Weiss dodged the hail of fire, ducking around and pouring more arcana into his shields. He grunted with the effort, but not a single flame managed to burn him, as they'd planned.

Behind him, he knew Elya was preparing to support them. Grantz was darting around, keeping the demons in front of them in check. Neumann was recovering behind Grantz, getting ready to create more shields, while Koenig…

Koenig was gone.

Weiss glared at the sword in his hands, but he sighed and just poured more arcana into the spells – no, the formulas. He poured more arcana into the sword clutched in his grip.

As much as he would like to complain about the weapon, he couldn't.

Guns weren't common down here, and cartridges were even less so. He had run out of ammunition after his first fight, and he'd lost the pistol itself in the first week to keep his freedom.

Nearly all of their clothing had been damaged or sold off as well, and they'd been reduced to wearing scraps of cloth that might have been used as bandages, but only on a poor day. Thankfully, matches this low in the arena couldn't be made on things the opponent didn't know the other person had, so none of them had lost their Computation Jewels. Not yet, at least.

Suppressing the urge to shout, Weiss loped forward, slashing into the short, black, clawed Imps in front of him. Two, three, four at a time, the Imps, dead or alive, fell back in the face of his onslaught. Their opponent had bet the four of them couldn't stand against their horde of lesser demons, and they had accepted the bet.

The fight wasn't pretty, but things rarely were for the 203rd Imperial Mage Battalion.

Weiss felt the ground behind him shake, and he jumped up at the signal, propelled upwards by magic. Neumann jumped forward, stomping on the ground and using distracting, mostly meaningless illusions to attract the Imps attention. They focused on him, swarming forward and Weiss grinned as he saw Grantz begin to overpower some of the more proficient demons.

Relative to other demons, Imps couldn't be disabled as easily using physical attacks, since they weren't very powerful. Other enemies, like the Succubi that Grantz was facing and the gangly man with the head and wings of a crow that Elya was now struggling to hold off, took a lot more damage.

The field before him assessed, Weiss glided toward Elya. She jumped backwards with a smirk, but before the gangly demon could press forward, Weiss thrust his sword into its leg.

It screeched terribly, and Weiss mirrored Elya's grin and nod with a smile and nod of his own as it collapsed to the ground. His slash would have been considered a flesh wound for a human.

The crow headed man curled up on the ground and whimpering was no human. A wound like that, despite its seeming shallowness, meant a demon wouldn't be fighting without healing or an abnormally high pain tolerance.

He and Elya turned back to the larger fight. Grantz was still distracting the opposing Succubi, while Neumann was pushing into the horde of Imps with aplomb. They both charged into the fray, their gazes set on the floating, malformed brain that was directing the Imps.

Soon, it became a rout. The Imps continued to push forward, of course, but the smarter demons, who had more they could lose than their lives, signaled to the referee. He was sure that they wouldn't escape unscathed for using whatever withdrawal clauses they had as demons bound to the service of another, but for the 203rd, it would soon be over.

The Imps pressed forward for a moment more, but when they realized that their allies had abandoned them, they gave up, retreating to the referee as the others had. Weiss smirked, and he walked towards the other three as they all stood, catching their breaths.

Not that they needed to breathe.

Elya, as usual, was flittering around them. After she'd discovered that she had thin wings that appeared and disappeared, she hardly walked anymore. It cost arcana to fly – the mana of Hell, so to speak, and the stuff that they'd been using to power their formulas before they'd even learned it was different from mana – but she'd been a class C mage in the Empire.

She couldn't have flown back in the Empire. Here, though, with just how much energy was around them, it was as easy as breathing had once been.

Neumann and Grantz had two Computation Jewels, the Type 13 and the Type 97 respectively. Neumann's new body granted him almost as much arcana as the Colonel had once had mana, while Grantz's willowy, frail form meant he needed more defense than the rest of them. Thus, they had been given some of their most precious tools.

They all smirked at each other, and then trekked towards the exit in silence. They had a demon to meet.

