Double Or Nothing: A Coin Flip Away

Medic!!

An earthquaking knock shook the house and its owners from their fidgeting positions around the long dinner table. Lucifer was the first to push himself out of his throne at the head of the table, his hands flat on the wood surface. "There they are!" he shouted, rushing out of the dining hall with his cloak swinging around his shoulders and buckling over his chest. Lilith rose from her seat with her child safe in her arms, and Winfrey helped the Queen of Hell follow her anxious husband. Lilith and the imp butler tried to match Lucifer's anxiety-fueled pace, but the King of Hell quickly disappeared around every corner, arriving at the grand hallway in the foyer.

Turning to his large, ornately carved mahogany doors, Lucifer snapped his fingers with a dark expression of worry on his face. The doors into his mansion blew open, and in swept a ragtag group of his children and some. Morpheus came barreling through first, his large mechanical arms cradling the fluffed, coarse fur of Asmodeus, whose shining amethyst frame now glittered with stale red blood. Lucifer pushed forward, rushing to his youngest child's side. "Asmodeus! What happened to you, dear? Please, speak to me," he paused, fading away with every breath.

Morpheus removed his admiral's hat with a tentacle from his beard, hanging his breathing apparatus and hat on the hooks beside the door. "She was attacked by a monster, one with a name but no face. We barely had enough time to get her to your home." Lucifer rubbed his hands in nervous rapid succession, directing his focus to the next group of individuals. Thankfully, amidst the cluster of strangers, some faces stuck out to him. "Doctor Florence. Decklyn. What business brings you here?" Cynthia shook her head, her lips pursed and her throat tight with striped red eyes.

Every inch of her was trembling and glowing a faint, exhausted pink. Lucifer raised his eyebrows, but when Deck stepped forward and laid out the bloodied and unconscious Jules on the carpet, the King of Hell changed his expression. "Jackson?! What happened to him?" Lucifer panicked, but Deck raised a blood-cloaked gauntlet, his vertically-arranged eyes shaking. "Nope, not Jack. Jack's fine, a little shaken by the rush of adrenaline, but he's leaving to help Wrench in Greed. This," Deck gestured, reaching hand down and sliding the fedora away from Jule's flowing black hair, "is his biological daughter, Jules. The girl I failed to protect."

Lucifer knelt and combed a hand over Jules' padded kevlar. The faint pulse of life echoed from his fingertips, brimming tears in the King of Hell's eyes. Rising to standing height, Lucifer slid his hands into his cloak before turning to the bitter and distraught Cynthia. "She will live. She has her mother's strength and her biological father's resilience. If Jack could withstand twelve sniper wounds and continue to fire as if nothing were wrong with him, I suspect Jules will have quite the immune system protecting her." Lilith stepped into the hall behind Lucifer, watching as Deck helped his siblings carry the injured, limp body of Jules to the dining hall.

After watching the Demons disappear, Lucifer turned to the unsure and shaken Morpheus and Asmodeus. "You two must stay here, I implore you. Hell is not safe anymore, and I cannot have my children fighting in the streets like the rest of those suicidal, brainwashed nightmares." Morpheus sighed, his tentacles curling up in twitching hesitation. "Lord Lucifer, Father, if you will. My siblings still require my assistance across Hell. And it is my civic duty to ensure the framework of Hell and its inhabitants are protected well." Lucifer pursed his lips, his eyes narrowing on the beady droplets curling from the cephalopod's clammy skin.

"No means no, Morpheus. I've been clear on that and won't repeat it." Cynthia broke the silence, saying, "Then send me out." Morpheus, a faintly coughing Asmodeus and Lucifer all turned to the tear-dried mother in shock. Morpheus was the first to mentally recover himself, coughing. "Cynthia, you're mad! Those Demons and Sinners will tear you to pieces in your current, devastated state! Think of your daughter, for Hell's sake!" Cynthia cleared her throat, fixing the goggles strapped to her face with one of Morpheus' mechanical gauntlets. "Thanks for telling me what I already know. But I'm going back out there whether you choose to stop me or not."

Cynthia turned to the open doorway with a dark acid storm on the horizon. Lightning crackled in the lenses of her goggles. "The Crimson Stripe is going to pay with his life for what he's done to my daughter." Lucifer waved his hands, tapping his scepter on the carpet beside the Demoness. "Be that as you say it, Doctor, this is no time to go blindly charging into the unknown. The Stripe could be anywhere, and we have no clue where or what he's up to next!" Cynthia turned slowly, her eyes wide and stricken with static shock. "I beg your pardon? You are the King of Hell, dominant over everybody who enters this world!!

"You shouldn't have any trouble finding him! He's not like Jack, he knows where he is and knows he belongs here. The Crimson Stripe belongs in this godforsaken wasteland!" Lucifer took a step back, his chest rising and falling rapidly. His knuckles were pale ivory on the hilt of his scepter. Cynthia's shoulders rose and fell before she straightened out, brushing curls of her silver hair away from her dark red eyes. "I'm going out to help whether you get a say in it or not. Who doesn't have a partner where they're headed yet?" Despite Morpheus and Asmodeus backing away, their father took a step forward, his eyes locked on the floor in a fatigued silence.

When his shining gold pupils slid up and connected with Cynthia's striped red lenses, his lips pursed before moving. "Shrap is currently en route to Gluttony. He's traveling alone at the moment. You could also accompany Crow and Satan to the twisting sands of Envy." Cynthia cracked her knuckles, her eyes shuffling around in their sockets in a deep contemplation. After silence took the floor for a few minutes, Cynthia returned to Lucifer with her arms crossed. "I'll go with Shrap. Gluttony's a dangerous place for lone operatives." Lucifer paused, his chest falling before his throat exhaled.

Snapping his right fingers, a rippling, shimmering scar split open on the wall opposite Cynthia. As the shapeshifter turned to face the gateway, Lucifer coaxed his gloves over his trembling fingertips, still scarred from the Harbinger's uncontrollable rage. "That portal will take you to Gluttony. Shrap is currently in Quexaxot's small outpost at the edge of that town. Find him and tell him that the Vizier needs help closing the rift to the Living World." Cynthia swallowed back the lump in her throat, turning to the dining hall entrance. She moved her emotionless hand to the door. She asked the King of Hell, "What will you do with my daughter?"

Lucifer closed his eyes, turning slowly to the door with his scepter sliding away from his hand, joining his cloak in the air beside him. "Your daughter will remain here with Asmodeus and Morpheus. She will be treated, cared for as if she were my second child." Cynthia stiffened, her eyes narrowing and her scarlet horns flashing with ruby red light. "Her life is yours now. If her's ends, I'm coming for you, King or not." As Cynthia leapt through the gateway, closing rapidly in a snap of flashing pink light, Morpheus turned to Lucifer with the fatigued, coughing Asmodeus in his arms. "She's not well. You shouldn't have done that," he gasped.

Lucifer snapped his wrists, fastening his top hat on his head of flowing gold hair. "It's better I sent her to help her teammates than to keep her troubled mind here. That negative energy is not something we have nor need an abundance of." Morpheus sucked in a long breath, then exhaled before sweeping away with Asmodeus to the medically altered kitchen space.