Redemption lies within

Mac

Mac groaned as his senses returned to him, and as he became more aware of his surroundings, he felt restrained. Blinking his eyes open, Mac tested his arms and feet, only to feel tied to what felt like a chair. He grunted as he tried to free himself, but to no avail.

"Ah, good, you're awake." A voice brought Mac's attention to the far side of the room, and from out of the darkness walked the target he and his men were supposed to kidnap and bring back to his employer.

As the burnt sinner approached the table near Mac's seat, the man placed a few tools on the table, such as pliers and a blowtorch.

Mac's eyes widened in fear, not for his life, but for the potential excruciating pain he'd feel if the other sinner was about to torture him for information on who he works for. "Listen, man, I don't want any more trouble; I'm just a bottom-rung minion of the guy that sent us after you!" he pleaded to the burnt sinner.

On the other hand, the other sinner was brushing his hands off something while looking down at the tools he placed on the table before looking up at Mac. "You brought trouble to me, and while the good book teaches to love thy neighbor, I must get to the bottom of why you and your men wanted to accost me," he said authoritatively.

Mac had to blink a few times at what the other sinner had said, registering for a bit in his mind, before realizing the sinner standing on the other side of the table was once a bible reader, perhaps still. Hard to say. Mac never paid that religious crap much mind. Still, upon reflection on that bit, Mac couldn't help but realize he never thought of the irony in not believing in the afterlife and always did what he wanted in the belief that his only one life was what he got.

And now look at him. A tied-up sinner in hell, about to be tortured by another sinner who was himself declared to be of the faith. The irony was palpable.

Mac couldn't help but scoff at the burnt man underneath heavy gauze: "Look, man, torture me all you want with those tools, but spare me that drivel of that book stuff. I'm already miserable in hell as it is!" he expressed with an annoyed look, "I don't need no Saint Peter book of goodwill jargon!"

"Ah, I see." While glancing down at the tools and pushing them aside, the other sinner remarked, "There's been some misunderstanding on a few things, but we shall fix them, along with whatever information I can get out of you willingly."

Mac lifted a brow at the sudden awkward atmosphere. "Wait, what do you mean?" he asked, his avian beak looking confused.

The Burnt sinner gestured at the tools, "I simply got back from helping the manager and his workers clean up the mess of the front window, and I had just gotten back to check if you were awake yet."

"...What!?" Mac squawked in disbelief at the sinner and glanced at the blowtorch in particular, "In what fashion would you need a blowtorch to fix a window!?" he shrieked in disbelief.

"I welded bars over the broken window." The burnt man answered without missing a beat, "A temporary fix to keep thieves from entering the store during closing hours."

"...My man, I think you forget where we are." Mac deadpanned at the other sinner, "I don't think metal bars would stop the more strident attempt of thieves to ransack this place."

The burnt man stepped around the table while pulling a chair with him, his legs scraping against the floor as he did so. "And you'd be correct, but the manager had also eased my doubts on that idea," he said while plopping the chair around to sit across from Mac on the same side of the table. But we've gone off-topic," the burnt sinner said while easing himself into the wooden chair.

Mac let out a gruff noise as he gave the man an annoyed look, "What, you'll talk the info out of me? Hah!" he derided the burnt sinner, "I told you before, I'm a bottom rung minion, I don't know anything beyond the task and the employers name.

"Ah, then we are getting somewhere." The burnt sinner remarked with a glint in his eyes.

"...What? But I didn't say anything!" Mac remarked with a confused look.

The other sinner shook his head at Mac, "I want your employer's name." He answered calmly, "Give me your boss's name, and I shall set you free."

"...You promise?" Mac asked after thinking about it for a moment and staring back at the man for any hint of deception. Mac earned a slow affirmative nod from the burnt man. "A-a-alright, his name is Leviathan Von Eldritch," he answered with a nervous smile.

"Much obliged." the other sinner answered before reaching into his vest and pulling out a revolver to aim at Mac's head.

"Wait- you promi-" Mac stuttered, only for the burnt sinner to interrupt him as the man pulled the revolver's hammer back to prime it.

"Yes, and I am a man of my word. I shall set you free of your mortal coil." The burnt sinner intoned before firing the revolver at Mac's head. An intense cloud of gunpowder filled the room from the man firing the revolver at Mac's head, and after several moments passed, the cloud dissipated to show Mac still alive and wide-eyed with the burnt sinner's arm still holding his gun up at Mac's head.

Joshua

Mac was completely unharmed with not a speck of a bullet ever gracing his head, while Joshua spun his revolver around on his finger before holstering it into his vest, "That was a joke on my part, you are actually free to go." he expressed lightheartedly.

