at Gregory, tackling him over. Damien runs past us. Gregory stretches out an arm to do something, anything, but I punch him in the face before he can get a spell out. By the time I've climbed on top of him and straddled him, pinning his hands above his head, Damien is gone.

"Please get off me," he says, "before I'm forced to use violent force."

"Quit fucking talking like that," I say, and punch him in the face again. I know he's letting me hit him, and that pisses me off, because if no one had ever put magic into the mix I could beat the shit out of him.

Hell. I can still beat the shit out of him.

I pull back my fist again to deliver another punch to his pretty-boy nose. Then a whip of magic snags my wrist and sends me flying through the air. My back hits the far wall. My vision blurs for a second.

Gregory is heading towards the door. Going after Damien.

I stagger to my feet and launch myself at him again. He whirls and slams an elbow into my nose, breaking it. I crash to the floor again.

Fuck beating the shit out of him. I just want to stay alive.

"You're not going after 'im," I pant out, my voice clogged by my broken nose.

He glowers at me, gore coloring his uniform.

"Try and stop me."

This time when I leap at him, I manage to get both hands around his neck. I squeeze for a second before a draft of air yanks me free of him and sends me flying back to the floor again. Wooden boards snap free of the floor as my body slides back. By the time I ram into the wall, my back is a bleeding mess.

I cough up a wad of blood. Gregory stalks over to me, his eyes narrowed. He grabs me by the collar and drags me to my feet. His fist comes back.

The force of his blow makes my head snap back. He knees me in the stomach and my legs give way underneath me. My body hits the grounds. I struggle for air. He turns and starts to walk away. Towards the door. Going after Damien.

No.

My fingers curl into fists. I stagger to my feet, my vision swirling around me. He turns back and stares at me.

I lift my fist and stumble towards him. He takes me down in less than a second. I collapse onto my back, breathing heavily, my body aching. I clench my fists and try to stand again.

He kicks me down and presses my chest down with his boot. "Why don't you ever just stop?" he growls. He slams his boot down on my broken nose. A scream escapes me, against my will. "Why don't you ever fucking give up?"

My fingers scrabble for purchase. They manage to latch onto his boot. I start to tug it off me.

"Bloody hell," he says.

He sits on top of me, grabs my forehead, and slams it back against the broken floor. I see stars. Blood fills my mouth. I'm making a hoarse, rasping, keening sound, but I can't help myself, can't keep from struggling and writhing and trying to keep him off me. My mind advises me that the safest course of action would be to give up and let Gregory go after Damien. I don't usually listen to that silly little thing called 'common sense.'

I start swearing at him.

He grabs my wrists, pins them above my head with one hand, and silences me with his lips.

I try to bite at him but it doesn't make him pull away. He keeps his mouth on mine, invading my mouth with his tongue, kissing me in a way I've never been kissed before.

And I don't want to be kissed this way by anyone, least of all Gregory.

I try to struggle away by my exhaustion hinders me. He keeps my chin in place with his other hand. When he pulls away, he's breathing hard and glowering down at me.

"Fucking let me go," I whisper out. Panic swamps through me. I try to keep my eyes narrowed and my teeth gritted, try not to let Gregory know he can freak me out like this.

But he sees right through me. He always does.

"Do you have any idea what you do to my head, Christophe Simon?" he says, rather mockingly, then crashes down on my mouth again.

I struggle and writhe. The panic starts to build in me. When he pulls back a second time, there are tears in my eyes, against my will.

"Gregory, stop eet. You're not one of zose bastards. We've got a fucking war to fight. Let me go."

"My orders were to kill you," he says, pressing my shoulders down, his breath in my face. I'm limp underneath him. Blood runs down my back, soaking the floor around us. Blood loss makes me dizzy. I'm still exhausted from my day and a half in the Fridge. I don't have the energy to fight back.

But somehow, I manage to glare up at him. "Fine, zen. Kill me. Kill ze boy you grew up wiz, who you went zrough 'ell wiz, who you called a fucking 'ero-"

"That's right, Mole," he snarls. "You are a hero. And I think . . . I think I might be the bad guy."

His hands grip my shoulders. They start to heat up, burning at me. It hurts. It hurts a lot. I struggle as best I can, but he's a hell of a lot stronger than me.

"You're not a bad guy," I start to babble. "You're not ze villain, zey've just told you zat you 'ave to be one your whole life. You've just been tricked and forced into working into some assholes. Eet's not your fault. Maybe a little bit of eet ees your fault. But you were afraid, you were just a kid, we were all just kids-"

"Shut up!" His blow hits my cheek.

I stare up at the ceiling above me; my hands are limp at my sides. Blood loss makes my head swim and colors blur.

My breath comes in quick rasps. Every second brings a new stab of pain slicing through me. He wants to kill me. I can tell. Or at least, he wants to be able to kill me.

