Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The world around me was soft. Gentle. Like a warm blanket that caressed my body as I floated down a soothing river of clouds. My eyes weren't open, I wasn't even sure I had any, but I somehow knew that the space around me was bright and golden. I sighed as I drifted further into the light and the light seemed to glow even brighter for a moment. Just as it almost seemed to reach a crescendo…

"Sir?!"

The voice was loud but a bit unclear, it sounded almost desperate. And I felt my body shake from it.

"Sir!"

The shaking grew even stronger and the voice clearer.

"Adam, answer me!"

This time something in me stirred as the shaking continued and I realized that it wasn't the voice that was shaking my body but a pair of hands. I groaned as awareness returned to me and I could feel my body slowly respond to my commands. I heard a gasp and a sigh of relief while those hands that were shaking me grabbed tight fistfuls of cloth from my… dress? No, robe, it's an important difference. I felt a weight press on my chest and I finally managed to crack open my eyes to a bright and cheerful cloudy sky.

"Ugh, wha?" My first words weren't exactly the most elegant of things to say upon waking up but it did capture the essence of my confusion rather well.

The weight came off my chest, stomach I now realized, and my vision was quickly met with an incredibly beautiful sight. A woman with snowy white hair, equally pale skin, and beautiful piercing golden eyes that had tiny tear streaks running down her cheeks greeted me. She was an angel… literally. She had a black halo over her head that glowed with a soft white light around it and white wings with a black trimming. It was odd, in my opinion, that an angel had a black halo and I wondered if she was supposed to be a fallen angel.

"Adam!" the angel repeated, her face inching closer to my own and she was now using my upper chest to lean over me to get a closer look at my face. "Are you alright?!"

Adam wasn't my name. Actually, I couldn't for the life of me remember my name and that was a major problem, but I was pretty sure it wasn't Adam. I think. That distressing line of thought aside, I was only able to answer the angel above me back with another moan as I slowly picked myself up into a sitting position, my head grasped in one of my oddly black hands. It wasn't my skin color though, my hands and even the rest of my body felt like they were covered in a black bodysuit. It was weird. I turned my head to the angel next to me and said gave a weak smirk, "Heh, did I die and go to heaven? Cause if you're the first person I see whenever I wake up then that'd be fuckin' awesome."

The angel coughed and leaned back a bit in surprise, her face gained some actual color when she blushed and that made for quite the interesting sight considering how pale she was. Truthfully, I wasn't sure if I was dreaming this or not so I decided to shoot my shot with a babe like this anyway. Though, admittedly, the painful headache I was feeling definitely pointed to this not being a dream. I wasn't sure how I felt about that but given that I was currently sitting down in a bright and cheerful street while, after looking around, a ton of other angels flew above us while they looked down at the spectacle we were making with concern written on their faces and hands over their mouths I could accept the facts presented to me.

This shit was way too lucid and I wasn't dumb nor in needless denial. I died and apparently went to heaven if the cloudy architecture, general good vibes, and the hot people everywhere you looked were of any indication. Though, I must admit, heaven was a lot more furry than I had expected but whatever. As long as those degenerates weren't walking around in full diapers or some shit I was cool with it. Seriously, the furry community is fucking weird as fuck.

"Wha- Adam, now is not the time for jokes!" She says that but her face still remains just a little bit rosy even if a bit lighter now. "More importantly, are you alright?! The sign hit you on the head really hard! It even managed to break through your mask!"

I turned to where she was looking and saw a large sign that was meant to hang on the side of buildings laying down on the street in a heap of this whitish metal. It was broken now and the connecting points were busted and bent in several odd angles. The sign itself looked to be for some sort of craft burger joint and one of the corners of the burger shaped sign was covered in a strange golden liquid. It kinda looked like mustard was dripping out of the bottom of the burger.

I took my hand away from my head and stared down at the matching golden liquid now covering my hand. No, not liquid. This was blood. How the fuck was I even alive… Well, alive wasn't exactly the right terminology here for someone in the afterlife but still. That sign looked pretty heavy and it seemed to have hit me right on the top of my head. And, given that this angel next to me knew who this body belonged to, I was fairly sure that I had somehow switched bodies with this guy or maybe took over his body when he died for a second time.

This couldn't be some Freaky Friday kind of bullshit could it?

For a moment I considered trying to play along with everything happening. Try to act like I was the person whose body I was in and slowly piece together what was going on. Get into some hilarious and awkward hijinks in the process… But yeah, no, I can't do that kind of shit for long. Let's just pretend to have amnesia or something, that shit always works for a while until something better comes along.

I turned to the angel next to me and stared into her eyes, "I… I don't know who Adam is or who you are. What's going on?" 

"…Fuck," she swore, her eyes wide and disbelieving.

"I just… I just don't get how this could even happen! I've never even heard of angels getting amnesia!" Lute, the angel that I awoke to the sight of, yelled, her hands covering her eyes as she leaned back in the beanbag chair sitting in one corner of my bedroom in my new home. She had been going on about this for a while, ever since I awoke back on the street to the mandatory and free hospital visit and all the way to here.

I stared into the fullbody mirror in my new home in heaven, taking a moment to pose and get a good look at my new self when out of my robes and only in my underwear. It was different from my old body that was for sure, more muscular than you'd think though you'd never be able to tell with the robe, and I really liked the golden pupils. My halo was pretty awesome looking too and after getting a look at the halos of other angels I figured that it was probably a design choice or something. Maybe, I haven't figured out how to change it. My hands were probably another big change. Seriously, what kind of freak human or angel only has three fingers and a thumb? Weird.

I had spent several hours after initially waking up trying to get used to everything from the many views to the advanced technology I didn't expect this place to have. Heaven was a nice afterlife, not surprising, and I still haven't gotten over the novelty of having wings. And magic. Can't forget the fucking awesome magic I now have. It comes so naturally to me it was like I had had it my entire life. I've been summoning random things from quills and guitars to shooting fucking laser beams from my finger tips like I was a fuckin' Dragonball Z character!

"Shit, I really need to make a giant golden kamehameha sometime!" I mentally mused to myself.

"So, my name is Adam and I, along with you as my second, lead my personal army of badass angel bitches to go down every year and kill demons in Hell to keep their population of sinners under control and also keep them from rising against heaven and threatening everything good in the universe? Is that right?" I summarized, trying to redirect Lute to something other than the topic of my mostly fake amnesia.

Lute tried not to stare too much at my rockin' bod, or at least that was what I thought she was doing since she refused to directly stare at me while I posed and tried to get used to this new body of mine. She nodded and tried not to look sad when she sighed once again ever since I revealed my "amnesia". I felt for her, I really did. From her perspective she probably just lost a dear friend to an accident and can't do anything about it. I'd be a walking reminder of that for the rest of eternity.

Well, I wouldn't mind at least trying to help her out. I might not be able to be this Adam guy, who was apparently also the biblical Adam which is pretty wild, but I can still be me. I strode over to her and placed a hand on top of her shoulder and under her chin as I decided to try to comfort her, "Look, Lute. I can't be the Adam you knew, I don't know him. But, I can be the new Adam you can now know. You're a pretty and nice woman who has helped me out when I needed it. I doubt I'd be handling this all that well without you so chin up babe, yeah?"

Lute tilted her head as I moved it up with a finger and gave me a considering look but eventually she wiped a tiny tear from her eye and smiled back at me before she put a hand over the one I placed on her shoulder and gave it a slight squeeze, "Alright, I guess I can live with that. I'll have to. Heh, it helps that I can almost see some of the old Adam in there somewhere. What about the extermination?"

Ah, the extermination. I turned and clasped my hands behind my back as I walked over to the window in my room that overlooked a piece of heaven as I ruminated over the subject. Truthfully, I didn't really disagree with it. As far as I knew angels and demons fighting each other was just something that happened in the bible, every video game featuring them, movies, and tv shows that I've read, played, or seen. I wasn't against it as fighting demons was what angels did, hell it was practically divine ordainment which was only reinforced by what was in front of me.

[Yearly Extermination Quest!]

Time until extermination: 18h 23m 49sec

Go down and deliver righteous punishment to the sinners in Hell and reduce its overpopulation! On the end of extermination day a performance grade will be awarded and an angelic power increasing token will be given based on the grade of the performance.

Performance: ?

It was a screen that only I was, apparently, able to see. It had been sitting at a corner of my vision for a while and only when I focused on it did it expand for me to see everything. I had no other screens other than this one. No status menus, no attributes, no perks, no option menu, nada. Just one single apparently yearly quest box and a possible reward that I don't know what exactly it was but could make a few guesses. I was pretty tempted by it in all honesty and it did give me something to do for eternity. I wasn't going to turn down the chance to make bigger beams of energy after all!

Plus, they were demons we were killing, they deserve it or else they wouldn't be in Hell in the first place! Also, I was maybe still feeling just a bit detached from everything right now. All of this was a lot to take in.

I about-faced from my spot at the window and stared hard at Lute who was looking almost nervously at me. I grinned at her and her eyes shone with relief as I answered her, "They're demons, you'd better believe that I'll be doing my part in this. Now, let's get ready for our divine and holy mission!"

"Fuck yes, sir!" Lute pumped a fist and shouted with joy and saluted me, grinning massively with glee as I began to redress myself. The body suit and LED mask thing were still weird but I didn't want to stand out too much and be too different from what the other angels knew of the guy who came before me. Once that was done I grabbed two sodas, tossed one to Lute, and headed out to see what I was working with. I still didn't understand how I could eat and drink through this thing but I didn't want to waste brain power figuring it out.

I only had about eighteen and a half hours to get up to speed on everything that was related to this extermination. I had a lot of work to do if I wanted to get the best performance grade possible and I did not need any fuck ups to ruin it.

Chapter Text

Lute and I walked down one of the many hallways of the building that was my home until we came to an elevator. In truth, I now owned a largish skyscraper in heaven that had a large “A” on two of the upper, wider sides of the building. The “A” letters were stylized like the one on my robe and were also as golden as my own halo. The inside of the building was sort of homey in a college dorm building kind of way and was certainly not like an office building.

There were several floors that were basically individual dorms and shower facilities while recreational distractions like game rooms, computer rooms, pools, a library, and even a large personal movie theatre were all also present inside. The place had tons of activities to do if one didn’t want to leave and I was almost swept away by the wealth on display.