Joshua stood up from his chair and glanced back down at the avian sinner, only to see the avian pass out and the distinct smell of urine wafting from Mac. "...Daniel did say my humor was always lacking…" Joshua muttered to himself before getting up from his chair and stepping over to drag the tied-up sinner out of the room and out the back of the store to deposit the unconscious avian sinner out of the bindings Joshua had put him in.

After finishing up the process of chucking the avian sinner off to the side beside a dumpster in the back of the store, Joshua resolved to take his leave of the store with Niffty and find another store that sold phones.

Elsewhere

Heaven Embassy

At the front desk of the embassy, a bright yellow tear tore through the lobby air, and through the hole, a figure stepped through the tear. The figure was angelic, as the angel in question was nowhere near human in appearance compared to when most angels would lower their forms to be easier on the minds of mortals.

While the angel held a tome in his lower left arm, his lower right arm had a phone while his upper arms were crossed over his chest. On the back of the angel were four wings, and its feet were of talons. As the angel was thumbing into its phone to contact Seraphial that it had arrived in hell, its head was that of a hawk while on the backside was the face of an owl. Both faces beheld four eyes each.

The hawk's front face looked down with its lower eyes as it thumbed its phone a bit more before getting the face time to finally work as the call went through. "Why couldn't Sera just let me use my orb to contact her?" the angel grumbled in a masculine tone. "It works just the same…" he grumbled as his upper eyes swiveled around to examine his surroundings.

On the other hand, his owl face on the backside commented in the same voice, "Nice place." He commented, "Just a shame it has to dwell in hell." The angel said the call finally connected, allowing him to Facetime with Seraphial.

Seraphial gleamed with a simple smile. "Ah, you've finally called. I was worried you would not be able to understand how to handle the new technology," Seraphim remarked with a bemused smile. I'm glad that you could take time out of your schedule to help on this matter, Raziel."

Raziel's eagle eyes now looked down at his phone to converse with Seraphial, "The humans can go without a day of my influence on them. I trust that much in them." he said. At the same time, his backside owl face let out a hoot before comment with it while twisting his head around to let it face the phone, "Though, the past century has been a bit violent before the mid-century had passed. Quite nasty those humans can be against each other." the owl face commented with a wizened tone and wide-eyed stare from his four owl eyes.

Seraphial's face darkened a bit before coughing into her fist and making a sideways look. "Yes. Well…" she replied, then looked back at Raziel through the phone, "We can talk about those years some other time. It was a chaotic mess for both heaven and hell. But for now, I require your assistance in finding the stray soul in hell and sending him back to his home realm." she instructed with a sharp look as she sat at her desk during the call.

Raziel's head swiveled around back to that of his eagle face and conversed with Seraphial, "Yes. Yes. Quite." he nodded in agreement and gave his fellow Seraphim angel a look. "Ah, but pardon me, I believe I need to shift my form down." he expressed with an amused look in his four eyes.

"Yes." Seraphial agreed as she watched from the other end of the call as Raziel's form shifted with bright light. Before, what stood now was just a two-armed humanoid being with only an eagle's head and two wings of a hawk on his back while still having talons for feet.

Raziel coughed into his fist in embarrassment and shook his body a bit before his eagle head shimmered with light into a simple eagle face mask over his face while his feet glowed until the light disappeared to show simple bare feet. "That's the best I can power down, I suppose…." he remarked with some amusement in his tone towards his fellow Seraphim.

Seraphial smiled back at Raziel, steepling her fingers as she conversed with the other angel. "Yes, well, it's not like I need you at your full power to capture a simple lost sinner soul," she remarked with some bemusement.

"Hm…" Raziel nodded in agreement and started walking off to the embassy's entrance. "Do you perhaps have any images of the Sinner I need to detain?" the Archangel Seraphim asked Seraphial as he approached the doorways.

"Indeed I do." Seraphial answered as she pressed something on her end of the call, before an image popped up on Raziel phone, "This is the footage of the sinner, he was accompanying Lucifer's daughter during the last meeting between heaven and hell."

Raziel studied the footage, most in particular of the burnt man that stood beside the young Hellborn child of Lucifer. "Understood." the angel affirmed and looked up from the phone to reach up and let himself out of the embassy, "I'll report back when I have the stray soul detained." he intoned, earning a nod from Seraphial before both ended the call with each other.

As Raziel stood outside the Heaven embassy, he sniffed the air for a bit before wrinkling his nose. " Ugh, I forgot how bad hell smells with sin so rampant," he commented before he bent to his knees and jumped to soar through the air to search for his target.