"Zose Yardale bastards are ze ones pulling your strings. I'm not ze enemy 'ere, and neizzer are you. Please –" I suck in a deep breath, forcing down the screaming inside of me. "Please. Fucking zink for a second."

He stops and hunches over on top of me. I look at him and see for the first time he's crying. I can't remember the last time I saw him cry.

He wipes his eyes but doesn't stop. His shoulders shake. "I've fucked up so badly," he mumbles. "In the past eleven years, I've fucked up so badly. The only thing I ever did right was giving you that bloody plan to get out of Yardale."

"Zat was my own personal fuckup." I reach up and smudge a few tears from his face. His weight still crushes me, but I manage to drown out the fear. "Get ze fuck off me."

He rolls over and I sit up.

"'eal me up," I say, my voice cold. His hands flutter over my injured back. I close my eyes as the warmth floods through me. Within less than a minute, my skin has sealed over. The scorched, charred skin turns a healthy coppery tan again. I feel energized and new, although hunger still claws at my stomach.

He sits with his knees to his chest, his head in his arms, not saying anything, not rocking back and forth, just sitting.

"I don't forgive you for ze zings you've done," I tell him, "or what you did just zen. I cannot forgive you for hunting me down like prey. I can never forgive you for zat."

He nods into his hands.

I put my hand on his metal collar and reach for the magic inside of me. It takes several tries to latch onto the 'rope.' My metaphorical hands are sticky with sweat, same as my real-life palms. Finally, I have my magic in my grasp. I start to feed it into Gregory's collar.

It takes several minutes. I keep loosing my grasp on my magic. I feel it start to heat uncontrollably. I give it one more pulse of magic before pulling my hands free.

The collar shatters into a thousand metal shards, falling into a little pile on the floor. Gregory keeps staring straight ahead.

"Ees zere a room somewhere where zey keep all ze stuff zey've seized from zeir prisoners, or somezing?" I demand.

He nods.

"Take me zere."

It's on the second floor. Yardale School is entirely empty and silent inside, although I hear the battle raging outside, hear the screams and shouts. The reek of both Heavenfilth and Hellspawn makes my head spin. I can sense all that magic, and it fucking hurts.

The room is filled with items carefully organized by capture date and name. I stumble past clothing, weapons of all sort, and even toys and books and such. It's only when I get to a certain date in late September do I let out a sigh of relief.

There are the things I had on me. A pack of smokes and a lighter I distinctly remember stealing from Damien. A few wadded-up dollar bills. And my shovel.

My shovel. It's not 'battle magic', it's not a hallucination, it's my real-life shovel, right in front of me.

I light one of the cigarettes and stick it between my lips, then offer Gregory another one. He gives me a 'are-you-fucking-crazy' look, then accepts.

I stuff the cigarettes into my pocket and reach out. My fingers curl around the handle of my shovel. I heft it in my arms, judge its weight. I remember every groove and every dent, and how all of them got there.

The nicotine calms my nerves, and my shovel gives me confidence. I turn back to Gregory.

"Let's go stop zis fucking war."

When Kenny wakes up, he's buried under a pile of rubble. He gasps out and dust fills his lungs. He coughs, which makes the rubble around him shift.

He pushes his way free. Sunlight pours down on him. His sweatshirt hood falls back and he tips his face into the sun.

He remembers every detail of this particular death.

It hurt enough when his parents died, honestly. It hurts every day to see them down in Hell instead of up on the surface, drinking alcohol and fighting like they should be. He hates their guts most of the time, but there are rare times when he can stand to be around them.

But Stan and Kyle and Cartman . . .

They weren't down in Hell. He knows enough to know they don't get an afterlife.

He swallows hard.

It was just supposed to be him. He was supposed to be the 'one who died.' The other guys were always fine. Every single damn time. It pissed him off, but . . .

Now he's more like 'the one who lived.'

And he doesn't like that title any more than his previous one.

He pushes himself to his feet and stumbles down to the bottom of the pile. He's inside the broken remains of the white house. The stone under his feet is cracked and filthy.

They broke his world. They took his friends and they broke his world.

The black wings stretch out from his shoulders. With one flap, he takes to the sky. He heads north, using magic to accelerate his speed until he's shooting through the sky.

We run down the hallways.

We jump over the staircases.

We burst out the door.

The battle rages in front of us.

It trashes over the dead grass, scuffs up the road, crashes into the gate.

Soldier fighting soldier. Angel against demon. Blood sprays the ground. Shrieking, grunts, sword clashing with sword. The battle spills out the gates, fills the surrounding highway and grasslands, stretching on for miles. Winged creatures claw at each other in the air. A body crashes down in the ground inches from me.

I take two steps and a demon tackles me, a humanoid with bared teeth and huge red eyes. My back hits the grass. Gregory lets out a yell next to me. I draw my fist back and slam it into her jaw. Her teeth crack and she rolls off me. I jump to my feet, but a Hellspawn soldier aims his rifle at me. I pull my shovel from my back and smash it into his gut.