Eventually, Lute led us out of the elevator into a massive common room with an attached kitchen combination in one corner. The place was two stories high with a central spiral staircase leading up to the second story that only hung about halfway over the lower floor leaving a large gap above where large fancy light fixtures hung above. Holographic and very sleek technology was scattered around the place acting as fancy computers while hovering over low tables and desks with more bean bag chairs.

I saw tons of angels with black halos and the same kind of body suit that Lute was wearing hanging around the place and either talking, hyping themselves up for the extermination ahead, or doing some last minute preparations. I even saw one of the ladies sharpening a fuck-off huge white battle axe. I could easily take a guess that these were my new army of badass bitches and I realized that the reason why this place had so many individual dorm rooms in it was because my army lived with me.

I take the time to wave to the angels that greeted and saluted me while inspecting the place like it was the first time I’ve been there. Because it was. I stopped in front of one of the many weapon racks that were hanging around the place and took a spear from it.

“So, uh, explain to me again what these weapons can do again,” I told Lute.

“It’s a spear, sir. You take and jab it right up the ass of any demon you see !” Lute was being a little smartass at first then got super into sodomizing demons with spears. She even smirked wide and clenched her fist at the thought and the few other angels that heard cheered their agreement.

“Oh, gee, you stab with a spear. How didn’t I think of that?” I rolled my eyes and gave Lute a deadpan stare. “I mean, how are these things able to kill demons?”

Lute coughed and stared back up at me, “Right, they erase the souls when used to kill a hellspawn, preventing them from just coming back to life.”

I nodded my head absentmindedly and poked the tip of the spear with a finger to test out its pointiness. “Ow! Fuck!” I swore and shook my finger, a few small drops of golden blood dripped out of my finger as I did. I didn’t know what I had been expecting.

“They are sharp, sir,” Lute told me.

I muttered her words sarcastically to myself and put the spear back in the weapon rack, “So, what other kinds of weapons do we have?”

Lute grinned and proceeded to go on an excited dialogue about the many types of weapons she liked to use to kill demons in increasingly creative ways. Most of them were melee weapons (she has a favorite sword with a golden handle that she really loves to use to take demons apart with) though there was this one time when she used the head of a battle-axe and threw it into a… no, nevermind, I didn’t want to pay attention to that. Christ, Lute…

As I mostly nodded along with her excited rambling a thought occurred to me. I glanced down with a frown at my pricked finger and rubbed at it with my thumb. The tiny wound was completely gone now but now I had to know what kinds of things can harm us down in Hell so that I didn’t end up dying. Seriously, death by not knowing what to expect would be such a stupid way to go.

I held a finger out and stopped Lute in the middle of her excited rant, “Hold that thought for a moment, babe. What kinds of things do demons have that can hurt us?”

Lute stared at me for a second before bursting out laughing. She even doubled over and clutched her stomach.

“What? What’s so funny?” I asked, a bit taken aback at her laughter.

“Haha… sorry, sir. Those hellspawn haven’t managed to kill one of us ever since the exterminations started! No, we’re the ones who do the killing!” Lute replied, now sporting a vicious and predatory grin. That was quite the track record, I was impressed! She continued on, “We’ve always dominated those hellspawn at every turn every extermination day! Even when we need to come back to heaven we continue our work by leaving behind our weapons so those stupid hellspawn can kill each other with them!”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” I asked, a bit dumbfounded.

“We leave behind angelic weaponry so the sinners can kill each other when we aren’t there! So the body count increases even between exterminations!” Lute told me, her grin not leaving and her seemingly unknowing of the implications of what she just said to me.

“Buh, wha…” I sputtered at the absurdity since, just now, that very same weaponry made with that very same material just made me bleed my own blood. And also, you know, smashed the previous owner of this body’s head with a giant burger sign made mostly of the same material. I took a deep breath and pointed at Lute, “Right, time to stop that. Gather the girls over there, it’s time that I addressed this.”

“Oh, uh, certainly, sir!” Lute replied, a bit taken aback. She messed with a fancy looking smartphone for a moment before she turned to the rest of the room and shouted, “Gather up ladies! Adam has something he needs to say to all of us!”

Looking back at me she said, “The rest are on their way, five minutes tops.”

I nodded back to Lute and gave her a smile before I crossed my arms as I turned to my own thoughts. Seriously, they have to know that their own weapons can hurt them. Why the ever-loving fuck would they just leave any of them behind for any demon to use to kill one of us?! I need to stop this shit at once!

After five minutes had passed I flapped my wings and flew up to the floor above, standing on top of the edge’s golden railing and looking down at the gathered mass of angel warrior women. They all stood in the common room and stared up at me, waiting for me to say something. I clasped my hand behind my back and did my best to seem general-like and stuff.

“Alright ladies! I don’t know if you heard but I had a bit of an accident today and lost my memories,” I started off. I heard many gasps and worried mutterings, it was nice to be appreciated. I soldiered on, “But, don’t worry, I still intend to continue kicking demon ass right alongside you all!”

Cheers and bloodthirsty comments about killing demons rang out and I held my hands out to quiet them down before continuing, “Now, thanks to this memory loss of mine I’ll be relearning what makes this army of kickass bitches tick! I’ll also probably be making some changes to better help us kill demons and protect heaven!”

This got more cheers from the gathering of angels. I smiled down at them and delivered my first change, “To that effect, the first thing I want to change is that no angel is to leave any of our weapons behind now! When we leave Hell we leave with our weapons and you better have a pretty fucking good excuse if you don’t!”

The angels seemed to be confused.

“Think about it!” I yelled out, catching their attention. “Those demons don’t have a way of hurting us on their own! But we do! Our own weapons can hurt us!” I held out my finger for all to see as proof, the glove of my body suit slightly stained gold when I pricked my finger earlier on a spear. “And there is no way that I want any angel to die by our own weapons, that is stupid and lame and some serious weaksauce!”

Gasps and some nods in agreement went around the room.

“And to any who are still skeptical, think about it like this! If you die from one of our own weapons then you won’t be able to kill more demons anymore and that means more demons get to live than they would have if you had stayed alive!” I shouted and the angels below gasped and shouted their sudden realization and agreement, they wanted to make sure as many demons died as possible. I had doubts about my speechcraft abilities but these girls seemed easy enough to work with. “Now, Lute here will be keeping track of what weapons you all take with you down to Hell. I’ll also be leaving the punishment of losing any weapons up to her!”

That made several of the exorcist angels gulp and Lute, who had moved behind the railing off to my side at some point, smirked down at the gathering… flock? Well, it was good that I knew she had my back no matter what!

“I’ll have more changes later but I’ll need to see how shit goes down for myself first! Now, let's get ready for tomorrow’s extermination!” I raised my fist into the air as I cheered down at my angelic army and they all cheered back at me with their own fists and various weapons raised in return, every one of them eager to kill demons.

“Alright,” I spoke to Lute after finishing my address to the angels and jumping off the railing. “I’ve got to go out and do shit. You got that schedule for me?”

Lute tapped something on a pad she brought out from somewhere, “Yup, just sent it to you. You remember what I told you your phone's passcode is?”

“I know, I know. 3003, I got it,” I said, giving her a thumbs up as I pulled out said phone and tapped away.

Lute seemed glad that I remembered and then paused for a moment and took a hesitant step forward, her face twisted in worry as I got ready to leave. “Stay safe, Adam,” she told me and fidgeted in place when I turned to look back at her.

I grinned and gave her the finger guns, “You betcha, I’ll be back soon so get that info dump ready for me.”

Initially, my little jaunt out into heaven wasn’t all that thrilling. Sure, the scenery was phenomenal and the people were all pretty nice and helpful but I was out here on business and couldn’t stay for the pleasure. It honestly takes a special kind of weirdo to find a bank exciting and I had to go in and try to figure out the financial situation of someone I had almost zero knowledge of. But, it was necessary and I wasn’t about to put it off.

I was rich and my bank account had a lot of zeros, which was fitting since the guy who used to own this body had been around since around the dawn of Earth apparently. There were also tons of various stocks and shit in my portfolio that the bank also managed for me. That also made me wonder why heaven even needed things like money and stocks, was it just to help the people who lived on Earth adapt and be at ease with something they already knew about?

Well, I guess it didn’t matter. I was rich and surrounded by a gaggle of angel women, I couldn’t ask for more.

“Oh, it’s Adam! Glad you’re ok!” an angel said to me as I walked down the street.

“Oh, thanks! Glad I am too!” I shot them a thumbs up.

I had a lot of similar passing conversations like that in my little jaunt around heaven. It shouldn’t surprise me that tons of people knew who I was but I still had to get used to it since it wasn’t technically me that was so popular. Also, everyone was quite nice and seemed genuinely worried for my health.

At least my trip back to my home was more interesting. Even as I kept a slightly paranoid eye on the many large signs hanging around I got to know a lot about the place. Currently, I just left a more business-like district and was now wandering through a shopping center of some sort where lots of colorful stores, restaurants, and cafes were scattered around.

I bought a hotdog to snack on as I slowly made my way back home until I heard a gasp from the air behind me and turned around to see a shortish six-winged angel with a grey complexion float down from the sky. She landed right in front of me and took one of my hands in her own. Now that I took a moment to properly take her in she was quite the cutie.

“Oh my gosh Adam, I heard about the accident! You’re alright, right?!” she asked me.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” I lamely replied. She had been a lot more forward about her worry than the others and I hadn’t been expecting that. She also seemed to carry a lot of respect and adoration around here if some of the looks she received from some of the others was of any indication. I cleared my throat, “I, uh, had a mostly full recovery.”

“Oh, no! Is there anything I can do to help? I know that we aren’t exactly close but ask me anything and I’ll see what I can do!” She seemed to know the guy I was pretending to be, at least probably more than could be said for most of the other angels.

I gave her a weak chuckle and removed my hand from her grasp before patting her shoulder, “No, I don’t think so. I ended up losing my memories. Honestly, you seem to know me but I don’t remember you.”

She looked genuinely sad at that and covered her mouth as she let out a small gasp, even sporting tiny tears. Fighting back the urge to pat her adorable head, I had to wonder just how quickly news of my injury seemed to have spread. It’s barely even been a couple of hours now. I coughed into my fist and continued, hoping to not make this girl any sadder than she already was, “Right. Uh, don’t worry, Lute is helping me out already and you probably already know her. I just came back from the bank and she’s helping me settle down from the accident. Right now we’re just preparing for the ex-uh, nevermind.”

