Verosika Mayday was a very simple woman, when you got down to it. Despite her 'superstardom' and her talent which she'd honed to a skill of razor's edge, she was still a woman who had very simple hungers. She was a woman who needed to be seen. To be wanted. To be the most desperate of desires in a man's eyes and to thereafter find herself atop his penis. It was somewhat useful to her that she was born a Succubus. She imagined that if she had not been one of the native daughters of Lust, her wants would have been a ruin to her rather than an ambition.
She rose from her place in the cuddle-pit amongst her sluts, she being the only one of them who didn't put her glamour up. Because it still didn't work right. They were all very human looking right now, gathered as they were in the most posh of the four tour buses that Mayday kept ticking over here in the Human World. Her every step was met with an ache, but to one like her, it was the best kind of ache she could hope for.
It turned out, sufficiently horny men didn't care if you had neon pink skin, horns and a tail.
Of course, it was risky as fuck her being up here. This wasn't actually her tour. There were no performances by the Pink Power House racing along the west coast of America and Mexico. No, as far as the paperwork and the press were concerned, she was just footing the bill for Billie and Dom's 'experimental' performances. Which was a fancy way of saying 'sex shows with surprisingly good musical accompaniment'. While her performances had the veneer of being a legitimate musical performance, wherein people simply got unaccountably fuckish and then started running more trains than Grand Central Station on her boys and girls, these ones were not that. No, these ones revelled in the sexuality even more than Verosika's did.
Which was the source of her sufficiently horny men.
Of course, the dynamic had shifted. She wasn't the one in charge anymore. She couldn't show her face, not with Two and whatever the fuck else that un-human bitch had up her sleeves coming to shoot it off with an anti-materiel rifle. In fact, the only contact that she had with people who didn't ram her as a result of the 'performances' was her doing back-room legwork over the phone, manipulating these stupid humans into not arresting them all on sight. After all, it was only today when they crossed the border into a region of the Human World were such things as they got down to weren't utterly illegal. She didn't see why, though. If humans didn't fuck of their own volition, there wouldn't be eight billion of them right now.
"Come back to the pile," Anastasius drowsily drawled, from where he was sandwiched between the eponymous Dom and Billie. He had the appearance of a very tall, heavily shredded man who looked like he should be modelling very revealing men's underwear. Verosika ignored him, though. She felt full, her bits ached, and all was right in Creation. The mellow heat of northern Mexico swelled as she opened up the door to the bus, and started to smoke. The other buses would hide her from any nearby traffic, and right now, she just felt good, so she was going to enjoy it. Even if she always did keep twitching her hand as though getting ready to create a Portal at a blink's notice.
Today might be a birthday, she realized. She didn't keep track too closely about that sort of thing. Succubi and Incubi didn't tend to, as a rule, because along with their unclear parentage – Lust Fiends being Lust Fiends, monogamy was... well, let's just say fairly rare – and variable gestation time, they also tended to live for a long time. A very long time. The life they stole with their junk added directly to their own. The stronger the victim, the more time the Lust Fiend got.
She heard stories that Satan had made a Succubus immortal by complete accident, once. Regardless of whether that was true or not, a well fed Succubus could expect to still be smoking hot for at least two centuries, and be a MILF for three more after that. So did that make Verosika forty one, or fifty one? It was always so hard to remember.
With a cigarette smoked down to the filter, she pulled her Hellphone out of extraplanar storage. Couldn't be seen with this thing, considering she had a contract with Apple. But it turned out, during last night's fuck-fest, she'd actually gotten a few messages she didn't bother to look at until now. One from her mother, rife with spelling and grammar errors, as that fossil of a woman was about a twitch away from running away screaming from the very notion of 'telephones', let alone a multi-use computer you could hide in your cleavage. Fitting for a woman who was either the oldest living Succubus, or the second oldest if those tall-tales were true. Another from the venue people over in Guadalupe, saying they'd have shit ready when she arrived.
Then one from an unknown number. Well, she was in a decent mood. Let's see what insanity was hiding in this one.
"–cking just... gimme a minute. I got this. I gooooot this. Fuck. Okay I don't got this," came the voice of Blitzø, which instantly curdled Verosika's good mood. She had half a mind to shut him off right there and then.
"If you don't do it now, how long until you work up the cour–" another voice came, this the sounding like that of the Prince of Flowers, Stolas. Only he sounded utterly, completely, resoundingly and inescapably drunk. There was a fairly wet belch that cut off the Demon Prince's words, then after a moment, he continued, "the courage again? You'll never be able to do it unless," he trailed off into incoherent slurring for a moment before his words returned. "And I think if I dink that much again I might die."
"Drink, Stolas. There's an 'r' in that bitch," Blitzø said.
"I BEG TO DIPPER!" Stolas declared.
"Fuggin'fine-goddamn-it..." Blitzø voice quavered for a moment, sounding almost as drunk as the owl. "Fine. Fine! Did I dial yet? Fuckin... well I'm not doin' it twice. Verosika! You... fuckin'... No no I ain't doin' that today fuckin FUCK YOU STOLAS!"
"DO IT BLITZIE! I DEMAND IT ON PAIN OF ABSINENCESES!" Stolas countered.
"GodDAMNit Stolas..." Blitzø said. There was silence for a moment. "Why ya gotta do me like that?"
"Pleee~ase, Blitzie..."
"Verosika... I'm a shithead," he finally said.
Well, that got Mayday's attention.
"I fucked up a good thing with you, and it weren't... f...wasn't! Wasn't your fault," Blitz continued. "I don't know why I did it. Actually fuck that, I know why I did it, I did it 'cause I was fuckin' scared you were gonna see past my pretty looks and see the shitty, shitty creep that I am. An' I figured bgest..." he then broke off to the sound of a short bout of vomiting, before coming back as though not interrupted, "that you cou'dn' break up wi' me if I got you first! And that's fuckin' stupid 'cause you're hot as hell!"
"Really? I don' see the appeal," Stolas slurred.
"Never took a swing for the Succubitches eh? Then where the fuck did you learn about the Reverse Blasphemer?"
"I read about it in a book!" Stolas sounded very proud of himself.
"Fuckin... Oh fuck me the thing just beeped I think I'm runnin' out of time. Look. I'm probably not gonna be able to admit this sober but... I fucked up with you. You deserved better. So... yeah. Sorry," Blitz said. And despite his utter intoxication, he might have even meant it.
"I'm so proud of you, Blitzie!" Stolas said. "Now how about we go back to my palace and you can start to tear my clothes off and run your tongue along m–"
At which point the recording helpfully cut off what depravity that the bird was going to receive from the dumbass. Verosika just sat there for a moment. The fuck was that that she'd just listened to?
An actual apology?
From Blitzø?
"Armageddon must be happening," Verosika said. After all, if motherfucking Blitzø was handing out long fucking overdue apologies for his mountain of shitty behavior, then the world simply had to be coming to an end.
Chapter 7
Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead
"Is it done?" the Princess of All Hell asked him. Moxxie turned to her, and gave an uncomfortable shrug.
"I'm sorry to say, your grace, but when dealing with magic nothing is ever 'done'," Moxxie said. She looked less than happy with that. "Is the tumor gone from her head? Yes. It's back to being a single cell somewhere in her corpus-callosum. Will it come back? Well, that depends entirely on whether her illness formed as a result of carcinogenesis or if it was congenital."
"But even if it isn't permanently gone, it's gone for now, right?" she asked.
"Yes. Yes it is gone, and the rest of her brain functions are restored," Moxxie said. He shot another look at the dragon who had broken his wife's neck and cut off his own arm – both of them now surprisingly survivable and recoverable injuries, as it turned out – in her now pathetic state. It would have taken very little time or effort to open a portal under her bed, dumping the entire thing just onto the other side of the Pride Wall and putting her out of his misery.
But he'd been hired to do a job. And Moxxie Rough had standards.
At the same time, Moxxie was somewhat of two minds about Fiona O'Daire. Yes, she had literally done all of those things, and tried very hard to kill he and Millie. But the first instant that she had the choice not to, she just shut down like an engine breaking its cam-shaft. Considering she'd been in Birch's possession the longest of his bodyguards, it shouldn't be any surprise. And that she fought as hard as she was required to without choice in the matter shouldn't be held against her.
