Healing Blitzo

Meetings

***Thirteen Years Ago***

Propaganda was a common thing to be exposed to in Hell. If you were to ask her nine rings' most loyal and patriotic demons what their goal was, it was simple: Defeat God. Or, if you wanted to be more specific: Defeat a tyrant manipulating everyone to his own desires to worship him by obeying his rules or suffering them. To embrace sin was to embrace true freedom. Hell was the true paradise away from the so-called "order" that had condemned demons to their fate because they refused to get on their knees to worship the God of Heaven. It was in Hell where you could be whatever you wanted, do whatever you wanted, and take whatever path you wanted without consequences.

Spend five minutes in Hell with a clear mind and observation, and you'll learn it was all bullshit.

There was no "freedom" in Hell. Not in the sense that the propaganda department was always going on about. The rich and powerful ruled Hell, and everyone else served them or fought each other for the scraps. Heaven was still more powerful than Hell because of its infinite resources, the mighty armies, the unity it had, and the fact that Hell still had to agree to rules from Heaven, such as the Exterminations, which was proof of who really held power between the two realms. People with common sense could see that Hell was a terrible place to live while being ruled by horrible people. And yet, Agent Danarius of Hell's Intelligence and Special Services would still do anything to protect it.

Home was home, after all.

While Danarius might have been disillusioned over the years, despite what he was told all his life, it didn't mean he wasn't a lover of his home and her people. At least in a nationalistic sense. Sitting alone in his office, late at night when people were supposed to be asleep, Danarius was typing on his computer with baggy eyes and a cup of double caffeine next to him. All while dealing with the worst enemy any agent had to deal with: paperwork.

Danarius was a demonic lizard of pure green scales and a mix of orange and red eyes glowing in the dark. Unlike most of his kind, he was born with no horns anywhere on his body which was rare. It was often thought by his people, the Lac'daerta, that it was a sign of someone blessed by Satan to rise high in the world. While Danarius had managed to get his job at the H.I.S.S at a younger age than average, he hadn't managed to achieve much in prestige. He managed to work on a few cases here and there, but most turned out to be false leads or low-risk threats. Despite what the TV shows portray, intelligence work wasn't always finding terrorist groups that threatened to destroy a ring level, break into the headquarters, and have a big shootout before saving the day and giving out a few one-liners. Most of the time, it was following trails and leads, spying on a few people, assessing threats, and waiting for things to happen. Danarius only fired his gun once, which was in self-defense at a drug-induced crazed hobo trying to rob him for money.

It honestly was getting to Danarius that he had yet to do something that made his job feel meaningful until he finally got on a case that was interesting: The I.R.A., aka the Imp Resistance Army.

Danarius had nothing against Imps, unlike the majority of Hell. Having spent his summers in Wrath by the farming lands, he had grown to respect the so-called "weakest" of Hell's races for their determination and other qualities. However, he wasn't blind to mistreating Imps from the other races, including the higher-up ones. So it wasn't surprising that resistance groups were fighting for equality for their race. Most didn't last a year, but this one, the I.R.A., was different from the rest because they were not just making multiple terrorist attacks. Large populations of demons were dying because of it, including high-ranking demons.

If there was anything that got the bureaucratic machine of Hell (or any government for that matter) moving, it was when someone was threatening their power or their lives.