The great doors they had entered the arena through had them winding through corridors of tough, unyielding black and red rocks carved to look like bricks. Nothing any of them had seen had prepared them for navigating the labyrinth – not even the Colonel had thought to train them for navigating tunnels underground. Still, they had learned.

They wound through the confusing hallways underneath the stands that held up the spectators, ignoring the begging, hunched over demons that hid in the darkest parts, pleading from underneath tattered, faded cloth for a morsel.

They didn't so much as look at the beggars.

They weren't heartless. They just knew better now.

Elya and Grantz had felt pity for one of them when they'd won for the first time, and they had all had their winnings stolen for their trouble. So, they hurried past the darkened hollows of the catacombs, feeling vindicated every time they heard a curse of anger in their wake.

After continuing to wind through the dark hallways, they soon found themselves in a meeting room. The four of them spread out around the room, glaring at the sharply dressed demon before them. They knew that the demon before them might try and back out of their deal.

Its exaggerated facial features twisted from grotesquely maudlin to insanely overjoyed as it bobbed its giant, inflated head. "Thank you verrrryyyy much for fiiiighting."

Weiss felt a confused frown flash across his face, but that was enough for the experienced demon in front of him to guess at everything he was thinking. "Ah, I won eiiither wayyyyy. If you aaaaall had lost, then I would haaaaave your liiiivvvves to do wiiiith as I wished for the next yyyyeeeaar. Siiiince you won, however, the demons you fought in the Arena will all become my slaves for another hundred yyyyeeears."

They grimaced, but they all knew that they couldn't stop anything. Those demons had entered the service of the demon in front of them, and they'd reap the consequences of that action, just as Weiss, Elya, Grantz, and Neumann would have reaped the consequences had they lost.

He leaned down under his desk – a relatively tame hardwood desk that Tanya probably would have liked – and brought out four bags that gave off an eerie light.

Weiss licked his lips.

Demons did not eat food. There wasn't any of that down in Hell, with how hot it was, and they were built to feed off of more… ethereal energy, anyway.

That was how very weak demons that didn't need much in the way of emotions or arcana in order to survive were able to flee to an actual world and subsist there. They weren't tied to Hell by much, and they could simply feed off of the arcana in their surroundings and eke out an existence away from Hell.

And that explained why nothing of the sort had been in the world with the Empire – mana just didn't stick around long enough to be of any use to demons, which meant that arcana probably stuck around for even less time, if it was there at all.

Unfortunately, Elya was probably the only one of them that could pull something like that off. The other four of them needed much more than just arcana, and even she would likely become twisted without emotions to feed off of.

Weiss took his bag, as did the other three. This was a very potent meal of emotions, and he half wondered how a demon this low in the arena had gotten it. Perhaps his age? Though he was probably lying about that.

The demon behind the desk grinned maniacally at them, salivating greedily. "Thank you for yyyyoooouuur help…" he trailed off, before sticking them with an enterprising glance. "You know, you four aren't aaaaall that bad at fiiiiighting. If you sign up under my seeeervvvice, I could eeeeaasily promise regular meals just as luxurrrriiious as this one."

Immediately, all four of them shook their heads. Demons were good at making contracts and making sure to adhere to the letter of their contracts.

Of course, no one they had met had anything on Tanya in that regard, but it was nice to see that, had she been sent here, Tanya would probably rule a good portion of the place within a week.

He shrugged. "Oh well. Have a good day, demons."

They knew a dismissal when they heard one, and all of them filtered out of the office, nearly running through the hallways. With bags of emotions clasped openly against their bodies, they were much higher value targets, and they needed to eat quickly before something much stronger than them decided to order them to give him their winnings or die.

The place they were going was one of the only relatively safe areas in Hell. You could still be attacked, but demons here were usually much more interested in other things, and that meant you wouldn't be killed or attacked anywhere near as often anywhere else.

Coincidentally, it was also where they'd lost Koenig.