Still, this was Hell. Even Moxxie, soft heart that he was so frequently mocked for in all, he still allowed the entertainment of vindictive thoughts.
He got up from the bunker's (the thing was made of Weepstone, buried a dozen floors up and in the center of a hotel) cot and faced the Princess in her fine red suit, while Krieg continued to work her more subtle magic behind him. He was pretty sure there was a way to do it faster, but he hadn't yet had a bit of time to dedicate himself to refining the incredibly crude existing forms of Thaumaturgy, of discovering their limitations, their workarounds, and scion disciplines that could be derived from them. For the time being, he was taking a break, killing people for money, and enjoying time with his wife.
"That's good to hear," the Princess said. When he tried to skirt her, she quickly slid into his path. "Do you have some sort of grudge against Miss O'Daire?"
"Why do you ask?" Moxxie asked, leaning back to look up at the woman who was twice his height.
"You were looking at her like you were trying to find a way to quietly True Kill her," she answered him. Oh. Well. Best not be so obvious with his expressions next time, then.
"She tried to kill the love of my life," Moxxie said neutrally.
"I'm sorry to hear that. Was she alright?"
That question interrupted the path that Moxxie presumed the conversation was going to go. He had expected her to immediately ramp up her defensive aggression, claiming the dragon as being under code of sanctuary and under the aegis of the House of Morningstar. "She's... well, she had her neck broken but she unbroke it. It's a long story, ma'am."
"I didn't know that imps could do that," the Princess said, what defensiveness she did have starting to melt a bit. "And I'm sorry that she put you through that, the pain of it and the worry of it, but..."
"But now she's your client, which means an attack on her is an attack on you, I understand," Moxxie said, nodding along with the truths self-evident.
"No, what I was going to say that I hope to have her reach a point where she can apologize and atone for what she's done, even to people she's hurt badly, like you or your wife. What's her name, by the way?" the Princess asked.
"I... what? Her name? It's... Millie, your grace," Moxxie said. This was not the direction he'd have predicted the conversation to be going.
"Please, don't call me 'your grace', I don't rule anything. Just call me Charlie," she said, stepping aside so that he could leave the converted pantry to the Dragon, and the young Thaumaturge beside her. When Moxxie started to exit, the Princess joined him. "Is it true what Krieg said about you? That you and your company were responsible for getting rid of that ghastly Nathan Birch?"
"Yes," Moxxie said with all the pride that such a claim deserved, which was A LOT. "If you need anybody else of his power level removed, I'm sure our boss can work out a deal..."
"I'm not in the business of killing off my enemies," Charlie said with a warding gesture.
"...really?" he asked. That wasn't the kind of statement he expected to hear from the daughter of the Devil Himself.
"Of course not. I'm actually interested in how you learned how to do this," she motioned to the room behind them. "I know that miss Krieg stole her knowledge from the ring of Lust, from one of the Clans there. Where did you learn your magic?"
Old Moxxie, from two months ago, would have immediately answered and immediately implicated himself, and by extension Krieg, no doubt putting both in the Beast That Grins' crosshairs. New Moxxie, though, was able to think a bit – or perhaps a lot – quicker and come up with a better answer.
"Pure derivation," Moxxie said. "Did you know that unlike Correspondance Magic, all Thaumaturgy operates off of strict paramathematical laws, and that through manipulation of them you can invoke the effects of certain Thaumaturgical 'wyrds' while foregoing expensive reagents or even sacrifices?"
"That's fascinating. Most people treat Thaumaturgy like it's mystical and unknowable," the Princess said, failing to be baffled by his brilliance nor buried by his bullshit.
"That's because most people are stuck in the last millennium," Moxxie said with a roll of his eyes, taking it for what it was. He didn't miss the fact that she called imps 'people', though. That, too, was unexpected. "I didn't take you for a student of the arcane."
"I'm not actually," the Princess said. Moxxie lofted a brow at her for that. "What? I never found it very interesting."
"The power to rewrite reality to suit your ends and you didn't find it interesting?" Moxxie asked, flabbergasted.
"You make it sound like magic is hard. I can do it whenever I want. Like this," she snapped her fingers with a hum emitting from the back of her throat, and instantly Moxxie's suit-jacket and bowtie were transmuted into a tuxedo and ascot, the hand he was pointing with now wrapped around a silver-headed cane. Moxxie waited for her to finish.
"That's Angelsong. That doesn't count."
"It does too count," the Princess said.
"I have to side with the little thaumaturge on this one," the Radio Demon's voice butted in as they reached the stairwell that lead down to the ground floor. Even with all that had transpired, Moxxie still flinched and recoiled from the sound of it. It took stern stuff indeed to not, when the Beast That Grins, who had single-handedly ended a war by wiping out all three sides, made his presence known. "Your magic is firmly in the neighborhood of 'talent', and talent unrefined is an easy if shallow life. You should press yourself, little girl! Strive for something!"
"I've got plenty to strive for already," she said, refusing to turn to face the deer demon who was now on the other side of her to Moxxie. For which Moxxie was glad. Keep that thing as far away from him as possible, thank you. "And I know you've converted our loft into a radio station. Is there a reason you're airing all of that misery up there?"
"Misery? Please. My dear, I'm telling people the truth. And if that truth inspires misery, that's a failure of my listeners!" Alastor broke into a distorted laugh. "Your father's half baked invasion of an entrenched opponent is going exactly how it was always going to, and the revelation of truths that people want buried? That is sweeter than honey or wine to me. Why? Are you intending to stop me?"
"That depends. Are you bringing infamy to the name of the Happy Hotel?" the Princess asked.
"The sign says 'Hazbin'," Moxxie pointed out.
"Again, Alastor?" the Princess looked not best pleased by that.
"You cannot prove that I was the one who did that," Alastor said. She looked now firmly annoyed. "But to answer your question, no. I do not mention your little game to any degree whilst pursuing my amusements."
"Acceptable," the Princess muttered. Moxxie, though, felt a very strong hand grab his shoulder behind the Princess's back, jerking him to a halt as Charlotte took a few steps forward, heedless.
"And as for you, little thaumaturge. Don't think for a moment that I'm done with you, nor with your little friend in that bunker," Alastor said, leaning well down to glare into Moxxie's eyes. "You hold within your mind a plethora of paramathematical formulae, of spells and theory that I WILL POSSESS... one way or another."
Charlotte sighed, having realized that she'd walked clear of them, and turned. "Alastor, I forbid you to threaten the guests of my hotel," she said in an impatient tone.
"He's not a guest, is he?" Alastor's shark-toothed grin grew wider, looming in on him and making him lean back with terror welling in him. For all he was a transformed imp in the wake of what they had done in the last fragments of Purgatory, Moxxie was still an imp, the Radio Demon was still the Radio Demon, and there was no amount of quick thinking that Moxxie could do that would save him if the Beast That Grins really wanted to kill him. But he was saved when a pale hand grabbed the wrist of Alastor, and with a visible bit of strain, peeled it away from Moxxie's shoulder.
"Don't try to play games with your oath, Alastor," Charlotte said, her usual pleasant and cheery expression now buried behind a bulkhead of anger and focus. "I decide who is welcome in my hotel, who is SAFE in my hotel... not you. Clear?"
The cruelty of the Radio Demon's smile faded and he plastered a more genial expression on his mug before offering a laugh. "Of course you're in charge, my dear. I wouldn't dream of trying to usurp your position of authority here. I'm simply reminding the little thaumaturge that his debts to me are not yet paid. He will repay them," Charlotte opened her mouth, but Alastor continued. "That is upon Naked Law itself. He knows exactly what I mean by that. And it is something entirely outside of your remit to countermand."
"You're telling me to 'know my place'? From you? That's rich," Charlotte said.
"I know my place better than you could ever know. And I know that debts, given time, accrue interest," he turned a glance to Moxxie. "See to it, little Thaumaturge, that you pay them adroitly. Or when I come to collect them, they will be costly indeed."
