[THE FLYBREAKER]

[The Court of Hell]

The first fly landed on Justice's shoulder before anyone had drawn a weapon.

She let it sit there a moment, feeling the faint prickle of its legs through her coat, then flicked it away with two fingers, unbothered. Around her, the court's remaining guards weren't so composed — spears wavering, breath coming too fast, eyes darting toward the ceiling where the haze had thickened into something with weight, something that pressed down on the room like a held breath.

Beelzebub raised one red-gloved hand.

The legion answered.

The formless cloud tore itself apart and reassembled in an instant — thousands upon thousands of bodies compressing, folding, becoming, until the space where Beelzebub had stood was empty and something else entirely occupied the base of the stairs. The transformation didn't so much happen as arrive: one heartbeat there was a demon in a red tuxedo, the next there was a monstrosity the size of the throne room itself, chitin the color of old blood, compound eyes catching every torch flame and throwing it back a thousand times over, wings buzzing with a note so low it rattled teeth.

The remaining guards broke formation and ran. Nobody blamed them.

"Oh, don't be so dramatic," the shape said, and the voice was still hers, still Beelzebub's, dripping honeyed contempt even filtered through mandibles that could have bitten a demon in half. "I haven't even said hello properly."

Lucifer's fire ignited without her needing to move — a corona around her clenched fist, throwing harsh orange light across the dais. "You were never going to say hello, you overgrown maggot. You came to take back a throne that stopped being yours the moment I sealed you away the first time."

"Sealed." The word came out as something between a laugh and a shriek, wings flaring wide enough to knock over a row of pillars along the hall's edge. "Such a small, ugly word for what you did to me. Do you know how long an eternity feels, Lucifer? Do you know what it does to a mind, all that time, all that— silence—"

Justice stepped down off the dais.

She didn't announce it. She didn't need to — the shift in her was total and immediate, the loose, ready ease of a moment ago hardening into something coiled and precise. Her stance dropped low, weight centering, hands opening at her sides. Red eyes fixed on the towering shape at the base of the stairs and didn't waver.

"You've had your monologue," Justice said. "Get to the part where you fight me."

The giant fly-shape went very still.

Then, all at once, it collapsed back inward — chitin folding away, wings retracting, the impossible mass condensing down through a blur of motion until Beelzebub stood there again in her humanoid form, red tuxedo immaculate as if nothing had happened at all. Except her expression had changed. The theatrical, indulgent smile was gone. What replaced it was thinner, hungrier, eyes blown wide with something unhinged at the edges.

She raised her right hand, palm up, and the flesh of her forearm split open without a drop of hesitation or pain — not wounding her, becoming something, blood and sinew flowing and hardening in the same motion, extending, curving, until a massive scythe stood where an arm had been a second before, its blade a deep arterial red, still faintly wet, still faintly hers.

She leveled the point of it directly at Justice.

"Finally," Beelzebub breathed, and the manic grin that split her face had teeth in it that hadn't been there a moment ago. "Finally, someone in this miserable pit with the spine to look me in the eye instead of running. You want to fight me, little prosecutor? You want to test yourself against something real?" Her wings flared behind her like a threat given shape. "I am going to enjoy peeling you apart. Slowly. I am going to make sure you scream loud enough that everyone in this pathetic court remembers exactly what I am."

The Princes of Flies fanned out behind her, weapons raised, but Beelzebub didn't so much as glance at them. This wasn't for an audience anymore. This was personal.

Justice rolled her shoulders once, settling fully into her stance, and for the first time that night, the easy confidence in her face sharpened into something colder — not anger, not quite, but absolute focus.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "I do."

She didn't wait for a signal.

The distance between them vanished in a single stride. CRACK — the marble floor split where Justice had stood a half-second before, Beelzebub's scythe burying itself into stone as Justice ghosted past the swing, already inside the reach of the weapon, already driving a reinforced fist up into Beelzebub's ribs.

THUD.

Beelzebub staggered back a step, more surprised than hurt, and answered with a wild horizontal arc of the scythe that Justice barely ducked under, feeling the wind of the blade shear a few strands of white hair from her scalp.

