"Hey, are you going to wake up any time soon?" I said down to the lazy, naked form of Maze.

Her face contorted in irritation as she rolled over to be facing away from me. "Go 'way." she grumbled, her hand roaming around the bed searchingly. "Where's the redhead?" she asked when she found nothing.

"She's gone. Must have taken off before I woke up." And that was serious cause for concern. I was a paranoid guy and I'd had a complete stranger standing over me while I was unconscious and I hadn't woken up. I was fine with Lucifer and Maze being around me because if they wanted me dead they just would kill me while I was awake. They were personal like that.

Maze lazily waved her hand at me. "Her loss. Now either snuggle or let me sleep."

Shaking my head in bemusement at what was supposedly a fearsome general in the Great War asking for snuggles, I headed out into the club.

There were several naked men and women strewn about in various positions and groupings. It appeared that when Lucifer didn't clear the club to meet with an interesting human, there were quite a few people leftover when the sun came up.

"Ah, Xarion! Good morning to you, my friend. How was it?" Lucifer asked from behind the bar as he was shaking a drink of some sort.

"Great." I said honestly. "You didn't happen to catch the woman Maze and I were with leaving, did you?"

Lucifer shot me a knowing grin as he poured himself a drink. "The little minx didn't leave you her number, I take it?"

I waved him off, saying, "No, but that's not it. I'm a little on edge right now. She wasn't using her real name and-"

"Xarion." Lucifer said with a sigh. "Very few people who come here use their true moniker. You may be unfamiliar with the concept of a one night stand, but I assure you, she is not plotting your agonizing demise. Thirsty?" he finished, holding out a glass to me.

I held up my hand. "No thanks. You and Maze have me drinking more than I have in years already, I need to cut back a bit. Even if my regeneration can handle it."

Lucifer shrugged. "Your loss." He downed the offered drink in one go then picked up his own, swirling the liquid inside it as he sat down on one of the sofas and laid his head against a slumbering blonde woman's shoulder.

The woman stirred and wrapped her limbs around Lucifer before falling back to her slumber.

"So, Xarion, any plans for today?" The Devil asked as he stroked the woman's hair with one hand and held his drink with the other.

Getting over my paranoia, Lucifer was right that I needed to loosen up, I shook my head. "I'll probably just wander around like I did yesterday until I find something more interesting to do."

"Well, when you are done for the day you may always return here. Maze has not been this happy in years! No matter what she tells you, she is quite enjoying your little arrangement."

Why did that fact scare me more than anything else? Probably because I didn't want to know what happened when Maze lost her… fuckbuddy? I was gonna go with that.

"Well, I can't say I'm not enjoying it as well. Do me a favor and tell her…. Are they supposed to be here?" I asked, staring suspiciously at the door to the club. It was probably nothing, but I walked out of an illusion of myself and turned invisible anyway. Large gatherings of conspicuous people I'd never met convening around a door made me nervous. Maybe they were just really dedicated Jehovah's Witnesses here to cleanse Lux of sin?

"No. No they are not." Lucifer said with narrowed eyes as he extricated himself from the woman's grasp, causing her to moan in disapproval, as he walked over to join my illusion, setting his drink down as he did. That alone terrified me.

Since I'd met him, Lucifer never put down a drink without draining it and at least four others around it. I'd be worried about his liver if I didn't know he had regenerative capabilities that would make a troll jealous. He was also probably invulnerable, but I wasn't sure how self-inflicted alcohol-induced maladies responded to invulnerability. Something to ask about later.

"Hello!" Lucifer called out in a cheery voice. "Yes, you lot rudely milling around my door! Lux is closed for the morning. Come back in the evening and I'll be happy to accommodate any one of-"

The door blasted open, blown apart by an explosive charge. A dozen men and women in black uniforms and tactical gear filed through the opening and trained their rifles on Lucifer and my duplicate, more and more people filing through after them. The various humans leftover from Lux's past evening began shrieking and scrambling away from the people with guns as they surrounded Lucifer and my duplicate. More operatives poured around them and began searching the club, smashing everything in sight as they went.

I saw a group head towards where Maze was sleeping and sent a brief mental message to the devil to warn her. She would probably have been fine either way, but I didn't know what these people were or what they were packing.

As more and more black-uniformed mystery men tore into the club, my duplicate was wrapped in a glowing blue chain that seemingly materialized from nowhere, and I made it put on a good show of toppling to the ground and struggling.

"That was hand-engraved purpleheart you just destroyed. Have you no respect for beauty?" Lucifer demanded, fuming at the rifle-wielding intruders, seemingly not caring about the aforementioned rifles.

"Frankly, I don't care." a self-important man in a dark suit said as he walked through the opening, a cocky grin on his face. "You should consider yourselves lucky that I have orders to take you alive. As far as I'm concerned, the only good alien scum is dead alien scum." He smirked down at my still-struggling duplicate and said, "You like that, scum? I called in a favor from a…. Actually she's a bitch, but she does good work. You're not going to be able to leave until we're done with you."

Lucifer's irritated stare turned to the man as he walked down the stairs, and Lucifer's irritation slowly turned to…something else.

