Two weeks after God was found, freed, and left Hell to get Heaven straightened out - with Lilith icily explaining everything that happened to Lucifer, and the whole story about Adam, herself, Eve, and why the apple was even necessary, leaving all the other people in the room bar Alastor horrified - Vox finds himself marching up the hill to the Hotel, dragging one bound and gagged idiot behind him. He clearly remembers Lucifer telling God that, if they don't hear from him within a month then there's nothing he can actually do to stop Calliope from storming Heaving and breaking down any doors or walls in her way to get some answers about what's going to happen next - and, fuck, does he not want anything like that coming towards V-Tower and his and Velvette's respective businesses because of none other than Adam hanging around.
Or, at least, someone claiming to be him.
If she's willing and able to march straight up to Heaven and demand some answers about whether or not they're still planning a war - complete radio-silence on that end, even as more plans get piled up including Lilith herself being set up in Alastor's radio tower to broadcast her singing until the battle's over, one way or another - then she's more than willing to turn the entire tower into ground zero for an explosion that'll make the Hotel's television look like a Party Popper.
Hence why he's dragging a Dragon-fied 'First Man' up to the hotel; he's already been killed about six times now - he doesn't even want to try and imagine just how he's now a Sinner, he really doesn't, Peverell killed him after all - all because he can't keep his mouth shut about how terrible Hell is, how much of a shithole it is, and how he's the First Man and everyone else are a bunch of losers. And how he should've killed everyone down here when he had the chance.
Safe to say, Adam has all of zero friends, allies, or even people that tolerate him.
Pounding on the front door with one hand, Vox mutters "See if these guys will take you in…because literally nobody else in Hell will." If Alastor ends up putting Adam on his show, he won't be particularly surprised.
The door opens, and Vox sees Angel Dust standing there - fully clothed, something he never thought possible before. The spider demon blinks once, and then a heartbeat later he bursts out laughing before slamming the door shut. A moment later, the door opens again, and Husker is standing there even as Angel Dust laughs hysterically from out of sight of the doorway. Then the door shuts again - it opens again to the spider's shorter sibling, holding two guns in his hands as Angel Dust and Husker laugh - the door shuts again as a pair of white limbs wrap around the black spider.
The doorway turns into a series of new people opening and closing the door, all of them adding to the laughter that can only be heard when another person opens it. Calliope's magic, Vox can only assume - if she can accidentally bring an entire set of silverware and a television to life with her blood, she can make it so you can't hear something happening in another room.
At one point, even the Princess and her white-haired girlfriend open the door - Charlotte clapping both her hands to her face even as the spear-wielding woman looks absolutely delighted for some reason - even as Adam suddenly sucks a sharp breath in through his nose for some reason.
And then the door slams shut once more, cutting off all the roaring laughter that could be heard from inside the place.
Vox eyes Adam, and drily says "I think they recognized you." It also seems…he's actually that Adam. Wonders never cease, it seems!
Adam rolls his eyes, making various sounds from behind his cable-gag that sound similar to 'I told you so!'
Finally, after a solid minute, the door opens again - to the King and Queen of Hell, this time. One of Lilith's eyebrows rises so high it nearly disappears into her hairline, and Lucifer very clearly has to keep himself from bursting out into his own gales of laughter. "So," Lilith hums, amusement thick in every syllable, "seems Calli was right when she said not to be too surprised if we see someone who looks like a certain dead Exorcist leader."
Vox raises an eyebrow of his own, asking "She knew he'd show up? Also, this is actually Adam, the First Man Adam?!" That should be impossible, he was up in Heaven, had the halo and everything! How the fuck is he now a Sinner?!
Lilith waves a hand dismissively, saying "There's things she can't share with human souls. Rules she has to follow as well. A great many of them related to why she's been out of Hell for the past century and a half."
Vox incredulously asks "You're saying she has people she answers to?!" He can't see it, he really can't. She has all the other Sins leaping to her every word, orders literal God around, can travel from the deepest Ring of Hell to Heaven and back if she so desires…who the fuck could she possibly answer to?!
