The soldier tumbled through the stale air with only a mild feeling of concern, pinwheeling towards the ground. Underneath him, Daisy was screaming, her arms and legs flailing uncontrollably as she fell. Isabeld had their paws aimed downwards, legs splayed out as their tongues wiggled wildly through the wind whipping at their face.

Easily, the soldier directed his fall toward Daisy, plucked her out of the air with all the ease of picking an apple from a tree, and righted himself. He slammed into the ground, and a massive cloud of red dust erupted around him.

After it cleared, he gazed around Brimstone's barren land and nodded appreciatively. He hadn't been in Hell in far too long, and he was finally back.

Daisy was shivering, her ears flat against the back of her head as she whispered, "I'm not good with heights."

The soldier set her down and patted her on the top of the head. She'd seemed to like it earlier, and it made her calm down now. Staring around with an expression of unmistakable dread, she tentatively asked, "Where is this?"

The soldier's voice was gravelly and, for the first time that she'd ever heard it, happy. "Hell."

She stared at him. "We're in Hell!? Why!?"

The soldier had thought he'd made it pretty clear where they were going, seeing as they'd gone to a diabolist and all, but he answered regardless, rubbing her head and making her fur stick up in every direction. "To rip and tear."

She grinned as winningly as she could, an enormous amount of stress clearly visible in her. "And, uh, we can't... do that somewhere else? Like maybe the Kaila Islands? I heard they're pretty nice right now."

The soldier shook his head, summoned a shotgun, and handed it to her. She stumbled back under its weight and fell over, yelping as she slammed her rump on the rocky ground. Setting the weapon down, she rubbed her backside and sighed. "Okay, we're in Hell. I guess I can get used to that. But I don't think I can use-" She frowned at the pump-action shotgun. "Whatever that is."

After a moment's consideration, the soldier held a hand up and summoned a different gun. This one might have been called a large pistol in the soldier's hands, but in Daisy's arms it looked more like a single-shot rifle of some kind. It still looked heavy, but she could hold it without falling over. Taking a look down its barrel, she asked casually, "So what's-"

The soldier quickly leaned over and moved the barrel away from her face, aiming it at the buildings nearby, and then summoned another. Although it looked pitifully small in his hands, he raised it to his shoulder and braced it, curling his finger around the trigger. "Aim it at what you want to kill."

Daisy hesitantly copied his motion, and the soldier replaced his own copy of the pistol/rifle with the three-barreled chain gun.

He still wanted to kill Envy. Quite a lot, actually. It might have been some time since he was kicked out of Hell by Satan, but his eagerness to annihilate all of the demons one by one - or better yet, a couple thousand at a time - had not diminished in the slightest. If anything, the drought had made him all the more thirsty for blood.

Looking around for a moment, he caught a glimpse of the gigantic dome marking Envy's palace and started off towards it. After a moment's hesitation, Daisy started following him. Almost immediately, she cried out and stumbled to the ground, grabbing at her feet. Concerned, the soldier picked her up. With her nose twitching and tears rushing to her eyes, she angrily growled through gritted teeth, "Why is the ground so sharp? This place was not made with Lepori in mind."

No, the soldier agreed, it was made with demons in mind. It wouldn't do to have Daisy tearing her bare feet up on the rough terrain of Hell - she was his rabbit, after all. After thinking about it for a moment, he walked over to Isabeld and set the Lepori on her furry back. Grabbing for a moment, Daisy found an indent in the armor around Isabeld's shoulders and held onto it tightly with one arm. The other grasped her rifle/pistol, which she awkwardly rested on one shoulder. Dusting his hands off, the soldier gave her a thumbs up and turned around, once again heading for the palace.

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He hadn't been in Hell all that long, all things considered, but he knew which roads to take based on the demons he'd killed in them. This alley, he knew, was the one where he'd replaced the head of one of the smaller demons with a wall. That wide road full of potholes was the one where he'd leveled a few hundred demons with a chaingun from the vantage point on the roof of one of the nearby houses. That section of ruined buildings was where he'd been forced into close quarters and had used a particularly tough demon's head as a weapon for half an hour.

