Vox tries to think exactly when this day got so insane - was it when a guy turned up in his tower lobby claiming to be the leader of the Exorcists Ambassador Peverell magically electrocuted?
Was it when he got the idea to take him to the Hotel and let them decide what to do with the idiot? Because, honestly, that sounds like it's something for at least the Sins to deal with, considering he's claiming something that's supposed to be impossible.
No, wait, maybe it was when the giant dragon-like creature ripped its way into the sky and very nearly hit V-Tower before getting forcibly dragged upwards by Calliope Peverell.
Whatever the case, he's got a migraine that feels like his head is about to explode, and it's barely ten in the morning.
Now, though?
Now, he's sitting on a couch, still gripping the cables tying up Adam - who is still potentially the same Adam that led the Exorcists every year for millennia, which hasn't been confirmed or denied as of yet, and who has been un-gagged for now - next to literal God. The three Archangels he remembers from the 'Hellish Pixelware' incident are gathered around an injured fourth Archangel, these Sera and Lute people on God's other side.
Meanwhile, Lucifer, Lilith, and Charlotte are seated on the opposite couch, Prince Stolas sitting in a chair and looking highly nervous - not that Vox can blame the guy, Goetia Prince or no this isn't exactly something that happens every day - a bird-girl that can only be his daughter behind the couch with Emily and Vaggie…and Alastor standing directly behind the couch, just beside Lilith and resting his chin on his linked fingers with an expression like he's wondering who he gets to eat first.
Azrael, meanwhile, is lying down on the third couch while the green-robed Archangel heals his chest - because, apparently, he broke several ribs trying to deal with the massive dragon that's been unleashed.
"So," Gabriel asks in confusion, staring at Azrael, "what exactly happened?"
Azrael groans, wincing as they hear a noise from his chest that sounds painful, and says "Two bored eldritch primal deities, that's what. They made a full-grown dragon, and not a particularly well-behaved one either. It got out."
Michael raises an eyebrow, asking "And this sort of thing happens often?"
"Calli's been in the office the past we-don't-know-how-long, and for that stretch they were fine. Fate would send her out into Earth for a while when she started getting close to an actual breakdown, but even then it was only a few weeks earth-time. They were fine…and the office didn't blow because she went completely nuts overworking herself to her impossible death."
Raphael rolls his eyes, muttering about seeing that before, and Michael deadpans "You mean to tell me she's a chronic workaholic like Gabriel?"
Azrael snorts, wincing again as another rib heals, and says "She's not a workaholic…she's the workaholic. This world's first and worst."
Gabriel mutters "No wonder she apparently has no patience for idiots or people trying to screw with her."
Lilith says "That was time and forty years spent in her original society's government trying to fix it. Now, as to why-"
There's a sudden popping sound, and when they all look…there's a woman Alastor immediately recognizes standing there. Magic, in all her suffocating glory…looking distinctly hurried, as it happens. Azrael sits up halfway, despite Raphael's protests, and asks "Magic? What're you-"
"Drink up, instant healing! Made sure it's painless, this time, to!" Azrael barely manages to not drop the vial that's shoved into his hands, but quickly downs it - whatever Magic's reasons for the potion, he's not turning down painless healing. She then sees Emily, hurries over, and shoves a vial into her hands, saying "Instant Animagus form! Enjoy!"
And now Lucifer, Lilith, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael all get what Calli meant when she said Life, Death, Fate, and Magic don't think like mortals do…not by a long shot. Omniscience, apparently, means they think that everyone else will know what they mean, what they want them to do, and why they're doing something.
Lucifer carefully asks "What's going on?"
"Fate and I messed up…and not a little, either. So…trying to make Calliope happy enough she won't be mad at us. Bottom's up, kid!" And then, before anyone can react, she's dumping the contents of the vial down Emily's mouth.
Alastor pulls her behind himself as she coughs and splutters, asking "Far as I was aware, only someone with the same kind of magic as Calliope could become an Animagus." Which means Calli's likely going to have something of a nervous breakdown at the implications, in all honesty. He knows for sure she's been keeping an eye on Emily for anything out of the ordinary happening - her Curse, mainly. So, this? Going to send her spiraling just as hard as Emily calling her 'mom' for the first time to her face did.