Lucifer nods, mirth vanishing as he says "Yeah. Trust me, you don't want to meet them yourself. Azrael's stories are more than enough for me."
"So," Lilith says, leaning against the doorframe, "I suppose the question is…why are you here?"
Vox holds out the cable towards the two of them, saying "You guys deal with him, I don't care how!" And that would be the point where even the rulers of Hell themselves join the large group of people still laughing their asses off, Lucifer slamming the door shut.
Vox glances at Adam in sheer disbelief, and incredulously asks "What did you do?!" Because, despite being incredibly powerful and ruling Hell for the past ten millennia, Lucifer and Lilith Morningstar aren't particularly cruel or ruthless…like, at all. No, Calliope Peverell is all their ruthlessness, he's learned. They're the ones she wanted as King and Queen of Hell so they'd be untouchable - nobody wants to fuck with the King and Queen when they have a guard dragon that can and will burn everyone else to a crisp at even the slightest hint of a threat, after all.
Adam just glares at him, dragon tail thrashing angrily. And then, suddenly, the door opens once more…this time revealing Alastor.
"Oh, thank fuck…here, take this idiot, and I don't care if he ends up on your Radio show! I really don't, Al!"
Alastor raises an eyebrow, eyes scanning the two of them, and he asks "Care to explain?"
"This idiot started making a scene in the damn lobby, I don't even know what he was doing in V-Tower to begin with. But, considering who he claims to be…" Vox eyes Adam once more, noting how he's gone completely still at the sight of Alastor, this time looking nervous of all things - right, the Exorcist leader did fight him on the rooftop that day. Shrugging, Vox adds "Nobody wants anything to do with him. Anyone that so much as touches him with a ten-foot pole is going to be hunted down. And the last thing Vel and I need is him fucking things up." They're still doing damage control after Valentino's unfixable screw-up. Re-branding, taking the Vees in a new direction, all of it - literally the last thing they need is Adam the idiot getting attached to their reputation. Which means this idiot - whether he's actually Adam or is just taking credit - needs to go.
Preferably in the most public way possible, but he'll take the guy getting quietly squirreled away in the Hotel.
Alastor raises an eyebrow, grin widening so far it looks like he's going to split his face open entirely, and asks "And what makes you think he'll be welcome here? After all, he did attack the place out of sheer pettiness for being shown up in Heaven."
"There's gotta be something you can do with him - put him on your Radio show for all I care! He's been claiming to be a bloodthirsty arrogant murderer who enjoyed picking off anyone and everyone he found down here, no matter if he's actually the same guy or not! Literally nobody I can think of is going to be sorry to hear this idiot scream, alright?" If he sounds like he's at his wit's end…it's because he is. He's seen plenty of Sinners in denial about being in Hell - the ones who 'didn't do anything wrong' and who 'this can't be happening to. Fuck, he had his own phase - he literally woke up with a TV for a head,dammit.
But, this guy?
He takes it to a whole other level on top of everything else, and Vox has literally never seen anyone so utterly out of touch with reality…and that's coming from him, the guy who was drugged to the near-literal gills by Valentino for decades and never realized it.
Hence the gag, he had to shut the guy up somehow, anyhow.
And then Calliope appears in the doorway, slipping out from underneath Alastor's arm and asking "What's…oh. That explains a lot." She flicks her fingers, and suddenly they can't hear the laughter that's still going on. "So," she pseudo-casually asks, "what are the two of you doing here? You never struck me as much of a 'Gods, do I want to get out of Hell' type of person, Vox, and Adam over there…" Seems Azrael had to 'find' his paperwork at long-last. At least they had a few months of relative peace from his specific brand of idiocy.
Alastor chuckles, leaning against the doorframe as he says "He's trying to foist the ex-Exorcist off onto us."
Calli raises an eyebrow, lips twitching as she tries to keep her composure, and says "He can't possibly be more trouble than Valentino, Vox."