The Radio Demon started laughing then, laughing deep and heavy as his body broke down into shadows and drifted away, exiting Charlotte's grasp like a fist full of water. His laughter outlasted his body for several seconds, seeming to rise higher into the building as it went. Charlotte stared up at it balefully for a moment, then turned to Moxxie again, an apologetic look on her face. "I'm sorry about him. He's such a handful some days."
"What exactly does he bring to this place?" Moxxie asked, as he continued heading down the stairs.
Charlotte raised a finger, to make a point, but seemed to find that she didn't have one.
"So why do you put up with him?" Moxxie asked.
And again, the Princess of All Hell had no answer to give him, as they descended to the ground floor, and made for the exits.
If this wasn't the most uncomfortable meeting that Octavia had ever been a part of, she didn't know what else could possibly qualify.
Tea was served, places set, finger-foods arrayed, for the three members of this branch of the Goetia family on one side, comprising of two owl demons – one elder and one younger – and a pale parrot demon in her fancy garb, and the other side playing host to the fine, alabaster and golden forms of Lucifer and his consort Lilith. And he was content to rebuff all attempts at conversation, at asking why he had suddenly shown up at Stolas' doorstep, at any questions at all. And Lilith just watched them, as though peaking from anticipation alone.
And it didn't help that Dad was hung over. He'd spent the last night out with that red dickhead. That in turn immediately inspired Mum to a rage, which she took out on anybody who was nearby. Beeble managed to avoid the worst of it; the straight-horned little imp was very adept at that. The only other person in the room from said imp, and the royals in question, were a pair of men in armor. Well, one was a man, if with eagle's features. The other was... not. It was something else. Something that Octavia didn't like looking at. And it stood quietly at Lucifer's side of the table, wearing segmented armor in too-bright whites and golds, a porcelain mask on its face with an androgynous visage.
Something grey-green sometimes slithered out of the eye holes.
Octavia didn't look too closely.
The ticking of the clock that loomed against one wall of the dining hall gave a sensation of a guillotine, its trigger wire being pulled tighter, tighter, tighter... just a hair until the block was shifted and the blade began to fall.
Finally, Lucifer set down his cup of tea. Smacking his lips and turning an impassive look at the aristocrats across the table from him, he placed that cup down, his fingers running around its lip. The thing began to hum, to resonate like a singing bowl. It did so, until the thing shattered under his fingertips, sending porcelain shards scattering across the tabletop.
"I am not happy," Lucifer said, the first words he uttered since he barged into their estate and wordlessly demanded to be served. Any adolescent quip that could have been born in Octavia's throat died long before it could possibly be uttered, because she would have had to have been as stupid as the red dickhead to say such a thing in the face of the Devil Himself.
"How so?" Stolas asked, trying to hold a regal bearing, dressed as he was to the nines with his formal jacket and crowned top hat. Mum had opted to quickly change into the one Angel Satin dress she had left while nobody was watching her, which took longer because she had to have it untailored from Octavia's measurements. That left Octavia. Dressed like a teenager. In front of the King of All Hell. She wished she was so audacious as to say that Lucifer didn't terrify her down to her bones, that she could be flippant in his face. She wished. Hell did not as a rule respond to wishes and fancies.
"Well, considering the amount of blood your servants have had to mop up out of your entryway, and the poppies growing in your front yard, I think you know exactly why I'm not happy," Lucifer said.
"We obeyed your command, and gave the Stellar, the Iron, and the Flower Guard to Asmodeus," Stolas began.
"And where were you?" Lucifer asked, tilting his head slightly.
"I beg your pardon. What?" Stolas asked.
"Where were you, in that battle to reclaim my rightful throne?" Lucifer pressed, leaning forward slightly in his seat. Stolas recoiled under such scrutiny. Even Mum did. "Trying to wheedle the use of my Proxy's book, no doubt. Reality will keep, Prince of Flowers, for a few days, while you fulfill your obligations."
"And if I were to be maimed or killed, who would sure the walls of your kingdom against..." Stolas finally broke free of the withering intimidation, shooting a look at the white-masked crime against reality that stood at Lucifer's right hand. "Certain forces?"
"There are others who have your skills," Lucifer answered back as though biting iron bars that he may spit out nails. "You are not indispensable. None of you are," he then leaned back a bit. "But let's humor your position, and say for the sake of argument that you are not worth the hassle to replace, thus must be maintained. The same cannot be said of the rest of you."
"Leave Octavia out of this," Mum said.
"Ṡ̴̬̖̟I̸̟͋̀̈́L̸̠̿̚E̵̞̜̜̓̓Ǹ̸̢̮̙̉C̸̪̎̓E̵̜̚!̵̗̱͎̂͌͋" Lucifer roared, which made Mum recoil and reach for Agrippa. She tried to show a brave face, Octavia was sure of that, but there was being brave, and then there was facing down the Morningstar in a rage. Lucifer thrust a finger at Stolas. "You don't even get his level of consideration in this. Because he was actively seeking out to do one duty to me while neglecting another. He might be net negative, but he is not gross negative. You, on the other hand, fucked off to Sloth for an entire FUCKING FORTNIGHT while the first wave attacked. Where was Iron Incarnate herself when the forces of Heaven needed to be broken? Sitting in a FUCKING SPA! DRINKING MOJITOS!"
Stella didn't say a word, simply standing with her back straight, her gaze forward and her plumage low. There was nothing that could be said to this man, right now.
"So since you're in a much bigger ditch than your husband, who's still doing his fucking job to me, you're going to lead the next attack. And you're going to gain ground."
There was a silence for a moment, Mum making very sure that Lucifer had finished speaking, before offering her own words. Octavia found herself grabbing her father's hand. He seemed as stunned as she was.
"If we are repulsed as Asmodeus was in the previous wave..."
"Then you will leave your corpse on the battlefield of Heaven," Lucifer said. His brow dropped into a deeply angry scowl. "Let me be perfectly clear about this, Stella. You've already fucked up. Massively. And you are deeply in my bad books. But I'm offering you a path to absolution. You can either die, right here, right now, screaming agony in front of your kid. Or you can agree to be the leader of the next wave, and TAKE SOME FUCKING GROUND."
"I..."
"I'm not finished!" Lucifer said, swiping his hand, and having a massive crack sound as Stella Goetia flopped to the floor, her face leaking golden blood as though he'd just crossed the entire table to smash her in the face with a warhammer. He continued to glare at her as she slowly picked herself up, and tried to resume her poise. "So the choices I give you are death without glory, and all that you've tried to build ripped up in the face of your cowardice... or you can be the Stella that ripped off her own penis and hurled it at the foot of God's throne. You can do what you have always been best at. And you will take a foothold for Hell's conquest of Heaven. If you do that for me, Stella, if you give me so much as single bunker on Cloud One... all of your failures dissolve away. And you are the Duchess Of Iron once more. Am I being clear?"
"Perfectly," she answered him.
"Exactly as I thought," Lucifer said. "When I call for you, you will answer." He rose from his seat, and without saying another word, without so much as a word of goodbye, he took Lilith's hand, and there was a loud flapping sound, as though the fluttering of wings, and the two of them were gone, only leaving behind dark grey feathers that fluttered to the ground, then dissolved into mist. The porcelain masked... being... continued to stare at them, silent, for a moment, before it folded on itself, growing smaller as though being turned into origami, before it finally folded itself one final time and disappeared from sight.
"I," Stella said, pointedly not looking at Stolas, "am going to rebuilt my Legions. If you can do nothing else with your pathetic life... swear to me, upon your own name... that you will not let him have my daughter."
"Nobody is going to hurt Octavia. I swear this," Dad said. He reached out for her, but she strode away before his fingers could come close to her. Mum didn't look back. Oh no. Not like this, Octavia prayed, for all a thing such as her could be allowed to pray... don't let my family die like this.
"So what's this piece of nuts that I'm lookin' at here?" Husk asked, as he stood at the door of one of the rooms that Rachel had overtaken for herself. He knew that there was one where she kept her clothes, but the bed had never been used. It seemed like the Innocent didn't need to sleep. Lucky her.