They were in the 'room' in a flash, huddling in a corner and opening their bags. They took no time at all to start stuffing themselves.

Oh, they knew that it was disgusting to look at, but none of the other demons around them – and there were probably many tens of thousands in this expansive 'room' – didn't look down on them.

Eating fast meant that other demons wouldn't attempt to steal their things if they happened to glance away.

Eating fast also meant that they wouldn't begin to harbor ideas about stealing food from each other… something Weiss was not proud to admit he'd done.

Of course, those reasons wouldn't stop Tanya from flaying them alive if she saw them eating like this. She understood the value of food on the front, and she didn't let them waste anything without an order to fight from a higher up.

Just as Weiss was about to stuff the last morsel of physical emotion into his mouth, he felt… something. A flicker of something on the near-constant Observation formula – finally adjusted for the presence of so much arcana – he always had active now to ensure that a demon wouldn't suddenly attack them.

He nearly choked on the morsel of soft, succulent sadness he was sucking on as he jumped to his feet, saluting and staring down at where he knew her head would be.

It was Tanya! He felt her mana, her presence, her-

Then he blinked as he realized that he was staring at the clothing of an Imperial officer and not the annoyed expression of his superior. He looked up and saw the angular, pointed, red face of Koenig.

He grinned, as did the other four in their group. "Koenig!"

They hugged him, taking care not to brush against the blades on his fingers. He tried to shake them off, but they didn't let go.

It had been… a while since they'd seen him. They didn't exactly have a very good way to keep track of time down here, since none of them had watches and they didn't even need to sleep, but they were fairly sure it had been more than a week.

He chuckled, trying to push them off. "Would you guys stop that? Why're you all so…"

"Someone's stealing your emotions!" he shouted, just barely able to point a finger at their meal. Quick as a flash, they all jumped off him, preparing to destroy-

But no one was there. They all looked back at him, confused and angry, but he simply sat down. "You all needed to give me a bit of space."

They blinked, and Weiss rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.

Right, eating emotions gave demons a sort of high for a while. Plus, they hadn't had a meal this good in a while, so suddenly having the world snap into so much focus instead of being a dredge of hunger was… enlightening as to why they really did need to eat.

Reluctantly, they allowed Koenig to pick at the scraps of their remaining food as Weiss began to speak. "Koenig. Where were you? Was there some sort of complication?"

The question about Tanya, and why all of them, barring Elya, had felt her presence and saluted the person they thought was her went unasked. He knew that, although unasked, they wouldn't suffer him being silent on the subject.

Not for long.

Koenig shook his head. "Not really. Remember how that additional information pamphlet we purchased said that different worlds had different rates at which time progressed?"

They all nodded, and he continued. "That world had a very slow progression of time compared to our own world. I was only there for a few days from my point of view."

They all took a moment to digest that, but Koenig didn't pause for long, knowing what they were really interested in.

"As I was waiting in the Ascent, my Observation spells picked up a hint of Tanya's mana signature," he explained.

What followed was his fighting off a dozen Imps that wanted to be summoned, an odd conversation with an old, disgustingly powerful demon that had asked to be referred to as the 'Demon King,' and three days of flight from said King's castle to Tanya.

He sighed. "I was only able to deliver the letter, nothing else. I…"

He chuckled nervously. "I nearly called her 'Major.' Can you believe it?"

They chuckled with him, and he continued sadly. "I accidentally grabbed a few drops of her blood with my claws, and since that technically counted as payment…"

He hung his head dejectedly, and Grantz patted his back reassuringly. Weiss sighed. "You saved the blood, yes?"

Koenig nodded. "Yeah. Those odd potion flasks we won were quite helpful in that regard."

Again, they were all silent, and then Koenig continued. "She's not destitute, but…"

He scoffed. "Honestly, she looks better than ever. Supposedly, that world's 'Demon King' is fighting against all of the countries on that continent, but away from the frontlines, things are relatively peaceful, even with all the odd monsters."