Shit, nearly spilled the beans about the extermination. Lute had told me, insisted in fact, that only us exorcists and someone named Sera are to know about the extermination. I guess they simply wanted the general population to be happy and carefree so how could I judge?

“So,” I started, hoping to quickly speed past that near blunder, “what’s your name?”

She perked up, “Oh! Right! My name is Emily but you can call me Em, Emmy, or even E! Heh, just call me whatever! It’s fine!”

“Sure thing, Em,” I replied, gesturing at her with my hotdog and a nod. “Anyway babe, I’ll tell you what, I have to head back home and reorient myself some more right now so how about we catch some lunch together in a few days and get to know each other?”

“Ooh, sounds fun! I know this great place down by the Celestial River that I know you’ll love!” Emily squeed and I could see her barely control her bubbly bouncing around while she flew around a bit with her six wings.

“Sounds great!” I replied as I took out my phone ready to add her number to it when I paused. “Uh, do I have your number already?”

Emily tilted her head and put a finger to her chin, “I think so. Ah, don’t worry! I’ll just send you a message in a few days myself!”

Then her phone buzzed and she took a quick look at it, having a dramatic gasp before she quickly began floating upward, “Oh! I have to go as well! Bye, Adam!”

I just waved her off and watched her go for a moment before quickly polishing off my hotdog and heading back home. I got some last minute shit to learn and not a whole lot of time to do it!

Time until next extermination: 12 hours 21 minutes 37 seconds

I learned something back when I went to the bank, I was left handed now. It wasn’t as noticeable back there since I was too busy focusing on making sure I had everything in order but while sitting at a desk in one of the few conference rooms my building had and acting as if I was cramming hard for a test later it made it hard not to focus on the fact. I was originally right handed , I was sure, though I think I managed to teach myself how to be ambidextrous so the whole thing wasn’t as off putting as one would think but it was there nonetheless.

Lute was standing off in front of my desk with a remote in her hand. She had been using it to swap around what looked like a PowerPoint presentation slideshow that was displayed on a holographic screen projected out of the wall. Lute had originally been standing next to the hologram but I had been forced to exert my authority and told her to stand in front of my desk instead due to one too many attempts of screaming in fury and stabbing the pictures of demons on display with a sword she pulled from nowhere. After the third sword-sized hole in the wall I had had enough.

I was holding a quill in one hand and had a piece of golden paper in front of me so that I could take various notes on the subjects presented to me. It really felt like I was in school once more and I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering due to the horror of it all.

Lute was still talking and I just stared at her as the image of her dressed up as a sexy teacher came to the forefront of my mind. I almost drooled as I thought about her sitting on a desk in a black suit skirt with one leg crossed over the other and those thighs almost on full display…

I must have been a bit too noticeably out of it since I startled a bit when Lute’s voice interrupted my thoughts, “Sir, are you even listening?”

I coughed into a fist and ended up saying the first thing that came to mind, “Totally! I was just also thinking that you’d make a pretty hot teacher!”

Sadly my brain was still mostly in daydreaming mode and I ended up mentioning just what I had been thinking about. Lute smirked at me and leaned forward to get in my face while she put a hand over her hip, “Then maybe I should start disciplining inattentive students. Especially when they are about to go and take an important test.”

Hint taken, I gave her a slightly shaky thumbs up, “Heh, don’t worry I gotchu Lute. This Adam is going to study the shit out of this stuff!”

She almost looked disappointed but turned away from me and headed down to the front of the room. I swear I saw her hips start to sway from side to side enticingly as she walked. “I am going to tap that ass so hard even Hell itself will hear it,” I muttered to myself softly as to not have her hear what I said. I froze a bit when I saw her twitch but she didn’t say or do anything so I assumed she didn’t hear anything.

The rest of this cram session went by and I got most of the bare basics down. Who I could and couldn’t target was one of them, which was enforced by some kind of deal the other Adam had made with Lucifer, and I also got as much of a detail on the layout of the Pride Ring as we had available. I also got a detailed crash course on the different types of hellborn demons alongside an even more detailed description of how Lute wanted to kill each and every one of them but couldn’t. Personally, I took this as just her way of venting. Then she went on about the sinners themselves.

Sinners were human souls that were, basically, garbage in life that then became demons in death thanks to that. They had no set forms when they got into Hell so they were pretty easily identifiable when you saw them since every one of them looked strange in some weird way. It reminded me of the show Supernatural where demons were also former human souls that became corrupted by their punishment in Hell.

When it came to the stronger sinner demons in Hell we, truthfully, didn’t have as much information on them as I’d like. They were apparently known as Overlords in Hell and dealt in deals to own other sinner souls to gain power and increase their influence which only further reinforced my thoughts about them being similar to the Supernatural demons. They also tended to be smart about things and fucked off to someplace hidden when the extermination comes knocking. Also, other Adam didn’t really bother with reconnaissance since they never had any trouble with the exterminations before and all of the exorcist angels were perfectly happy just slaughtering the weaker sinners.

I mean, I guess getting rid of the fodder was fine for a while so that they never had the numbers to challenge us but pruning the stronger sinner demons every once in a while just seemed like the smart thing to do. Learning and studying Hell was something that I’d just have to get to work on in the months after this current extermination as I simply didn’t have the time for it right now.

Anyway, Lute told me enough of what I needed to know to simply go through my first extermination without too much trouble. The rest we can delve into after tomorrow, but first I needed a good night’s rest. Going into my first extermination tired seemed like a bad idea.

The pearly gates were quite the sight to see, I decided. With all of the gold and the clouds it made for quite the majestic sight to behold and if my religious nutcase of an aunt were here she’d be shitting and cumming herself until she died a second time. Truly, it was a masterpiece.

“Sir, everyone is lined up and ready for you!” Lute said as she stepped into view from behind me.

I turned away from looking at the gates and followed Lute as we flew over to a spot a little ways away from the entrance to Heaven. There wasn’t a whole lot to the place other than it being a staging area of some sort with a view down into a huge swirl of clouds. Just barely, I could see a red realm underneath a floating pentagram with an equally red moon with a different pentagram etched onto it as it floated relatively close by. It was Hell and it had a moon for some weird reason.

I flew down in front of the gaggle of exorcist angels. Once I had their attention I began to speak, “Now, ladies, it’s time we go out there and make sure no demons can ever rise up to challenge Heaven!”

I was met with bloodthirsty cheers and screams of slaughtering demons.

“Just remember to not leave behind any of our weapons this time!” I continued over the enthusiastic cheering. Lute was practically bouncing in her place and her mask made the weird stitched mouth on her mask that appeared when she smiled stretch from ear to ear. I liked the enthusiasm in any case.

“Only a minute left on the timer,” I thought to myself. I didn’t know what would happen if we left before the timer was done but I didn’t want to risk anything. The other exorcists were doing various things like stretching or checking on their own weapons. Some were even standing near the staging ground’s edge crouched and ready to take off at a moment’s notice.

“Just make the portal and give the command to attack whenever you’re ready, sir!” Lute said, she was in her own half crouch with her wings extended and her sword in her hand.

The second I saw the timer reach zero and finished enjoying the sight of my angels fidgeting in place I pointed in the direction of Hell and used my angelic powers. The power to create came naturally to me and a giant golden portal to Hell appeared in the air, connecting the large gap of space between the two realms into such a short distance. The second the portal came into being I shouted, “Charge!”

This being my first ever extermination I decided to simply see how things normally went before trying to change anything. I didn’t really have too high of hopes for the strategy of it all since, well, there wasn’t really one other than “go to Hell and kill demons”. The angels all let out loud war cries and I quickly followed them through the portal, Lute flying next to my side the whole time. I did also happen to enjoy the sight of their swaying asses while we flew which was a nice bonus. 

The bodysuits they all wore were a nice idea and really accented their figures… but they also offered, like, zero protection in all honesty. I was going to need to fix that, and at least wearing armor can still be sexy in its own way!

I summoned my awesome golden guitar that was intimately connected to my will somehow. It was an amazing piece of work in my humble opinion with a glowing golden body that had an equally golden harp as its head and it just straight up looked like it would be amazing to shred on. It even came with an alternate form that had a spike where its strap button would be, blades along its body, and some parts were colored black to make it more menacing. But I didn’t use that form right now, I wanted to have some fun with its full guitar form and my new magic powers first.

I loved the guitar when I was alive and I’m going to love it here as well.

Once I passed through the portal I took in the sight of Hell personally for the first time and the only thing I could say about it was that it looked like a shitty run down metropolis. I took in the sight for a few more seconds before making my decision on where to go first. I dove down towards the nearest street at random with Lute right behind me as a few other exorcist angels chased down sinners trying to flee down alleys.

Once I saw a group of demons trying to run away in a crowd I sped up and slid through the air on my knees, don’t ask it was weird, as I didn’t want to do it on the dirty looking street. I shredded on my guitar as I passed them by with blasts of holy light flashing out from my guitar, the bolts impacting each demon and turning them into nothing if they were small enough or blasting massive holes into their bodies and even leaving craters on the ground. None of them got back up and Lute assisted with her own bit of carnage, cutting apart demons with a savage grin on her face.

“Alright, let’s do this!” I shouted to her as the extermination began.

Chapter Text

I smashed shoulder-first through the window of a street level store, with my guitar-axe in hand and not a scratch on my body I swung it down onto the fat demon in front of me that was trying to ward me off with a switchblade. My axe was superior to the tiny knife and the fat demon was split in half from head to balls like a piece of firewood.

After a while of doing this it was remarkable how easy it was to kill these demons. I was barely putting any strength into that swing and I was still able to literally split it in half. I heard some yelling and swearing from the other side of the store and glanced over to see Lute standing over the corpse of another demon with one foot pressing down on its bloody chest while her sword was buried in the face of another.

Lute’s mask smirked at me, “Looks like I got two to your one, sir.”

I scoffed as we strolled out of the building, “Pssh, the guy I killed was, like, three of them combined.”

We flapped our wings and took off into the air to look for more demons. The street we were on was largely barren of activity now. The only reason we even went to the store was because I happened to see one of the demons glance out through the window at us. While we flew through the air I kept an eye out for more demons while also making sure that my girls weren’t leaving any weapons behind. So far, it seemed that they were following orders well enough.

Occasionally, I sent out random blasts of holy light at buildings to see if that baited any demons into fleeing into the streets. Sometimes it did and sometimes it did not but it certainly left a lot of ruined buildings in our wake. While Lute and I flew towards a section of the city that wasn’t more on fire than it likely was normally I contemplated on what was going on.