"I'm trying to put together a psychological profile for O'Daire," Rachel said, not facing him. "Wildly unstable, obviously, wildly unpredictable, sure. But the human brain is nothing if not resilient. The only reason people lose consciousness is because their brain is trying to keep them awake and failing. People with anterograde amnesia still display emotional learning cues that they are not procedurally able to remember. People with advanced senility still remember individuals to be important if not why they are."
"So yer sayin' that inside that fucked up brain-pan, the dragon's real personality has been tryin' to get out for near a millennium, now?"
"Nine centuries, but frankly that's close enough for poetry," Rachel said. She finally flit a glance at him. "What happened to your face?"
"What?" he asked. He glanced down at himself, but didn't see anything.
"...huh," she said, then returned to the wall of madness, of connections between terms that he didn't understand, to the names of people were killed in the Pride War, to other Overlords who were in power around the time she got grabbed by Birch. Husk wasn't above admitting that he shot a glare at the mug-shot of 'Furious' George Stirling, over there connected to very little.
"Don't you 'huh' me, woman. If you see somethin', you let me hear it!" he demanded.
"Your jaw is a different shape than the first time I saw it," she said with a shrug. "But considering your kind, the Damned, are built like they're made of clay, I shouldn't have been too surprised."
"That's it? Fuck woman, you had me worried fer a minute there," he said, rubbing at his face. It still felt like his face. But then again, of course it would. Even if he took a completely different Aspect, he would still feel his features as being 'completely normal' for what he would expect them to be.
"The problem with most of my work is that it relies on talking to the subject, first and foremost. Until the imp is done, that's not an option for me. The next option would be to attempt 'forensic psychology', and figure out her frame of mind from the people who knew her best. But her gang has been dispersed for decades, her territory has been overrun, and her peers are either dead or unwilling to entertain as much as a phone call."
"Yer really reachin' out to fuckin' Overlords over this dame? You're outta yer head."
"Mental illness should not by itself be enough to damn somebody. If it was, then God would have no moral standing to enact any judgments at all. So there was an actual sin that she committed, one so grievous as to damn her even with mitigating circumstances. And based on my conversations with Charlie, I have a notion that surmounting Damnation is predicated on one thing; overcoming your sin."
"And why d'ya figure that?" He asked, pulling a cigar from his many extraspatial pockets and lighting it off of a flame from his thumb. He wasn't even an Elemental, but he could still do the thumb lighter trick. Never figured out how or why. Still, better than having to cart around matches.
"I got in despite my obvious issues," she pointed out.
"Issues bein'?" He asked.
"Sociopathy," she said.
"You ain't a sociopath, dame," Husk said.
"As the one currently living with my own mind, I think I'd beg to differ," Rachel said.
"Whatever you are? It ain't a sociopath. Their kind abound in Hell. Fuck me, I play poker every week with like six of 'em. And you ain't their kind."
"Really. So you have an explanation why I felt nothing watching the other kids die in La Tuque, or why I didn't care whether my husband even woke up each morning?"
"Well, that requires an answer of its own," Husk said, moving to the chair and spinning it so that he could drop himself into it. "Explain to me what the fuck La Tuque is."
"You don't know about... of course you don't. You're American. You don't know anything about Canada's evils."
"Canada's got evils? Color me shocked. I thought the reason they got sent to Heck when they died is 'cause they were so fuckin' squeaky clean," Husk said.
"If you read the true history of any nation in the world, they have at least one stain on their reputation that is hard to stomach. Your countrymen were unusual in that I think you were trying to collect a whole set," Rachel said. "What would you say my race is?"
"Yer what?" Husk asked, leaning back.
"My race. The thing that determined whether your people were enslaved until the eighteenth century."
Husk was about to point out that she was as white as they came, since only Irish and Scandinavians had that particular combination of bright red hair and cold blue eyes. But before his mouth shot off without thinking, he actually took a minute to do that. And he looked at her. Yeah, she had freckles, and the colors of the whiskey-rose... but her facial structure was all off. Her nose a bit too strong, her cheeks a bit too high. And when he looked at her eyes, they had the beginnings of an epicanthal fold.
"Ah," Husk said. "You're an Indian. What nation?"
"Cree," she said. She cocked a fist on her hip. "I'm surprised you could tell just by looking."
"I spent a lotta time around a bunch of Dene and Navajo, back when we was buildin' Hoover Dam," Husk said, puffing on his cigar. "Good people. Tough bastards. So what's this got to do wit' La Tuque?"
"The Canadian Government decided that the best way to deal with 'The Indian Problem' was to kill them," she said. "They would scoop up children from native reservations, dump them into 'residential schools', and then spend the next five to ten years 'beating the Indian out of them'. Needless to say, we weren't treated well. There are a lot of graves filled with children under La Tuque. I hope that one day I get a chance to go back to Earth, so I can burn that place to the ground."
Husk pulled out his phone and connected through SinLink, then looked the place up. "They're ahead 'a you on that one, dame. Razed the place to the ground back in '06," he then turned to her. And he stared for a moment. "Fuck me, they molested the kids too, didn't they?"
"Why do you think so many of them died?" she asked.
"And you?" he asked. She was silent for a moment, her face utterly empty, a mask made of stone.
"I was a favorite. A victim that didn't look like a 'foul Indian', but instead reminded them of people they weren't allowed to touch. But I had no such protections," she said. Husk sat back in his chair, chewing on his cigar. Never let it be said that humanity lacked for ways to be a bunch of fucked up bastards. "They kicked me and all the ones who weren't dead out in '78. And with no papers, no money, and a hostile community around us, most of us limped to the nearest Res, then drank themselves to death. I didn't die. Well, until I did."
"Christ on his magic stick. Shit like that makes me wonder what the fuck was goin' on up there," Husk muttered. The thing was, while La Tuque in particular and this thing about 'residential schools' was new to him, he knew that it was perfectly in line with how people treated the Navajo and the Dene. He'd heard no few horror stories from his worker buddies while he was still alive. And he'd heard a few more of them from the ones that'd landed down here in Hell with him. Making a note to himself to get into contact with Joseph Greencorn again, if only to invite him to the next poker game, he sat forward again. "You ain't a psycho, woman. Yer' just broken, like all of us doomed assholes down here."
"I fail to see a difference in that distinction," Rachel said. "And if there is no meaningful difference between a sociopath and what you classify as 'merely a broken person', then I'll have to continue treating them as the same. Now that you've gotten a lesson in how big a bunch of bastards Canada can be, would you mind helping me nail down some things about Fiona O'Daire?"
"Fine. Wadd'y'a need?" he asked.
"Every truly ancient Sinner who's still active. I need somebody from when she was alive, in either Ireland or Byzantium," she said.
"Why would those matter?" Husk asked.
"Because if I can figure out what she was like before her brain started to drive her insane, I can figure out how to fix her."
"Most souls don't last that long. Judas got offed in one'a the first Purges, fer Christ's sake," Husk pointed out.
"She didn't. Who else?" she asked.
"If yer lookin' for the old fucks, why not just ask Cain? He tooled around wit' her a long fuckin' time ago. The least he can say is nothin', like he's been doin' for as long as I've been here," Husk pointed out.
"Judas died immediately and yet Cain, purported first of the Damned, endures," Rachel said flatly.
"He was a fuckin' terror, back when," Husk offered.
"He might also be our best shot."
"Surely you can't be serious," Husk said.
"I'm deadly serious. And don't call me Shirley," Rachel said. And both of them gave a warning look at each other, as though daring each other to call out that they'd made the Airplane!-joke. Neither did.
"I think this is nuts," Husk said.
"I'm a sociopath who got into Heaven then was pitched to Hell because an angel was being a turd. Nothing about my existence makes sense," Rachel noted.
"Fine. Get yer hair up. If we're gon' to High Central, I can't let anybody see that bullshit," he pointed at her incomplete halo. One of these days, dames like this were gonna be the end of him. And that thought didn't bother him nearly as bad as once they did.
Reggie's apartment was tiny. So small that you could walk its short-side in three paces, it's long side in nine, and subdivided into a miniscule bedroom, a small bathroom, and a single other 'everything' room, it was a minor miracle that three Hellhounds could live here. Frankly, it seemed like it'd be claustrophobic for one. But it had a bed for the owners to sleep on, a couch for Maelstrom, a place to cook, and protection from the elements.