Vox has to give her credit, there's only a little bit of amusement leaking through in her voice. "Val is exactly why we can't have this absolute moron hanging around! He's got absolutely no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, keeps claiming to literally everyone who will listen to him that he's the very dead leader of the Exorcists. The one you killed! Somehow, he made his way to V-Tower and started causing a scene. I don't know if he's delusional, completely insane, or what, but-"
Calli's phone suddenly rings, and she pulls it out of a pocket only to raise an eyebrow. Picking up, she asks "Magic?"
Vox has to pound himself on the chest real quick, clear the blockage that just spontaneously formed in his airway - but, Magic?! He did not just hear that right, did he?!
"What's going on?!"
"So…Fate and I got a little bored, and-"
The noise that comes out of Calli's throat is probably the single most distressed noise any of them have ever heard. She screeches "That's what I'm for!! That's when you either tune in to the 'Chaos around Calliope' channel or just call me!"
"You're on vacation, though…D said we weren't allowed to bother you. For a straight millennia over there, at that."
"Oh gods," Calli says, running a hand through her hair before pinching the bridge of her nose in a gesture Vox is all too familiar with, "what'd you two do? What'd you make? Did you make another Bloodline curse? Because you know better than anyone else, Magic, that two Luck Curses like mine are probably going to rip this entire reality apart faster than G or Roo getting obliterated-"
There's a roar in the background of the call, loud enough that everyone hears it without issue. Calli goes whiter than snow, and hisses "You two made a Hungarian Horntail?!"
"Not quite, it didn't turn out quite the same…and I'm pretty sure it can-"
Nobody hears what the voice on the other end of the call says, as a sound that's something like a mix of fabric being torn and a cannon being fired sounds - from both the call and Pride Ring. All four of them stare in shock as two sets of massive talons suddenly rip through the sky, and an honest-to-gods dragon rips its way into Pride Ring.
All four of them stare in absolute horror as the thing forces its way through, and Calli says "If you were going to say you think it can travel between realms…it can. Gotta go, bye!" She promptly flames away, and about fifteen seconds later they see her reappear in a burst of light right over the Dragon's body. With several explosions happening along the body, to no apparent effect.
And then a familiar portal opens up, and Azrael comes flying through and rolls to a stop with a groan about three feet away.
Alastor slams the door shut, and about twenty seconds later it opens back up to reveal himself, Lilith, and Lucifer standing there - none of them laughing anymore.
Lilith rushes over to help Azrael off the ground, slinging one of his arms around her shoulders as he gets to his feet, asking "What happened?!"
Azrael groans, his free hand holding his torso like his ribs are broken, and asks "You know Calli's story about out-flying a dragon at fourteen?"
Vox's screen glitches slightly, and he asks "Come again?!" He hasn't heard that one, and he'd really like to not get taken by surprise whenever someone says something like that - since when were dragons real, and how the fuck would a teenager end up needing to out-fly one?!
"Well, I just discovered she downplays how utterly terrifying that must've been. We knew she's got that habit of downplaying stuff…I didn't think she downplayed it that much, though." He thought he grasped it, thought he understood just how petrified she must've been - he might've gotten how utterly fucked-up such a thing was and still is, but the fear?
Not by a long shot.
Vox chuckles disbelievingly, and asks "You mean she gives just enough details that something's believable while still holding back most everything?"
Azrael laughs humorlessly, wincing and holding his ribs tighter, and says "She mastered that art before this world was even around. Yes, she's always been like this long as we've known her."
Vox lets out a sharp breath as the dragon suddenly gets a green line around its head - likely Calliope trying to steer the thing the old fashioned way - and just misses V-Tower altogether as it sharply pulls up before ripping another hole in the air and vanishing once more. After a minute, he mutters "I don't know whether that's better or worse than the time with all the Angels appearing out of the blue…"
"Sera," a familiar voice says from the bottom of the hill, "tell me that wasn't some contingency plan of yours."
When they all look over, they see God, Sera, and Lute standing down there, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael a few feet ahead. And God looks pissed off, even as Sera frantically denies any knowledge of the giant monster that just vanished.
And Lute's staring at Adam like her entire worldview has just been upended altogether.