Privately, deep down, I had wondered if I’d even be able to actually kill a demon. These demons were supposedly sinners from earth that did evil and wound up in Hell for it, so would I feel some sort of connection with them since I too used to be a human? The answer ended up being no which was a surprise to me. These demons, even the humanoid ones, just looked so utterly inhuman and hellish to me that I felt no more bad about killing them than I did when I played the Doom games. Granted, these demons were a lot more varied in appearance than the ones in Doom but still.

“Sir, more hellspawn in that direction!” Lute shouted, pointing out a group of fleeing demons with her sword that were trying to flee down a street.

Lute and I chased them down and I deigned to not use my awesome laser powers to blast them all at once as I had to be fair to Lute. We caught up swiftly and Lute flew forward to cut their escape off while I shot down behind them from the air. I was like a missile in my descent down with my axe raised. I slammed into the concrete and crushed the first demon with the weight of my axe, creating a decently sized crater in the process and essentially making the demon explode into a gored fountain. It still amazed me how I felt so little of that impact that it didn’t faze me in the slightest.

It was like playing a VR game of Doom with amazing graphics and equally amazing control of your character. I grinned and shouted towards Lute, “Rip and Tear, Lute!”

I doubted she got the reference but she roared a battle cry anyway and went to town on the demons. Wasting no time, I followed her lead and started my own swinging. The demons did try to fight back but their basic blades and bullets did nothing to us. It was interesting to note that I could think quickly in times like these and could predict the trajectory of those bullets and the attacks of the demons. This must kinda be what it's like to be in a shonen anime or something.

I was a tad bit careless as it was my first real battle and I felt one of those bullets impact my shoulder and bounce off. It barely moved said shoulder and so I split the offending demon’s head like a watermelon in response. It was easy to see how my angels got to be so overconfident that they didn’t even think about the possible danger of leaving their weapons behind. Not when fighting these demons seemed to be so one-sided.

It did make me wonder why heaven would be worried about an uprising if we had such a big advantage but then I remembered that there are supposed to be stronger demons than this elsewhere in Hell. What we were doing is basically stopping them from gathering up an army, or something to that effect.

Once we finished the last of the demons in this group we flew off once again to find some more. Off in the distance I could see a bright section of the city glowing purple and, from what I could see since I was so far away, looking a lot nicer than the rest of the city. I paused my flight and stared harder, squinting a bit. In the distance I could see a large tower with what looked like three “V”s all next to each other.

“Sir?” Lute asked.

“Hang on,” I told her. “I want to test out my aim.”

If whoever built the thing didn’t want it to be shot off then they should not have made it such an appealing target. It was just like the eyes that I saw everywhere down in this place, I just had to shoot it down. Seriously, the eyes were creepy and I made it my personal mission to destroy them every chance I got.

I leveled a finger gun at the top of the tower and took aim. My goal was to snipe the annoying sign off the tower and I required careful aim for it. Destroying the tower would be easy but I needed a challenge and practice for more precise uses of my laser power. Once I felt that my aim was good enough I fired a beam of holy light out of my finger and it shot straight towards the tower. I clicked my tongue when I noticed that my aim was slightly off and instead blew off the antenna at the tip of the tower. Adjusting it slightly, I fired a beam once more and this time the sign on the tower was no more.

“All good,” I said to Lute. “Hopefully we’ll get more target practice for me later.”

With that done Lute and I roamed around the city killing demons and, for me, making a mental map of the place and comparing it to what I had learned up in heaven. There was a place called Cannibal Town, which we mostly avoided as the residents were mostly hellborn though I personally didn’t like the thought of a town of literal cannibals existing. But still, we avoided it and only took some time for me to get a good look at it. We did end up scaring the locals before we left which was a little funny.

After that visit we killed demon after demon as we flew in a circle around the city, letting me get a feel for it. As I glanced around I could not help but raise an eyebrow at a weirdly designed hotel sitting off at the very edge of the city and pointed my finger at it. I fired off a beam and turned the sign into scrap much like the other tower across the city, but this time I managed it on my first try. Yay me!

Seriously, it was such an obvious target. Lute was a bit too busy diving up and down to kill more demons to answer any questions about the place.

Still, I wondered what that place was even for. It didn’t look like a good place to put a hotel since I didn’t see any interesting things to do near it. Putting it out of my mind I refocused on following Lute down to the street, swinging my axe lazily at an odd plant demon and cutting it in half at its stem. I eyed Lute as she mercilessly mowed down demons with mad glee on her mask face and bent down to pick up the plant demon’s phone that had dropped from its leafy grip.

It didn’t have a lock screen, much to my benefit, so I was able to browse around in it.

“D-Die you fucking angels!” I heard a demon’s voice scream from behind me. In response I simply flapped my wings and hovered in the air while I continued to use the phone to search around on Hell’s internet. The demon somehow tripped as he missed his attack so I lazily stretched my foot out and pointed it down at the demon, sending a blast of holy light from the tip of my foot and disintegrating the demon under me.

I did the same thing to a bunch of other demons as Lute and I moved down the streets, almost as if I was some Wild West gunslinger dual wielding revolvers.

“From your feet, sir?” Lute asked me with a raised eyebrow as we flew towards the next demon group. She was breathing heavily from all of the excitement as we slaughtered demons left and right all day. Lute was also covered in blood and demon gore now yet her grin never dropped from her masked face.

I shrugged and tucked my new Hell phone away into my robe, “It worked, right?”

Lute made to respond but then the central heaven embassy in the city rang out and we paused. Lute glanced at the embassy and then looked back at me, still breathing heavily, “The extermination is over now, sir. It’s time to go back to heaven.”

She looked reluctant to leave now but I gave her a thumbs up and we ascended back into the sky towards the still formed portal to heaven. As we did so my quest thing updated and as I focused on it I was met with a screen that listed it as complete yet now it had to process the results.

[Yearly Extermination Quest - Complete!]

Go down and deliver righteous punishment to the sinners in Hell and reduce its overpopulation! On the end of extermination day a performance grade will be awarded and an angelic power increasing token will be given based on the grade of the performance.

Processing Performance: 0%

“Well, I guess that even some almighty quest thing has to consolidate its data?” I pondered. I didn’t really care all that much, being perfectly happy to wait and all, though I would not have been able to ponder on it for long anyway. I used my magic to clean Lute and the other angels of the blood covering them from head to toe so that we wouldn’t be entering heaven looking like murder victims and creating a scene. Not long after that Lute, still panting and looking a little flushed, stared at me hard before she grabbed me by the neck of my robe and practically dragged me into the air towards my home.

I let out a surprised “mmph!” after Lute had practically dragged me through the air back to the exorcist’s headquarters (and my home), ripped both our masks off, and then proceeded to slam her lips into my own. If I had to guess, the extermination battle probably had her blood heat up and her emotions start to run wild after the intense session of demon slaying. Plus, she seemed to have affection for the old Adam and that affection likely passed over to me.

Her face was flushed and her lips were soft even as she tried to shove her tongue down my throat. I didn’t exactly fight this even if it all suddenly came out of left field and used my free arms to lift her up to my height and keep her body pressed up against my own.

I could feel Lute trying to pull at my robe as she was now all but crawling on my body like Spider-Man. I was taking this moment to have one hand to cop a feel of her ass through her exorcist uniform and use that as a much better way of keeping her lifted in the air, all the while I snaked my other hand up her body to fondle one of her breasts. Lute made appreciative noises at my ministrations and as she failed to take off my own robe she simply wrapped her legs around my body and threw her arms around my neck while her wings also tried their best to wrap around our bodies in a feathery embrace. I was briefly lamenting on the fact that I was wearing the damn robe right now.

Sadly, our passionate makeout session was not to last as the door to my room burst open and one of my exorcists quickly entered and urgently shouted, “Sir! You need to hear th- holy shit, I fucking knew it!”

Lute growled through our still connected lips and then quickly snapped her head towards the other angel, “You better have a good fucking explanation for interrupting!”

“Tocks never came back to heaven, ma’am, sir!” the other exorcist replied. “She’s dead, killed by a demon!”

“What?!” Lute yelled just as my quest prompt finally finished processing its results. Almost as if it were waiting for this exact moment it automatically opened itself and appeared in front of my face. I was glad that I had a stable grip on her rear end as while I was holding Lute up I dropped the hand holding her a few inches down from the shock of the situation until her head no longer blocked my view of the results.

[Yearly Extermination Quest - Complete!]

Go down and deliver righteous punishment to the sinners in Hell and reduce its overpopulation! On the end of extermination day a performance grade will be awarded and an angelic power increasing token will be given based on the grade of the performance.

Performance: C (B)

-Minus one grade for first ever angelic loss.

“What?!” I mirrored Lute’s exclamation not long after having read through the prompt I just got almost as quickly as it appeared. I was furious at both the loss of one of my angels and the reduction in the performance grade. I was no perfectionist but this quest was a yearly activity and I wasn’t necessarily an entirely patient man when I’m also staring at a timer going down over the course of an entire fucking year. Trying for a better performance grade is going to be a torturously long wait.

In the palm of my right hand, the one not still holding onto Lute’s firm ass, I felt something suddenly appear out of nowhere in it. I discreetly opened my hand and looked down at my palm, seeing a small bronze colored token about the size of a US half-dollar coin. On one side was an image of a nondescript angel clasping their hands together while the opposite side looked like rays of light coming from the center of the coin right behind a fat large “C” in the middle of it all. On the top and bottom of each image on each side of the coin were the words “Break me!” written along the rim of the coin’s edge.

Now wasn’t the time to explore what it would do when I break it so I used my angelic magic to flash it away into a pocket inside of my robe and focused on the others in the room.

“Who, how, and where?!” Lute snarled as she pulled away from my body, my hand now sadly grasping at air, and stormed forward until she got right up into the other angel’s face.

The other exorcist saluted, “We have a few approximate locations, ma’am, though due to the outskirts of the Pride Ring being mostly rubble it's hard to pinpoint anything exact. The other exorcists that accompanied her weren’t really paying attention to the location either.”

“What about the demon that killed her,” I interjected, already annoyed at the lack of information gathering as that was just one more thing we had to fix. “Any details?”