After near a decade sleeping nearly naked in the rain under a length of iron chain, it was still a drastic improvement.
"Stay still or it'll scar," Lissa said, carefully re-suturing the massive gash on Maelstrom's forearm that had come undone on the way home. He didn't answer her, because he had been staying still. He could barely feel her ministrations. They were nothing compared to the pain that the injury she was now treating had caused, let alone some of the torments that he'd endured in his past.
"Hate to say it', Liss, but I think that's you shaking, not him," Reggie said, as he carefully manipulated the prosthetic that Maelstrom had afforded him with his windfall after Helmitt's very timely demise. The hand looked a bit anemic, sized as it was for a Fiend and not a Hellhound, but it made it so that Reggie's arm didn't end just past the elbow anymore. Take what you can get.
"Do you wanna do this?" Lissa asked, handing the needle toward him.
"I'd like one of you to finish, and it doesn't matter to me which one it is," Maelstrom asked.
"You're sure that's all that he managed to get on you. I've seen the way Helmitt fights," Reggie said. "The man was a vicious, honorless cur. Are you sure he didn't poison you?"
"If he did, I'll be dead tomorrow, so what's the point in worrying about it?" Maelstrom asked.
"You fight the Champion of one of the Most Unhallowed Houses and you manage to not only get away with only a gash in your arm, but manage to kill him in the process. How the hell did you manage that, bruv?" Reggie asked. Lissa rolled her eyes for some reason.
"How could I not? He fought like he was swimming in molasses," Maelstrom said. It was true. His movements were so telegraphed and readable by Maelstrom that every savage trick that Helmitt tried to pull on him not only failed, but was counter-attacked, tearing the Sinner down bit by bit despite the massive defensive advantage he had. It must have looked like a truly unfair and uninteresting challenge to an outside observer. A small, unremarkable looking Hellhound in street clothes challenging a Champion in his Hellish Panoply to a fight to the death. They probably had wagers not on whether Maelstrom would win, but how many seconds he survived.
And Maelstrom mechanically disassembled Helmitt. By the time he was done, after less than two minutes of fighting, Helmitt's armor was in pieces, his weapons were broken, all of the poison he did actually try to use soaking into the soil, the trick-weapons failed and his body was rent into shattered, bloody chunks. The only hit that Helmitt got in the entire fight was the sucker-swipe that he opened the fight with in lieu of actually accepting Maelstrom's challenge.
There was an odd sort of satisfaction he got from digging through Helmitt's pockets, finding a bottle of pure Stygium, and pouring it onto the decapitated head of Helmitt, so he wouldn't Regenerate and would stay fucking dead.
"Holy shit, you're on the 'Tube," Reggie said, glancing at his phone. Maelstrom glanced over and saw that, yes, somebody had recorded the impromptu duel, and witnessed the humiliating destruction of an Aristocratic Champion. Great. Another thing he was going to have to deal with at some point. "You might want to offer your services as Champion. After a show like that, I think you'd have your pick of offers."
"No. No, I don't think I will," Maelstrom said. Becoming somebody's Champion was entirely too close to returning to what he'd been under Birch. And he would never be that person again. "Besides, I'm already employed. I didn't pay for that arm of yours through larceny or prostitution, you realize?"
"I'm just saying, it would take you far."
"Take me far down a path I have no interest in going," Maelstrom said flatly, sternly. Reggie finally grasped that this was not a thing he was going to do well in pursuing, so raised his hands – and it was now hands, because of the prosthetic he wore – in a warding gesture.
"That should do you," Lissa said, tying off the sutures and putting the kit away. She was a mutt, but still managed to be slightly bigger than Reggie or Maelstrom, her fur golden at the top of her and darkening as it went down. She turned a look toward her lover. "Why can't you come home with as few injuries as him, hm?"
"Because I'm not the New King of the Pit, hon," Reggie said amiably.
There was a knock at the door, which caused three sets of ears to flick toward it. Because this apartment was literally carved out of a section of otherwise unused basement, it had its own short hallway and no doors approaching it. That could have been another room for the apartment, if only the lock wasn't on the wrong side of that hallway. And it was so innocuous that if Reggie hadn't literally talked Maelstrom to his doorstep, Maelstrom would never have found it.
"Landlord?" Maelstrom asked at a whisper.
"You'd better be in there. I'm tired of asking after you guys!" the voice at the door was not the landlord. It was too young, and was female.
And after a moment's parsing, Maelstrom recognized it. He got up, putting his shirt back on and headed for the door, opening it just a crack.
Loona Miller was outside.
"How did you find us?" he asked.
"I'm a Hound, dude," she seemed a bit insulted by the implication. But then Maelstrom gave that a moment's thought and realized she probably had a better nose than he did. "Just gonna stand there like a dumbass or are you gonna let me in?"
"It's Loona," Maelstrom said.
"D'uh, we've got ears, bruv," Reggie said.
"Reg, please. Enough with the accent," Lissa said.
"I'm..." Reg began.
"I get it, he's got a cool Legionary accent. Yours is just comedic," Lissa said. Reggie could only hang his head. Maelstrom rolled his eyes and undid the chain preventing the door from swinging wide, then allowed the bitch to enter the room with them.
"Well fuck me, you weren't kidding when you said you lived in a shoe-box," Loona said. "How the hell are three of you living here?"
"I've got the couch," Maelstrom said, casting a thumb over his shoulder.
"Dad's apartment is, like, three times this. And that's fucking sad," she then gave her head a shake. "Whatever. I'm gonna get you a Human Disguise so you can do real work."
"Real work? Maelstrom just killed Helmut Helmet Helmitt!" Lissa pointed out.
"And how often do you figure contracts like that are going to keep coming up, now that people know that there's a chance actually nevermind you might be onto something," she talked herself out of her own point. "Usually hiring somebody to kill a Champion is throwing money into a hole that says 'we tried' and hoping for a miracle. You don't need a miracle."
"I'm still not sure how I feel about that work, to be fair," Maelstrom said.
"Well, point is, we're going shopping. See y'all at Denny's on Sunday?"
"You know it!" Reggie said, raising his new arm.
"He buy you that arm? Nice," she said, before shepherding Maelstrom ahead of her like he was a stranded lamb being brought back to the flock. He could have turned and tried to rebuke the madness, but the moment that Loona Miller was involved, there was typically all gas, and no brakes.
She as much as pushed him into the van, an obviously patched-together safety-hazard on wheels which was so piled with garbage that when the passenger door opened, a bunch of fast-food boxes tumbled out. The side used to have the I.M.P. logo on it, but it had been scuffed away and the crude stencil of LAST CHANCE was put over it. It looked like the entire front of the thing had been replaced by another, very different van. As Loona started to drive, he gestured vaguely at the side of the vehicle he was now entombed in.
"So what exactly is..." he began, then looked back, and saw that the back of the van had its seats removed, and was chock-a-block with boxes covered in large, sciencey-looking words. "...Is this a mobile meth lab?"
"What? No. No this is Dad's old van. He gave it to me for twenty Souls and some quaaludes. I figure I should branch out a bit. Smuggle some human shit down here for resale. And this shit sells like people've never seen it before. It's great."
Maelstrom stared at her. "You're running your human medicine smuggling operation out of a clapped-out van?" he asked.
"Yeah. Where else am I gonna do it?"
"A... warehouse?" Maelstrom offered.
Loona stared ahead for a moment. "Oooh shit, that's a much better idea," she admitted. She gave a chuckle. "I guess when we did our Purgatory bullshit all the really good ideas went to Fatty."
"Why do you call him that? He's so thin I could practically spit through him," Maelstrom asked.
"He knows why," she refused to elaborate. "So have you given any thought to what you want your human to look like?"
"Honestly, if I had a choice, I'd just pick one that looks like me," Maelstrom said, turning the wing mirror to get a look at himself. He knew that he was at most a year older than Loona, but a near decade of stress and terror had aged his face, causing it to sag slightly at the jowls and etch lines between his brows. When he turned back to his next sentence, there was a weird, pale human driving the van. He flinched into the door, his fists instantly cocked back to launch into attack before his mind could catch up and tell him exactly what he was seeing.