Magic nods, saying "Yeah, that's right. One detail about the Blood Adoption Potion…it slightly altered the drinker's magic so they'd be recognized by family-based wards as part of the family. So, in this case, it just gave her the abilities. Hasn't anything happened yet?" At Emily's headshake, Magic shrugs and says "Either because your new Magical Core has been growing or because you're probably the safest kid in this entire reality. Yeah, no, it's there."
Everybody's silent for a long minute, just processing that bombshell that was casually dropped on them all, and Adam nervously asks "There's two of her, now?!" If his voice sounds at least three octaves higher than usual…well, she electrocuted him with very little effort. He figures he's allowed to be petrified of a second person with that woman's magic running around.
And then, suddenly, Calli flames into the lobby looking dead on her feet, part of her hair choppy and half as long as the rest, wearing her armor, a wooden stick behind one ear, and carrying…is that the dragon?! She stops dead in her tracks upon seeing Magic standing there, and then flatly asks "Magic, you do know that when you make a brand new life - no matter what kind of creature or what size - it has the intelligence, knowledge, understanding, and motor skills of a newborn, right? Even if you put it in a fully-grown, adult-sized body?"
"Um," Magic says, "oh. Guess we should've asked Life a few questions after all."
Yep, five people think, definitely doesn't think like humans, Angels, or Demons do.
Vox incredulously asks "Is that thing still alive?!"
"I don't kill kids," Calli flatly says, "especially not toddlers that are panicking, trying to find someone to feed them, trying to figure out what's going on and who's going to care for them." Pinching the bridge of her nose with her free hand, she mutters "No fucking wonder I couldn't understand a word it was saying, it wasn't saying words at all…" Said dragon apparently wakes up at all the noise…and starts crying, little chirp-like noises, jagged-sounding trills, and a snorted hiccup coupled with a puff of smoke and a few embers. Magic is at Calli's side in an instant, shoving a second vial that matches the Animagus Potion she gave Emily into Calli's mouth before she can react - quite the feat, given how fast nearly everyone there has seen her react to things.
"Magic," Calli slowly says, sounding calm in a way that tells everyone there's an imminent explosion brewing, as soon as the vial leaves her mouth, "what was that?"
"Instant Animagus Potion! You're an Animagus now!"
"You want me to be able to turn into some kind of animal? In a way that's almost certainly going to break every rule of Animagus transformations that was ever written, no less?"
"You might get a magical form, you might get multiple forms - who knows?! It'll be fun! And less dangerous!"
They see Calli's eyebrow start twitching, and she says "Uh-huh, yeah…not like I don't already break literally every rule of magic you ever created for my old world or anything…" That's why she never became an Animagus…along with the near-certainty of the press getting wind of it and spreading even more rumors about her. She didn't want or need yet another way to prove to everyone around her that all the rules of literally everything just didn't apply to her.
The baby dragon she's holding starts crying even more now, and Calli carefully re-adjusts her grip on it before saying "I'm confiscating the newborn, Magic. De-aged its body via a de-aging potion and spell combination. Which means its body now matches its actual age- easy there, I know you want something, just gotta give me a minute!"
Calli waves her hand, the scratch marks already halfway healed, and Emily walks over while saying "She's hungry. I can take her?"
Calli blinks, asking "This is a female? You can tell this is a female? Actually, know what? If you can keep from being scratched or bit, Emily, go to it. Here's a plate of meat cubes, might be hungry but I'm not sure."
Emily slowly takes the baby dragon from Calli's arm, calming it and whispering to it as she does, and grabs the plate of raw meat pieces that appeared on the coffee table.
Vox raises a digital eyebrow, asking "There's something you don't know?"
Calli shrugs one shoulder - making Lilith's eyes narrow at her like it's a bad sign - and says "Charlie Weasley was a dragon tamer, and I out-flew a Hungarian Horntail when I was fourteen. Ron could recite every law on how illegal it was to own a dragon by heart since Charlie was so obsessed with them, but I never had any particular burning desire to get close to another one."