“Escaped in their shock. Uh, I think they also said she had really stupid pointy hair and pointed shoes made of angelic steel,” the angel replied. Then I saw the eyes of her mask widen, “You really were right about our own weapons being able to kill us, sir! Amazing!”

“Yeah, I’m pretty great,” I replied in afterthought as I started to calm down now that I had an acceptable target to direct my wrath towards. I’m glad I snagged that phone from that demon, hopefully I can still use it while up here in heaven else I’d need to head to the heaven embassy.

“Get the scout ship ready,” Lute ordered the angel who saluted and hurried off. Then she turned to me, “Sir, we need to do something about this, this… this is unprecedented.”

I was just about to reply when the world around us was suddenly enveloped in white and feathers and then we were standing in a futuristic office. The whole ordeal made me jump in surprise until I saw a very tall dark skinned freckled lady with grey flowing feather-looking hair, glowing white pupils in her eyes surrounded by dark blue irises, and an ornate halo that looked like a crown floating above her head. She appeared before us with her hands demurely clasped in front of her.

“Uh, hi?” I lamely stated.

“Adam,” the tall lady replied, nodding towards me with her voice carefully neutral.

“Your highness,” Lute greeted the woman, putting a fist over her heart for a moment.

I did not recognize the angel in front of me and once again it seemed that someone else knew who I was while I did not know them. It shouldn’t honestly surprise me if the Adam before me was actually the biblical Adam, he’d have known a lot of people over the years if he was. Lute’s crash course was mostly meant to get me up to speed with the extermination which was the most pressing thing about to happen. I had intended for her to teach me more about heaven at some point before I met a big shot but with this I was forced to go into it blind.

Well, I guess I wasn’t completely blind though, I could clearly see that this lady was someone important in heaven. She also had more than one set of wings, three sets of two just like Emily, so this seemed to lend some credit to the thought. I wasn’t exactly super into the various Abrahamic mythologies so I don’t exactly know how angels were sorted into their respective power levels but I was reasonably confident it boiled down to “have more wings, have higher power level”. At least, perhaps, here in this universe. I’ve only ever met two people with more than one set of wings in total so I can’t claim to be an expert.

The tall woman narrowed her eyes and leaned forward to stare into mine. After a minute of uncomfortable staring between us, since I refused to look away, she leaned back looking a little baffled and said to me, “It is true, you really have lost your memories. I don’t sense any spark of recognition from you.”

She sighed heavily and placed a hand over her breast, “Very well then, I suppose reintroductions are in order. My name is Sera, I am the High Seraphim of Heaven and I oversee and ensure that heaven’s order is maintained and kept secure from evil.”

“Uh, nice to meet you,” I awkwardly replied back. I remembered that Lute mentioned that nobody else but the exorcists and a woman named Sera was to know about the extermination. So, I now knew that this lady was supposed to be my new boss. Good to know.

“Also, isn’t the singular supposed to be Seraph? I think heaven either needs a spell checker or a grammar school.”

Sera moved over to the window, “After hearing of your accident down in the city I mostly wanted to bring you here to see if you had truly lost your memories. Seeing as that is the case, I instead wish to use this meeting as a reminder to you of your duties in heaven.”

I held a hand up, “Ah, don’t worry, Lute already told me about the extermination thing. We just got back from kicking demon ass.”

“Well, except for the one angel that died.”

I held a fist towards Lute despite my inner thoughts and she seemed a bit surprised at first but then was really happy to pound it back. She gave me a little smirk.

Sera almost looked a little disappointed at that and shook her head slightly. Perhaps she wanted to be the one to tell me about the exterminations but forgot the time? Heh, angels really did have it out for demons. I bet she is hiding some serious bloodlust towards demons behind that calm and serene image she is presenting me with. I mean, she’s the one authorizing this whole shebang in the first place!

“No, not about… that . Whatever goes on in the exterminations I leave authority to you and your lieutenant so long as you maintain the foundation of heaven and do not invite trouble to its doorstep,” Sera replied, briefly holding her hand out towards me as if to ward something away. Well, that solved a question of if I had to get permission to actually do anything about the most certainly deceased angel.

She returned her hands back to their normally clasped position and moved a little closer to me and Lute. I had to crane my neck a bit to see her face, she was ridiculously tall. She continued on, her face and voice still calm and patient, “No, I have brought you here to remind you of your real work as the first man in heaven.”

My face must have shown that my mood instantly fell a bit and Sera huffed while rolling her eyes, likely guessing that the idea of working in heaven was horrifying to me. She was correct. But, thinking rationally, doing nothing every day would be equally, if not more, horrifying no matter how glamorous heaven was. Having something to do in the meantime might be good… depending on what it is.

“Well, I suppose even with your memories gone you are still Adam on the inside,” she shook her head in apparent exasperation and pinched her nose with one of her long fingers and her thumb. With a deep breath Sera refocused herself and stared at me, “It is nothing so bad. As the first man and human soul in heaven you must simply be present as the representative in the heavenly court of the human souls that have ascended to heaven. You may be asked for your opinion but it is not always strictly needed.”

“Oh,” I replied. “That doesn’t sound too bad. So, am I getting-”

“Yes, Adam, you are getting paid to attend court,” Sera cut me off, somehow guessing my question! Smart lady! “So, do you have any further questions?”

“Yeah, can you send us back? We have a small problem that we still need to take care of,” I told her.

Chapter Text

Our first order of business was to send out some flying stealth ships down to Hell in order to search for the body of our dead angel. Now back at my home tower Lute and I went to the room we previously used to cram some basic knowledge into my head and used it to give us a picture of the Pride Ring using one of the holoscreens. We also had several other various screens turned on and surrounding us, each one showing all of the data we currently had. I fingered a screen in front of me that I was using and flicked through it like a regular touchscreen.

"We know that she went into this general section of Hell," Lute said, pointing to the big red circle covering a section of the city's outskirts. A lot of demons ended up there as the 'better' parts of the city were taken by the wealthier and stronger demons, it also made up a good portion of the city and the city was pretty fucking massive in scale. "But most of it is rubble and the body may have already been moved."

"We should still comb the area for the body, if we can't find it then we will have to spread the search out even further," I replied.

"We'll need to be careful, sir," Lute advised. "If our scouts are discovered it could lead to Lucifer getting involved."

"We will have to be firm to our scouts about secrecy then, Sera really doesn't want this to be a bigger mess than it already is," I nodded and we took a small break as we had been going through our current information and interviewing the exorcists that had seen Tocks last. In this moment of silence I thought back to my first meeting with the seraphim angel not too long ago, more specifically after I told her about the dead exorcist angel.

She was pretty hands off all things considered and by a surprisingly large amount too. After I had told her about the dead exorcist angel she looked extremely worried about the situation in Hell. Rightfully so, if the sinners down there have never even contemplated an exorcist dying before and suddenly found that they can die then we could have a full blown Heaven vs Hell Apocalypse scenario on our hands.

Sure, that sounds kinda cool on paper and especially in a movie or TV show but it would seriously suck for everyone involved in reality. In order to put a stop to this before it got to that point Sera decided to give us some more resources to play around with. Some of it was simply more funding but something far, far more important was access to Heaven's R&D.

The biggest question on what to use said access to it was what to develop. Most of our current weapon stock was simply based on earth's technology just with most of the materials replaced with angelic steel. That was all well and good for the moment as it made it easier to manufacture without the potential of leaking the knowledge of the exterminations to the wider heavenly public.

But if we wanted something more advanced then we'd have to come up with a plausible explanation as to why we'd want it. Then we can pass this on to Sera and she'd handle everything else, or if we couldn't do that then we'd have to ask really nicely if she could instead come up with some political speech finagling to skirt past actually answering anything and get our ideas approved.

Personally speaking, if we really wanted something better than simple guns, armor, and melee weapons we'd, out of sheer necessity, need to expand the circle of people that are in the know just to make this whole process easier on everyone involved. Sera is really against doing that, which is understandable since the more that know the easier it is to get out, but it does slow things down a lot and make things seem super suspicious to anyone that tries to pry.

Eh, maybe we could shove it all on the humans on earth to research and make them? Or maybe not, they already have enough stuff down there to kill themselves several times over.

I was personally thinking of, in the future, trying to get some of the exorcists to learn how to manufacture, or at the very least repair, the new toys we can get. Mostly to cut down on the potential expanding of the circle of intrigue and also give them something to do other than laze about, train, or prepare for the yearly exterminations. But that was going to be a long way off and we still needed to come up with new weapons and armor in the first place anyway.

But, before all that, we needed a theme for the new toys…

Now, I liked the current theme of the exorcists but I still felt that it could be a bit… more. I stared at Lute, studying her appearance from her white hair and piercing eyes to her wings, and finally to her toned body that was forged through countless exterminations of demons. She was also intensely loyal to both me and Heaven itself.

Lute noticed my gaze and she shifted in her seat. That observation was there in the back of my mind but I was too focused now to pay it much heed. I continued to stare as a thought bubbled to the forefront of my mind. A group of warrior women that fight for a cause that they believe is holy, not shying away from violence and embracing the death of their enemies.

"By god…" I thought to myself as the epiphany struck home and my eyebrows shot upward in the realization. "I have my own Sisters of Battle! My very own Bolter Bitches!"

And suddenly I could easily imagine my army of exorcists flying into Hell equipped with power armor while wielding bolters and chainswords. It was glorious even if I was still getting way ahead of myself here. Power armor was quite a ways off into the future but getting chainswords and maybe bolters should be easy enough, hopefully. Hell, Earth, and Heaven have all this weird super tech stuff anyway so it's not like it is out of the realm of possibility and I had a good feeling that Lute and the other exorcists would love wielding chainswords against the demons.

Damn, now that I'm thinking about it even more, Lute and the other exorcists that I've seen out of their masks would definitely make really hot Sisters of Battle.

I'm even pretty sure that we could still incorporate the exorcist's masks into the more armored helmets of the possible power armor as well while still keeping them armored, those were my favorite part of the current uniform they wore since they looked so cool so I definitely wanted to keep them somehow. The colors too, I had nothing against the colors and it would help keep some of the familiarity of the old uniform. Before all of that, however, we'll have to stick to more normal armor like some chainmail and bullet-proof armor.

Also, this Sisters of Battle stuff would all be totally original too as far as anyone else was concerned. I checked in the little amount of free time I've had since returning to heaven and, sadly, Warhammer was never a thing in this universe whether on Earth or in Heaven which was a fucking shame. On the bright side, however, I could totally nick designs and ideas from it and shove them onto some egghead to make the new toys for me and my angelic army and nobody would be any wiser!

