Using my hell phone, I tapped into a news broadcast that was currently broadcasting a podium in front of the White House. One of the great things about hell phones is you didn't have to pay for TV or subscription services. The current President of the United States stood before the podium.

His name was something weird sounding. Not to be offensive to whatever familial culture he was brought up in. It just sounded strange to me. I think it was Peel-off Husk.

You know, like corn. They had a corn president. I would have called him my president, since I originated from the United States, but one benefit from becoming a citizen of Hell is that I didn't have to ally or associate myself with my former country's government or its leaders.

"Citizens," Pylaff Husk spread his arms wide, "for too long have we had to tiptoe around the sensibilities of other countries. Well, no more! As of today, I am declaring war on the countries of the world! In a few minutes, we will be firing nuclear warheads into every country other than our own! I have prepared a fireworks display over the White House to commemorate this momentous occasion!"

Suddenly, the glass of water on the podium rippled enough to be caught by the camera. Every few seconds, the water in the glass rippled harder.

"What is that?" Pylaff Husk said. "Guards! Get the air force to investigate and eliminate that disturbance!" He was instinctively ducking and covering his head.

The glass itself started to shudder until it eventually slid off the podium and shattered on the ground.

"Someone find out what that is! Now!" Pylaff yelled.

Pylaff and the surrounding ground grew dark like a cloud went in front of the sun. Pylaff looked up and off screen to the right. "What the hell is that?"

The ground shook so hard that Pylaff fell to the ground and the camera fell sideways. It kept broadcasting. The sound of explosions could be heard happening off screen.

Pylaff tried to crawl backwards. "No! No! Nooo!!!"

The video feed grew darker and darker until something solid and massive came down and smashed Pylaff. The news feed shook violently until finally breaking into static.

I put away my hell phone and looked down from Behemoth's shoulder. Pylaff had disappeared under Behemoth's foot, but I was under no illusions that would be it. He was stronger than that.

As if to prove my point, the top of Behemoth's foot exploded and Pylaff flew up on black wings towards me. Behemoth roared in pain. I patted Behemoth's shoulder. "Don't worry buddy. I'll heal you when all this is over. You just have to endure until then."

"Thank you, Dave," his booming voice responded.

Pylaff continued to rapidly climb up towards me on unholy wings of disgust and hatred. I drew sword Steve in preparation for the battle to come. Pylaff finished ascending Behemoth's massive body and gently touched down on his shoulder, facing me.

"I didn't anticipate you coming back from your wounds, let alone coming back with two of the three domain holders," he looked up at Ziz who was swooping down towards us.

Ziz cried out in her best bird scream and tried to snatch Pylaff up with her massive talons. Pylaff dodged to the left and narrowly missed her talons. Ziz cried out in frustration and started circling around to make another pass.

"Ziz! Stand down! I don't want him to kill either of you," I said, putting my hand up palm facing out. "I've got this."

"As you wish, little bird, but you better not die!" she said. She flew up higher into the sky and began to circle, just watching.

"Don't worry. I won't," I said, looking at Pylaff with a confident grin on my face.

"You seem awfully confident for someone whom I pulverized less than 24 hours ago," Pylaff said, pushing up his sleeves.

"You seem awfully arrogant for someone who just cried like a baby before being stepped on," I said, taking off my jacket and then my shirt.

"What are you doing?" he said.

"I'm asserting my dominance," I said, flexing my bare chest and arms.

"Whatever. You're just making yourself more vulnerable for me," he said, sweeping his hand through the air.

I concentrated and poured all my mental energy into my pride over my physical appearance. The silver mercurial jewel of vanity lit up on the Crown of Corruption. My body changed to look like it was made out of white marble, like the statue of David. Except this was the statue of Dave, and he was exceptional.

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I lifted sword Steve and shifted my feet into a fencing position. "Come on."

"That's not exactly fair. I don't have a weapon," he said.

"Quit your whining! I'm sure you're more than capable of coming up with a weapon. You're just trying to throw me off," I said.

He shrugged. "You caught me." He ripped his left arm out of the socket and completely off his body. He held the arm up like a sword until it transformed into a huge glaive.

A glaive for those who don't know is a pole weapon with a single-edged blade on the end. Like a spear or halberd except instead of a point or an axe head with a point, it's just a blade. They are incredibly effective and deadly in the right hands. They have a tremendous advantage over standard swords due to their reach.

He closed his eyes and a new left arm burst from his shoulder socket. He used his new arm to hold the glaive in two hands and position himself in a fighting stance of his own.

Pylaff lunged forward with his glaive, thrusting it at me, attempting to gore me on it. I jumped to the side and knocked it aside with sword Steve. He quickly repositioned his glaive and thrust it at me straight on again.