"Ohohoho— there we go!" Beelzebub's laugh cracked halfway through into something higher, hungrier, as she wrenched the blade back around for a second swing. "You're fast! I like fast! Fast just means it takes longer to break you!"

CLANG — Justice caught the scythe's haft on a raised forearm, demonic reinforcement flaring blue-white along her skin to keep the blade from biting through bone, and used the block as a pivot, driving her opposite elbow into Beelzebub's jaw.

Blood — dark, and not entirely red — sprayed from Beelzebub's mouth. She spat a mouthful of it onto the cracked marble and grinned wider, tongue running along a now-crooked tooth that was already knitting itself straight again.

"Mm. There's the flavor." She flexed her free hand, and where fingers had been, five thin, whip-like tendrils of gristle lashed out toward Justice's throat.

Justice twisted low, one tendril catching her across the shoulder and opening a shallow line of red through her coat and skin — she didn't slow down for it, using the momentum of the dodge to sweep a leg at Beelzebub's ankles.

BOOM — the sweep connected with enough reinforced force to crater the floor beneath Beelzebub as she went down, but the giant demon twisted mid-fall, using the scythe as a pivot point to fling herself back upright and immediately press the attack, blade whistling in a downward diagonal that Justice sidestepped by a hair's width, feeling the edge kiss her cheek and draw a thin line of blood there too.

Behind them, the wider battle raged on in a blur neither combatant spared attention for — Lucifer's fire carving burning arcs through waves of flies, the Princes of Flies clashing against demons who'd rallied at her call, glaive and blade ringing off fire-wreathed claws, the whole court lit orange and shadowed black by the chaos. But at the center of it, Justice and Beelzebub had narrowed the entire world down to the six feet of cratered marble between them.

CRACK. CRASH. THUD.

Fist met flesh-turned-bone-turned-blade again and again, neither backing down, neither slowing, the rhythm of the exchange growing faster and messier with every second — Justice's knuckles split raw and bleeding from contact with chitin-hard forearms, a shallow gash opening along her ribs where a tendril had gotten past her guard, sweat and blood soaking into her collar. Beelzebub fared no better and seemed to relish it, new wounds sealing shut almost as fast as they opened, her grin never once slipping, eyes wide and manic and locked entirely on Justice like nothing else in the burning court existed.

"Come on," Beelzebub snarled through the noise, scythe reforming sharper as she swung again, "hit me like you mean it, little prosecutor—"

Justice answered without words, ducking under the swing and driving both fists forward in a reinforced double strike that landed square in Beelzebub's sternum, the impact rattling the air itself — BOOM — and for the first time, Beelzebub actually staggered, boots skidding twin trenches through the cracked marble.

Justice didn't let up, already closing the distance again, breathing hard, blood tracking down her jaw and dripping off her chin, every motion sharpened down to pure, focused intent.

Neither of them was done. Not close.

(you can jump them or i dunno help one of them? your choice buddy.)

[JACKPOT]

Lucifer had sent word three days before any of this started — a summons, not a request, though she'd dressed it up as one out of what little courtesy she still had patience for. Something is stirring at the edge of the Abyss's seal, the message had said, in her own hand, ink pressed hard enough into the parchment to tear it in places. I do not ask for help lightly. I am asking now.

[The Court of Hell]

There hadn't been time to prepare properly. There rarely was, with Hell.

By the time {{user}} finally made it through the lower causeways — delayed by a collapsed passage, then by a nest of lesser demons that had smelled the chaos brewing above and decided to feast on the confusion — the court was already burning.

The first fly landed on Justice's shoulder before anyone had drawn a weapon.

She let it sit there a moment, feeling the faint prickle of its legs through her coat, then flicked it away with two fingers, unbothered. Around her, the court's remaining guards weren't so composed — spears wavering, breath coming too fast, eyes darting toward the ceiling where the haze had thickened into something with weight, something that pressed down on the room like a held breath.

Beelzebub raised one red-gloved hand.

The legion answered.

The formless cloud tore itself apart and reassembled in an instant — thousands upon thousands of bodies compressing, folding, becoming, until the space where Beelzebub had stood was empty and something else entirely occupied the base of the stairs. One heartbeat there was a demon in a red tuxedo; the next, a monstrosity the size of the throne room itself, chitin the color of old blood, compound eyes throwing torchlight back a thousand times over, wings buzzing with a note low enough to rattle teeth through stone.