God, actually holding a real-life chainsword in my hands would be a dream come true. That's going to be one of the first things I'm going to use our bigger budget and Heaven's R&D for.

Lute coughed into a fist, face still red, breaking me out of my thoughts, "S-Sir."

I blinked, "Ah, sorry Lute. Lost in thought. Got some pretty bitchin' new ideas for some new weapons and armor, remind me to tell you later. You'll love them."

We spent the next few hours going over a new training regime for the exorcists and basically seeing about overhauling how they all fought piece by piece. It was all a bit dull on this end but it was important as we didn't want another angel casualty in the future. As of now they were a bit too sure of a demon's inability to hurt them so most of their combat style was just pure unfiltered aggression. Aggression wasn't really a bad trait but an army of reckless berserkers wasn't exactly stellar army material.

Lute and I finally got the chance to take another break and we relaxed in our comfy chairs with heavy sighs. This was busy work but hopefully we can get a chance to relax again after this soon. While slurping on a slushy I fiddled with the angelic power token I got from the extermination quest, rolling it between my fingers. I had been contemplating on what to do with it until I finally came to a decision.

I was fairly strong but Lute wasn't nearly as strong as me of that I was certain. I doubted this thing would bring her to my level but it was worth a shot to see what it did to her. I placed the token down onto the desk and slid it over to her with a finger and she looked back at me quizzically with a raised eyebrow.

"Try breaking that," I told her.

She kept her eyebrow raised but didn't question me and just shrugged. After a moment Lute took the coin into her hands and attempted to snap it in two. She grunted and strained, her face going cherry red with effort until she abruptly stopped and tossed the token back at me with a huff, which I effortlessly caught, shaking her head.

"Sorry, sir. I can't," Lute said. After a moment she got up from her seat and stretched every part of her, I watched her lithe body as she did so and I was certain that this little display was on purpose. Once done with her little show Lute turned to me and said, "I don't know what that was about but I have to go and get our new armor ready."

I nodded and snapped a finger at her and played it off, "That's fine, don't worry about it babe. Have fun!"

When she left I was alone in the room. I stared down at the token for a moment before placing it in my hands and attempted to snap it just like Lute tried to. It snapped easily, like breaking a cheap chocolate coin, and as a brief flash of golden light washed over my body I felt power flood into me. It wasn't a huge amount, likely because of its grade, but if I had to guesstimate how much I got my current pool of power was now about five percent or so more than my old maximum power.

It was a little underwhelming but I guess that just means that I needed to work even harder now for something better.

Several days have gone by since we began the search for the body and I've finally begun to fully feel the stress of command. It was surprisingly exhausting going over everything and trying to pin down something so elusive while coordinating search patrols and changing the training of the exorcist angels from pure aggression to slightly less aggression with a more intelligent and cooperative fighting style. Seriously, it was a dead angel body, how can it stay hidden for this long?

We did manage to eliminate several areas of Hell that the dead Tocks could be in but progress is still a lot slower than I'd like and I was still fuming a bit at the death. Even now, several days after the fact, I still hate how my first ever extermination and its relevant quest went so poorly. The sting has lessened over the past few days but it was always there. Honestly, I really needed to do something other than worry about all of this.

Ugh, wasn't this supposed to be Heaven? I shouldn't be worrying over shit.

That was when my phone went off. I slapped my robe in several places and also dug my hands into several different areas of it looking for the damned thing until I just sighed and gave up. I snapped my fingers and my phone appeared in a flash of golden light in my hand.

I idly spun around in my spinning desk chair and glanced at the screen. I saw a picture of Emily on it which meant that I did have her number. Honestly, I had forgotten to check if I had it since our first meeting.

"Sup, Em," I answered, stopping my spinning and getting out of my chair to move from the conference room I had been using to do my work to head back to my personal room. I needed a soda and Lute was off doing second-in-command stuff right now so we can't hang out.

"Hi, Adam!" Emily's cheerful voice answered. "I've got some free time, want to explore some of the best places in Heaven with me?"

"Sure, I need something to do," I agreed, opening my room's door and making my way inside. "Anywhere you wanna meet?"

Before I made it a few steps into my apartment in my building I heard a knock on the glass door that led out onto a balcony and glanced out to see Emily waving back at me through it. I snorted and ended the call as I made my way over and unlocked the glass door that separated the balcony with the rest of my apartment. I stepped out and greeted the short seraphim.

"Sup," I inclined my head.

Emily giggled, "Hi, Adam!"

"So, what's the plan?" I asked as I closed the glass door. Emily and I took off, I followed her as we flew through the air towards a winding river that looked like clouds. It moved like liquid and it had glittering stars that moved with its flow. I knew this to be the Celestial River from my slowly expanding knowledge of Heaven and recalled that Emily wanted to take me to a place near it.

"It's a BBQ restaurant!" Emily cheerfully replied. "I know that you used to love ribs, I figured that maybe eating something you used to like would help you regain some of your memories. After that I'll take you to the zoo, oh the animals there are sooo cute you'll love them!"

What a sweetheart, it was unfair that this wouldn't exactly help since I wasn't actually Adam but I liked BBQ and ribs so I might as well enjoy myself. Plus, Emily was pleasant to be around and zoos were kinda cool. Since it's Heaven I wonder if they have unicorns?

Well, at least this will be a fun distraction. I needed a good break.

Lute straddled me, her piercing eyes eyeing me up and down as I layed on the bed sans my robe. She was lacking some key parts of her own usual clothes too, now only wearing a pair of white panties and a dark grey sports bra. I licked my lips as my own eyes drank in the sight of her much less dressed body, I could feel myself growing hard as she slowly rubbed her crotch into my own.

"We were interrupted after the extermination," Lute purred, leaning down to get face to face with me. I felt her gently rake her fingers over my chest as she did that, already doing her best to peel off the rest of my remaining clothes and run her hands over any skin she could find. She whispered down to me, not taking her eyes off mine though they narrowed just a bit, "And since you left earlier to go play with Her Highness Emily I have been very, very, busy doing most of the work. So, how about we both take a moment to let me… destress."

"No, uh, complaints here babe," I fully agreed with her, the little friendly time I had with Emily was fun and all but I needed more and the two of us have been working hard to get our shit together. I quickly began taking off the gloves covering my hands and tossing them somewhere else on my bedroom floor. When I looked at my clothes when I first awoke I thought they were a singular bodysuit but they were actually more piecemeal than I had initially thought.

I explored her body as much as she did mine, taking plenty of time to thoroughly enjoy the feel of her breasts as they were two of the three most prominent things currently near my face. Lute hummed as she continued to rub on me as I began to take her bra off, she lifted her arms and as I removed the clothing and tossed it off to the side I received an amazing view of what had laid underneath.

My hands went and covered the C-cup boobs, gently squeezing and fondling them and burning them into my memory. I rolled her pink nipples with my thumbs and that got me a pleased gasp to come out of her lips. Lute worked my own clothes off until we were both covered in only the underwear over our groins. I removed one of my hands from her chest and used it to move her head towards mine, we kissed and didn't part from it even as we tried to desperately remove the last bits of cloth from our bodies.

I flipped us over once we were both naked and pinned Lute to the bed, taking care not to harm her wings in the process, and snaked my free hand down to her pussy, teasing her folds and her clit with my fingers as she simultaneously rubbed my own shaft with her hand. Her grip was firm but not unpleasantly so as she moved her hand up and down, constantly sending sparks of pleasure up my spine.

Lute gripped the back of my head with her other hand and attempted to bring our heads even closer together than they already were, our lips smushed almost painfully as we toyed with each other's body. She evidently knew what she wanted as I felt her get wetter and wetter in the process and I decided that I liked that in a woman.

Once she was ready she guided me into her with the hand still covering my shaft and once in position I wasted no time and thrusted forward. She felt warm and gripped me tightly and I felt every inch of her part before me, the second I bottomed out as deep as I could go she gasped and arched her back. I wasted no time now that I was inside of Lute and started to rock my hips. She matched me with her own movements, releasing soft moans and gasps as we moved in sync with each other's bodies.

As time went on we moved faster and faster until my bed creaked and slammed into the wall as we gave no further thought to any semblance of self control. What started off slow and methodical as we got to know each other's body became quick and frantic as the pleasure grew. Our breath intermingled as we locked eyes once more, having closed them in the throes of sex, and Lute threw her arms over my shoulders as she held onto my neck. I took this moment to change positions and I kneeled on the bed before I easily picked her up and placed her in my lap, with the new position I began to thrust up into her having barely stopped the motions at all.

Her body bounced against my own and I gave myself a firm grasp of her toned ass with one hand as the other moved up her back. I recalled a passing bit of information I randomly learned regarding angels and the large amount of nerves on their backs, centered mostly where their wings were. I reached out and felt the section where her wings connected to her body and gave it an experimental brush of my hand. I felt her tighten her hold against me and clench her legs around my waist as she buried her head into the crook of my neck, gasping as I continued to lightly and mercilessly brush my fingers over the area where her wings were connected.

"Nngh!" Lute moaned directly into my ear though I didn't think that was intentional, doing her best attempt to crush me with her limbs as she came. It must have been intense as her legs and arms tightened around me while her wings twitched and flapped wildly behind her. She knocked over a lamp on my nightstand by accident but I couldn't care less about that right now when her nails dug into my back and my own pleasure ramped up.

My orgasm wasn't far behind Lute's and as I felt her inner walls tighten and twitch over me I practically slammed her onto my lap as my cum rushed out to try and match her own orgasm. When the initial rush finished I pulled her up and down slowly as I did my best to try to draw out my own orgasm and cover every inch inside of her white. I gasped for air as I came down from the rush of it all and I barely had the presence of mind as I fell down to the pillows to turn around and let Lute fall on top of me.

As the two of us slowly fell asleep together all I could do was use some of my magic to make the blanket cover us. I grinned as sleep finally overtook me, "That was pretty great."

It had officially been a week since the extermination yet we haven't found the body yet. Lute was adamant that we were close since we had scoured most of the area where Tocks had died and only had some smaller areas left to search. Luckily, through our limited intelligence gathering I've been doing using my new phone I got down in Hell and a small portal I made to temporarily connect with their internet using it, I was fairly certain that nothing about the death of the angel had gotten out to the wider demon population.