Gregory grabs me around the waist, and before I can argue, takes to the air. We duck around the other battlers, rushing into the sky. He doesn't stop flapping until we're a thousand feet up.

"Zis ees chaos," I say, trying to catch my breath. "Zis eesn't a battle or a war. Zis ees a massacre on boz sides. Zere ees nozing fucking civilized about zis."

"Other battles weren't like this," Gregory says. His forehead creases. "I think they probably meant to have a 'proper' battle, and then it erupted." His accent is back in full swing. He's like me, probably: stress and fear make it worse.

"We 'ave to stop eet. We need to find Damien and make sure 'e's gotten to 'is fazzer."

Gregory swoops downwards. Battling angels and demons clog our path, but he ducks us around him. I really wish I could fly on my own. His arms stay locked around me as we descend. The roar of the battle below makes my ears ring. I spot Maria on the ground below, half-buried by a mass of cat-shaped demons. Gregory notices her half-a-second after, because he flies us over to her. We jump to the ground and start hauling the demons off her. She incinerates them as soon as we free her.

There's a slight break in the battle around us. The demons are not want to attack three pissed-off Heavenfilth.

Her eyes are ringed with red and black. She bleeds from several wounds and I wonder why she hasn't healed herself yet. Exhaustion? Her clothes are ripped and something's burned the right side of her head, scarring her eye, turning her cheek an ugly red, and searing off half her hair. She's wearing one of the fucking collars.

"Have you two worked out your issues yet?" she demands, her voice hoarse.

"Duck," Gregory says. We all duck and a pillar of flame flies over us. His sword materializes in his hand. Then he slices in half the demon that spit fire at us.

"Yeah," he says. "I think we did."

I glare at him.

"I'm not going to try to capture or kill Christophe anymore," he says hurriedly.

"Christophe? You?" Maria demands. She sends a wave of water crashing out at a demon pouncing for us.

I stare at her blankly. She motions with her free hand, still shooting water out of her other hand.

"What? You 'onestly expect me to fucking trust zis cocksucker after all 'e's done to me?"

She elbows me.

"I won't trust 'im, but I'll save my beatdown of 'im till after zis fucking war ees over."

"Good Christophe." She reaches up and pats me on the head. "So. No collars. Fun stuff. Mind helping me get mine off?"

Gregory lets his fingers rest on her collar. A demon swoops out of the sky, making a beeline for the two of them. I bash it over the head with my shovel and it crumples to the ground, unconscious. Our slight clearing is slowly shrinking as more of the soldiers stumble closer to us.

A minute passes while the collar heats up. When it explodes, Maria looks physically relived.

"Thank fucking god," she mumbles. "Thank you, Gregory."

He shrugs, looking sick. "What happened to Chase?"

Maria points to the burned-up right side of face. "Fire demon," she says. "I- . . . I-it got me right here, but . . ."

She turns away to blast another demon coming for us.

"I made it evaporate right after, but I was too late."

We both stare at her.

"No," Gregory says.

Something drops inside of me.

These three were pretty much my entire motivation when I was six and seven years old. Keeping them alive was the only reason I fought as hard as I did. Maria and Chase stayed strong and good even as the years past, even as the Yardale School tried to feed them their lies (Gregory is the only one of us four who really listened).

Chase was always "the good guy." We used to tease him about how naïve and innocent he was. He always believed in people being "good."

It was . . . it was . . .

"No," Gregory says again.

"You fucking knew zere were going to be casualties," I snarl to him. "You knew we were just going to be ze fucking sacrifices for zis stupid war. Don't – don't act so fucking surprised."

He punches me in the gut, hard, which I definitely deserved.

"They said if I did whatever they wanted, then Chase and Maria wouldn't be hurt-"

"Zey were lying, beetch," I hiss out. "Zey fucking lied to us for eleven years. Zis war means all of us will die. All of us. You understand eet, oui? Ze only way for us all to live ees for us all to fight een the first place."

"You mean run away?" He's still staring at nothing.

"No." I rake my fingers through my hair. "I don't mean run away."

Maria has this half-mad, half-scared look in her eyes.

"Come on. We 'ave to find Damien."

Kenny flies north because he doesn't know what else to do, and he only starts loosing altitude because his head hurts and his limbs ache and his muscles scream from overuse and his magic is starting to fade away.

He sees the battle raging below him, spreading out for miles in every direction. He dodges around the fighting humanoids in the sky. His wings fold behind his back when he touches down to the roof of the huge building. The black feathers whispers over his flesh before disappearing. There are other soldiers on the roof, but they ignore him in favor of beating the shit out of each other.

He kicks open the door and runs down the stairs. Other soldiers spill into the building behind him, and he doesn't know whether they're with Hell or Heaven, but he decides it doesn't matter.