They sent him questioning glances, and he explained all the information he had been able to gather from the people in the city he'd been able to intimidate into giving him information.

He had killed them afterwards, but that world seemed feudal, which meant the nobility didn't care about a few commoners going missing. Weiss nodded to himself, and then stood happily.

"Then everything is alright. We've got a way to find her, when the time comes. For now, we need to stick together and keep getting stronger."

The other nodded, and they left soon after, ready to look for a place to relax for a little while. Then, they'd go to the arena and find an open battle to fight.

They'd keep getting stronger, until the day came that they all escaped Hell and made it back to the Colonel's side.

-OxOxO-

Neumann snacked on the newest emotion. He'd been trying to get a taste of anything down here, and while apathy was very smooth, he was beginning to get a taste for fear.

He opened his eyes to glance at the squealing ball of yellow light-

All of the gusto he was about to employ when biting down on the emotion disappeared as he realized that he was no longer holding onto a ball of pure emotion. He woodenly turned to the others.

They all had just finished with another fight. They had yet to lose too much of anything else – Koenig had lost the last of his good clothing, but it was a small sacrifice to make sure they didn't have to sacrifice a limb.

He realized that no, his friends hadn't stolen his food. They were also looking at each other, glaring murderously. He quickly looked around the dark, small corridor that they had to walk down, two pairs and Elya in the center.

As one, they cried out the name of a spell. "Observation!"

He detected nothing, and it was easy to see that Weiss, walking next to him, hadn't seen anything either. He looked over his shoulder, and-

"Above!" Elya shouted. As one, they turned their attention to the ceiling, spells already flying from their lips and weapons.

A vile screech echoed above them, but the thief fell in between all of them. Neumann looked around for a moment.

Elya was cracking her knuckles. Koenig was sharpening his fingers using magic. Weiss was readying his sword, while Grantz was readying his daggers.

Neumann quickly grabbed his club from his side, beating his hand with it and glaring down. The cowardly Gremlin that was between them all cowered.

"W- Wait! You can't kill me! I represent the esteemed Maxwell! Yo-"

Elya cut him off. "Oh please. Do you know how many times we've heard that same shit?"

She clasped her hands in front of her as best she could and batted her eyelashes mockingly at the Gremlin. "Oh, pwease, would you awwow us to take your emwotions? We definitewy wepwesent some higher demon, so if you don't you'll get pwunished."

She smacked the small thing upside its long nose. "Shut it! If you so much as look at our stuff again, we'll have no problem ending your existence right now!"

It whimpered and glared at them, when it brought a small, glass-like horn out from its satchel…

Neumann's face turned white – or it would have, if that were possible – as he recognized the item and the image on the side of the bag.

He blew into the horn, and Neumann sighed as Weiss killed it and took their emotions back from the thing. Weiss stashed them away, and then he turned to face the hallway Neumann had been walking down.

Neumann only spent a second or two more staring at the rough bag Weiss had stuffed the emotions into than he would have if he weren't still hungry.

"Running?" Weiss asked, undoubtedly aware of the looks they were all sending the bag their emotions were in.

Koenig shook his head after a moment. "Unlikely to work. We can all fly, but it would take at least five minutes to get out into the open air. We'd be swarmed."

He sighed. "Then we'll have to fight and retreat."

Neumann needed no more prompting as the sound of an unending torrent of pounding feet reached his ears. He threw up two Active Barrier spells, one in front and one behind.

Unlike the normal, smooth surface the mages of the Empire had utilized, these two surfaces were covered in spikes, big and small, to ensure that enemies would impale themselves if they attempted to just charge in. It would give them a bit of breathing room.

He marveled at the sight for a moment. An Active Barrier spell like this, constructed to be so irregular, would have given the Colonel a tough time, at least for a little bit. Here, with so much arcana, it wasn't even taxing.