This was good, since the regular demons wouldn't get any funny ideas about fighting back. But that didn't account for anyone important down there. It wouldn't surprise me if one of those "Overlords" knew something about all of this since one of them killed my angel and the rest probably weren't stupid. And were probably connected with each other.

Oh, I also finally got a name for my newest future punching bag now. Carmilla, the primary supplier of angelic steel weapons and components down in Hell and the one who is on my biggest shitlist. Also, my angels were right, she did have stupid looking hair.

"Sir," Lute said, coming up from behind me with her hands clasped behind her back. She was in work mode right now and I could see that her expression was intense behind her mask. "What is our response going to be? We should do it soon if we're going to arrange a meeting with Lucifer regarding the previous extermination."

"Well, what should we do?" I asked. I needed some options presented to me. The extermination is a yearly thing according to my quest but I didn't want to wait that long to do something about this injustice. Though, that year would be well spent upgrading our defensive arsenal and maybe getting new awesome weapons so it would not be a waste. "We've got a whole year until the next extermination and who knows what will happen until then."

"We should show them that Heaven is not to be defied," she responded, clenching a fist and slamming it into the desk. "We should make the exterminations more frequent, every month until there isn't a single hellspawn left to remember this insult to us!"

"Every month would be a bit much. Maybe a little less frequent," I replied, holding a hand out to try and calm Lute down a notch. Honestly, I didn't even know that we could do that in the first place. I figured it was some ancient deal that specified that Heaven can only come down once a year to kill and slaughter the demons.

Like that robotic santa from Futurama.

I blinked as a new screen appeared in front of me as Lute grumbled to herself and tried to calm her tits down.

Optional Extermination Quest!

Time remaining: 176 days

Go down and deliver righteous punishment to the sinners in Hell and reduce its overpopulation! At the end of this optional mid-year extermination a performance grade will be awarded and an angelic power increasing token for any of your subordinates will be given based on the grade of the performance.

Performance: ?

Something had to be out there watching me. I didn't think for a second that whatever it was wasn't trying to manipulate me using something that I really wanted. Giving my second in command something to boost her own power would be pretty great and was an incredibly tempting offer. Almost too tempting but since I had nothing to go on, and the tokens didn't seem to do anything bad when I used one, I had to consider it.

I briefly entertained the thought of ignoring it entirely before I just gave in and went along with it. At the very least I could see what it is this new token can do and if it would increase Lute's power by a noticeable amount. The one I got did increase mine by a bit but I didn't know if these things had diminishing returns or not.

"How about we do a mid-year extermination?" I told Lute. I didn't want us to do this every six months but an example did need to be made and I'd like to start by getting some good old fashioned revenge. "Yeah, that sounds good, send that down to little ol' Lucy and get us that meeting."

Lute saluted, "Yes, sir!"

She went and did whatever it was that got us this meeting. I idly sat down and played with my phone, scrolling through Heaven's internet and playing phone games when I got bored of that. Heaven had a pretty good mobile gaming industry it seemed, though thankfully they weren't freemium exploitative games and were actually kinda decent. As late, nearly afternoon, morning rolled up I ordered some takeout from a BBQ place that Adam seemed to frequent often judging by his order history, figuring that we could all have some lunch while we did business. I was really craving ribs for some reason, it must be a weird instinct of this new body of mine.

Lute eventually came back and filled me in that Lucifer's daughter was the one that was going to meet us at the embassy. I was a bit irked at that, feeling like he was trying to snub me but quickly brushed it off since he probably doesn't know about my "amnesia" and that I wasn't the usual guy he probably knew. Plus, this daughter of his was technically a princess so there's that. Maybe he just wanted her to learn how to do diplomacy?

Lute and I set off, only stopping once to pick up the food I ordered. Once we were away from prying eyes I snapped my fingers and a portal large enough for the two of us appeared in the air. Unlike the one that I made to send the exorcists through, this one had a small ring of fire that surrounded it that culminated into a bigger flame on its topmost edge. Lute and I stepped into it and I quickly settled down comfortably in a seat at the head of the conference table in the embassy while she stood off to the side, keeping an eye out.

My eyes glanced at the door when said door finally snapped open on its own. A tall blonde woman in a red suit poked her head from off to its side, peering into the room we were in. She was pretty, pale, had these weird circular dots like a clown on each of her cheeks, and her red pupils and yellow sclera were kinda cool. When she saw us she excitedly rushed forward and introduced herself.

"Hi! I'm Charlie! My dad asked me if I wanted to meet you," Charlie said, beaming at the two of us.

"Sup, babe," I replied, casually taking out the lunch I got and pulling a rib from its container. "Name's Adam. Lunch?"

I could already tell by her excited expression that she wanted something from this meeting. I guess it'd be a nice thing to do to let her get it out before I tell her the bad news. First though, we need to have something to eat while I try to get to know the woman in front of me. After all, it wasn't every day you met the literal spawn of the devil.

Chapter Text

“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.

Chapter Text

The night after Charlie’s meeting with Adam…

Charlie breathed in deeply as she and her girlfriend Vaggie prepared to go to bed. She was filled with fire and determination now that she now kinda-maybe-sorta had Heaven’s approval. Or at least the leader of the exorcists… kinda. He didn’t seem like he thought it was possible but he told her to give it a try anyway and they’ll see where it all goes! And hey, it was a step in the right direction at least!

“So,” Vaggie began as she pulled the covers over her legs while she gave Charlie a worried look as her mind raced about the terrible things Adam could have done or said, “how did the meeting go? You didn’t really get a chance to explain.”

Charlie beamed at Vaggie as she sneaked her way into their bed, “I think it went amazing! Well, at least it was a lot better than when I’ve tried pitching the idea of redemption to sinners. Adam seemed a bit skeptical since redemption has never been done before. But even then he was still a little supportive and gave us the OK to do our best to redeem souls and prove that this hotel works! The new extermination timeline for this year was a little out of left field… oh but I’m sure it wasn’t his fault. He seemed to be trying to get it all out in a rush at the end of the meeting, he likely just almost forgot or something during our talk. We did spend a lot of time getting to know each other after all. He’s probably just doing whatever Heaven is telling him to do.”

Charlie clenched her fist and gazed determinately up at the ceiling, “I’m certain that I can get us an extension. Maybe… maybe Adam can just explain things to Heaven for us and get us that extension if they just realize what we’re trying to do! If we can’t get at least one sinner redeemed before the six months are up I’ll have to get in contact with them one more time!”

Charlie wasn't worried about the shortened time frame of the extermination. Hahaha, no way no how... The shorter time between exterminations this year that she now had certainly did not feel like a waiting executioner’s ax hovering over the neck of her dream to save her people. She was definitely going to redeem a soul and prove that her method works before that day even comes and becomes a problem. There was no way that she could fail this and let down her people because there just had to be a better way than wholesale slaughter of sinners. Already Charlie had begun thinking of a few new ideas that the hotel could use to begin redeeming their first soul.

Vaggie’s eyebrows rose as she stared at Charlie in surprise and sheer, utter, intense disbelief. Her former sisters and leader were bloodthirsty maniacs that maimed, killed, and relished in the death of any demon they could see and was in arms reach of. She briefly touched under her eyepatch and felt her back muscles tighten and quiver in an old pain before she quickly pulled her hand away lest Charlie ask what was wrong.

Vaggie could still feel the phantom pains of her eye being cut out by Lute’s sword and her wings being literally ripped out of her back by Lute’s hands. But of the two phantom pains she still felt none were worse than the second one of her wings being torn out, that was the more painful of the memories and it still stuck with her even after all these years. When she first had her wings torn from her back the pain was so agonizing she was barely able to move at all back then until she eventually blacked out momentarily from the pain.

The idea that either of them, especially Lute, would ever condone or even consider the mere idea of the redemption of sinners into Heaven was out of the question. Vaggie coughed into a fist, “I mean, you remember that they shot the hotel’s sign off during the extermination, right?”

And boy was that something that nearly gave Vaggie a heart attack. For just those few moments when the hotel shook from the impact of Adam’s holy light Vaggie had sworn that they knew she was staying there and were giving her a warning that they could come for her at any time. Or maybe it was an indication that they were willing to test the boundaries of their deal with Hell. Even if Adam had also targeted those pricks in the V tower Vaggie felt that there was going to be a massive shift in Hell’s structure soon.

Charlie’s eyes widened and she lightly smacked her forehead in frustration, “Oh, shoot! I forgot to bring that up at the meeting! I really hope they don’t attack the hotel again next time...”

“Well, I still say that you should temper your expectations. I don’t trust them a single bit and I don’t want you to end up getting hurt by them,” Vaggie said, shaking her head in amusement at her girlfriend’s forgetfulness and was able to put aside her worries for that moment. After that moment of levity she still couldn’t stop thinking about Adam’s angelic power blasting through the sign atop their hotel.

Charlie giggled and snuggled up to Vaggie, “Oh, you worry too much, Vaggie. I think this will all work out in the end! We just need to get at least one sinner redeemed and prove this can work and then it will be a happy day in Hell! We can do this, I know it!”

Vaggie’s face softened as she cuddled with her partner and did her best to let her worries fade away for now. She smiled down at her girlfriend but inside she remained unconvinced. Her former time in the exorcist army gave her special inside knowledge of how they operated up there, though it wasn’t something she could ever tell Charlie about. There was no way of knowing how she could react by knowing the atrocities Vaggie had committed on Charlie's people, the same ones Charlie was so desperately trying to protect. Even now the guilt gnawed at her.

Vaggie swallowed, and couldn’t help but think of whatever sadistic plans Adam could possibly have for them in his head. None of them could be good for anyone in the hotel or even Hell in general. Supporting redeeming souls into Heaven? It was laughable that Adam of all people would even consider giving redemption of sinners a shot even in theory. He had to be up to something but Vaggie just didn’t know what it could be. Sleep came hard for her that night as the possibilities swirled endlessly through her mind.

The present…

I leaned forward onto the railing of my little booth attached to the wall of the courtroom with my cheek in my hand as I tried my best to melt into it and turn into a puddle on the floor. Today was a day that I had finally been called to do my job and at first I was interested in what exactly a courtroom in Heaven of all places would tackle as an issue. Turns out, nothing important at all.

“As you can clearly see, their sign is a good two inches into my store’s zone and-”

I turned the asshole out as I nearly passed out from boredom. Who the hell would even care that someone’s sign was so insignificantly into your store’s area? I sure didn’t. It was one of the most droll things I have ever had the displeasure of listening to and I didn’t even have Lute with me right now to distract myself since she was busy training with the other exorcists.