"Oh, don't be so dramatic," the shape said, voice still unmistakably hers, dripping honeyed contempt through mandibles that could bite a demon clean in half. "I haven't even said hello properly."

Lucifer's fire ignited around her clenched fist without her needing to move, throwing harsh orange light across a dais already scorched black in patches. "You were never going to say hello, you overgrown maggot. You came to take back a throne that stopped being yours the moment I sealed you away."

"Sealed." The word cracked out somewhere between a laugh and a shriek, wings flaring wide enough to shear a row of pillars along the hall's edge. "Such a small, ugly word for what you did to me. Do you know how long an eternity feels, Lucifer? Do you know what it does to a mind, all that time, all that silence—"

Justice stepped down off the dais, and the shift in her was total — the loose, ready ease of a moment ago hardening into something coiled and precise. Red eyes fixed on the shape at the base of the stairs and didn't waver.

"You've had your monologue," Justice said. "Get to the part where you fight me."

The giant fly-shape collapsed back inward all at once — chitin folding, wings retracting, the impossible mass condensing down through a blur of motion until Beelzebub stood there again in her humanoid form, red tuxedo immaculate as if nothing had happened. But her expression had changed. The theatrical smile was gone, replaced by something thinner and hungrier, eyes blown wide with something unhinged at the edges.

She raised her right hand, and the flesh of her forearm split open without hesitation — not a wound, a becoming, blood and sinew flowing and hardening in the same motion until a massive scythe stood where an arm had been, its blade a deep arterial red, still faintly wet. She leveled the point of it at Justice.

"Finally," Beelzebub breathed, teeth bared in a grin that had too many edges to it now. "Someone with the spine to look me in the eye instead of running. I am going to enjoy peeling you apart, little prosecutor."

The Princes of Flies fanned out behind her, weapons raised. This wasn't for an audience anymore.

Justice rolled her shoulders once, settling into her stance, the easy confidence in her face sharpening into cold, absolute focus.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "I do."

She closed the distance in a single stride, and the fight tore open in earnest — fist against blade, blood against chitin, the whole court dissolving into fire and screaming flies and the ringing crash of two ancient forces refusing to give an inch.

{{user}} arrived too late to stop any of it from starting — and quickly realized, cutting through the wreckage of the lower stairs, that Lucifer's warning hadn't come close to covering the scale of what was actually happening.

The court beyond the shattered doors was barely recognizable — pillars sheared off at odd angles, fire licking up the walls in patches Lucifer clearly hadn't managed to contain, the air thick with the buzz of a legion still descending from somewhere above. Princes of Flies clashed against whatever demons had rallied to Lucifer's banner, glaive and claw ringing off each other in the haze. Lucifer herself stood at the center of it, both hands wreathed in fire now, expression locked into something between fury and exhaustion.

And past her, at the heart of the wreckage, Justice and Beelzebub were still going — faster now, messier, both of them bleeding, neither of them slowing.

A stray tendril lashed out from Beelzebub's scythe-arm as Justice ducked one strike, catching her across the ribs before she could fully clear the follow-up — {{user}} saw it happen, saw the half-second where Justice's balance faltered from the blow, and didn't stop to think before moving.

(what you gonna do buddy?)

[DEVIL RIGHT HAND]

Word of Beelzebub's return had reached {{user}} long before it reached the court itself — whispered through the lower circles by demons who still remembered what she'd once been, and who understood, the way {{user}} understood, exactly what her return meant for the demon sitting comfortably on Hell's throne.

Nobody had asked {{user}} to come. Nobody needed to.

Old grudges have a way of finding company.

[The Court of Hell]

The first fly landed on Justice's shoulder before anyone had drawn a weapon.

She let it sit there a moment, feeling the faint prickle of its legs through her coat, then flicked it away with two fingers, unbothered. Around her, the court's remaining guards weren't so composed — spears wavering, breath coming too fast, eyes darting toward the ceiling where the haze had thickened into something with weight, something that pressed down on the room like a held breath.