As one, they activated their Flight spells and began to rush through the winding corridors. They had to get as close to the surface, before-

It was already too late. Neumann grimaced as they impacted dozens of Gremlins and Imps at once. He held up a hand, and they slowed down.

In front of them, a nearly unending horde of demons greeted them, and it wasn't just weak, useless demons.

He could hear more of them coming up behind them, closing them inside the wall of the arenas. He gulped audibly.

They were trapped.

He glanced over his shoulder at Weiss, and he slipped into a different language. Their first language.

"Alright. Our… Chemical Conversion spells won't be effective on demons. The best bet we have is to hold off and hope that Maxwell calls them off long enough for us to escape."

"Just like Teigenhoff, right?" he asked in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

The other three members of the 203rd chuckled mirthlessly at the memory. "Too bad we didn't have our Chemical Conversion spells back then, right?"

"Hey…" he heard Grantz mutter. The demons were advancing slowly, warily eyeing Neumann's shields.

"Could we use them as smokescreens?" he asked quickly. Neumann cast a look at Weiss, who grinned.

"Now all we need is a…" Koenig began, before he cast a look at the bag Weiss had stashed their meal in.

Weiss shook his head, and Neumann briefly considered murdering Koenig for what he was about to do, but it was already too late. Keonig had grabbed the bag of emotions, and-

"You want it? Go GET IT!" he shouted at the hordes, tossing it behind them. Neumann threw his shield down and watched the bag sail away.

Immediately, the starved, weak looking Gremlins and Imps rushed around them as Neumann, Weiss, and Elya activated the 'Chemical Conversion' spells.

They were harder to complete down here – there wasn't as much Chlorine to create the gas – but they did eventually make the foul-smelling stuff explode into the corridors. An Observation spell allowed him to keep track of Weiss, who was leading them through the stuff and towards the other end of the hallway.

Soon, they were out of the fog. He quickly looked around, trying to find enemies-

He grinned. No one was here. They were completely-

BOOOM!

BOOOM!

BOOOM!

With each ground-shaking step, Neumann was very sure that this was not good at all. He hurried forward after Weiss, and he hoped the others were following, because-

CRRAAAAACK!

Slack-jawed, he watched as the tunnel ahead of them began to fold in on itself, revealing it to the open air. Neumann threw a look behind him, and then turned to-

He blinked. The others were all already looking out of a hole where once there had been seemingly solid rock walls. Grumbling and wondering if he should bring up how reckless they were being, he walked behind them and looked out.

He blinked in shock, and then he turned around. Nope! He wasn't-

"Neumann, we can't run from… that."

He sighed, and then turned around again, brushing Weiss's hand off of him. He looked out at the great… beast.

It must have been the tallest living thing he'd ever heard of, and he wasn't even sure that it was just one creature. Regardless, the giant, slow-moving demon, taller than even the buildings he heard the Americans had built, held out a hand, making a platform for them to stand on.

There was no way to judge exactly what the thing was feeling. Where skin and muscles would have been, the head of the creature had been scoured of everything besides bone. It skull, if it could be called that, was shaped like a normal human skull, but where the jaw bone would connect with the rest of the skull, and where the eye sockets would be, and where the teeth would have formed a macabre smile, was instead a vast expanse of bone as featureless as the top of its skull.

It remained perfectly still. They stared at it, for a moment, but Weiss jumped forward. When he wasn't crushed into a paste, they followed him, grumbling and swearing up at the hulking thing above them.

Then, they were pushed into the coarse, bark-like skin of the giant's hand by the sudden increase in speed as it raised them up. Neumann struggled to stand, to look around.

He did get to look around, for a moment. There were many of the giant demons, each of them acting as an equivalent to… mass transit. Some seemed to be carrying great loads of cargo, while others were acting like this one was and carting other demons around, though rather than being held in its hands, they clung to every inch of its body.

Even now, he could see some being sent flying by the force of the creatures' gait alone.

All of the giants walked along the great, black-red-yellow tower that had apparently crashed into Hell some eons ago that all the arenas were contained in, covering the distance it would have taken them hours to cross in only minutes.