He almost looses balance several times on the way down the stairs. He makes it to the ground floor, somehow, panting hard. Then he proceeds to run further underground.

He doesn't know what's guiding him. Instinct? Magic? Something else? He stops at the very bottom floor and leaves the stairwell.

It's quiet down here. Quiet enough for the sound of his footsteps to echo off the walls, quiet enough for his panicked breaths to fill his ears. His sneakers hit the tiled floor. The florescent lights cast an eerie glow to his skin, making him look sick and yellowish.

He opens the first door. It reveals a six-by-six-by-six cell, with glaringly white walls, furnished only with a glaringly white bench. He tiptoes out of it and heads to the next door.

Opening this door reveals the same cell, but this one has a . . . person in it. His stomach clenches. The humanoid on the floor is curled up into a little ball. It doesn't seem to notice him. The wounds on its flesh ooze black sludge. His instincts tell him what it is and where it's aligned, but he doesn't particularly care about that. He closes the door, and leans against it, taking a deep breath. The hallway is air-conditioned and smells like antiseptic.

He opens the next door down. None of the doors seem to be locked; maybe they lock from the inside. There's nothing in this cell, and nothing in the next room down. The fifth cell holds another humanoid oozing the same black gunk. It breathes in deep, raspy gulps, each sound the deadest sound he's ever heard. He's heard a lot of things that were close to death. He shuts the door and has to struggle to calm himself before entering the sixth room.

There's a boy curled up on the bench, a skeleton of a child with a threadbare blanket thrown over his body. He looks like he hasn't eaten in months. Scars and open wounds mar his skin. A collar is sealed around his neck. His eyes have been ripped out. Empty sockets are all that remains.

Kenny swallows his bile.

The boy's mouth opens slightly, revealing a mouth with only a couple of teeth. "Who . . . who's there . . . " he mumbles before curling his legs closer to his chest.

A scruff of blond hair reveals his identity.

"Fuck. They just left you here and forgot about you, didn't they?" Kenny rubs his eyes. "I'm going to get you out of here, Butters. It's all going to be okay."

"Kenny?" Butters mumbles, twisting around and trying to sit up. He doesn't have the energy to lift himself up. Kenny grabs him before he can fall. The boy has to weigh a hundred and ten pounds tops. Something inside of Kenny screams.

Butters is the only one left. There were four of them; him and Stan and Kyle and Cartman. But then there was Butters. Kenny doesn't know if Butters can count as another one of his friends, but he really doesn't have anyone else left.

His parents. His friends. He can't loose the annoying little squirt, too.

Kenny's not great at magic, but after three months of training he can get his way around. He conjures a pair of jeans and a t-shirt up for Butters, then helps him get into them. He heals up his wounds by willing the magic into him. Then he shatters his collar.

Butters still looks almost dead. Kenny isn't quite sure how to conjure up food, and he thinks what Butters really needs right now is an IV drip, so he just pulls him into his arms, carrying him as gently as possible.

"Hold on, Butters," he says. "I'm going to get you to a hospital, okay?"

"All . . . all right, then," Butters mumbles. His missing teeth make his pronunciation almost incomprehensible. Kenny's going to have to ask someone how to regrow teeth. How to regrow eyes, too. Whenever he moves his hands over Butters' eye sockets, the bitter feel of celestial magic makes him yank his hand away. Maybe an angel took them out or something, and that's why he can't grow them back. Maybe Christophe will have more luck.

Kenny takes an elevator up the stairs so he doesn't jar Butters. Butters is still staring out at nothing, so Kenny uses his thumb to move his eyelids over his empty sockets.

"Kenny? Kenny, are my parents okay?"

"Your parents? Oh, yeah, they're fine," he says, before remember the angels killed pretty much all of the South Park survivors. He doesn't think Butters can handle that right now, so he just keeps talking in a reassuring, soothing voice (or what he hopes is a reassuring, soothing voice).

"You'll see, Butters. We'll get out of here and Christophe will get your eyes fixed up and we'll move back to South Park and everything will be awesome again-"

"Where are Stan and Kyle and Eric?"

"They're out, um, getting some stuff done." He swallows hard. "Just stay quiet, okay? I think you're too sick to talk."

There's a thumping noise above them. Kenny looks up just in time to see a blade slice through the roof of the elevator above them. A mangled scream worms its way up his throat but dies before it can make it past his lips. The blade sticks in the elevator above them. The elevator stops moving. There's another thumping sound above them. He hears the screaming now, the battle cries of the fray outside the elevator.

"What was that?" Butters tries to lift his head. Kenny presses Butters' forehead back against his arm with his free hand, shifting the boy's weight from arm to arm in an attempt to keep from dropping him.

"Nothing. Don't worry about it."

He shifts one hand free and points a finger at the elevator doors. It takes a second, but the metal starts to pry away and reveal the floor outside. The sounds of gunshots and screaming become even louder. He grips tighter to Butters and manages to crawl out of the elevator, which stopped halfway above the ground floor. His sneakers hit the lobby. Butters moans and shifts in his arms.