Vox gets the distinct impression that Princess Charlotte was definitely named after this dragon tamer - badass, admittedly, but still. Sera, meanwhile, is staring at Emily - currently sitting next to Charlie and feeding a baby dragon pieces of meat by hand as it sits in her lap - like she's seen a ghost. A ghost that shouldn't exist, one that she barely recognizes…and she's getting Alastor's full attention now, eyes narrowed and shadow creeping forward towards the feathery woman. He knows from watching as a spectator that said woman can now count her lifespan in minutes, if not seconds.
Adam and Lute are staring at her to, looking like they almost recognize her from somewhere.
Magic leaves after that - looking particularly relieved, no less - and then Calli promptly falls face-first onto the couch longways, completely ignoring the detail that there are several people sitting there and she's now using all their legs as pillows.
Lucifer runs a hand through her hair, holding the cut-off part up like he's measuring, and asks "You good, sis?"
Calli props herself up on one elbow, and says "I just spent seven hours beating up a baby, Luce. There's no definition of the word in any universe that would fit me right now."
Azrael sucks in a sharp breath, asking "Seven hours?!"
Calli nods, asking "How're the ribs healing? Also, somebody catch me up please. What'd I miss, and why are they here?"
There's a long silence, everyone including Emily trading looks as they try to figure out how to break the news to Calli. Finally, after a long minute, Lilith says "Calli…it's been seven minutes."
Calli goes several shades paler, and everyone can see her doing some mental math as she processes that implication.
Vox quickly does his own, referencing the last time she was known to be in Hell before arriving shortly after Extermination Day - 150 years ago. He comes up with…a ballpark number of around 9,000 years.
Everyone else apparently comes up with similarly-large numbers, because Charlie faintly says "That explains why you thought I'd forgotten you…"
"Well," Calli says after a long moment and a few swallows, "guess I really need to know why we've got some extra guests, then. G, if you'd like to start talking…?"
God sighs, rubbing his head with two fingers like he's massaging his temples, and says "Heaven's a mess, I'm still trying to piece everything together, I've heard about eighteen different versions of events that happened at and around Lucifer's Fall, and everything seems to lead back to Sera and these…Exorcists, they're called? Adam apparently died in their last battle, which leaves this one," he gestures towards Lute, even as the dragon-fied Adam swallows audibly, "over here in charge of them. And she - previously Adam, apparently - reports directly to Sera. Most of them have been parroting the same story about Hell uprising and culling the Sinner population, but she gave me a different story. Meanwhile, the council that's apparently been running Heaven is incapable of functioning - either still recovering from their brief time down here or questioning everything she ever told them and wondering what all they've been accomplices to. It's all an absolute disaster, between them and the Winners calling for heads to roll, and I'm not sure just what to do to evens tart to fix any of it. Any ideas?"
Calli rolls over and sits up, all hints of exhaustion gone, and says "Put them on trial, G. A public one, at that. Broadcast it all over Heaven so there's no way anyone can say it was covered up. From what you just described, it's pretty much your only option." God nods with a groan, casting another look at Sera and Lute, and says "Except the Exorcists can't go anywhere without being called sadists, murderers, etc. And Sera? Can't go out into the city at all. We do a trial, it can't be in Heaven, it'll get stormed and they'll get ripped apart."
"As much as I'd like to put her in front of all the Sins and cast judgement that way, we can't - it's only because of you that Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael haven't been corrupted yet if they aren't wearing the pendants I made," they all quickly pull out faintly-glowing pendants, which suddenly glow a lot stronger after three arcs of bright green escape Calli and enter them, "so holding a trial here would be akin to rapidly-poisoning anyone from Heaven in attendance. Same goes for if the trial is in Heaven and anyone from Hell is there - such as, you know, Lucifer. Lillith. Charlie. Emily. The Over-"
"Emily?!"