"Mine doesn't look much like me, but I can make it work," Loona's voice came from the pale human with her distinct mane of pale-ash colored hair. Her eyes were still red, though. And she still smelled like Loona.
"I'll take that under advisement," he said, forcing the spike of panic to ebb. It took quite a few seconds for his heartrate to descend to a manageable level.
Last lingering aftershocks of years of pain, fear, and ruin.
"Oh come on," she said as the glamour empowering the disguise broke and she returned to her more natural form. "It'll do you some good to pick a new face for yourself."
"And why did you pick that one, if it doesn't look anything like you?" Maelstrom asked, trying to keep the conversation light.
"She looked like she was a bad bitch," she said, and seemed to think that it was enough explanation. For her, and her thought-processes, it may well have been. The rest of the drive to the store was quiet, and ended when she cut off somebody backing into the parking spot fairly close to the entrance by nose-diving into the spot before they could get in. She immediately earned a horn, a middle finger, and a drawn firearm at that. She answered with a burning glare that would have turned away an Elder Devil, and got the Sinner to shut the fuck up, put away his piece, and find another parking spot.
The boutique – if it could be called that – was staffed by insectoid Gluttony Drones, that flit about with vacant eyes and many limbs in constant motion putting things just so or manipulating them in their displays to make them the most eye-catching possible. Often they repeated themselves after mere seconds. Gluttony Drones were not known for being model employees in retail, after all.
"What d'ya want?" the Drone at the cash register had at least enough intellect in her eyes to look bored, which made her so much more akin to the Hellhounds entering the store than to the other fiends which buzzed around looking like her.
"Human disguise for my buddy, here," Loona said, and immediately held Maelstrom's wallet up as proof that she could pay and wasn't just window-shopping. Maelstrom immediately reached for his pocket and found it empty. How in the hell?
"What's your flavor, sugar?" the manager asked, mustering enough professionalism to stand up straight and not look like she was a few seconds from pulling out a Hellphone and ignoring them.
"I... uh... don't know," he said.
"Brute? Slut? Model? Or are you one'a them weirdos who wants a Blank?" the manager asked.
"I don't know what any of those are," Maelstrom admitted, and the manager snapped the fingers of one of her four hands, and the mindless drones instantly swarmed and gently shoved him toward a magical mirror that took up much of a section of wall. In the triptych it portrayed, the left image was himself, as he was; a Hellhound. The middle and right showed no reflection, until the Manager snapped her fingers again.
"Brute," she said, and the middle now showed a hulking human, about six and a half to seven feet tall, muscles chiselled from dark stone. "Slut," she said. The Brute was shifted to the right, and the middle now showed an androgynous and waifish... not even man, but more boi. Honestly, if he wasn't aware he was looking at himself, he might have even found it giving him the dreaded 'why boner'. "Model," and a human whom Maelstrom presumed was intended to be a perfect masculine human specimen took its place, features sharp and clean, while the pretty-boy version took the Brute's spot on the right.
"Gimme a couple minutes with a Blank. I think I got his number," Loona said.
"You wanna dig through the source-code, that's your business. Talk to me when you're done. If you break it, you're buying it," the manager said.
"Yeah yeah," Loona said as she sat at the console which was shackled to the wall so people wouldn't try to walk out with it. The links of the chain holding it in place had cut marks on it, so it seemed like somebody in the past had indeed tried. "I've got a bit of experience doing this. I made everybody's Disguises already, even before I.M.P. was a thing."
"You made your own? Do humans notice it?" Maelstrom asked.
"They see a pretty girl with smooth white skin and bitching makeup, they're gonna overlook a lot of little bullshit," Loona said. "Then there's Dad, who wanted me to make sure his scars carried over. Gotta say, I think he's a bit stuck on what he looks like."
"He does have more scar tissue than skin, in my recollection," Maelstrom noted. Imps' skin was naturally red, or in some cases red-orange, but any time scar tissue mounted up on that red hide it grew back bleached white. And considering there was a huge white mark covering the right side of Blitz's face, he'd had to have gone through a lot of damage to look like that.
And of course, Millie had a few jagged scars, some visible on her arms, one of them emerging with her ankle, showing that she had a history of violence as well. And Krieg had ritual scarification on the back of her left hand, and what seemed to be ritual brands on her face. It seemed like most imps tend to wrack up pain and damage if they last any length of time.
Come to think of it, Moxxie was unique in that he wasn't festooned with scars. Unless his freckles were actually acid burns or something.
"How's it coming?" Maelstrom asked.
"Ever play a game where you get stuck in the character editor for like an hour before you even start playing?" Loona asked.
"I've never played a video game in my life," Maelstrom answered. She stooped, leaned over to look at him with concern on her face.
"You poor bastard," she said. Then she went back to work. "Well, I'm tryin' to give you a good one, because I've talked to a lot of the other Hounds, and they have a habit of sticking with Disguises that look like the one they start out with. I think Fatty called it 'an Anchoring effect'. You start to see your human-sona as a certain way, and it gets hard to deviate from it."
"Human...sona?" Maelstrom asked.
"Have you ever even been out of Hell?" she asked.
"No," he said.
"God damn. And I thought I had a boring as fuck upbringing," she said. "What place did you grow up in anyway?"
"An orphanage. Not one of Satan's, though. This one was run by a Legion," he said. "And I started out in a Kennel, until I Popped late. They only wanted kids so they could turn them into soldiers to replace the ones that die. There's a never ending tide of dead soldiers in the Forever War, after all."
"Not anymore. That shit got cancelled," Loona said, continuing to fiddle with things that Maelstrom couldn't see from his vantage. The center pane of the mirror continued to show a fuzzy and indistinct figure, the one that she was no doubt working on.
"Yes. Yes it did," Maelstrom said. He pondered for a moment. "Sometimes I wonder if I'd be any better if I'd managed to dodge Birch's attention. Just another Hellhound in the Legion, like Reggie was. Probably be dead by now regardless, now that I think about it."
"Naw, you'd have been running shit by now," Loona said.
"Well I somewhat lack your faith in the ability of the military leaders of Hell to recognize Hellhounds as being anything other than cannon fodder," Maelstrom said. "Besides, I was a Late Pop. I was almost seven. There's not a lot of call for people with my level of reading comprehension..."
"Who the fuck are you comparing yourself against?" Loona turned an unamused eye at him. "You can read better than Millie can. And she actually went to school!"
"She dropped out in grade ten," Maelstrom said.
"And that still puts you as better than Dad," she said. Then she shrugged. "Admittedly, considering the number of blows to the head that he's taken in his life, both before getting stranded in the Human World during their Second World War and since, I guess it's a minor miracle that he still knows to pull his pants down to piss."
"I wasn't going to lead with the implication that my employer might have brain damage, but..." Maelstrom let the thought trail off.
"But you're not blind," Loona finished for him. "Okay, how's this look?"
The image in the center pane snapped into coherence. Standing there, wearing the same clothes he was, was a brown skinned human with striking red eyes, not of particularly massive stature or build. He was so very ordinary. Yes, he could tell that the steel-cable muscles that his life had forced him to develop were still evidenced in his human avatar, but it left his human self looking ropy and lithe.
He looked... gentle.
"What is this?" he asked.
"That's you, in human form," she said, getting up to stand beside him. Even when she leaned against his shoulder for a moment to look at the comparison between his Hellhound self, the one she'd built for him, and the Adonis version still lingering in the right pane, she didn't show up in the reflections, leaving Maelstrom standing slightly askew for no obvious reason. "You might be a deadly fighter, Maelstrom, but that isn't all that you are. I figured you ought to have a human face that reminds you of that."
Maelstrom stared at it. He didn't know what to think for a moment, his head devoid of coherent thoughts to explain it. It wasn't a shrinking cur. It wasn't a rabid, 'roided beast. It was just a guy. A guy who she now gave a beard to, which honestly didn't hurt. No not that beard, he thought. I'm not a viking. Thankfully, Loona's finishing touches vis-a-vis his facial hair decided on a short, well groomed beard as black as the rest of his hair against the very dark tan of his skin. She even kept his coloration.
"I like it," he finally said.
"I thought you would," she said.