Soldiers are grappling with each other around them, their respective white and black uniforms ripped and filthy. Gunshots echo through the lobby. Bodies litter the ground.

Kenny throws up a magical shield, even though he can feel his magic slipping away. He bursts out the door and the full-out war greets him.

Butters clings to his hoodie.

"Uhm." It's hard for Kenny to work his tongue, even harder for him to talk loud enough to be heard over the battle.

"I think the hospital's gonna have to wait."

A few hundred feet down the road from Yardale School, there is a slight hill with a clearing on the crest, surrounded by trees. Soldiers spill around the hill, but don't climb it. The higher powers in the clearing scare the weaker soldiers away.

I spot Damien tugging at his father, shouting at him while Satan strikes angels down from the sky. Pip is throwing bright flashes at the demons surrounding Satan. Esalen and the other angels on the council stride purposefully towards Satan, their transparent-half-real wings fluttering behind them.

Maria touches to the ground and Gregory lets me to drop into a crouch before fluttering down himself. I pull my shovel off my back and hold it out in front of me, ready to smash it down.

We end up right in the middle of the battle. They see us approach. The angels stop trying to attack Satan. Damien stops tugging at my father and turns to watch me.

Esalen wears an expression I can't place. Her lips are drawn back in a closed smile, her eyes are guarded, and her brow furrows. She crosses her arms in front of her chest.

"Gregory," an all-too familiar voice says. "Gregory? What are you doing?"

Rita Grayson is standing with the angels, her chin tipped up, her lacquered eyelashes fluttering.

"Gregory, what are you doing?"

Gregory freezes up.

"Don't listen to the paedo bitch," Maria snaps, her fists trembling. "We're not fighting for them anymore, remember?"

"Gregory," Rita Grayson says. "You know who the good guys are. You've known your whole life."

He clenches his fists. "I do know," he says, "and it bloody well isn't you."

She lets out a short laugh.

"Just because we sometimes have to do bad things doesn't mean we're bad people. We have to fight like this because ultimately, Hell wants to take over the world and slaughter all the humans, and we want to save it. That's the truth of it, Gregory. That's the truth and you know it. Don't forget everything you've worked so hard for. Don't be reckless. Fight for the good guys."

"No," I say, but he's already walking towards her. She hooks one of his arms around her waist, leaning into his body. He doesn't look at me.

Heaven stands on one side of the clearing, Hell on the other.

"Gregory," Maria says pleadingly.

He shakes his head.

"I can't do it without Chase," she says to me. "I just can't. I- I don't want to be alone when you die, too."

She rubs at her eyes and walks to stand on Esalen's other side. Pip, next to her, squeezes her hand, even though he doesn't even know her. He's always been the sickeningly naïve asshole. The angels fall back behind the High Heavenfilth and Esalen.

Esalen smirks at Satan across the clearing. Probably thrilled because she has more power or something. Of course. She has three High Heavenfilth and Satan only has Damien, who looks about as happy to fight as I am.

"You do know how this is going to play out, don't you, Lucifer?" she calls across the clearing.

Satan's demons flank him, but their force is still smaller than Heaven's.

"Wait a fucking minute!"

We all turn to look.

Kenny climbs up the hill to stand in the middle next to me. An emaciated boy curls up in his arms, and it takes me a second to recognize him as Butters.

. . . Butters is alive?

"All of you assholes wait a minute," Kenny says, glaring at Esalen, then at Satan.

"Which one of you did this to him?" he snarls out. "Which one of you fucked with Butters like this? I know it was one of you! My magic tells me! Who was it?"

Rita Grayson raised her hands, shrugging. She gives a slight smile. "I'm so sorry. It was necessary."

"You fucking bitch!" Fire flares out from his mouth. He hugs Butters tighter. Butters lets out a slight whimper.

"I've learned something to day," Kenny says calmly. "I've learned that even the good guys can be pretty fucked up sometimes. I've learned that everyone can die and even the best cause can have horrible results if you fight about it in the wrong way. I've learned that the bad guys will fucking kill you, and you have to be able to put your all into fighting them back. And I've learned sometimes it's better to side with the assholes, because in the end, they didn't kill your best friends in the world. So fuck you."

He spits in Grayson's general direction. Then he turns and carries Butters over to stand with Damien.

Something inside me feels cramped-up and nauseated. I'm the only one still standing in them middle. I glance at Damien, who's still snarling hushed whispers at his father, then at Gregory.

Satan and Esalen glare each other down. They're two presumptuous angels who think they're smarter than that beetch, God, who think they know how the state of the world should be carried out.

