When I'd returned here, I'd expected…. Well, I guess I wasn't sure what I expected. Kuroka and I to come together and have some sappy, romantic embrace? Bikou, Arthur and La Fay to take turns hugging me, thanking the world that I was back?

But now as I stared into the Pendragon estate, none of that was happening. Instead, I was standing at the far edge of the border, masking my presence beneath my illusions as my spirits watched the people within.

In the main sitting room where we would always eat breakfast, La Fay and Arthur ate muffins with content smiles on their faces, ignoring the three pictures on the mantle with roses laying in front of them - Vali's, Bikou's and mine. Bikou was dead too. That alone hurt.

Though what caused me to stand so far removed from the house, the thing that kept me from throwing the doors open and greeting my old friends, was a new figure in the house. I'd never seen him before, but I could tell from his strength and presence he was a devil. He had brown hair and was moderately muscled. I couldn't see his eye color because his eyes were closed as he slept, spooning Kuroka whose stomach had enlarged in the tell tale sign of the latter stages of pregnancy.

I wasn't quite sure how long the gestation period was for a devil/nekomata child, but I was guessing it was somewhat similar to that of humans. I was gone for ten months? Eleven? I wasn't quite sure because I hadn't been counting, but I knew it was less than a year.

Doing the mental math hurt. I wasn't so arrogant as to not want her to move on, in fact I was glad she did, but I really wish she had mourned me.

In the end, it didn't matter. The Pendragons seemed happy and Kuroka obviously was. They'd moved on. What kind of asshole would I be if I reopened old wounds?

Taking one last look at my old home, I expanded my illusions to obscure the fire that whisked me away.

X

I wasn't sure why I was still here, or why I'd fled to this place in particular. Was it maybe that I wanted to reminisce? If that was the case, why was it so hard to think of anything? My mind was entirely blank, refusing to think of much of anything.

I took another bite of the burrito in my hand, and smiled as the horrible taste washed over me. The house elves had spoiled me. I wouldn't be able to eat regular food ever again.

"Xarion!"

I leapt to my feet, my burrito falling to the ground forgotten as spell circles rose in its place. No one should know I was here, so how did….

Appearing in a silver flash not ten feet away, was a face I recognized.

"I…. I didn't want to believe it when they told me you were seen. It hurts to hope. Then I saw you through the spirits you left here and I-"

"Azazel!" I growled as dozens of illusory copies of myself exploded from my body. I fell under an invisibility spell just after I launched two necrotic orbs at the fallen's head.

He easily batted them aside, then held his hands up, his features contorted with grief. "Wait! Please! I'm not here to fight!"

I watched from hundreds of feet away as my nearest illusion said, "Then talk. How the hell did you find me?"

"A traffic camera caught you teleporting a few hours ago. I knew you were here because I figured out how to control your spirits after reading one of your old research journals. Look I…. Please come out, I just want to talk." he sounded broken as he said that.

"You've got one fucking chance." I said as I shimmered into being behind him, using the time to seed the area beneath him with traps that would activate at a moment's notice. If he was going to give me time to prepare to kill him, I was going to let him talk as long as he wanted.

He turned to face me, and there were actually tears in his eyes. "I'm sorry, Xarion. You don't know how sorry I am. I should have tested the Sacred gear extractor. I should have told Ajuka to fuck off. I should have-"

"You shouldn't have killed your son." I said, bitingly.

The fallen had the nerve to sob, and he surprised me by falling to his knees. "There was no other way!" he screamed in a voice colored by abject loss. "The factions only respect power. I had to become so powerful that I could kill all of them on my own. The only way to do that was to-"

"Do I look like I give a shit about any of that?" I cut him off once more. "You killed my best friend."

Growling, Azazel stormed back to his feet. "I killed my own son! Do you really think your pain even resembles mine! I killed my son, and I thought I'd killed you too. But you're here, please…. Please tell me how to make it right. I'll do anything. Just…. Just please stop looking at me like that."

Despite myself, I felt my rage slowly bleed away.

He's killed Vali, but he had already punished himself more than I ever could. And really, what could I do to kill him? He killed Vali for Divine Dividing and tried to kill me for Boosted Gear. It stood to reason that he had both of them in addition to whatever the hell that golden armor was. There was no way anyone would have called a cease fire if he didn't.