Neumann turned to Weiss, who seemed to be incredibly nervous. Koenig, as always, was stoic and uncaring of where they were going, since they didn't really have a say at this point.

Elya was looking out at the other demons being ferried around, waving occasionally, while Grantz was staring at her in annoyance. "Why must you be so social? We didn't even get to finish our meals…"

She shrugged effortlessly and didn't even look at him. "It's important to be well known, if we ever want a chance to see them again."

Neumann sighed. She had a point, but…

He wasn't all that sure they would ever get to do that. They fought and fought, and the most they could do was get slightly better weapons and food to subsist off of.

He heard a great rumbling echo through the hand below him, and he looked to the others. "Should we hold on?"

They began to move, and Neumann quickly shoved his hands into the creases of the giant's bark-skin as they rushed downwards. Before he could get off-

"Oof!" he shouted. They had all been unceremoniously dumped onto a hard, cool, stone surface. He looked around.

The others seemed okay, but-

"Yee- Yee… How wonderful it is to see you all!"

He turned around, and-

His knees quaked. The being before him…

The Colonel couldn't have fought him alone. This thing would have wiped the floor with her. It was even more powerful than that bitch had been.

Standing in an immaculate, embroidered suit with a pitch black bowtie cut out of the void itself, was one of the feared rulers of Hell. Unlike Vanir's rumored black-and-white mask, he had a small pair of glasses on his face that detained his white-blue eyes behind them.

Neumann tried to back up-

He hit… something, and he dared to turn around and stare into the brooding, unhappy face of a demon three times superior to him in size. He tried to give it an approximation of a friendly grin, and it smirked cruelly back at him. It looked like it would enjoy watching whatever was about to happen.

Neumann stood, taking point and shielding the others and preparing to activate his shields. They all wouldn't survive – that much was obvious.

However, if one of them could escape – Elya didn't need as much energy as they did, and the only reason she had stuck around for so long was that they might not be able to find Tanya if she took the drops of blood Koenig had taken from the Colonel – it would be worth it.

Another demon standing by Maxwell's side began to walk forward. It might have resembled a regular person, dressing in an unfamiliar military uniform, if not for the television set that sat where its head should have been.

The flesh connecting the TV to its body was pulsating and bubbling, constantly moving and shifting, creeping up towards the screen of the TV set and retreating away from it as if it were breathing. Despite its relative lack of power, it still outclassed all of them and the demons prevented their escape.

Suddenly, it reached forward, he flinched back…

And when nothing happened, he opened his eyes and blinked rapidly.

It held out a hand.

He blinked at it again. Was he…

Offering to shake his hand?

Maxwell spoke up, bobbing his head and sending his long, blond hair flying. "Hey, hey… you should make a good first impression, right? That's what your Majorly General would say?"

Neumann blinked in surprise again. "You-"

The Duke of Hell cut him off with a sigh. "Shake Qindur's hand, dummy dummy!"

He grimaced, but he did as he was told and-

He gasped. He was…

He was seeing Maxwell, only…

He didn't look like the Duke of Hell. He was disheveled, besides the still-pristine glasses, and he looked rather underfed, for someone of his standing.

"Are you really okay without any compensation? If Alderp owes you, I can probably figure something out…" Neumann heard himself say.

Only, it wasn't his voice, but the voice of Tanya!

Neumann saw Maxwell speak. "Nope! As long as you promise to owe me in the future, I'll not trouble you a bit! Not at all at all!"

Neumann glanced at Maxwell for a moment, before shaking his hand and-

"Wonderful! Bye bye!" he said, waving his hand like a kid.

Neumann was thrown out of the image and shook his head. He spared a glance around himself to see that the others were doing much the same, as if they'd shaken his hand too.

"He ha! She didn't know that 'future' meant 'in five seconds!' What a wonderful prank, to take a memory! And I got to prove myself to her followers! Ha he!"