I see how this will play. We'll fight each other and everyone will die. They won't die as martyrs, and they won't die as war heroes. They'll just be corpses in the end. The battle will swallow up a decent part of the world with the destructive violence. I can't imagine Damien and Gregory going down without a fight as least as violent as a couple of nuclear bombs. And we'll fight and the soldiers will fight and in the end, everyone will die. Someone will win, I suppose, and someone will control the earth. But a lot of people will be dead.

I don't want to see any of these people dead.

My shovel starts to glow and heat in my hands. I glance down at it. Somehow, the spontaneous magic should surprise me.

It doesn't.

I'm kind of scared to use this magic. I did a horrible thing to steal it from its previous owners. I became a monster in order to possess this power.

I admit what I did was wrong. I hate myself for letting Yardale force me into making that choice.

I'm not going to let them force me into anything anymore. I'm not afraid anymore.

I lift the shovel over my head and –

The world shifts.

I have to blink several times for my brain to start processing the new surroundings.

We appear to be on the roof of Yardale School. There's a giant grayish bubble around us, like a protective shield. The angels and demons, including Satan and Esalen, are outside the grayish bubble, but they don't seem to be moving. It's like something's frozen them in place. Magic. My magic, maybe?

The seven of us High Heavenfilth and Hellspawn are standing on a giant chessboard. The squares beneath us are two feet by two feet, and made of carved marble. I stand in the middle. Damien, Kenny and Butters are on one side; Gregory, Maria and Pip stand on the other.

The others' appearances startle me at first. They don't look like their defined selves anymore. Damien's side are just pure black, like someone took all the color out of them and sharpied them over. Gregory's side is pure white, like all the color was bleached out of them. And when I glance down at myself, my entire body is grey.

"It's been a long time."

I whirl. A skinny, ten-year-old girl in a ripped-up dress stands behind me with her hands behind her back. She grins at me, revealing a mouth missing the two front teeth.

"Hey," Emma says. "How'ya doing, Christophe?"

I rub my temples. "Fuck. Not more 'allucinations."

"Nope," she says. "I'm actually not a hallucination. All the souls of the damned down in Hell, we figured you'd been through enough with the crazy visions. So, no. I'm a ghost. And I'm telling the truth, I swear."

"Oh." I blink a couple times. "So . . . why are you 'ere?"

She props her hands on her hips. "You've been avoiding me. You've come down to Hell a bunch of times in the past ten years and you've never come to visit me."

I look at her feet.

"You're scared, aren't you?" she says, lightly teasing. "Scared I'll be pissed at you for killing me."

I don't give her any response.

"The other guys – they say you know them as 'Jorge's gang' – say they're not mad at you. They say they know you were just a kid. Except Jorge, but he's a dick. Lilac even says thank you."

"Zat doesn't make eet any better," I snap.

She nods. "I know. I'm sorry. You probably didn't want to hear that."

She starts walking towards me, taking me in. "Jeez, you've grown so much but you're still so short," she says, shaking her head. "And those are some seriously nasty scars. And you're smoking? Really, Christophe, really?"

I reach up and find the stub of a cigarette between my lips. I seem to have acquired magical powers when it comes to smoking. I pluck the stub from my mouth and drop it to the chessboard at my feet. I'm standing between a black and a white square.

"I don't know what to say to you."

"It's okay," she says amiably, still walking towards me. "I know you've done all your crying, and, anyway, if you started up right now it would seriously freak me out."

I stick my tongue out at her, a decidedly childish impulse, and she giggles and stops right in front of me.

"For what it's worth," she says, "I'm really proud of you."

I start to shake my head, but she glares at me and I stop.

"You might have fucked up kind of a lot," she says, "but you've done some good things and you've tried your hardest, and you're a good person, Christophe, you really are, I know you are."

I make a small sound. It's all I can summon in the way of vocalization.

"I believe in you," she says. "I think you can do it. I think you can do whatever you have to do to keep our world from plunging into, you know, a thousand years of darkness. Or at least keep a bunch of people from dying."

I want to protest. But something in her eyes makes me just shut up and listen to her. And it feels kind of good to have someone's full confidence in me.

"Zank you." I heft my shovel and strap it over my back.

She stands on her tippy-toes. I bend down to give her better access. She plants a kiss on my cheek. Her lips feel cool and dead.

"Have a really long, really exciting life," she says.

I nod. "I promise."

"Good." She grins as she starts to fade away. The last thing I see before she's gone is the white of her eyes and her teeth.

I take a deep breath and turn to face the High Heavenfilth and Hellspawn before me. They seem frozen in place, just like the angels and demons outside our chessboard.

I walk over to Damien's side, Hell's side. I know what I have to do. I touch his shoulder and he comes alive. Even though his only color is still black and draped in shadows, he blinks and looks at me.

"Christophe," he breathes out, and throws his arms around me. I hug him back, as hard as I can.

"I don't know what the fuck you're doing," he says, "but I think you should keep doing it."

"Your fazzer-" I glance at Satan. His eyes narrow.

