Some time later, I was standing by the front door in full "battle" gear. It turned out the mask could be "pulled" over the entire head, forming a kind of helmet. With fucking horns. About half the length of my arm.
Unfortunately, none of Adam's knowledge had surfaced, but if I tried hard, I thought, it should work out. In the last five minutes, I'd managed to put together a "skeleton" of a plan – if I got lucky, it would fly.
Ding-dong – The doorbell rang. For a second, the thought of just escaping through the balcony and hiding in some hole crossed my mind, but quickly quashing this cowardice, I reached for the doorknob.
Standing on the threshold was a pretty young woman with short white hair. To be honest, for a brief moment, my breath caught – I'd never seen anyone more beautiful in my life. Maybe in photos, but you can use all sorts of "photoshop" there, whereas I'd definitely never met such beauties in real life.
"Hey, Lute. 'Sup?" I said with a smirk. My voice wavered, but I held it steady.
"Everything is fine, Sir. Are you ready?" she replied.
"Yeah, yeah, everything's peachy. Let's fly off to this little princess already. By the way, I'd like to personally shoot the shit with her. I'm afraid I won't be able to mess with her much as a projection." – I had plans for a personal meeting, and in that case, I could ask Lute to leave the room. If she heard my conversation with Charlie, I was afraid I'd be exposed immediately.
"As you wish, Sir."
She's kinda emotionless… How long has she been "in my service" anyway? Is there a chance she barely interacted with the previous Adam? Doubt it, fuck. So little information!
"Well, fucking great then. Let's roll." I gave a vague nod towards the exit. Let her fly where she needed to, and I'd discreetly scope out the surroundings.
Lute silently flew off towards the largest local building. The Seraphim tower? Or whatever it's called? Hell if I knew, but damn, this lack of information was infuriating; I was literally stumbling in the dark.
We flew through the streets of the heavenly city. Looking at the locals, I saw people… or rather, angels, content with their lives. Most of them only resembled humans in form: I kept seeing all sorts of furries, and sometimes completely bizarre creatures, "half-crayfish, half-god-knows-what-the-fuck," as the saying goes. But one thing united them all – they were cheerful, smiling happily, and amusing themselves. Some even waved at us with, what seemed to me, respect in their eyes.
By the way, my vision had also become incredibly sharp. I could pick out the tiniest details in the locals' faces, notice every gesture and every action. Maybe it was a function of the mask? Unlikely it was just a phone, though an angel's body should also surpass a human's…
Finally, reaching the huge building, we veered slightly to the side and landed at another, also quite large one. Is this building for teleports? Or can you create holograms in Heaven's embassy in Hell here?
"Sir, about Harfy… We haven't found her yet. I'm afraid she perished," Lute said with a note of sadness and anger simultaneously.
If only I knew what the fuck she was talking about.
No, I'm not stupid enough not to guess she was most likely talking about the unnamed exorcist killed by Carmilla Carmine. But it's hard to just switch gears like that. And what am I supposed to do with this information? How should I react? What emotions should I show?
"Those goddamn hellish bastards! If I had my way, I'd fucking slaughter them all!" I decided to show some of my anger to my lieutenant, let her think I was furious about a subordinate's death.
"Have you decided to reschedule the exterminations?" Lute asked with interest.
Apparently, this was the moment the decision to move the exterminations to "every six months" was made. Though what did that require? Didn't it need to be coordinated with the Seraphim? More precisely, with Sera. As far as I remembered, no one but her knew about the annual purges of sinners…
"I'll talk to this little princess and then decide – whether to slaughter them every six months or not. What if she proposes some 'fucking brilliant' plan that I like?" I said with a smirk, winking at my lieutenant.
Meanwhile, we had already walked deeper into the building. It was quite large: high ceilings, lots of open space, and not a soul in sight, except for two exorcists standing right at the entrance. Don't their legs get tired?
"Adam, I'm serious. It's time we wiped out these bastards completely. If they actually killed one of us, this is just the first warning sign!" she declared, more expressively now. Was she trying to restrain herself while we were in public?
Damn it, what is our relationship? Why can't people just keep a diary, for example? I'd read a few dozen pages right now and have all the necessary information.
And yes, there were definitely no "diaries." At least not in Adam's bedroom. Or rather, my bedroom now. I'd rummaged through the entire nightstand and wardrobes, even checked under the pillow – jack shit there. I also fiddled with the helmet, checked out the local YouTube and TikTok, even logged into their version of Facebook, but Adam hadn't left any notes anywhere.
Though, after ten thousand years, you'd get fucking tired of writing down your whole life, so that's understandable, but it doesn't make it any easier.
"Don't hiss, sweetcheeks! Daddy knows what to do!" I delivered pompously, cringing inwardly with shame.
Adam, why was your behavior portrayed… LIKE THIS? It feels like I'm playing a third-rate villain from some teen cartoon, not a warrior who's lived for thousands of years… Oh, right…
Meanwhile, we entered a spacious room, in the center of which stood a huge table with many chairs. At the end of the table, a massive golden throne rose. The entire room was decorated in the usual white-and-gold colors.
I silently walked to the throne and sat down. Judging by Lute's calm reaction, I did it right. Thank all the gods Adam was such a power-hungry idiot.
"So, when's the meeting with this chick?" I asked, not really understanding what to do next…
In the animated series, Adam created portals and projections without any problems, and it didn't seem to cause him any difficulty. Could Lute open a portal? Doubtful. And considering I needed to talk to Charlie personally... I'd have to try to open a portal myself – and do it without blowing my cover in front of Lute.
"In 25 minutes, Sir," Lute said, placing some kind of box on the table. A device for interdimensional travel? Or can you create your hologram in Hell with this thing?