Everyone glances between Sera's shocked, borderline-horrified expression, and Emily's blank one as she looks up from the baby dragon that's now curled up on her legs and growling at the raised voice. "Oh," she says, voice neutral like she's forcing it to be, "yeah. Hi, Sera. Like the new look?"
The look on Sera's face would be enough to make Vox burst out laughing in any other situation - not with Alastor looking like he's two seconds from dragging Sera into a shadow and Calliope looking like she's about to leap over.
Adam picks his jaw up off the floor and incredulously asks "What happened to you?!"
Now God is looking at Adam - further confirming Vox's suspicion that this guy has zero self-preservation instinct - and says "You must be Adam, then."
Now Lute stares at Adam like he's grown a second head. "Adam?!"
"Yes," Vox says, rolling his eyes, "he's been claiming he's your dead leader for weeks now. Ever since he manifested down here as a Sinner."
Calli and Azrael both suck in sharp breaths through their teeth, and Azrael says "Excuse me, but he did what?!"
Vox nods, saying "Nobody believes him, but plenty of people have killed him by now. He's taking a rough adjustment period to a whole new level, telling everybody who will listen that he was the leader of the Exorcists, he's supposed to be up in Heaven, and everyone down here is a pack of losers. He literally cannot go one sentence without spilling his holier-than-thou shit and insulting everyone in the process."
Calli facepalms, Lilith pinches the bridge of her nose, Charlie's very clearly trying not to laugh, Vaggie has one hand clapped over her mouth, and pretty much everyone else is staring at Adam in varying stages of 'you can't be serious.'
And then Calli starts hissing, taking out her phone and hitting a button.
"She needs to make a call," Azrael says in lieu of any kind of explanation, "because you, you idiot, managed to break the rules we've been following for the past ten millennia too badly to fix without Calli altering everyone's memories irreversibly."
Adam blinks, asking "What?"
"We aren't supposed to tell human souls reincarnation is a thing! Possibly because of Calli's reaction upon learning it in her old world, I don't know. What I do know is that no human soul was ever supposed to find out their souls don't just go 'poof!' in death! Not even perma-death from Angelic weapons. That's why Extermination Day was such a problem for D and the others - all you and yours coming down every year and 'permanently' killing as many souls as possible in the span of a day did was put them back in circulation and give everyone massive headaches. Why did you think Calli was stuck in the office for the past hundred and fifty some years in Hell's time, to organize paperwork?!"
Vox groans, feeling his screen glitch as static crawls up his neck like an incoming migraine - but, that? He was not prepared for that kind of revelation. He did not sign up for any world-shattering revelations today when he woke up, thank you very much!
Calli, meanwhile, is hissing non-stop and gesturing, holding her phone in one hand and apparently about to lose her mind altogether with the other hand returning to her hair to grip it.
"That's gonna be a while," Azrael calmly says, "let's keep this going, shall we?"
Lilith says "Hell needs to have representation in this trial, if we're going that route. It's our kingdom she had invaded, our people that Sera had massacred year after year. Lucifer is King of Hell, and he nearly died because of Sera's lies. Hell hasn't uprisen in ten thousand years, but her crimes against us going unpunished will certainly change that." She'll make it happen herself if she has to, Calli will definitely be on board with it.
And that'd be when Vox notices the red dot near-completely hidden on Adam's chest that's hovering, and slowly looks up to see…Angel Dust and Husk with two beers at the overhead railing, listening in on everything with Angel leaning in to whisper something in Husk's ear, and some Imps with guns looking like they're waiting for a signal to start lighting some people up. Angel sees he's staring, and gives him a near-sneer before flipping him off - alright, yeah, fair, they were never exactly the best of friends when he was working for Valentino.
And then Calli stalks over to Sera, still hissing into her phone…and hits her with the same ball of light that showed all that black in God.
To Vox's dwindling surprise, there's black radiating out of this Sera's chest - seems she's who Calliope was going to kill before Emily intervened - spreading all over her body like a creepy octopus.
