Double or Nothing: One in a Million

Time's Not A Luxury Anymore

Morpheus stepped through the archway into the ruined festivities, his sky blue lighting setting the room in a calm, static blue glow. Jack and Cynthia raced forward, pushing past the Cobra agents that sat and rested, recovering from their wounds while Cynthia clasped her hands over her mouth in a scream of fear and despair. Jack, finding the source of anguish, threw his trench coat and fedora to the side and leapt over the mossy stone decor, diving headfirst into the pool and thrashing to the bottom before surfacing with the limp, desaturated form of Julia Florence in his arms. The water was stained red and murky gold with the shimmering confetti.

While Jack emerged from the pool, soaked and trembling from the adrenaline rush, Deck leapt down from the balcony above, diving into a roll before popping up and running to Jack and Cynthia. Skidding to a full stop next to Jules, the Demon combed his hand over Jules' head, tears filling both of his eyes and pooling in the scars and cracks of his deformed face. "Oh God, Jules," he gasped, but as Jack laid his protege down on a bench beside the pool, Cynthia's hands coiled around Deck's neck, slamming the Demon into the floor. As Deck thrashed against the choking agony, Cynthia's goggles flashed with pure hate.

"What did I warn you would happen to Deck if he messed up, Jack?" she snarled. But Jack turned away, rushing over and grabbing Cynthia's shoulders. "Thia, stop it! I don't think Deck had any control over what happened here!" The armored Demon struggled in Cynthia's ironclad grip, his hooves flailing and his tail shaking from lack of oxygen when another voice called out through a rasp. "It wasn't his fault, Cynthia! It was mine!" Cynthia dropped the heaving succubus and turned to the balcony, where a gravely wounded and scraped Asmodeus had limped to the balcony, resting her arms on the bronze railing.

Coughing through tear-bled eyes, Asmodeus forced herself to deliver the truth. "We were attacked by terrorists. A man came through here, asking for me to surrender and join his army of terrorists, the same who have been attacking Pride and causing all the madness." Cynthia's shoulders dropped in disbelief while Morpheus gasped, his metallic breathing loud as he stormed up the steps, sliding across the railing to his sister's side. "My Lord, you've been wounded! Azzie, what did you do?" Resting her legs and back in her brother's titanium arms, Asmodeus sprawled out, unable to change into something without whimpering in agony.

"This man, this Sinner, he fought unlike anything I've ever encountered. He could have defeated Azazel, Murphy, he could have!" The Lord of Sloth directed his focus to Jack and Cynthia below, now accompanied by two more succubi, a bulkier Demon with a ruined suit and a smaller Demoness with a bronze cutlass slung over her shoulder. His watered blue eyes grew cold and lifeless with stunned silence. Jack took another step forward from below, waving his gloves out. "Did this monster say who he was or what he wanted?" Asmodeus coughed, dragging her frayed and scraped tail over her arms and legs in a trembling fever.

"He called himself the Crimson Stripe. Although he claimed he was here for me, I think he was looking for you, and mistook Jules for someone she wasn't." Cynthia turned to face her daughter, but caught herself on Jack, who had frozen solid. His hands clenched and unclenched and everything in his exposed face seemed to grow a deep, burning red that filled his eyes and forced every vein in his neck to bulge out. "Jack? What's wrong, are you-?" And without warning, the Sin Hunter violently seized a chair and threw it hard across the room.

For a chair forged from pure steel and rimmed silver of quite heavy proportions, the Sin Hunter threw the chair as if it were a baseball, swinging across the room and shattering three vases on its course to the opposite wall. Everybody froze, all eyes on the hunched, heaving figure in the center of the room. Jack's eyes wobbled in their sockets and his canines glistened in the diffracted chandelier light. When Cynthia took a step forward, Jack snapped upward, his eyes narrowed into pure silver slits. "The Crimson Stripe...you mean that asshole who kidnapped my wife and held my best friends hostage?!" he roared.