Lucifer cooly regarded the man, not moving an inch. "You have no idea what you've just started, do you?" His voice was chillingly calm, and I unconsciously took a step away from him. His posture was causing memories of an exploding city to resurface, and I was willing to bet he was twice the devil his son was.

"You think you can make it out of here, don't you?" the official looking man said with a grin, lazily drawing a pistol from inside his coat. "You're wrong. Every weapon here was specially designed with you and your freakish durability in mind. You don't have a-"

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The operatives took a surprised step back as Lucifer began howling, a merry smile unmoving upon his face.

"You have no idea!" he gleefully declared, something dangerous passing over his eyes.

The man in the suit, whoever he was, must have seen the same thing because he leveled his handgun towards Lucifer's head. "Stand down now. Submit yourself to custody and I'll make sure you get to spend the rest of your very long life in a box so the world can forget you. Or you could resist. Please resist. Then I get to end you once and for all."

Lucifer's smile grew wider. "You have ruined my morning, destroyed my club and, most egregiously, you have insulted me. I am not some plebeian whelp to be chained and forgotten. What do you think we should do with them, Maze?" he asked, his eyes never leaving the man in the suit.

"I thought that was obvious?" an amused voice said from the hallway that led to the bedroom I'd slept in last night.

Rifles swiveled over to level at Maze as she lazily walked into the room, idly spinning two enchanted karambits around her fingers, blood spraying from the blades as they rotated. She cut a rather imposing figure naked as she was, yet absolutely covered in blood. Her skin had turned a dark crimson due to the sheer quantity of crimson covering her. She'd likely killed every operative sent towards her with her bare hands before they could say a word into the radios I was sure they had on them.

"I already got started, so I hope we're handling this the usual way." Maze said, an expectant grin on her face. "Otherwise, I owe these boys an apology."

"What do you say, Xarion? Up for a little fun?" Lucifer asked, his head swiveling to where I, the real me, was standing invisible.

I weighed my options quickly, but ultimately decided to side with The Devil as he had been nothing but polite and these people were trashing his club. The irony wasn't lost on me, nor was the fact that I was potentially making a terrible mistake. If this screwed things up too bad I'd just planeswalk again and find a new world to set up shop in. It wasn't like I was overly attached to this one after all.

Shimmering back into being, I let my illusion fade away, the glowing chains crumpling uselessly to the ground as the form they were wrapped around disappeared.

"I'm in." I said, causing several weapons to train on me. It didn't escape my notice that the majority of the operatives were trembling slightly.

"Shut up!" the man in the suit yelled. "This is your last chance! If you don't-" His head fell to the floor with a dull thump as Lucifer looked lovingly at a blade of black, demonic energy that had just appeared in his grasp.

"Finally. I thought he'd never-" The Devil was cut off as the entire club erupted with gunfire.

Lucifer merely grinned as the bullets bounced off him. He calmly walked through the invaders, slicing them to pieces as he went.

Maze moved with a speed her opponents couldn't track, appearing long enough to deal a killing blow with one of her knives before seemingly teleporting away, already having killed six more.

I wasn't sure what 'specially designed' bullets would do to my regeneration, so I hadn't taken any chances.

Lucifer may have given my position away, but I was an expert illusionist. The moment 'I' had revealed myself was really just another illusion as the real me slunk out of the firing line of as many rifles as possible.

My illusion was peppered with dozens of bullets as the men surrounding me opened fire.

Realizing that this was the first chance I'd had to experiment with my magic against normal opponents - when had fighting the abnormal become normal? - I flexed my mental magic and was pleased to see every operative I'd targeted fall over dead with blood leaking from their eyes, nose, ears…. Their whole face really. Fighting normal people was easy.

Five more fell by my hand as I sent a pulse of necrotic energy into them. Their veins blackened and they vomited putrid ichor as they crumbled to the ground.

Trying something that I had never really used in serious combat, I created four illusions that I fed my power into. As the enchanted bullets tore into them, the small amount of regeneration they had received from me kicked in, though it was more diminished than it should have been.

So the bullets would slow my regeneration but not outright stop it. That was good to know.

My four illusions all closed the distance to a separate operative and began to manhandle them in physical combat. While I may have never used this in a life or death struggle, one of these illusions, albeit a significantly stronger one whose power wasn't shared with three others, had managed to survive a spar with Bikou long enough for my curse to take its toll on the Monkey King - may he rest in peace. Regular humans weren't a match for even a version of me with a fraction of my full strength.

Since the battle's conception, only five seconds passed before all of our adversaries were dead, and it only took that long because none of us were taking it seriously. Maze had attacked to ensure as much blood coated her form as possible - I was starting to think she may have some vampire hidden in her veins because of her strange blood fetish - Lucifer had literally walked through the crowd of idiots and I had been experimenting with how mortals reacted to my power.

"Well that was fun." Lucifer said as he rolled the suit man's head around with the bottom of his foot. It was an incredibly macabre sight, but I'd seen far worse so I wasn't even fazed.

"Anyone up for some champagne? I'd offer something that didn't taste like bubbles, but these rude fellows shot the rest of my store." the Devil said in irritation as he kicked the man's head down a hallway.