"How did you even...?" Maelstrom asked, turning to her. She had the smuggest look on her face.
"That's what you get for my playing way too fucking much of The Sims when I was in the orphanage," she said.
"You're a miracle worker," he said. The difference between what she'd built for him and what the templates offered was beyond striking. The difference between putting on make-up, or diving into a vat of paint.
"Stop sucking my dick, Mal, I don't have one," she said, popping to her feet. "And besides, cheap as Blanks are... you're still the one who's gotta pay for it."
"Who are these people and why shouldn't I have them killed?" Mum asked upon entering the room, with the guests that she (well, technically it had been Agrippa who did the talking) invited. They were an odd group. One of them was a short, squat Sinner who was round in every way a Sinner could be, down to having a ball instead of legs. The other was tall and impossibly lanky, goggles welded to the flesh of his face and the most comic-book villain costume that she could have dreamt up. He had horns that held a top hat nailed to his head, and had a handlebar mustache that extended to about a foot away from his face. The last was an imp, with a showman's suit and a showman's facial hair, who was keeping well back from the thing which dominated the study.
"Mistress, I have been informed as to your approaching needs," Agrippa said, taking Octavia's words and putting them in a mouth that people would actually bother to listen to. "And I deemed it worthy to ensure that you had a proper weapon and panoply for when it occurs."
"Are you saying I don't have weapons sufficient to my powers?" Mum seemed like she was in her typical ill mood.
"I am saying I have first hand experience of the war that you will be entering, and wish you to succeed where I failed," Agrippa smoothly countered. "The weapons of Heaven have grown terrible, and if one of the Goetia is to take the field in person, they ought be more terrible still."
Stella turned a cold glare at Agrippa for a moment, then to her daughter. "And what is she doing here?"
"I have been tasked with the training of Domina Octavia in matters of logistics and procurement," Agrippa said, offering her the excuse that they'd whipped up that wouldn't immediately see her drastically overprotective parents immediately strip any chance of her being able to make a meaningful difference in this conflict to any degree away from her.
"Not strategy?" Stella asked.
"I was not asked to. Are you ordering that I expand her tutelage?" Agrippa asked. Stella continued to stare at him, with all the cold imperiousness that an eon of conflict had given her. Agrippa, though, had fought just as hard, and for only one order of magnitude less long. He did not flinch, blink, or turn.
"I say, you look like the kind of person who needs my finest new products!" the imp said with a thick Wrathful drawl. But what he was going to continue with curdled when Mum turned that glare at him, and reminded him that she was a once-angel, and he was merely an imp.
"Alright. I'll play your game, imp," she said, then turned to the device that dominated the study, covered under a sheet. "What have you brought into my home?"
"The very finest in heavy armor!" Lyle Lipton, the round Sinner announced, rolling up to it and stripping that sheet away. Beneath was what looked to be an automaton of metal plates, one that stood around thirteen feet tall and had strange feather-like protrusions from its back. Stella stared at it for a moment, while Lipton expounded on details that he'd already shared with Octavia, but Stella showed no wonder or even appreciation.
"This is worthless," Stella cut him off mid word. "You want me to throw a golem at the angels? This does nothing to solve any problem of mine, Legatus."
"Who said that it was a golem?" Agrippa said.
"Exactly!" Loopty Goopty exclaimed, leaning toward the Ars Goetia to an extent that the only way he should be able to still be standing would be if his heels were nailed to the floor. "When your Italian friend here asked if we had advanced arms and armor, we had just the thing already half built! And when he offered the specifics, we were able to whip up a prototype in no time at all! BEHOLD! THE GYRFALCON! POWERED! ARMOR!"
And then he pressed a comically large red button on a remote control, and the front panels hissed and released, sliding open to reveal a cavity in the center of the construction, one sized for a being of Mum's exact size and dimensions.
"So you've given me a coffin to bury me in," Stella asked.
"Mistress," Agrippa said, pulling her attention away from the display that she'd walked in on and to himself. "Do you trust that I have your martial best interests in mind?"
"I believe that you believe that," Stella said, tapping her fingernails across the arm crossed before her chest.
"And do you trust in my service that I do not suffer fools easily, nor will I attach my word of honor to boondoggles and fiascos?" Agrippa prompted.
"...I will grant you that," she said.
"Then please, trust that I believe this will be of benefit to you. Step inside the armor," Agrippa said, motioning toward it. She shot another distasteful glare at the inventors and the industrialist who employed them, but with a final roll of her eyes, she moved to the thing, levelled it with a fresh glare that peeled the paint of it slightly, then pulled herself into the cavity within. Goopty hit the button again, and the entire thing folded back into place, a hum rising as some unseen power source came online.
"The first step was always going to be the hardest," Octavia said. "If we can get Mum to see the value of this... maybe we can do more."
"If nothing else, a plate of protection over all vulnerable parts of her will preserve her from the Steel of Angels," Agrippa said. The hum changed to a thrum, and the joints unlocked, starting to slump or swing slightly, and the armor started to turn itself on. "I swore an oath to your parents, my Domina, that I will not allow harm to come to them by action or omission. And I swear now to you. I will do all in my power to ensure your mother succeeds."
"Thank you, Ambrosius," she said.
"–less as an unplugged refrigerator," Mum's mutterings suddenly became audible as the external speakers came to life. She then rose to her full posture, the low thrum of the device the only sound. It offered no clattering or clanking, moving with her every minute motion as though it were fused to her skin. "What is... oh. Oh I see what this is supposed to be now."
"Exactly so, I say I say!" Wackford expounded. "Why don't you go take 'er for a spin!"
"So long as my doing so doesn't presign me to spend money on this lunacy, I think I just may," Mum said, the head-section of the armor doing its best to glare at the imp, who was very slowly pulling a particular sheet out of the massive manuscript of a contract.
"Wouldn't dream of such a thing!" Wackford lied loudly and obviously, and as soon as Mum turned and stalked to the balcony, before jumping off of it, he promptly tore that particular page to shreds.
"This is not what I need," Octavia said, and Agrippa nodded along with her.
"WHAAAAT? Whatever do you meeeean?" Goopty demanded of her.
"That thing's a prototype. Even somebody as ignorant as me can see that. It's using all the one-off bits you built months or years ago that you could slam together in seven hours, a completely one-of-a-kind creation. And it might even be good. But its not what I asked for."
"Perhaps you should let the adults speak, young lady," Lipton said, to which Agrippa silenced him with a glare.
"If you came here believing that I was your client, you are mistaken," Agrippa said. "Octavia Goetia was the one who put in the order."
"You don't even know what you're LOOKING at, young missy!" Goopty belted at her. "This is a piece of WONDERTECH! The likes of which only THREE PEOPLE in Hell could even make!"
"Four. King Zagan, you two... and Ser Pentious," Octavia said, her expression growing unkind as she settled into her chair. Goopty looked like he was going to blow a gasket.
"Don't you mention that SNAKE'S name in my presence!"
"I told you that I wanted a mass-produceable, small-arms immune armor, preferably with integrated high caliber weaponry. You gave me a piece of magical armor that you can make maybe one of every other month. It's not what I asked for," Octavia said.
"GLW Heavy Metal is not the only company which Domina Octavia has tendered her plans to," Agrippa said. GLW was actually a difficult company to find, because it had fairly recently been incorporated when the eponymous Goopty and Lipton bought enough of their former employer, Wacky Wally Wackford's Wacky Idea Factory, that they were now co-owners. And since nobody paid any attention to businesses started by imps, the paperwork was always months behind the curve. Still, Agrippa had found them. And contrary to what one might imagine of a business started by an exploitative showman with no actual design skill, GLW Heavy Metal had quickly developed a reputation, for spawning big death, for a big price-tag.
"You've not been paying attention to my design specifications. Which means I don't know if I can trust you to actually do the job that I'm paying for. And you are not the only weapon's developer in town. Between Ser Pentious and his Eggbois, and the more established Carmine Crafting, I don't lack for options. I am giving you an opportunity. Please stop squandering it," Octavia said. She gone into this expecting that she'd be talked over as the kid in the room. She'd even planned for it. But instead, Lipton hung for a moment over his spherical lower body, as though reconsidering in shame.
