(1st story)
In Hell, Logan remarks that he’s always wanted to believe. Always envied them that had faith. In eternal rewards. In heavens and higher powers. Faith’s just never come natural to him. From an early age, the world seemed to be showing him there wasn’t no such thing as a grand plan. No such thing as ultimate truth. When he was a boy, he found out the man he’d always thought was his father, wasn’t. And the man who was, well… he was the first man he ever killed. Such events don’t tend to lead a boy to believing in God. Not even so’s to curse him.
Since then, he’s seen the world many times over. He’s been brainwashed and used. Hated and feared. Plagued by tragedy and regret. But he still ain’t seen nothing that would make him believe. Until now. Now he looks around him, and he has no choice but to believe. But not in no heaven or glorious eternal reward. No, he believes in Hell. Continuing his attack on the Devil, Logan adds that he believes in pain and suffering and misery. He believes in hate and rage. In the spilling of blood. In retribution. Damnation. He believes. