This is a crosspost from my questionable questing account.

Chapter 5

"Oh, uh, sure," Charlie said, taking a rib from the provided plate of food.

"Lute, you want anything?" I asked holding up the plate of ribs towards her, Lute just shook her head no while she continued to glare hatefully at Charlie.

I just shrugged and placed the plate back onto the table while I cleaned off another rib bone. I could see why old Adam ordered from this place so much, these ribs were the best ribs I had ever eaten. I went to work on another as I gathered some sides onto a different plate I manifested. "Mmpht, so, how's your day been?" I asked around a mouthful of food at the woman seated off to the side.

"Oh, wow, these really are good," I heard her mutter before she seemed to shake herself from the food trance and focus back on me. "Oh, good I suppose. Actually, even better now that I have a chance to talk to you! See, I have this idea that I want to pitch to you that I'm sure you'll love, it's-"

I waved for her to quiet down, "Now, now, hold your horses. C'mon, let's not ruin a good lunch by talking about work let's get ot know each other. Like, what are some hobbies of yours? I like guitar, do you have any favorite instruments?"

"Oh, heh, sure," Charlie answered with a smile, brushing at some of the hair that curled over her cheeks.

We spent a good portion of this little meeting going back and forth, exchanging a few things about each other and sharing some small stories. I had to be a bit creative as I had a bit of a short time up in Heaven from my perspective and I didn't want to admit that I wasn't actually who I was supposed to be. Shit, most of my time was spent working and I doubted that Lute would appreciate me telling Charlie how we had passionate sex.

During our little chat Charlie did try to subtly point out all of these so-called "great" things in Hell and the multitude of nice people that she felt did not deserve to be there. I was, admittedly, a little skeptical. Other than that I did get to know this woman bit by bit and though I may have been wary of ever admitting that a demon in Hell could be called "nice" I was quite certain that this Charlie was at least genuine. And also the exception.

Of all the ways that the spawn of the devil himself could act like I felt that Charlie was most certainly on the better end of the spectrum of literal devilspawn. Considering where she lived I was also surprised at how nice she was, Hell seemed the kind of place that would constantly wear you down until you were nothing but negativity. Well, from what I knew of it anyway, I certainly wasn't about to spend a whole lot of time down there if I could help it. Bleh.

Maybe this super cheerful personality of Charlie was one of the ways in which she dealt with the atmosphere of Hell to not become just like every other demon?

"This is kinda… nice," Charlie said after a while. Our food was mostly gone by now and I leaned back in my chair with a sigh, now content and full and picking my teeth with a golden toothpick. "I didn't really know what I was expecting but I'm glad that I've gotten this chance to get to know you!"

She took hold of my left hand which had been resting on the table and held it between us. She was standing now and staring into my eyes with a wide fanged grin on her face. She was quite forward and it must have been my incredible charm and good looks that shines even through my mask that got her to smile that much. Either that or she just had a ton of energy… I think I'll stick with my massive charm as the reason.

That being said I was feeling a bit bad now, I was going to be giving her some bad news soon and ruin the good mood she had built up. She even reminded me a bit of Emily. But, I had to do this anyway. Warning the demons in Hell of when the exterminations will begin is part of the deal between Heaven and Hell.

I graciously allowed Charlie to continue holding my hand as she continued speaking, "I've heard about you from the story of Hell's creation and a couple of stories from my mom but I'm so glad that they had to be exaggerations! Uh, you are Adam the first man, right? Not another angel that just so happens to share his name?"

"Yup, first man and all that," I replied. Well, that was technically true in body if not spirit. Sadly, I had no memories of old Adam's life and was only aware of being known as the first-ever human man because others had told me about it. It would have made things a lot easier but, truthfully, I didn't particularly care about his previous life. I did want to see the Garden of Eden if it was still there though. It was only out of curiosity but, I mean, who wouldn't want to see this supposed paradise if they were in my shoes?