I let my preparations beneath the ground wither and die as I slumped. "You were one of the only people I'd ever let close to me, Azazel. You and Ddraig both. " I said quietly. "I guess you deserve each other."

"Please don't say that, Xarion." the fallen said, seeming to stagger under the force of my words.

"Goodbye, Azazel. Strangely, I really do hope you find a way to live with yourself." a green energy surrounded me as I began to planeswalk.

"No. No! No!" Azazel cried as golden armor with red boots and gauntlets and a white tail with Vali's wings enveloped his body. "Don't leave!" he screamed as he tried to close the distance fast enough to stop me. But I was already gone.

I stood unmoving on the sidewalk I appeared on for quite some time; just staring blankly in front of me as wounds that never really healed were torn wide open once more.

"Hey, uh…. You okay?"

I turned to face a rather scared looking man, and realized that, not for the first time, everyone on the street was filming me.

Not really caring about any of them, I looked at the guy who spoke and said, "If I wanted to get so drunk that I forgot the last three weeks of my life, where would I go?"

He swallowed nervously and said, "Uh…. Lux is right down the street? Big building with a long line. You can't miss it."

"Thanks." Without another word, I headed in the indicated direction. I needed a drink.

X

"More." I demanded, slapping more euros on the table. I'd never had a chance to get any American money while I was teaching at Hogwarts.

The bartender shook her head. "Buddy, you've had way too much. I can't let you-"

"Do I look the slightest bit tipsy to you?" I asked in frustration. I had finally found a downside to stealing Riser's phoenix regeneration. Evidently, it made it a pain in the ass to get drunk. "I'll pay for every fucking bottle on the wall and the building if I have to. Just give me another goddamn drink."

"Sir, I really think you should-"

Her eyes bogged wide as I dumped twenty large, golden coins on the table.

"This should be enough to cover everything." I said as I reached past her and grabbed three bottles with different colored liquid in them.

The young woman stood baffled as her jaw worked like a fish for several moments. "I...I can't….You should….Bwah?"

Ignoring her, I began to chug one of the bottles, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually felt something from this one. It was a start at least.

Taking a brief break to look around the club, I only got more depressed as I realized this was what people did with their free time.

There were stripper poles lining the exterior and by the stairs. People in exuberant outfits lounging on expensive looking furniture. And even a group of people openly having an orgy in the middle of the floor with others joining in every passing minute. If the line to get into this place - a line I skipped by using mental magic to force the bouncer to see me as a VIP - was any indication, this place was always packed. People could be doing anything with their time, and they were doing this?

I realized I really shouldn't have been talking as I finished off the first bottle, finally starting to feel a slight buzz.

"Well look at you, big spender. It's not every day a patron pays with pure gold!" a tall man with dark hair and a whiskey glass in his hand said in a thick british accent as he sat down at the bar next to me.

"Not interested in whatever you're after. Just let me get drunk and pass out in a gutter in peace." I punctuated my sentence by starting to chug the second bottle.

"Oh, darling, I only wish to talk. You're far more interesting than all the other mortals here. If you don't mind my asking, how did a human come to possess the Phenex bloodline?"

I spit out my drink as I rounded on the man sitting next to me. That was impossible. I'd planeswalked! No one here should have any idea about-

"Oh relax. I'm not here to pass judgement on you. They're all pricks if memory serves."

"Who the fuck are you?" I demanded, really starting to regret the liquor store's worth of alcohol I had consumed. I probed towards him with my magic, but the result couldn't have been right. My mystical senses were measuring him to be one of the single most powerful beings I had ever encountered. But I'd been feet away from Katerea Leviathan and Rizevim Lucifer. Surely my buzz was screwing with my magic?

The man stood up from his barstool with a wide smile on his face, not at all concerned with my outburst. Being careful not to spill his drink, he gave me an exaggerated bow. "Lucifer Morningstar! And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"

I could have teleported away. I could have planeswalked away. Instead, in my panicked and booze-ridden mind, I decided running away was the best course of action.

I made it all of two steps before one of the bar's patrons clotheslined me with her forearm, shattering my jaw and leaving a sizable dent in my forehead.