Joshua

Exiting from the recent store he had checked for an easy to use phone, Joshua stood outside an electronics store with a flip phone in hand and eyed it with some reservation. "Hm…not as difficult as it seems…" Joshua muttered to himself as he looked down at his flip phone.

It was supposed to be simple in use: just dial the number of the person you wanted to call, and the call would connect, none of that touch screen bells and whistles most sinners would often be seen looking down at while walking the sidewalks of pentagram city.

Looking up from his new device, Joshua began trekking back to the hotel. Niffty had already parted ways with him to return to the hotel with her cleaning supplies. The only reason Joshua didn't have a problem with Niffty going alone was a gut instinct—that and the little female sinner's penchant for violence.

With that thought out of the way, Joshua pocketed his flip phone into his vest pockets for safekeeping. Joshua eventually crossed a street as he walked through a crowd of sinners. While walking along the street, he heard the odd sound of an eagle and an owl noise simultaneously.

Joshua momentarily looked up. He stopped momentarily in the middle of the street, and as he did, he saw a speck in the sky that was becoming larger as it descended toward his location. Joshua's instincts blared in his mind to dodge, but before his reflexes could react in time, he felt himself impacted by a set of hands. A large crash and splash echoed around Joshua as he found himself underneath the streets of Pride Ring.

He found himself being impacted by whatever it was into the sewers of Pentagram city, and as Joshua groaned in pain while moving to pick himself up from the pile of asphalt he found himself in, a hand grabbed him by his vest to pull him up. Joshua's instincts went on hyper-alert as he quickly reached into his vest to pull out a pistol and fire into the offender who had decided to accost him in such a manner.

After emptying his clip into the offender on his person, Joshua's ears rang from him firing his gun in the sewers, the cacophony of the echos died down after a few seconds along with the echoing sounds of bullet casings falling into the sewage waters.

The offender, wearing an eagle mask, tilted his head at Joshua amusedly. "Was that supposed to hurt?" the unknown assailant asked Joshua. The person's tone did not hint at hostility.

A few moments passed in Joshua's mind, and after his senses finally returned to him from the quick exchange of his reaction, Joshua took quick stock of the situation and answered the assailant's question. "It is obvious it did not." he intoned, staring back at the eagle mask wearer's eyes. "But most times, it works on normal sinners." he finished saying, keeping himself tense since the assailant still held his vest.

"Hmm. Yes, you'd be correct on that." The assailant remarked as he tilted his head back to its normal position, "But I am no sinner; I am an angel, of which I am one of the highest ones, Raziel the Keeper of Magic, and I have come to take you back to your home realm, stray soul."

Joshua eyed the angel with some surprise, but kept his emotions under control, "I see, I'm afraid I must decline though, for the Lord's work requires my presence here in hell. So excuse me for denying the offer." he expressed kindly.

"I'm sure you think that," Raziel remarked as he brushed Joshua's shoulders off idly before jerking him up towards him to stare back at the sinner face to face. "But I wasn't making an offer. You don't belong here, and no amount of silly thoughts that amount to some belief that the Father of all creation had sent you to this realm will stay in my hand."

Joshua's arms snapped up as he grabbed Raziel's arms in response, giving the Archangel a sharp look. "Then the time for talk has passed; the lord's work must be shown his divine covenant with me, even if I must burn one of his angels."

Raziel

Raziel was about to laugh at the sinner and the absurdity of what the burnt sinner implied. He did not expect the sinner's hands, which gripped his arms, to explode into flames.

Most of all, he did not expect a familiar feeling from the flames themselves, which fed off the sinner's bare forearms and hands.

As Raziel stared back at the sinner with widened eyes beneath his hawk mask, his internal thoughts were a jumbled mess as the sinner reared his fist back and sent it flying into his face, shattering his hawk mask in the process. 'Father?' were Raziel's thoughts as he felt himself reeling from the punch and letting the sinner fall back down to stand on his feet.

Raziel stumbled back a bit as he tore his burning mask off and stared at the sinner with a wide-eyed and disbelieving look. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Why do you carry the Father's flame on you?"

The burnt sinner stared back at Raziel with a resolved look in his eyes, "I carry the lord's flame of judgment on myself as penance of past sins I had transgressed. It is also the mark of my covenant with the lord."

"You lie!" Raziel denied the thought that the Lord would go out of his way to send a sinner of all people to their realm of the afterlife.

The sinner simply held up his hand as the flames on it died down and pointed his index finger up, "Thou shall not bear false witness, and I am not one for making a lie against the Lord." the burnt man said with a tone that beheld no guile to Raziel's ears.

"What sort of covenant are you in with the Holy Father?" Raziel asked, his tone somewhat humble.

"Redemption of sinners, and through Lilith's child no less." The Sinner answered without missing a beat.