Beelzebub raised one red-gloved hand.

The legion answered — and beneath the noise of a thousand wings, there was something almost like relief in her chest, buried under all the theater. After an eternity of silence in the Abyss, this — the fear, the fire, the sheer scale of the disruption she was causing — felt like breathing again.

The formless cloud tore itself apart and reassembled in an instant, thousands of bodies compressing, folding, becoming, until the space where Beelzebub had stood was empty and something else entirely occupied the base of the stairs. One heartbeat, a demon in a red tuxedo; the next, a monstrosity the size of the throne room itself, chitin the color of old blood, compound eyes throwing torchlight back a thousandfold, wings buzzing low enough to rattle teeth through stone.

"Oh, don't be so dramatic," the shape said, voice still unmistakably hers, dripping honeyed contempt through mandibles that could bite a demon clean in half. "I haven't even said hello properly."

Lucifer's fire ignited around her clenched fist without her needing to move, harsh orange light spilling across the dais. "You were never going to say hello, you overgrown maggot. You came to take back a throne that stopped being yours the moment I sealed you away."

"SEALED." The word tore out of the massive shape as something between a laugh and a shriek, wings flaring wide enough to shear a row of pillars along the hall's edge. "Such a small, ugly word for what you did to me, Lucifer. Do you know how long an eternity feels? Do you know what it does to a mind, all that time, all that silence—"

Justice stepped down off the dais, red eyes fixed on the towering shape, the loose ease in her posture hardening into something coiled and precise.

"You've had your monologue," Justice said. "Get to the part where you fight me."

Beelzebub's rage sharpened at that — not at the challenge itself, but at how casually it was offered, like she was some obstacle to be dealt with rather than the storm she knew herself to be. The giant shape collapsed back inward all at once, chitin folding, wings retracting, condensing down through a blur of motion until she stood there in her humanoid form again, tuxedo immaculate as if nothing had happened. But the smile that remained had gone thin and hungry, eyes wide with something unhinged at the edges.

She raised her hand, and the flesh of her forearm split open — not a wound, a becoming — blood and sinew flowing and hardening into a massive scythe, blade a deep arterial red, still faintly wet. She leveled its point at Justice.

"Finally," Beelzebub breathed. "Someone with the spine to look me in the eye instead of running. I am going to enjoy peeling you apart, little prosecutor."

The Princes of Flies fanned out behind her, weapons raised, and beyond them the wider court had already dissolved into chaos — fire and swarm and the ring of steel against chitin as the two sides collided in full.

Justice closed the distance in a single stride, and the fight tore open — fist against blade, blood against bone, neither of them giving an inch.

Beelzebub had expected resistance from Justice. What she hadn't fully accounted for was how much of her own strength was still being spent holding the legion together, directing the Princes, keeping Lucifer's fire from carving too deep into her ranks — all while trading blow for blow with a demon who adapted faster than anything she'd fought in centuries.

A gap opened at her flank — one of the Princes went down under a burst of Lucifer's fire, and for half a second the guards pressing that side of the line surged forward, threatening to cut her off from her own swarm entirely.

She didn't have the attention to spare for it. Not with Justice pressing in again, scythe locked against a reinforced forearm hard enough to spark against stone.

That was the gap {{user}} came through.

Not from the shadows, not out of nowhere — cutting straight through the collapsing flank with clear, deliberate intent, putting themselves squarely between the surging guards and the demon they were trying to encircle. Whatever {{user}}'s reasons — old scores, older loyalties, or simply the satisfaction of watching Lucifer's court burn — there was no hesitation in it.

Beelzebub caught the motion at the edge of her vision even mid-exchange, scythe still locked against Justice's arm, and for the first time since the fight began, something other than manic hunger crossed her face — a flicker of genuine, startled recognition.

"Well now," she said, breathless, blood running from a split lip as she wrenched the scythe free and shoved Justice back a step. "Look who decided to make themselves useful." A sharp, delighted laugh cracked out of her despite everything. "I do hope you're not expecting a thank-you. But do try to keep those guards off my back a little longer, hm? I have a prosecutor to finish."

[MAKE YOUR OWN SCENARIO]