"Very well. You want your project? Why? It's so... drab," Lipton complained. He cast a hand to a wall, and the projector beaming onto it showed the 'napkin' sketch version that she'd demanded of them.
"In the height of the Republic, thousands of gladii were crafted by weaponsmiths in Rome every week during times of war, each of the a simple weapon built to a very specific purpose," Agrippa said. "Their simplicity allowed for our great Legions to be built in a whisper of time that our enemies could manage, to be rebuilt after such massacres as the Obliteration At Cannae before the foe could even catch his breath. This is following that same precept."
"A simple weapon system, that can be made by the hundreds in the amount of time it takes to make one of those, from the ground up," Octavia added, pointing out of the window, indicating her mother's piece of miracle tech. "Something so simple an idiot can use it. Something you can repair using a roofing nail and a convenient rock."
"Something which can be shot by .50 BMG from within one hundred yards and leave its wearer alive and able to fight," Agrippa continued, "able to provide twelve hours of combat resilience at the very least."
"Our miracle engines run forever!" Wackford tried to intrude.
"And how many of those can you build in a day?" Octavia asked.
Wackford suddenly looked very uncomfortable.
"In a week?" she pressed harder.
Wackford had a decidedly miserable cast to him.
"Simple. Robust. Resilient," Agrippa said, chopping his hand for each one. On the projected wall, Goopty and Lipton were furiously designing, arguing about technical minutea that she could not even begin to understand. "And possessing a mighty blade to slay with."
"Literally?" Lipton asked over his shoulder.
"Hopefully you can do better than a sharp piece of metal, human," Octavia said very, very flatly.
And they got quickly involved in design. Loudly. Argumentatively. And with their backs turned to Octavia and Agrippa.
"They do try to talk over my head," Octavia pointed out, now that everybody's attention was on other things.
"That is the failure of the old, thinking their wisdom has no room for the genius bestowed upon the young," Agrippa answered. "To be fair to their position, I too fail to see the true extent of this. A difficult to kill soldier will not shift the tides of the New War For Heaven. And it will be set upon by new invention by the other side. We only tear up our gates and set them further into the city with each advancement we make."
"I refuse to believe that this is literally the best that we can do. That there isn't some angle which hasn't been explored, some advantage which we haven't exploited," Octavia said, stabbing the arm of her chair with her claw.
"And when the Angels respond in kind, turning their cohesive factories against our patchwork cottage industry?"
Octavia shook her head, though. "That's just it; I don't think that they have them," she said. Agrippa raised a brow. "Think about it. New Exorcists come out every ten to thirty years, right? And every pretty much from the Type 4 onward, there've never been as many as the flood that we had with Types one, two and three."
"A bottleneck," Agrippa said.
"Exactly! Something is preventing the mass production of Exorcists! The fact that they keep using older models tells me that they can't just upgrade them all, which means they don't have the infrastructure. And the fact that they take decades to come up with a new model every time tells me that that they're doing exactly what these three idiots came to our house for," she cast a hand at the inventors, who where admittedly doing a lot of work very quickly, and had already moved into a basic schematic of a powered exoskeleton with plates of armor across its body. Now they were arguing about what weaponry should be built into it, with the fore-runners being a plasma-fed flamethrower or a small anti-tank missile, "but slower, which tells met that they're not inventive. Not like we are."
"One of your father's angelic kin is literally the Ingenuity of God," Agrippa said, very flatly.
"He's not doing a very good job if that," she pointed to the wreck of the Exorcist that took pride of place on the mantle of this room, "is the best that he could come up with."
"That was from a long time ago. When your mother and father were still... on speaking terms. Before your birth," Agrippa said, looking at the tortured, ruined bits of the arms and legs and pelvis of the destroyed Exorcist, arrayed in an artistically distasteful heap. "Although I do admit... I have seen little innovation from Heaven in the last few decades. And the technologies we have were matched and bettered by my human brethren in a blink of an eye, whereas I have no proof that there is any but stagnation on their side."
"See?" Octavia pressed. "Even if they do have better soldiers, better weapons, we have more. We have more people trying to solve it. We have more hands working. And we will have so much armor coming at them that they will spend every bullet they have and not even draw our blood."
"A spectacular notion," Agrippa said. "We shall see if there is truth to it."
There was a grinding sound as a clawed hand grabbed the electrified edge of the balcony, ignoring the essentially lethal current that got pumped down the limb, as Mum pulled herself back into the room. The radiator 'feathers' on the back of her head and which extended from her back were now glowing a dull black-red. She strode imperiously into the room, and was immediately annoyed that nobody was paying attention to her, as the inventors were now arguing almost to the point of exchanging blows, as Wackford was trying to push selling a light autocannon that his company made for tanks as a weapon alternative. Octavia was the one to break their stalemate by facing her mother, and speaking loudly. "Mother, how have you enjoyed the armor?"
"I fail to see any point to it," Stella declared, her tones haughty as usual. All three inventors turned to her. "It doesn't increase my strength nor speed to any degree, it doesn't give me mobility or any advantage. It is useless."
"May I offer a counterpoint, with your permission, my mistress?" Agrippa asked, as he pulled a dark red case from behind the chair he sat on, and flipped it open. Within was what Octavia recognized as a Carmine Ballistics Purgator .950 'Kingslayer' rifle. He picked it up, ignoring the stink of burning feathers and skin as its paradoxical nature both burned him with purity and reinforced him with blasphemy, as he very deliberately pulled one 24x70mm shell, which gleamed in the trademark and unmistakable glint of Seraphic steel. He chambered the round, and without hesitation shouldered the gun and fired it directly into the center of Stella's chest. There was a terrific 'ping', and the door to the balcony exploded into flinders as the deflected Angel Steel bullet smashed through its hinge and out into the garden. Stella, who was bristling with indignation, pressed an armored hand to the impact point.
And found there was a scratch so shallow that it was like dragging a car-key across wood a single time.
"That, my mistress, is why," Agrippa said, as he put the rifle away, only acknowledging the pain holding it had caused him with a brief flap of his hands as he closed the case.
"Did it slow you down at all, Mum?" Octavia asked.
"Don't be foolish. I didn't even notice a thing while I 'tested' it," Mum said, now glaring pointedly at Agrippa, who offered no guile, no apology, and no expression on his aquiline face.
"So tell me how that isn't great?" Octavia asked. That armored head swung toward her. "You're wearing enough armor to stop the biggest gun a man can be expected to carry that Hell has ever created, firing a Seraphic Steel bullet... and the armor didn't impact you in the slightest. And that's... disappointing?"
"...oh ho ho," Stella said. "You clever little chick. I see what this is. And I approve," Stella turned to the inventors. "I am commandeering this device. You have the thanks of the Goetia Families."
She then turned and strode away, the only sound that she made as she did so the thrum of the prototype's miracle engine and the quiet hydrolics keeping her feet from clanking with each stride.
"The material cost of that was... five point two million Souls," Lipton said, looking a little deflated.
"I'm offering thirty million for the first production run of armor, as long as you can make at least 100. If you can make a thousand, I'll pay even more. And make it the flame thrower. It'll be fitting to let Heaven feel what it's like to burn for a change," Octavia said.
"This will cause waves, my Domina," Agrippa said.
"If I don't cause waves at this point, it might be too late for me to ever start," Octavia said.
"It is hard to reconcile the changes that Hell has seen since the advent of the New War For Heaven. I'm sure that it is easier for you, that have held in living memory what Hell was during the Reign of Lucifer and the New War For Heaven. But some memories run older than that. If you had a chance to speak to Sinope or Satan – or even simply Cain – you would understand. But you have been here a blink of the eye compared even to the likes of me.
From charging machine-gun nests with horses, to powered battle-armor. From Seven Deadly Sins to barely even having three. From one Extermination each year, to the Purge Unending. And of course, from having Purgatory, to having no Purgatory... to having New Purgatory. This war has been terrible. I will admit to that freely and readily. But look at what grows now from its ashes? Sometimes, the kindest thing a beast can do is die, and the most prudent thing a farmer can do to it is plow its bones under the field.
Our Queen has done exactly that."
-Ambrosius Severus Agrippa, Dux Bellorum Infernis