"Well that was rather rude." Lucifer fucking Morningstar said as he calmly walked over me and watched in fascination as my jaw healed itself. "So you do have their regenerative abilities! I knew you had the fire and the wings from that video, but I wasn't sure you could heal like them. You simply must tell me how you were able to accomplish that."

"Alb ruthaw." I said through a half healed jaw.

"Yes, quite right." Lucifer said as if he understood what I was saying. He turned to the woman who'd knocked me on my ass and said, "Maze, dear? Could you do me a favor and clear out the club for the night. I think I'd like some privacy to talk with our new friend."

The dark skinned woman downed the rest of a random glass she found on a table and bellowed, "Everybody out!"

People began tripping over each other to escape the small woman as Lucifer looped an arm under mine and helped me to my feet.

"Come on now, I won't bite." he said as he led me to a sofa. "I merely wish to talk. It's been ages since I've met someone from my old neck of the woods; much less a mortal. How'd you manage to get past Great Red?"

"Skipped him." I idly replied. Was the room spinning or was that just the still-healing concussion talking?

"Skipped him, eh? I didn't know that was an option. Now, I'd of course love to hear your story, but first I want to know what has you so down. So tell me, what do you desire?"

My head began to swim as I felt something compelling me to answer. "I want to….Why I answering? What you do to my mentwal bareers?"

"Ah, that would be the booze and the currently inverted skull, my friend. Nothing at all to do with me. Now, what is it you desire?" he compelled me again.

I tried to shake off whatever he was doing, but I was in terrible shape right now, and he was the literal Devil. "I….I want…. I want the people I care about to stop betraying me." Just as I finished talking, I felt something in my forehead pop and suddenly my thoughts were clear again. He wasn't kidding about the inverted skull.

Lucifer blinked in surprise and leaned back a bit. "Oh, dear. It seems I've stumbled across a hidden landmine. Why don't you tell me all about it? I've heard I'm an excellent listener."

I wasn't able to think of anything better to do, so I told him my story.

XXX

"Let me get this straight," Lucifer said, putting his drink down. "Azy, little lustful Azy who would rather sniff panties than do any actual work, killed his adoptive son, my great-grandson, to take the power of the White Dragon Emperor, who had somehow been sealed into a Sacred Gear, and then he tried to do the same thing to you to take the power of the Red Dragon Emperor but you severed the connection first because the dragon tried to take over your body?"

"That's the jist of it, yeah." I said, putting my own drink down. Once my head had healed up, I'd realized I could planeswalk away whenever I wanted, but Lucifer didn't seem like a bad guy, and talking to him was actually strangely therapeutic, so I'd stuck around.

"Your life sucks, Xarion." Mazikeen - a devil who'd crossed over to this plane with Lucifer when he'd grown bored of the war, and the young woman who had both broken my face and cleared out the bar - who'd joined us once she'd thrown everyone out, said from across the table, her legs propped up on the armrest and her head hanging off the other end.

"Thank you for that, Mazikeen. I really needed to hear it." I said dryly.

"Oh, don't mind her. If anything, that's a compliment. She rather enjoys suffering!" Lucifer helpfully supplied. "Anyway, whatever happened with the second coming of the Great War? I wasn't aware the first one had even ended."

I shrugged and said, "I'm not quite sure myself, but my guess is Azazel found a way to tap into the full power of the being sealed into a Sacred Gear and used Albion and Ddraig's combined power to get everyone to fall in line. I mean, it's totally possible he just killed them all, too. I don't really know. I didn't stick around long enough to ask." Raising an eyebrow at Lucifer, I said, "How are you alive anyway? As far as anyone over there is concerned, you're dead. They've got a new Lucifer and everything."

"Oh, that would be…. Wait, they have a new Lucifer? Surely you're joking." Lucifer said, his demeanor changing from mild interest to offense.

"Yeah, they replaced all of the Old Satans when you all 'died'. Actually, are the others here?"

"No, just me. Now who replaced me?" Lucifer asked impatiently.

"Well, the new Leviathan is Serafall Sitri. Beelzebub is Ajuka Asutaroto. Asmodeus is Falbium Gurasha-Rabrasu. And Lucifer is Sirzechs Gremory."

"The little upstart with the power of destruction? Surely you're joking." Lucifer said, his face taking on a mask of disbelief.