Maze ignored him. She had a hungry look in her eyes as she stalked towards me. It made sense that she could see through my invisibility if Lucifer could, but how was I able to hide from Grayfia if they could-

My thoughts were wrenched away as Maze pulled my invisible form against her blood-coated one and began to heatedly make out with me.

I let my invisibility fade away as I deepened the kiss. This was definitely one of the weirder things I'd done, but I wasn't going to pull away for fear of finding myself with Maze's knives in my chest. Also she was a good kisser. I wasn't evil for enjoying making out with a beautiful, if mentally unhinged, devil.

She pulled back growling, her eyes shining dangerously as they locked with my own. "You. Me. Sex. Now. I'm going to fallback bravo, Lucifer." she said quickly.

Lucifer raised a partially destroyed champagne bottle in parting and said, "Have fun. I'll be along shortly."

A magic circle spread out from beneath Maze to encompass me as she shepherded us away with her devil magic.

The next thing I knew, Maze was on top of me and a rather comfortable bed was beneath me while the devil tore my clothes off with her claws.

Apparently this was happening now. Why was I so turned on?

I had issues.

X

Lucifer Morningstar

Ah, it was nice to see Maze so enthusiastic for someone other than myself. She could be a real handful when she didn't have enough fun, and seeing her happy made me happy. She was my best friend after all.

Giving up trying to find a cohesive way to drink from the bottle in my hand, I simply bit the entire top off, spat it out and began pouring it down my throat.

With my drink finished, I turned to face a shimmering dome of energy with a smile. "Are you alright, my darlings?"

The energy barrier I had set in place at the start of the little scuffle faded to reveal the trembling forms of the mortals who had spent the night in my club. Poor things were downright terrified.

Seeing something interesting, I actually started to chuckle. "Well aren't you a brave one. Not afraid I'll do to you what I did to them?" I motioned to the bodies strewn about the floor as I walked towards one woman in particular - she who had warmed my bed last night.

While the black haired, full-lipped woman was shaking like the others, she didn't scurry away like them as I approached. She was also holding a smartphone up towards me. I could see through her eyes that she was filming me - not that I cared, of course, but it was nice to see someone with some stomach.

"You are aware I could just smash that camera and kill you if I wanted this to remain a secret?" I asked, amused by the defiant gaze the woman shot up at me. Any heat in her gaze was lost solely because she was naked and crouched down on the ground beneath me.

"It's live streaming." she declared, sounding rather vindictive. "You won't get away with this."

I raised an eyebrow as I folded my legs underneath me to sit down in front of her, the camera following my movement. "What makes you think I am trying to get away with anything, my dear? I merely defended myself, my friends and my club. Though I could have done a better job defending Lux." I admitted sadly as I looked around the destroyed interior. I had put a lot of effort into this place over the decades, and seeing it like this was actually rather disappointing. It was what it was though. I could start again elsewhere.

"If I may, when did you start your livestream?" I asked curiously. Depending on her answer, I would need to clear up certain things to her camera.

"When the door exploded. I wanted to have evidence of unlawful imprisonment for you, but then…."

"Yes. Then they learned what happens when one slights the Devil."

The woman paled drastically and her eyes shot wide as she reevaluated me. Almost as if she were seeing me for the first time.

"You….You said your name was Lucifer Morningstar." she said in a daze. "That isn't a stage name?"

Smirking, I said, "God given, I'm afraid."

One of the more effeminate men cowering behind the woman with the camera mewled in fear at this newest revelation, causing me to roll my eyes.

"Oh, please. I haven't done anything devilish in years. Forgive me for not allowing myself to be imprisoned without cause."

The woman's jaw worked, but no sound came out. It was actually rather concerning. She seemed fun, I didn't want to have broken her.

"Miss?" I said, gently gripping her shoulder.

She came back to her senses and punched me with her free arm, surprising me when she actually managed to make me feel the impact. This woman was strong, unnaturally so.

"There's no need for that. I have no intention of harming someone who has done nothing to me - especially when they were attempting to do me a favor initially. I repay favors. Speaking of which…." I directed my attention to the camera before me, staring directly into it. "These were SHIELD agents if their badges are genuine. Yes, I know who and what you are. I made it a point to learn all I could of potential annoyances. You have never done anything to me, so I've left you alone. That ends. I will be paying several of your operations a visit to ensure you realize the folly of attacking me unprovoked, Director Fury. If you post a video of yourself sitting on a nine inch dildo that is six inches in diameter to the internet, I may consider leniency. I'm nothing if not merciful after all." Done with my threat, I turned back to the woman with the camera, a smile on my face. "Thank you so much for everything, dear." A small card materialized in my hand with a flash of black demonic power. Holding it out to her, I said, "Take this. Should you ever see a way for me to return the favor I owe you, you need only speak my name."

In a daze, the woman reached out and retrieved the card from my hand. She looked down to see what I had given her and gasped. The Devil Tarot stared back at her. I was nothing if not theatrical.

By the time the woman looked back up, I was gone - disappeared in a flash of magic.

I had places to be. The Devil always kept his promises, and I had promised a particular mortal a fair amount of retribution…