Everyone stares for a moment, then Calli facepalms, snaps a picture, and starts hissing again. Then, to Sera's misfortune, she hisses, nods her head, makes a fireball the size of her palm, hisses something else into the phone…then looks straight at Sera, hisses something else, and without any further warning shoves that fireball into the pale blue woman's chest.
Vox gets the distinct impression she just told Sera 'this is going to hurt' and didn't particularly care if she was speaking English or not.
Sera screams at once, curling in on herself and crashing into the floor as black smoke erupts out of her body like it's just been evicted - she near-convulses, ending up curled in a ball on the floor about five minutes later after Charlie and Emily get sent to the kitchen.
"Sera," Calliope coldly says, dragging her up off the floor by the back of her neck, "you absolute idiot." She sticks the tip of the knobby wand that was behind her ear underneath Sera's chin, and says "I should kill you right here and now. Give me one reason why I shouldn't." Sera opens her mouth, but Calli adds "And, before you say anything about me making a mess of you, keep in mind I know how to get blood out of literally everything. Cleaning up little bits of you splattered all over the lobby won't be a problem."
Great, Vox thinks, yet another reason why she and Alastor work as an item. As thoroughly embarrassed as he is about his outburst when Alastor went to his tower, he's apparently getting plenty of answers as to what she has that he doesn't - the knowledge of how to get bloodstains out of his coat, and the subsequent implication of just how much blood she's spilled in her lifetime, is just the latest in an ever-growing list of answers he's gotten shoved in his face.
If there was just one thing he could go back in time and change…actually, it'd be meeting Valentino in the first place. His afterlife would have been a lot simpler without needing to put out all of Valentino's dumpster-fire-messes all the time.
"Trial," Sera rasps out, "you mentioned a trial…"
Calliope chuckles coldly, expression stony as she says "I know humanity better than you think, Sera. Believe you me, most of the Winners, if not all of them, will be placated if I splatter you all over the lobby and toss them Adam and Lute over here. Fair and just? Probably not. But it would satisfy them. That's some of G's problems solved right there."
"Great," Vox nervously says, eying the glowing wand in her hand like it's a firecracker about to explode, "you're a fan of vigilante street justice…"
"Not usually," Calli says, not looking away from Sera, "but I'm more than willing to make an exception after everything she's done. Say the word, Lucifer, and she gets turned into a million little pieces here and now."
Lucifer swallows, even as Calli all but growls at Sera not to look at him, and he eventually says "We go the vigilante street justice route, Calli, someone at some point in time will stir up trouble over it. We'll do the trial, make it public. Show all of Heaven everything she did."
There's a heartbeat of silence, nobody moving, Sera hardly daring to breathe…right up until Calli casts a powerful Banging Hex right next to her ear loud as a gunshot. "You are so damn lucky," she spits at Sera, who's now trembling in her grip, "and you don't even deserve to be." She tosses Sera back onto the couch, where she curls up like she wants to sink into the cushions altogether.
One corner of Calli's lips lifts in an expression colder and sharper than a sneer, and she adds "Now you're afraid of me? Afraid of what I could do? Should've thought of that before you gave me a reason to start Cursing you with half the Black Family Library's contents."
"Oh-kay," Lucifer says, standing up just long enough to pull Calli over to the couch, "c'mere, you're sitting down now." Lucifer pulls Calliope to the couch so she's sitting right next to him, one arm wrapped around her shoulders…and then his wing, for good measure.
Lilith looks less than thrilled about that decision - the First Woman looked like she would've helped Calliope kill Sera if it came down to it, honestly - but says "Now that we're clear on there being a trial for all three people here, we need to pick out a location."
Calli says "I've got an island hidden away in the Atlantic Ocean, relatively close to the Bahamas. It was supposed to be a beach house for the two of you when I finally figured out how to break the binding on Lucifer keeping him trapped down here, but…well, you know."
Vox does some mental calculations, then has to hold himself back from facepalming. That's the rough location of the Bermuda Triangle. "This hidden island of yours wouldn't happen to be located roughly between the Bahamas and Puerto Rico…would it?"
Calli raises an eyebrow, and says "Good guess."
Yep, definitely the Bermuda Triangle…