It turned out to be simpler – it was a local laptop, with a built-in projector. A pretty high-quality one, at that.
We spent the rest of the time in a short conversation while Lute controlled drones exploring Hell. In the first episode, they showed one of them. They weren't visible on the projection; the cameras only recorded Hell, but from memory, the drones were triangular and painted in traditional heavenly colors.
But I wasn't just sitting around chatting with a beautiful girl. I was simultaneously trying to learn more about Heaven and "feel out" my relationship with Lute. It clearly wasn't standard – a multi-layered structure. In public, she behaved much more reservedly with me than when we were alone. Where were the boundaries of this behavior? If I could act like an idiot in public, was it permissible when we were alone? I didn't know what the previous Adam was like, so I had to proceed cautiously, adapting to the communication style of his acquaintances.
At the same time, I was doing a couple of other important things. Of course, I'm no Caesar, but if you want to survive, you'll do crazier shit than this.
During the conversation, I was Browse the heavenly "Google." The helmet had all the functions of a phone – actually, very convenient. In my past life, I could only dream of such a thing. Though, maybe everything here runs on magic? Not enough information.
First thing, I pulled up the Wikipedia page dedicated to Adam. The amount of text was impressive. There was a brief biography, his life story, and huge sections describing his "life after death."
In short: Adam – firstborn of the Seraphim (in the local canon, the first humans weren't created by God, but by them), a noble man with a bright soul, serving the good of Heaven and its inhabitants. More like propaganda, because in the cartoon, he behaved completely differently.
But let's continue. Adam lived peacefully until his wife began to refuse him intimacy. Let me remind you: both Adam and Lilith were created exclusively to "be fruitful and multiply." But Lilith, instead of following the order (?) of her "parents," avoided Adam and threw tantrums. Adam, of course, had no experience with women (or any experience at all, he was literally a newborn), so at first, he tried to win her affection, and then, when Lilith finally told him to get lost, he went to complain to his "parents."
They were, to put it mildly, fucking floored, but decided to talk to Lilith first. They sent… Lucifer to her. Who, apparently, liked the conversation with his "daughter" so much that he married her the same day. Just some utter bullshit. The other Seraphim didn't get it at all, but they didn't want to quarrel with their "brother" over such a trifle. Instead, they created Eve and had an educational talk with Adam, explaining how to communicate properly with girls.
And so began Adam's happy days: he could finally get down to the "critically important task" – reproduction. Everything was going well until one day, returning home, he saw something in the distance that shouldn't be in Eden. A huge black mass with eyes and tentacles.
Adam rushed there – Eve and their children were supposed to be nearby – but was stopped by Sera, who declared that this was his Eve, after which she teleported him to Earth.
Meanwhile, the Seraphim were already fighting "Eve," but their nature contradicted violence. Even though they possessed incredible power, they didn't know how to fight. In the end, they could only delay the monster until God intervened.
A heavenly beam tore the creature apart, but something went wrong: the sky of Eden "cracked," as if shattered, and the world was filled with evil.
The Seraphim managed to protect Heaven and partially Earth, but their strength wasn't enough for Eden.
Adam, meanwhile, was sitting on Earth, trying to understand: "What to do?" and "Who is to blame?" This continued for several days until the Seraphim finally freed themselves from their duties. They were the ones who told him what had happened.
Well, and then the familiar story. Lucifer "stole" Adam's first wife, turned the second into a fucking monster that destroyed Eden and turned it into Hell, God disappeared – supposedly protecting his creation from evil, and all of Adam's children were born with the freedom to choose between "good and evil."
And after that, Adam was given a new quest – to watch over humanity and "lead it to the light."
Just some utter fucking mess.
The more I read, the more I respected the local Adam. Despite everything, he hadn't descended into brutishness in 11,192 years of life. In canon, he was shown as a scumbag who was in Heaven either by mistake or "through connections." But what could he have been banished for?
Killing demons? What's wrong with that? Swearing? Who did he harm with that? Behaving like an asshole? Well, he was telling the truth – humanity owed him; he not only fathered it but also built civilization, protected it, developed science and culture.
Contempt for Charlie? You bet. The daughter of the bastard who took everything from him. Because of Lucifer, his children became scumbags, gladly killing, raping, and betraying each other. And Charlie, moreover, is the daughter of Lilith, who betrayed him and married the notorious Lucifer.
It's no wonder my mood changed as I read. Lute sometimes glanced at me with an unreadable expression.
Sometimes, images of the past Adam flashed in my head, like déjà vu, as if I myself had experienced these events. Perhaps this also influenced my attitude towards what was happening.
Simultaneously, I was trying to feel out my power – and I managed it fairly quickly. Somewhere inside me was an entire ocean of golden light. For a moment, I felt omnipotent but quickly got a grip on myself. I didn't know how to use this power. And I needed to open a portal to Hell.
"Adam, it's time for us to go to Hell. Are you sure you should transport there?" Lute asked worriedly, looking up from her search for the missing exorcist's body.
"Us? No. I'll go alone. There shouldn't be anything interesting there; that asshole was talking about some 'mind-blowing' idea his daughter had, nothing important. But if, in the meantime, you can find confirmation that demons dared to kill an exorcist…" I trailed off at the end, let her figure out the rest. If I say something wrong, fuck that.
Lute simply nodded and returned to the "laptop."
Concentrating, I envisioned the approximate place I needed to go, and I got lucky – the "reflex" of the previous Adam kicked in again. A "window" to another world opened before me; on the other side was an office exactly like the one we were in. Is this a copy of the embassy? Probably convenient if you need to be present as a hologram.
Stepping through the portal, I closed it with a mental effort and sat on the golden throne.
Now I need to decide what to say to the princess of Hell…