The guy was still going and I had to wonder if this was what Heaven should be using our resources for. Or at least the time and resources of its top decision makers. We needed a lesser court or something to handle shit like this. Maybe I should try to fly that by Sera sometime. Right now the asshole speaking was just citing rule and rule of how businesses may advertise and place whatever bullshit they needed to outside of their shops and how this other business owner was fucking it up by having his sign some inane distance from his designated zone nevermind the fact that this asshole wasn’t even using most of the space in front of his store.

Then again maybe we just didn’t have much to do and this was both entertainment and a way to feel important? Well, it didn’t matter right now. I discreetly pulled out my phone and played games on it, hoping with all my might that something that wasn’t mind numbing would happen as I payed no fucks given to this court case.

Things got a little more interesting when the previously mind shatteringly dull case left and a new one entered. Some other angel came into the court looking nerdy with his lab coat on (and was another furry but as a fat owl) and gave off a speech about how Heaven should start to shift our research focus into new fields.

I wasn’t a science guy but at least it was much more interesting than the other one and I paid some more attention to it as I played games. Once court for the day was over I noticed Sera floating down towards me from her and Emily’s high booth in the court. She held her hands clasped in front of her as she basically floated down.

“Adam,” she said as a way of greeting.

“Sera,” I replied, tucking my phone into a pocket in my robes. “What’s up?”

“Follow me to my office, we have a few things to discuss,” she said, already heading out through one of the doors.

Not having much else to do I shrugged and followed. Heaven’s central building was massive and full of various branches of its government so it was also full of angels running around and doing various things. It was sleek and very modern in its approach to style much like Sera’s own office. It was also clean and orderly, way better than some of the shit I had briefly seen in Hell.

As we walked down the halls I noticed several angels give Sera acknowledging greetings and respects. I guess when you help run Heaven for however long it’s been around you would garner a reputation for respect. I just gave them a peace sign as we walked and they waved back politely. Despite some vague, possibly false but potentially true, rumors I had dug up of what the guy I had been before was like, it seemed that the angels still held great respect for him as the first man. 

I still wasn’t quite sure how old Adam acted but I was able to gather that how I acted now was similar to him. My best guess was that he was a bit of a bro like me and my old college buddies. Hell, how his bedroom and a lot of the rooms in his tower looked seemed to support that. If the rumors were true he was a crass guy but I didn’t know by how much and, honestly, that wasn’t too off the mark from the circles I ran with even if I and a few others at least tried to keep it in check every now and then. I didn’t know much about the guy but he’d probably fit right in with us.

“You really should be paying more attention to the court proceedings, Adam,” Sera said after a minute or two of us making our way down the halls.

“I would if what we were preceding over wasn’t fucking stupid,” I shot back, not caring how I spoke to the older angel after getting pretty much used to her presence now. Also, maybe, I didn’t enjoy being reminded of the idiocy I had to sit through.

“The souls of Heaven are under our protection and care,” Sera told me as we finally entered her office. Sera moved past her desk and stood in front of the window, she turned towards me and brought a hand to her chest and clenched it, “We must do whatever is required in order to do this task. Even if it means listening and mediating between petty squabbles and insignificant issues so that the foundations of Heaven can be kept secure and its people calm. The rules in Heaven must be maintained if order is to be maintained and its souls protected.”

Seeing my disbelieving look Sera just sighed and slumped her shoulders, “I suppose that not everything can be changed of a person even when they lose their memories. I’ll just have to at least be grateful that you won’t interrupt the court session with rude remarks anymore.”

After a moment’s pause I shrugged and added, “Well, can’t we at least make some less important court to filter out all that bullshit?”

“We do have other courts to handle most of the cases,” Sera admitted, “but I feel that it is best to handle some of those issues ourselves if we are to maintain an awareness of how our city operates and what concerns the citizens may have. Having them be handled by us personally can alleviate much concern and strife that can be caused by internal issues between citizens.”

“Eh, I guess this city does have the most human souls living inside of it. You really just can’t take the human out of the angel in the end,” I thought.

Sera softly chuckled as she took a seat behind her desk, “The court session we had today isn’t typical and we do not get as many of them in Heaven as you may think. Normally, Heaven is quite calm and orderly.” She leaned forward and clasped her hands together and motioned for me to sit in a chair that sat in front of her desk.

For a moment I almost felt like a school boy having a chat with his principal.

“Now, we need to have a talk about something that concerns your… yearly activities,” Sera started. “More specifically the new weapons and armor you are requesting to equip your exorcists with.”

“What about them?” I asked, not really seeing the issue as I did my best to try to make myself comfortable in my chair.

Sera curled an eyebrow and pulled up a piece of golden paper, “Well, how about the fact you want us to develop a… chainsaw sword? It just doesn’t seem very practical.”

I shook my head in mock disappointment, “Sera, Sera, Sera, you just don’t get it. It’s not about the practicality, it’s about the message!”

“The… message?”

I slapped a hand on her desk as I rose from my seat and leaned forward, “Exactly! You already know that they managed to kill one of us and something like that can make them rally into doing something big, stupid, and dangerous. We’ve been killing them for centuries, no, millennia! After enough time they would’ve become mostly desensitized to the same kind of weapons we’ve been using since… uh, forever!”

“And you think this chainsaw sword would do something about that?”

“Chainsword, and yes!” I snapped a finger at Sera, “See, it’s all about psychological warfare! We gotta stop any retaliation before it even starts and we do that by making sure they see that we aren’t just going to stick with the same old same old but will bring out the bigger and badder stuff to kill them with if they get too out of line! Something like a chainsword is flashy and brutal enough that they won’t ever be able to forget it. And if they continue we can just keep bringing out bigger and better stuff to bear until they get the memo!”

I slammed a fist on her desk to hone in on the point. I was, naturally, making all this shit up as I went. Truthfully, I just wanted a chainsword of my own but Sera didn’t need to know that. Our armory was surprisingly diverse in more than just melee weapons. We had magical crossbows and even guns but those were just too… eh, basic was the best word for it. If we were going to be some badass angelic army then we needed cool stuff to go with it!

Sera pulled up another piece of paper and after looking it over she glanced back at me, “And I guess this rocket-grenade machine gun is another thing that would help us gain control over the situation?”

I crossed my arms and nodded, “Absolutely! You can never have enough dakka.”

“I… don’t know what that is,” Sera replied. Then she shook her head, “Nevermind. The laser rifles would be easy enough to work with but we should make the design more in line with Heaven’s image.” Sera flipped the paper over and moved to a new one. Then she pulled out the crappy drawing I made of what I could remember warhammer power armor looked like and showed it to me with a curled eyebrow, “The advanced armor request I can also understand but does it have to be so bulky? Would a sleeker design not be more appropriate for us since we can fly?”

I scratched my head and internally winced since I forgot that we, as angels, flew around with our own wings. Bulky power armor like in warhammer probably wouldn’t work too well realistically since we weren’t primarchs so I had to relinquish the point, “Eh, I guess? I was just drawing whatever, but if the eggheads can make it sleek and stuff then that's fine. Well, as long as they can keep the general vibe of everything the same. Gotta stick to a theme, y’know?”

Sera shook her head but replied, “Well, at least this armor of yours would be more easy to convince others to work on. We still have dangerous jobs that are hard to safely operate in and this armor could be a boon…”

“Ooh!” I suddenly interjected, “and get us some energy shields to go with them! And rocket boots!”

Sera just pinched the bridge of her nose as I let my imagination run wild with possible ideas.

“Hmm,” I hummed to myself as I scrolled through my phone. Currently, I was trying to get an idea of what this new reality I was stuck in was like and I was honestly not liking it all that much. Sure, I might have a bit of a low opinion of humanity but I wouldn’t say that I was a misanthrope, however what I had been reading so far really made me wish I was. No, I liked humanity but I was well aware that we could do some shitty things to each other if given the chance and motivation.

It was too bad I didn’t have Lute with me right now, she might have been able to give me a better angel perspective of humanity than the one I got from fucking around on my phone. But, well, Lute had went off with her other exorcist sisters on a girl’s night out so I was left alone with my thoughts tonight. I didn’t know if calling each other sister was literal or just meant that they had a close bond with each other but I insisted she go out and enjoy herself with them. Having a close bond with each other was important when fighting side by side.

Hmm, I might have to arrange a get together myself at some point.

Anyway, I was using my two different phones to try and paint myself a bigger picture of how humans in this new reality worked. I was given a lot of wildly different takes of how the world should function. Naturally, the heaven phone that connected to the wider heavenly internet tended to focus on the good of people and how we could all do our part to make the universe a better place.

Hell, there was even some cherub group that went down to earth to give the winners up in heaven, a term Lute told me about which amused me so much that I used it now, the ability to bless their loved ones that were still down on earth. They even did it for free which made me question just how long they could even stay in business.

The phone from Hell had several websites where sinners bemoaned their fate of being stuck down there. Most tended to bitch and gripe about the people in their lives that were still alive on earth and how they’d like to get some sort of vengeance for some past crime. Some of the demons in these bitchfest forums even talked about how they had heard of some imp group that would take money to go out on earth and kill people for sinners.

Imps were hellborns so I couldn’t kill them during the extermination, which made me frustrated since I did not like the thought of demons just blatantly going around killing people on earth. I really didn’t like the thought of said demons just going around unchecked on earth and if shit like this was that common and nothing was being done then we needed a more proactive approach. That said, given my lack of knowledge it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a proxy war of some kind going on down on earth. But I didn’t actually know that and neither of my phones could connect me to earth itself so I had to find a way to get down there myself and get an idea of what it was like first hand.

But could I do that? I was technically a dead human soul and those weren’t supposed to be able to go back to earth. But at one point I had been told in a short break during my conversation with Sera that I was a bit of a special case being the first man of humanity and having been created directly by the angels and all.

I leaned back in my beanbag chair and stared across my room at a dart board hung on the wall, lost in thought as I pondered. If I was a special case then I probably had the power to go down on earth and do things. I needed to do a bit of research, seeing what the rules of angels being on earth were. Clearly it wasn’t against the rules for angels to be there or the cherub group wouldn’t exist since I didn't believe that Heaven would just ignore a group like that.

I groaned as I cracked my neck and got ready for another long research and study session. I really hated not knowing shit...