"Hahaha!"
"My dearest ally!"
Laughing uproariously, Mephisto lifted off the ground, shifted back into his human guise with a survivor's grin, spread his arms wide, and moved in for a bear hug.
Hawk arched a brow.
"Stop."
"Squeak—"
Mephisto froze ten meters short, staring blankly at Hawk.
They locked eyes.
"Someone told me you and Heaven are the real allies."
"Me and Heaven—allies?"
Mephisto glanced down, taking in his Hell Dimension—mountains shattered, everything withered—then looked back at Hawk.
"Who told you that?"
"La Madora, the Blood God."
"Who?"
Mephisto blinked, then squinted at Hawk. "Madora's still alive? Didn't Yahweh run him through years ago?"
Hawk's face didn't change.
"He said Yahweh pinned him down—and you grabbed Yahweh's archangel sword and did the stabbing."
"He's full of it!"
Indignation flushed Mephisto's cheeks a very un-demonic pink. "So you think all this is a play Heaven and I staged together?"
Hawk watched the fuming devil, shrugged.
"I did come thinking that. I tried to confront you days ago. You didn't answer."
"That's because Yahweh shivved me."
Mephisto scowled.
"When I found out that old fraud was building 'Hell Angels,' I started digging."
"And I focused so hard on the 'Hell Angels' I forgot how many ghosts I'd left hidden at home."
"Yahweh's sleeper souls opened the gate for Michael's carrier to jump in."
"Those angels are lunatics."
"When I returned to Hell, they welcomed me with over a hundred self-detonations—blew me half to pieces."
"Otherwise…"
Long story short:
Mephisto got careless. It was his house, he waltzed in without wards, and Heaven's hit team landed a perfect ambush.
Heaven's force naturally counters Hell's. Mephisto and the Hell Dimension are bound. Hurt the lord, drain the realm. As Mephisto's wounds bled out, Hell's aura thinned, the balance tipped—and he almost went under.
If Hawk hadn't shown up—if the angels kept pressing—Mephisto might really have died.
After venting about the ambush, Mephisto eyed Hawk's cool expression and frowned.
"You still don't believe me?"
"Your reputation makes belief… difficult."
"Damn it—then the Madora you met was fake."
"I know."
"What?"
"I already know 'Madora' was Michael in disguise."
Hawk's tone stayed flat.
If Michael hadn't gone all-out, Hawk might not have nailed it down; but when Michael burned his soul and unleashed full power, Hawk caught the exact same trace he'd sensed from the 'dying Blood God'—the tell of a two-souled angel.
Michael was the very "Madora" who performed a death scene in front of him days ago—and even "left behind" a Blood Dimension.
Only—
Hawk's brow knit as he looked at Mephisto, puzzled.
"What does Yahweh gain from this?"
"Are you dense? He wants to split us up."
"…"
Hawk regarded the hopping-mad devil with a calm, faintly amused gaze.
Under that look, Mephisto's newly pink face slowly darkened.
"I'm not lying this time. No tricks in our deal."
"Maybe."
Hawk let it drop and steered back to Michael. "So Michael plays Madora, puts on a 'words of a dying god' act for me, and even leaves the dimension behind—just to sour our alliance?"
Mephisto's eyes lit. He stared at Hawk. "Wait—the dimension. The Blood God's pocket. Don't tell me you refined it."
"Is there a problem?"
Hawk's sword-like brows lifted. "I scanned every inch. No backdoors."
As he spoke, his mind sank into the Blood Dimension again; his Sixth Sense fanned out three hundred and sixty-five degrees, missing no seam or seamline.
Top to bottom, inside to out.
No corner spared.
Then—
Mephisto chuckled drily. "Yahweh doesn't need backdoors. Once you refine the Blood Dimension, they can ping your position off its residue any time. Your power isn't native to this universe; Heaven's backed by the Celestials. If they—"
BOOOOM—
Before Mephisto finished, Hawk detonated the Blood Dimension that existed in real space.
Instantly—
The Underworld's blood pool heaved like surf pounding a cliff; after a few heavy throbs, it settled back into stillness.
Mephisto felt the dimensional death and gawped at Hawk.
"So decisive?"
"Exactly that decisive."
"You didn't even hesitate?"
"No need."
"Doesn't making your power 'real' tempt you?"
"Not necessary."
Hawk's voice stayed even. "There are plenty of ways to anchor my power in reality. I don't need to keep a liability."
It wasn't Mephisto's "Celestials" reminder that sealed it. Hawk is going to clash with them anyway—once they learn he skimmed Tiamut's life-force, it's war to the knife.
The real reason he blew the Blood Dimension was simpler:
It wasn't earned.
Even without stealth hooks, he didn't want it.
In short—
He found it filthy.
The blood pool—and the blood-elves he'd forged from Heaven's blank souls—were different.
Those souls were war spoils.
Spoils are the fruit of labor.
The blood pool he'd derived by stripping the Blood God's dregs and bottling the essence—then shaping it with the Reality Stone.
That was his craft.
But that realspace dimension?
Let it go.
He didn't care—as he told Mephisto, there are other routes to "make it real." No need to hold a tainted thing.
First: it's filthy.
Second: who knows what risk it hides later.
Worst case: go back to plan A—steal the Phoenix Galaxy in the observable universe and make it his Phoenix Parallel.
With that, Hawk glanced at the wan Mephisto and waved, already bored.
"Alright. I'm heading out."
"So soon?"
Mephisto blinked at the man about to leave.
Hawk flicked him a look. "What else? I came ready to thrash you for conning me. Turns out… forget it. You've got cleanup. We'll talk when you're done."
He ignored Mephisto's attempt to stall him, turned, stepped once—and slipped out of Hell, reappearing over Pluto.
A heartbeat later—
The black phoenix flared behind him. But with the realspace Blood Dimension gone, the shade had lost that extra bite of "real."
Even his speed dipped; without that anchor, he couldn't push back to near-lightspeed. He spent two hours more than the trip out to reach Earth, punched back through the atmosphere, and slipped into New York.
On Palm Street, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s detail got the signal, started their engines, and rolled off.
Gwen, curled on the sofa reading the latest frontiers-in-biology journal, lifted her eyes when Hawk came in from the backyard; she set the magazine down and blinked.
"So? Mephisto still won't move?"
"No."
Hawk flopped down beside her and slipped an arm around her shoulders. "I almost got played by Yahweh."
Gwen nestled in, meeting his eyes. "What happened?"
"The Blood God—Madora…"
Hawk, who kept nothing from Gwen, laid out the whole trip: going to raise hell, finding Heaven butchering Hell, and "Madora" being the archangel Michael.
Gwen listened, increasingly wide-eyed.
"Michael the archangel?"
"Uh-huh."
Hawk nodded, then looked down at Gwen. "But I still don't get Yahweh's angle."
If Madora and his dimension were bait—
Hawk had already swallowed them.
So where was the hook?
Surely it wasn't as cheap as Mephisto claimed—"refine the dimension, let the Celestials triangulate, call Dad to punish the upstart."
Hawk couldn't make it add up.
Gwen thought, then something seemed to click.
"On the way back from church, you said Yahweh showed up during Ben's baptism?"
"Yeah. He looked shocked at first—but thinking back, that 'shock' wasn't at your reality foothold; there was a trace of… satisfaction. I was in too good a mood to listen to him prattle, so I swatted him flat."
"Then maybe this."
Gwen sat up and met his eyes. "What if Yahweh's appearance was to set the hook—but the fish he meant to catch wasn't you."
Hawk held her gaze.
A second passed.
He blinked.
…
(End of Chapter)
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