"I'll deal with him. I promise."

I nod and pull away. Bits of gray from my shoulders and arms coat his chest. The colors swirl around his body, shifting his color from black to a very dark gray. My own grayish color changes to even darker. When I pull back from him, Damien freezes him up again. His lighter color contrasts with Kenny and Butters.

I walk over to Kenny and Butters. My finger brushes Kenny's elbow. He unfreezes and looks at me, blinking blackness. The shadows swirl around him as he shifts.

"Those bastards killed everyone I love," he says.

"I know."

"I want to kill them."

"Dragging ze whole world down wiz zem eesn't going to fix anyzing," I say.

He nods and lets me drag more grayness around his cheek. His body turns a dark gray, the same shade as Damien's. He, too, freezes up when I pull away.

Butters is the next one. He doesn't look at me, probably because he doesn't have eyes.

"I don't wanna hurt anymore," he mumbles.

"You won't," I promise.

He nods and buries his head into Kenny's chest. I trace gray streaks over his body. When I step back, they're three dark gray, frozen statues.

I turn and cross over to Heaven's side of the chessboard. I stare at the three of them. I don't know if any of them would let me change their colors.

In the end, I wake Maria up first. She hugs herself and stares at me.

"I feel so alone," she confesses. "Gregory's so full of fear now, you're so full of hate. Chase was the only one ever there for me. I'm so alone."

"I-" I don't know what to say to that, so I just hug her. She resists for a second, then hugs me back. Her body shifts from pure white to a foggy gray.

Pip is next.

"I don't want to be a monster," he says.

"Eet's not being wiz 'eaven or 'ell zat makes you a monster," I say. "Eet's not ze magic, eizzer. I guess I know zat now. Eet's only 'ow you choose to use eet."

He bites his lip and lets me color him with gray streaks.

It takes me five minutes to work up the courage to reach out and touch Gregory's arm. He looks at the others, at their gray hues, and then he looks down at me.

"I'm afraid," he says. "I've always been afraid."

I reward him with a slight smile.

"I'm afraid of being impulsive. I'm afraid of not having a plan. I'm afraid of mucking something up and screwing everyone over."

He catches my hand and presses it against his cheek. When my hand moves down to grasp his shoulders, I have left a gray handprint on his skin.

"You've always been the hero, Christophe," he says. "And I – I want to be a hero, too."

I paint his body with my hands, coloring him with gray. And when I step back to the center, the other six come alive on their own and walk towards me. We reach out and touch each other, until we're all different hues and different shades of gray. But we're not divided anymore. We're all on the same side now.

I pull my shovel off my back. The six circle around me. I stick a fresh cigarette in my mouth, and Damien lights it with a spark from his finger.

Then I ram the shovel into the earth, cracking the chessboard.

The world comes alive again.

We don't smell like High Heavenfilth and Hellspawn anymore. We smell like us. Satan is the first to notice.

"Son!" he screams, striding towards us. The chessboard has disappeared and the world has rushed back. The sounds of the raging battle below us greet my ears, and the wind whips through my hair.

"Son! What have you done? What about your destiny as the antichrist? You're supposed-"

"Fuck destiny," Damien snarls, and lunges for his father.

He tackles Satan. He might be half his father's size, but he's strong and spitting fury. Chains come out of nowhere and rap around his father's ankles and wrists. Satan opens his mouth, (to, what, tell Damien off again?), but a gag forms over his lips.

"I'm taking your position as King of Hell and Prince of Darkness. You've done a fucking terrible job of it so far, and I think it's only right I try to a better job. If you refuse to accept my superiority, then we'll have a real fucking fight."

Satan glares up at him. The chains on his wrists and ankles start to fade. Damien rolls his eyes.

They roll off the roof. I think they're going to crash to the ground for a few seconds, but then the two of them rise up, each sporting a pair of black wings. Satan starts to build up a fireball in his hands. Damien rolls his eyes again (teenager, true to form) and slams into his father. This time, they really do crash to the grand, amidst the soldiers screaming fights underneath us.

The soldiers clear away. Damien ends up on top of his father. Brass knuckles form on his fists. He punches him in the face over and over again, lightning bursting from his fist with each blow. After a minute, he climbs up off Satan. His father's face is a bloody hunk.

He spits down on his father. "You suck so hard," I hear him yell. "But I'm not going to kill you, because you're not a total asshole. You're just kind of a pussy and kind of stupid, too. And you're my dad."

His wings ruffle behind him before flying up to the roof and landing besides me.

"Anyone got any questions?" he snaps, looking pissed off and pleased all at once. "Damn, I've been wanting to do that for years."

"My liege," Kenny says, bowing his head mockingly. Damien snorts. The other demons on the roof bend down to their knees and bow for real.

Esalen starts to clap. She and the other angels of the council are clustered on the other side of the roof.