I shrugged. "They didn't exactly have anyone better on hand."

Mazikeen started laughing her ass off and actually fell out of her chair. "You got replaced by the ginger!" she screeched, devolving into more laughter.

"Xarion!" Lucifer said, sounding desperate. "Please, tell me they replaced Maze as well! Please tell me that a mortal replaced her."

Looking between the two in confusion, I said, "Um… what was Mazikeen?"

Mazikeen's laughter died as she turned horrified eyes on me. "You know. Tell me you know!"

I shook my head. "I'm sorry, but this is the first I'm hearing of a Mazikeen."

Now it was Lucifer's turn to fall over laughing. "He hasn't even heard of you!"

"Bullshit!" Mazikeen snarled as she rose to her feet, stomping over to bear down on me. "I was the right hand of the Devil! General of the Legion of Desecration! Armies of angels fell by my hand! You have to have heard of me." By the end of her rant, her speech was less demanding and more pleading.

Wracking my brain, I was able to come up with something. "Well, if 'Right Hand of the Devil' is a position, then I guess the new occupant would be Sirzechs's wife, Grafyia Lucifuge."

Mazikeen fell to her knees in despair as Lucifer began to howl, clutching at his stomach.

"The girl with more tits than brains! You were replaced by a glorified sex doll!" He fell to the floor and began rolling around while Mazikeen kicked him, only causing him to laugh harder.

I wasn't sure what I pictured the embodiment of all evil looking like, but it certainly wasn't this. I just sat back and watched the two of them screw around while sipping my drink, taking this round much slower than my last one. I didn't want to get drunk to the point of losing cognitive functions ever again. The next devil I happened to meet while inebriated wasn't likely to be as nice as this one.

Something leapt back into my mind, and I said, "Not to break this up, but didn't you mention a video when I first got here? What was that video?"

"Oh that." Lucifer said, as he levitated up to his feet, completely ignoring Mazikeen as she continued to punch him. He pulled out a cell phone and fiddled with it for a bit. "Catch." he said as he tossed it over to me, then he went back to laughing at Mazikeen, and she redoubled her efforts to break his nose in.

Ignoring them, I focused on the phone before me. The screen was open to a news report showing a shaky cell phone video of me wreathed in fire dodging a truck before turning to look right at the camera. That meant this was the second world I jumped to while fighting the eldrazi. DXD, presumably, was the first since that was where Azazel got his information from.

Taking advantage of the fact that Lucifer had opened a news app, I began scrolling through some articles to give myself a frame of reference for where I was. I didn't stray into anything that may have been considered personal on Lucifer's phone, I just checked around some articles.

From what little I could see, this world was almost a carbon copy of DXD with the notable exclusion of any supernatural elements. Or at least supernatural elements that the world knew about, which made it entirely possible that the supernatural existed.

The phone was suddenly ripped from my hands, and I looked up to see a fuming devil above me.

"Yes, Mazikeen?" I said, keeping the quiver from my voice. I didn't do anything on Lucifer's phone to screw with him, but I got the sense she was extremely protective of her…. friend? I was going to go with friend with benefits.

"You're coming with me." she said in a frustrated growl as she grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. "And for fuck's sake, call me Maze. I haven't gone by Mazikeen in a thousand years."

"Lucifer? Help?" I said to the Devil as Maze dragged me across the room.

"Relax, Xarion! She just needs to work off some steam. She won't hurt you….much. Just give in and you might enjoy it!" He raised his glass in parting as Maze dragged me into a sideroom.

"Look, if this is about the fact that I haven't heard of you, understand that I-"

"Shut up." Maze growled, surprising me as she grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me forwards to devour my lips.

My surprised squawk must have killed Maze's mood if the tired look she gave me when she pulled back was any indicator.

"Look, I'm pissed that the world somehow forgot me. You're pissed your girl is pregnant with someone else's kid. Don't make anything of this that isn't there."

"I'm not pissed at Kuroka." I said. "I'm just-"

"Pissed." Maze cut me off, the look in her eye daring me to contradict her again. "Now shut up and get naked." She pulled me against her again, dragging us through another door into a room with a king sized bed.

Deciding that I was in fact pissed, I elected to focus on other things. Like the incredibly attractive, insistent devil who was literally tearing at my shirt with her claws.