We didn't really get to continue with this line of conversation as a shadow was soon cast in between us. Lute loomed over our clasped hands and glared down at them, both of her eyes were wide and not moving an inch from where they stared at our conjoined hands. I could tell, even with the mask covering her face, that her eyes never wavered from where they glared. Her right hand gripped her sword handle so tightly that I could see her arms shaking with the effort.

"When did she even pull that thing out?" I wondered.

"Remove that filthy hand, hellspawn, or I will cut it off," Lute growled at Charlie, raising her sword in the air threateningly. She spat the word "hellspawn" out in a low growl and I could practically feel the venom in her voice.

Charlie quickly backed off, her hands now clasped to her chest in wariness while she kept an eye on Lute. I coughed into my fist awkwardly and Lute took a deep breath to seemingly calm herself before she moved behind me and, I assumed, continued to glare at Charlie.

"Right, uh, you wanted to talk about something?" I started, hoping to break the tension that was still very thick in the air. Honestly, Lute, you gotta chill.

Charlie instantly perked up like a puppy and with a smile she made a gesture with her hands and a stack of papers was summoned from a portal on the table. They briefly defied gravity as they floated up from the portal before quickly settling down onto the table proper. I curled an eyebrow up as with a glance I could see that they were mostly childish drawings. They were even drawn using crayons of all things.

Charlie brought up one of the childish drawings of what was most probably Hell if the multitude of demons were of any indication. Or, at least, the city we were in the middle of. She showed me said picture a little more closely and flicked through a few other drawings as she made her pitch, "I know that Hell's population is out of control and that everything is super bad right now but what if I said that doesn't have to be the case!"

Charlie flung her hands out to emphasize her positivity on the subject and put those drawings of Hell down before she nearly shoved another one into my face. It was a picture of demons clasping their hands in front of their bodies and looking like they were ascending into the sky with yellow golden light rays surrounding them as they did so. All of it is still kinda stick-figurey.

"We can give them a chance for redemption and cleanse their souls of sin!" She continued. Charlie put the paper down and grabbed two more and showed them both to me side by side. This time the first picture was a picture of a hotel with a sort of familiar name, the second was just a bunch of demons and angels holding hands with stars and clouds and rainbows everywhere. "At my Hazbin Hotel demons can check in from Hell and check out into Heaven! And then demons and angels can live happily ever after with no more killing of souls needed ever again!"

"Plus," Charlie nudged an elbow at me and winked, "it would really save you all a trip. You wouldn't have to fly all the way down from Heaven anymore. It's a solution to all of our biggest problems!"

The meeting room was silent as Lute and I stared at the demoness in front of us. My second in command and pretty much girlfriend stepped around me and stood in front of Charlie who understandably eyed her warily. Lute's hand snapped out and yanked the picture of demons and angels holding hands before tearing it into shreds with a furious fervor.

She tossed the few scraps of paper she still grasped into Charlie's face, "Angels and demons working together? Happy together? Such vile and sinful behavior will never be acceptable. You hellspawn are a detestable lot, the only time we would ever work together is when you die by our hands."

"Wha- but it doesn't have to be this way! Sinners are human souls just like the ones you have up in Heaven!" Charlie protested.

"They are not the same, they had their chance and they earned damnation," Lute retorted.

"You're wrong, sinners made mistakes but so does everyone! Adam, you have to agree with me, right?" Charlie pleaded.

After suddenly being called out I snapped out of my slight daze and stared at Charlie and Lute. Both women were staring at me expectantly and I felt myself being scrutinized by both of their gazes. Shit, being stuck in the middle of two hot women arguing isn't something a guy should ever want to be in.

What's worse is that they are arguing about a topic that is so far above my pay grade it isn't even funny. Shit, I might not remember everything but I was positive that I was just some random smuck before I found myself as a super powerful angel dude who had a harem of battle babes at his side. Why couldn't it just stay that way? Keep shit nice and simple?

The fuck do I know about whether sinners can be redeemed into Heaven? I've never even met the big G before becoming an angel, the closest I have is the weird quest thing, and I've also only been an angel for, like, a week or something.

Speaking of the quest system, isn't the fact that the rewards that come from it give me or a subordinate of mine more angel juice proof that whatever is out there judging people thinks that what I'm doing is good? My memory of arriving in Heaven is a bit fuzzy but I still felt that deep sense of comfort and belonging before being fully awake and in a new body, I felt it straight down into my very soul. Giving extra power that is, to the best of my knowledge, the same type as the one we already have to angels has gotta be something that only works if they are a part of Heaven itself, right?

Also, I just didn't want to deal with this. So, I went into big brain mode and I came up with an idea.

I took a deep breath, steepled my hands, and said, "Alright, I gotta level with you." I pointed my steepled hands at Charlie, "Your idea… it's idealistic and filled with good intentions."

Charlie brightened and Lute's mouth dropped.

"Buuuut," I continued and Charlie dimmed a bit, "I'm not sure how feasible it really is. Have you even redeemed a soul yet?"

Charlie cringed a tad, "Uh, well, no. We officially started a little over a week ago but we do have a patron already and he's-"

"Ok, so you don't have a working system," I cut her off. "I can't really help you out here if you don't even know if redeeming a demon is even possible and I'd rather not waste time when we already have a working system in place. Plus, even if it was possible, I find it hard to believe that you could ever redeem enough souls before the exterminations that they'd become unnecessary, a lot of humans die everyday and redemption would most certainly be a slow and personal process. Now, that being said," I said the last part a bit more forcefully to talk over Charlie a bit before she could start, "we can talk about this again if you ever manage to redeem a soul."

I got up from my seat and placed an arm around her shoulders as I guided her out of the room, "Also, babe, you gotta work on your presentation. Kiddie drawings don't exactly inspire people into believing what you're trying to sell."

"Oh! Uh, noted," Charlie said as I gently pushed her out through the door. "Thanks, I'll get to work right away and prove this can work!"

"Lovely, you go and do that," I said to her, smiling broadly as I waved her goodbye, trying to quickly get her out before I had to continue this conversation any longer. Then I had a feeling that I was forgetting about something as I used my magic to shut the door. Right before the sliding door closed I remembered what we originally came here to do and shouted through the shortening crack of the door, "Oh, and we're doing two exterminations this year, can't say why but Hell has got six months until we come back! It's only for this year so don't feel the need to try to rush anything!"

Yes, that's right, my plan is to push this shit into the future and deal with it then! If the hotel doesn't work then it doesn't work and if it does work then it's future Adam's problem. Honestly, I'm such a genius I even surprise myself! I couldn't hear what Charlie responded with once the doors shut and I turned and walked back to Lute, thoroughly satisfied, who was still standing near Charlie's seat.

"Adam, you-you don't really think that demons can ever have a place in Heaven?!" Lute shouted, she rushed forward before I even got halfway to her and gripped my arms in desperation. She sounded genuinely horrified and the look I could see in her eyes through her mask made my heart hurt.

I gently removed her hands and gripped her shoulders instead, "I don't know if it's even possible but even if it was it wouldn't change anything. I mean, since I don't have any memories have you ever even heard of a sinner becoming an angel?"

Lute paused, her previous look of horror morphed into deep thought, and eventually shook her head, "Well, no. It's never happened before in all of Heaven's history."

I shrugged, "Then what's to worry about? The blonde babe can do her thing with the hotel and get nowhere while we keep doing what we've been doing. Tons of humans die everyday and end up in Hell, their overpopulation problem will never go away as long as humans keep being shitty people."

Truthfully, I didn't necessarily disagree with the concept but trying to stop their overpopulation problem (and potential demon uprisings because I'm genre savvy enough to know that would definitely happen sooner or later with any kind of Heaven and Hell relationship) with good feelings and hard work alone would be pretty impossible to do. Plus, I felt that Lute was also right. In life they had a chance to be good but they chose to be evil and in doing so they earned their place down there for whatever reason.

Also, those that ended up in Hell are inherently untrustworthy in the first place so I wouldn't be able to ever truly believe that a demon can say that they are redeemed and then be allowed to be brought up to Heaven. Even Charlie vouching for them isn't enough for me, she seemed way too trusting just from our first meeting. Also, the afterlife is supposed to be the final place where souls go after, well, their life. And if whatever divine judgement that placed them there actually did so then shouldn't that be where they were meant to go?

Ugh, theology wasn't my strongest subject. This is only made worse when, as an actual fucking angel of Heaven, I'm now a part of theological debate by default. Why couldn't this be like normal earth where the subject of the afterlife and religion is a matter of perspective and not fact? Well, then I guess I'd probably just be dead-dead and not dead-but-actually-alive-as-an-angel.

Lute seemed to calm herself down at my words and I felt her shoulders lose their tension.

At any rate, from what I've gathered, Charlie is a bit naive if she thinks that a hotel of all things will be what keeps Hell from being overpopulated. It's just way too inefficient. A better way would be to go directly to the source, being humanity, and work on making them be better before they kicked the bucket. Cut the problem off at the root of the cause.

Hmm, maybe that could be something to work on myself. I could use something to do in between exterminations and the occasional duty I had in Heaven's court. I just needed to think on what it could even be after I do some much required research on what this earth is even like. I focused on Lute as she suddenly pulled out her phone and stared at the screen. Heh, maybe I could do some heavenly guidance and make an actual Adepta Sororitas organization on earth from a bunch of nuns, have them go around and kill all the bad shit in my stead. Food for thought.

Lute looked up at me grimly all traces of the previous conversation disappearing into professional work mode, "We have found the body, sir. But it's missing its head."

"Twenty-eight."

The week I spent after that meeting went by smoothly. I'd finally begun to relax a bit and enjoy myself after that initial scramble to find Tocks's body. Well, most of it. The head was missing which clearly meant that someone found the body before us but they didn't seem to have posted it anywhere on Hell's social media and news agencies from what I could tell. There wasn't anything we could do about it so we were forced to let it go.

"Twenty-nine."

Though knowing that whoever found the body didn't immediately spread thew news around was important. It meant that they were smart and either wanted to profit immensely off the discovery or wanted to use it to secretly organize some sort of resistance against Heaven. We had to plan carefully and become better prepared, luckily we had six months to figure this shit out and get everyone up to snuff with their improved training.

"Thirty."

I grunted as I did my squats while my thoughts turned from the situation between Heaven and Hell and went to Lute who was sitting on a stool off to the side of the gym room with a small towel over her neck and shoulders. I came here to the gym in my tower home to work out this body of mine. It was slightly muscular before but it was still a little soft in places I didn't like so I didn't feel that it was muscular enough. I wasn't going for some body builder look but I did like having a more defined body.

Lute had joined me in my workout session, going off to do her own exercise routine but never straying far from where I was. Right now she was "taking a break" but I was fairly certain it was just so she could discreetly ogle me as I worked out this body of mine as she had been taking said break for about thirty minutes now. I was even fairly certain that I had caught her eyeing me a few times.

Damn it woman, I will not be objectified even if I was hot!

"Let's go on a date," Lute randomly stated as she now openly stared at my sweat-stained tank top covered chest. No, it was more of a subtle demand. Several other exorcists that were using the room with us paused their own workouts and stared at Lute incredulously.

"Holy shit, Boo was right, they are fucking!"

"I knew it! Hey, you owe me seventy Heaven bucks!"

I drowned out the idle chatter of the other exorcists as I stared at Lute. This was a bit out of the blue but I could do with a fun outing, I was basically done with my morning work out anyway. As I set the weights I was using to give my squats some extra difficulty back onto the rack, as a side note I was lifting way more than I could ever have done as a human, I just shrugged, "Sure, where to?"

I took a moment to get changed into something more comfortable than my sweaty workout clothes. While the robe was growing on me I decided to dress a bit differently today and switched to a more casual affair of jeans and a t-shirt that had a metal band logo over it. I had done my own shopping and I refused to wear the same damn thing every day like everyone else does for some unfathomable reason, even if I could use magic to make it permanently clean! After I was done we went out on our afternoon date, which meant that we needed to figure out a place to eat lunch.

"Let's eat something other than BBQ," Lute said, narrowing her eyes at me as we walked down a part of the promenade that had several different restaurants along it. Honestly, I didn't eat BBQ that much so she could have more faith in me than that.

The promenade of Halo City is a nice place, and was full of tall buildings filled with tons of shops and businesses that catered to a ludicrously large variety of things. Truthfully, there was such a large selection of what we could do and eat at that it made it even harder to choose. It also made me wonder just how they could all stay in business, did Heaven even make you pay rent?

As we looked around for a place to eat I stopped in front of a familiar part of the promenade. I glanced upwards and saw the burger sign that had hit the previous Adam, and me by proxy, on the head. Lute stopped next to me and looked at where I was looking, then she scowled.

"Adam, lets leave," there was a tone of something that I couldn't quite place in Lute's voice. But I snapped out of my slight daze and I let her lead us away from the building. I kept a wary eye on the sign, not trusting it, and I swore that I still saw my own golden blood on the thing despite the fact that it would have been thoroughly cleaned.

"Alright, it's too hard to decide," I finally stated, hands on my hips. I looked around for a bit before I spotted a movie theatre and jabbed my thumb in its direction, "How about a movie? We can just get something to eat there!"

Lute considered it for a moment then shrugged, "Sounds good."

She took my arm in her grasp and led me towards the movie theatre. We picked a movie that had a decently sounding name and after grabbing snacks we found a nice isolated seat and got ourselves comfortable. The movie was a mildly entertaining romcom that I was half paying attention to. My focus was more on Lute as I did the casual stretch and rest my arm around her shoulder routine, I've always wanted to do that.

Lute spared a glance at me for a moment before her lips curled up into a smirk. I recognized that look after spending every single day with her since I woke up in Heaven, it only appeared when she was about to get playful and devious. She reached a hand towards the bag of popcorn I was holding before said hand sudden veered off course and began to rub at my crotch.

I licked my lips and took a deep drag of my soda to try and clear my now slightly dry throat as I felt myself grow hard at her rubbing. Well, two can play at this game…

I moved my own hand that was resting over her shoulders and gently groped her closest boob. Lute hummed as I did so and I thought that this was the extent of what she was going to do until I saw her playful look grow bigger and I realized that I had just poked the bear.

Her fingers found my zipper and suddenly my cock was sprung free.

"I'm glad you're wearing something other than your robe, it makes this so much easier," Lute whispered into my ear before she moved the arm rest between us back up and then her head moved down. Lute paused as she let my tip enter her mouth, she kept my lower head just inside of her mouth for a moment while giving it a few licks until she that was enough and descended fully downward and engulfed my dick. At this point I was quite glad myself that I went with a wardrobe change.

Normally I might have considered that maybe having sex with Lute had awakened something in her that was being deeply buried and now I was going to start feeling the full weight of my actions as it was clear that old Adam and Lute didn't have this kind of relationship before. But right now I was feeling a warm and wet mouth moving up and down over my shaft and I wasn't thinking or caring of too much of anything else right now.

Other than that feeling of release…

"Shit, I'm cumming Lute," I groaned down to her bobbing head, my free hand resting on top of said head and guiding her.

She didn't stop and just hummed in acknowledgment and it didn't take me long until I quickly erupted into her mouth, she gave several long and slow bobs of her head along my length as she sucked hard while my orgasm petered out into blissful oblivion. Neither of us gave a shit about the movie anymore as we played with each other's bodies throughout the thing. Honestly, it was pure luck that we had this area of the theatre all by ourselves.

Lute still kept her self satisfied smirk on her face even as we strolled out of the movie theater and continued with our date.

(A/N) I headcanon that all exorcist angels have a huge jealous streak when it comes to others holding the hands of those they really like. Also, no songs because it'd just be a headache for me. I'm better with prose than song.