I grabbed the blade with my bare hand and broke it off, throwing it back at him. He narrowly dodged it and it skidded off Behemoth's shoulder, falling many hundreds of feet to the ground.

"How did you do that?" he asked.

"Wouldn't you like to know," I said.

"Yes, I would. That's why I asked," he said.

"Well, I'm not telling you," I said.

Pylaff ripped his hand off and stuck it to the end of the glaive. It morphed to form a new blade for the weapon. A new hand burst out of his wrist. He twirled the glaive around, passing it from one hand to the other without breaking the spin. He finished his impressive yet annoying display of acrobatics by tossing the twirling glaive high into the air.

Then he ripped his left hand off again and transformed it into a handful of throwing knives, which he threw at me all at once. Then he caught the glaive, regenerated his hand, and lunged at me behind the spray of knives.

None of that mattered to me because I was invincible. I jumped through the cloud of knives, letting them glance off my body, transitioning into a front flip. Pylaff tried to stab me but the blade glanced off my back and when I completed the front flip, I was above him in the air, past the end of the glaive. This meant the distancing effect of the glaive had been neutralized.

See, if I had simply lunged straight on, he could push me back with the glaive. Even if the blade didn't cut me, he could keep me at bay. But not with the front flip. I swung sword Steve down at Pylaff's face. Pylaff turned his head sideways trying to dodge, but I grabbed his torso with my legs, keeping him in place.

The sword sliced through flesh. I landed on my feet and kicked Pylaff in the chest, sending him sprawling. His body landed near a pine tree growing out of Behemoth's shoulder. We were on his right shoulder, which had a forest growing on it.

Pylaff scrambled along the ground, eventually touching the tree and using low-hanging branches to pull himself up. "I can't fucking see!" Pylaff turned around blindly, reaching his arms out. "Where are you, you bastard!" I could barely understand what he was saying. It all came out garbled, but my domination jewel translated it for me.

When he turned around, I realized his problem. His entire face had been sliced off. Everything that you could define as being part of a face was gone, including his eyes. All I could see were pieces of skull and brain. It was grotesque.

The wound looked burned. Cauterized. That would explain why he wasn't healing right away.

"Bllblbblrchtagrff!" turned into, "Why am I not healing? Hnnng!" He clenched and flexed his muscles and I saw his face start to grow back, but Pylaff's face wasn't the one that emerged from his skull. His face reformed into the face of Samael, the fallen angel who had almost killed me in the Abyss.

Samael narrowed his eyes at me in anger. "How did you know it was me?"

"I knew you couldn't resist the power of taking control of one of the largest countries in the world," I said. "And your speech just confirmed it. I knew if it wasn't you, it was one of your fallen angel cronies. The world leaders are all dead, aren't they?"

"If they had surrendered peacefully, we would have spared them," Samael said, shrugging.

"No, you wouldn't have! You liar," I said.

"You got me there," he said.

"Is this the point where I kill you?" I asked.

"I was going to say the same thing," he said.

"That's just it. You can't kill me," I said. "This ends with your death, whether that takes a minute or a month."

"Why can't I kill you? Wait. You didn't actually—" Samael said.

"I did," I said. "Now no one can kill me." I flexed my muscles.

"Well, that makes this simpler," he said, cracking his knuckles, sending a chill down my spine.

"What do you mean?" I asked, warily.

"I don't have to kill you," he said. "I just have to disable you. I put you in a chokehold, depriving your brain of oxygen until you pass out, and then I bury you in the ground. Cain and I used to call them his little naps."

"Every hundred years we would end up killing all the people with demon deals, and then I'd bury him for another hundred years to let the demon deals accumulate until we did it all over again."

"That doesn't make sense. Why would Cain want to die for real if you could effectively kill him by burying him in the ground?" I said.

"It's not the same. Ceasing to have brainwaves is nothing like living eternally in heaven. I just had to convince him he'd go to heaven once he died," Samael said.

"That's fucked up," I said.

"So?" he asked.

"So you shouldn't do fucked up things," I said.

"Says who?" he asked.

"I do," I said. Arguing with this guy was infuriating and pointless.

"Then make me stop," he said.

"Maybe I will," I said, gathering anger in the bottom of my stomach. I put out my left hand and let hell fire flow out of it.

Hell fire covered Samael and obscured his body from view. I thought it was doing something until the fire started to get smaller and smaller until it was revealed that Samael was sucking it into his mouth.

I stopped shooting fire and he finished sucking it in. He swallowed and said, "Mmm. Yummy."

"What the fuck?" I said.

"What? You think unholy things like hellfire can hurt me? I'm a fallen angel, baby. I'm one of the unholiest things to ever exist," he said, spreading his arms wide.

Uh oh. Time to change tactics.