Finally, they left the main part of the town and entered the clearing just before Envy's palace, and the soldier's eyes narrowed. There was a group of maybe a dozen or so muscular demons milling around in front of the gates, looking incredibly uncomfortable and talking to each other in low voices.

The moment they saw the soldier, without the slightest hesitation, they hurled themselves to the grounds, arms splayed out and horns buried into the ground. The soldier had already summoned a shotgun, but paused in confusion. What was happening?

Approaching with his shotgun at the ready, the soldier raised it to his shoulder and aimed, waiting for their response. The entire row flinched with every step he took, and the one in the front slowly began to crawl forward, his horns digging trenches into the ground. "Please don't kill us."

The soldier grunted in response. He'd heard that one before. Quite a lot.

As he lifted the shotgun, the demons buried their horns further into the ground, trembling in obvious terror. The frontmost one swallowed loudly and rasped, "We swear our undying fealty to you."

Now that he hadn't heard. Not that it mattered all that much - they were still demons, and 'undying' was definitely a lie where the soldier was concerned. And where the soldier was presently concerned was the distance between the end of his shotgun and the back of the demon's red skull.

As he started to raise the shotgun once again, Daisy leaned over and muttered worriedly, "Shouldn't we hear them out first?"

Very, very, slowly, the soldier turned his head to face her, leaving the shotgun aimed at the demons. Her ears immediately went flat on the back of her head, but she licked her suddenly dry lips and tentatively asked, "They're swearing fealty. That's a big deal for a demon."

Looking back to the demons, eyes squinted, the soldier made a decision.

Grabbing the frontmost demon on the shoulder with enough force to hear his bones grind, the soldier picked him up to his feet. The demon might have been considered tall by most standards. The soldier still towered over him. To the demon's credit, he didn't make a sound despite the undoubtedly agonizing pain in his shoulder.

Trembling like a leaf in a stiff wind, the demon began to speak and bit a scream off before he could finish. His knees gave out, and the only thing holding him up at that point was the soldier's steel grip. Finally, he managed to gasp out, "We... we fear you."

The soldier knew what fear was. It was the feeling other people got when they met him. It was the feeling he had instilled upon his enemies back in his Hell, although it'd taken him a lot longer to make the demons there fear him. This demon's confession of terror held no more impact to the soldier than a comment regarding the weather, and his grip impossibly tightened further.

A barely restrained shriek of agony became audible, marked by a keening whine emanating from the back of the demon's throat. The soldier was grinding the bones in his shoulder against each other, rolling his grip and kneading the muscles in the most painful possible way he could manage. He was honestly a bit surprised that the demon hadn't passed out yet.

A few seconds later, the soldier relinquished his grip, and the demon collapsed to the ground, nearly sobbing in relief. The other demons were extraordinarily still, evidently believing the total absence of movement to be the only chance of their survival. They weren't entirely wrong, to be fair.

As the demon who had been trying to talk to him nursed his shoulder, whimpering faintly, one of his allies crawled forward. Keeping his face downward, he whispered, "We swear our fealty to you, Doom Guy."

The soldier glared at him, but a blue board interrupted him before he could threaten the demon.

have sworn fealty to you. Do you accept?>

For what felt like the hundredth time, the soldier wished that was still around to explain things to him. This felt like a rather important decision, but after a moment he realized that the demons couldn't do much to him even if they did try to backstab him. That aside, it still meant there would be demons still in the possession of their lives, and he didn't like that very much.

Daisy tapped him on the shoulder. "Doom? It's - it's up to you in the end. But... I don't know, I don't feel good killing them when they're just sitting there. I mean... would there be any point?"

The soldier stared at her, a bit surprised. Aliss hadn't exactly been vocal about her scruples when it came to slaying and ripping and tearing and just generally having a good time, but in this case Daisy had a point. Exterminating the demons in front of him would carry with it all the satisfaction of kicking a dog.

With a grunt of annoyance, he pushed .