He was jumping up and down and shaking his own hand as if he were two people. Neumann glanced at him.

"Though, I thought more of you'd have been loyal enough to go to Hell, that I did…" he said, trailing off as he tried to continue.

He stopped for a few seconds, staring into space, when…

He turned to the previously named Qindur. "Hey hey, what were we doing?"

It sighed – though he wasn't sure how it did that without a mouth – and said, as if it had said it a hundred times before, "You were working on getting Degurechaff's soldiers to do your bidding?"

The voice crackled like the white, fuzzy snow being displayed on the TV set.

He snapped his fingers. "Right, right! Well, that's the price of my powers, I suppose," he said, chuckling.

Qindur gave him a long-suffering sigh. "As you have told me before, Maxwell."

The Duke of Hell rubbed his hands together, stepping towards them and grinning disarmingly. Neumann tried to stand between the others and the demon, but-

"Yee yee, you know I can beat all of you in an instant, but I don't want to, not at all, not at all. Just… how about you all come inside, yes yes?"

Neumann looked to Weiss, who deliberated for only a moment. He sighed tiredly, and motioned forward. Maxwell cackled madly, and they followed him inside the yawning mansion.

-OxOxO-

Maxwell smiled at them. "Hey, while I know it seems like a big fuss to get you guys here so convolutedly, it was great fun to watch, yee yee. I've got something to say!"

The only answer he got from them were five identical, unamused glares that desperately hid their trepidation, and he just shook his head. "Spoilsports!" he shouted, sticking a tongue out at them.

He stood from his plush, upholstered chair. "I'm not mad that she didn't let me get payment from Master Alderp! Nah, nah, Hell likes Tanya von Degurechaff!"

They all blinked at him owlishly, and he cackled. "Yes yes! God hasn't been so upset about anything for a long time! It's so so so funny!"

He smiled widely at them. "I never knew about no Mizuho Wakatsuki, no no. One of my friends, a Duke of Hell, did hear of him, yee yee."

He nodded, confirming his own thought processes. "He was super logical, super ruthless, and that dude would've been a shoe in because he didn't believe in God!"

He giggled feverishly, and Neumann backed away from him a bit. It was hard, with the soft couch he was sitting on and the hulking, bulky demons behind that, but he managed to distance himself a bit anyway.

They'd run into a lot of seemingly insane demons during their time in Hell, but this one seemed to take the cake. He was jumping between subjects feverishly and giggling madly, and his gaze darted between them, focusing on someone new each and every second.

"As Tanya von Degurechaff? Excellent, excellent! Instead of just an Atheist that never could have gone far due to lack of extra-normal powers…"

He sighed happily. "Yee yee, she had power and meanness in equal measures! Add her actions when she let herself really, really feel during that wasteful war, and she'd have been a Duke in a few million years!"

He shook his head and gestured wildly.

"Ho no ho, she was better than even we thought, though. She just couldn't kick the bucket sooner… so one of the other Dukes arranged for the firebombs headed for… Hollandia, I think I think, to instead be dropped over Dresdun while God was taking a tiny nap."

Finally, he stopped speaking, stopped looking between them, and sat stock still, his grin slight and full of malice. Slowly, the five of them realized what exactly he'd said.

Tanya. Firebombing. Dresdun.

They couldn't do anything. They wouldn't say anything, either. He wasn't naming which Duke of Hell had done it, and even if he had, they couldn't so much as scratch them if they were close to Maxwell in terms of power.

Still, Neumann couldn't help but glare heatedly at the thing, its poor approximation of regret shining on the lower half of its face, not reaching its far off, childish gaze. He gulped down his anger.

Maxwell shrugged. "Hey hey, we had a limited time to act – He doesn't take breaks often – and we just had to save her before she converted… according to the others."