"Bravo," she says. "Not that it changes anything. We will still-"

"Shut up," Damien snaps. "You're not going to win this war. None of your precious High Heavenfilth will fight for you. You don't even have God's support on this one. You're just a bunch of looser-ass angels on your own."

"Gregory!" Rita Grayson says. "Gregory, you-"

He glowers at her before taking a deep breath and snarling out his words.

"I'm not going to listen to you anymore," he says. "You're crazy and messed up in the head. You might preach to me about how I'm meant to be God's chosen or whatever, but you don't have any idea what you're talking about. I – I – I'm not going to listen to you. Not anymore. And the only reason I'm not killing you right now is that we're trying for this new thing called 'peace.'"

She starts to speak again, but then a voice booms. We all stiffen.

The voice fills the rooftops and echoes down over the battlefield. The soldiers all look up at the sky as if they're expecting something.

All right, God sighs out. This has gone on long enough.

Esalen's eyes widen.

I let you angels play at your game because I hoped the children you warped would be able to end the final battle between heaven and hell as peacefully as possible, because I knew it was something I would not be able to stop if I didn't want to interfere with your free will. And they did manage to end it without massive casualties. But I'll be damned if you try to fight anymore. Those who are allied to me, I command you to stop fighting.

Down below, all the Heavenfilth for a dozen or so miles of battle freeze up.

"And you Hellspawn, listen to me! I don't want you to fight, either!" Damien yells out, his voice amplified by magic. Thousands upon thousand upon millions of soldiers stare up at us.

"We're done, okay?" Damien yells. "We're done." He grins at me. "And we're going home."

I stare at him. I can't comprehend it, can't believe it.

I can't be alive. It can't be over. God can't- what- no-

You have done well, my son, God whispers into my ear. Is there any wish you would have me grant?

I look at Purple and I look at Rita Grayson and I look at the angels who have made my life and my friends' lives purgatory for the past eleven years.

"I want you to bring Yardale School crashing down to it knees."

The roof starts to rumble beneath me.

By the time I have the intelligence to realize that was a really, really stupid request, it's already too late.

The roof gives way under my feet. Damien's arms rap around me right before we start to plummet downwards. Crashing through floors, plaster and wood collapsing around us. I black out for a few seconds.

When I come to, we're buried under rubble. I panic, breathing in dust and coughing like crazy. Miraculously, I only have a few scrapes. Damien's arms pull me close to him; he's buried even deeper than me. I figure he must have cast a protective shield. Or God somehow manage to spell the collapse of the building into something safe, which is pretty likely in retrospect.

A hand reaches through the rubble above my face. I stick my hand up past some plaster. The hand grabs onto my wrist and drags me free. I emerge from the rubble, hacking up dust, unsteadily rising to my feet. Damien comes out after me. Gregory lets go of me and drops his hands to his sides.

"You cocksucking beetch," I say, and punch him in the shoulder. He looks down at my fist in surprise, then grins. I grin back at him. And we don't need any more than that, because we've shared a smile, a real smile, for the first time in ten years.

Because Yardale School has come crashing down!

I glance up at where the roof should be. The metal beams stretch up to the sky for a couple of stories, but most of the school has collapsed onto the ground floor, hence the huge piles of rubble under our feet. The afternoon sky above us is just starting to fade into red. The soldiers on the pseudo-battlefield around us are already picking up their weapons and heading . . . away. To their homes, I suppose? The angels and demons are warping out of this reality and to their respective corporeal planes.

Kenny flutters to the ground, Butters in his arms. His wings fade and he kicks at a piece of plaster. "I need to get him to a hospital," he growls out, and stomps from the school. Pip follows after him.

"You guys! You guys!"

Maria bursts from a pile of rubble a few dozen feet away. She leaps to her feet, shakes some dust from her hair, and lunges for Gregory. She hugs him, hard.

"It's gone," she sobs into his arms. "We're free. We're free now. They can't hurt us anymore. They took Chase but we're alive and we're free."

And it's true. The angels who broke us are still alive and in Heaven. They deserve to die but if we kill them it'll contradict our words of peace, so we have to let them be (until they threaten us). And we're strong now, strong enough to take them on, strong enough to take anyone on.

The four of us start to make our way out from the remains of Yardale School. We cross the threshold where the door used to be and make our way over the bloodstained grass. I think God is laughing out there.

"Huh," Damien says. Then: "That sucked. Let's never do that again."

"Promise," I say, and grab his wrist with my left hand. With my other hand, I reach over my shoulder and grab my shovel. I inspect it for a few minutes as we walk down the road, away from Yardale and away from the wreck of this place. Satan has already disappeared from the patch of ground where he lay.

"'ow's eet feel to be ze Prince of Darkness?"

"Pretty normal," he says.

I stop and slide my shovel back into its sheath on my back. I light a fresh cigarette, then pass out cigarettes to everyone else. Maria coughs on hers.

"Let's get ze 'ell out of 'ere."