Neumann saw Grantz about to voice a question, and Maxwell nodded his head. "Yes, sadly, so sadly, I was summoned away from my home to act as…"

He scowled. Neumann heard him begin muttering something about fat bastards until Qindur squeezed his shoulder and whispered in his ear, and Maxwell brightened considerably. "Right, right! That bastard Alderp summoned me and forced me to work for him for free for too long, too long."

He shook his head. "Hmm, hmm, now, where were we…"

He snapped, and then he sighed unhappily. "Yee yee, the little doll managed to escape again, and until she dies again, I'd like to help her out a bit. Having favors is always a good thing, yeah yeah, especially since we can't… ehh ehh, get her here faster this time, and helping you guys, her friends, helps too!"

Neumann glanced at the others. Something about the Duke of Hell seemed… off, even ignoring his insane rambling.

However, if he actually could get them closer to finding Tanya…

Maxwell smiled widely, and then he gestured to Qindur. His… head displayed…

He blinked in confusion. There appeared to be a small, simplified version of their demon forms chasing after a small, simplified version of Tanya and Viktoriya.

If Neumann thought that the drawn forms of Tanya and Viktoriya were cute, he'd bring the thought to his grave.

The Colonel did not like it when she was called cute.

Or, he assumed so. No one had dared, and he wouldn't be the first, even if she wasn't around.

Maxwell pointed to Qindur's… face. "Now now, you all desire to see Degurechaff, but doing so needs a greatly many things other than leaving through The Ascent, yeah yeah?"

None of them nodded – the Colonel had driven in what a rhetorical question looked like, and Elya knew to let the four of them take the lead during negotiations about their Colonel – and Maxwell continued.

"Hmm hmm, you need not just a way out of Hell, but a reliable way to use the blood in that vial around Koenig's neck to find her, yes? And a way to live, yee yee," he asked rhetorically once more.

Grantz growled, "How did you-"

"Easier than you would expect, I'm sure I'm sure."

Silence reigned for a few moments. Then, Qindur cleared his throat and Maxwell continued.

"Anyway anyway, in order to do any of that, you need info and resources. Yee yee, lucky for you guys, I happen to be a Duke of Hell, and I could supply both to you easily. But but…"

His easy grin hardened for a moment, and Neumann fought the urge to try and press back-

He blinked, and he imagined the Colonel in this Duke of Hell's place. Neumann gulped and sat ramrod straight.

Acting out of line in front of the Colonel in a briefing like this was the height of folly and would see him forced to take the night watch… so he continued to imagine that the being in front of him was half the man Tanya was.

"However, one good deed deserves another, no no? I need something from you all. Yee yee, a friend of mine has recently returned to Hell, and he is in need of a bit of… help. I have a million more important things to do than to help him personally, so so, you all will do."

He leaned back in his chair, grinning childishly, and a piece of paper materialized out of thin air. Neumann looked down at it and realized it was a contract.

Maxwell began to bounce up and down. "Yee yee, find my friend – without my help, mind you, I don't gotta clue where that bastard is – and help him. In return, I will give you information that will get you to your precious Colonel, I will I will."

Neumann looked at the others, and he began to think.

This could be a good idea. They currently had no clue how they'd get to her, and having a direction to go would aid them greatly.

This could be a bad idea. Signing a contract with a Duke of Hell, who had had untold amounts of time to perfect his craft of acting to the letter of his contracts, might spell eternal servitude for them.

Weiss sighed, and Neumann looked at him. "Let us look over the contract first and deliberate."

He nodded and leaned back in his seat. "Sure sure. Take all the time you need. This is one of the slower parts of Hell, as far as relative time is concerned, so you have no need to fear the worst for your Colonel, truly truly."

Neumann nodded, and then he bent down over the contract with Weiss. They would need to be sure about this.

He took a deep breath, even though he didn't need it. The road ahead was looking increasingly shaky, but…

His gaze hardened. They wouldn't falter, no matter what. They would reunite with the Colonel and Serebryakov.

-OxOxO-

A/N: If you'd like to donate to support me monetarily, search for Sugarcane Soldier on the website of the Patrons.

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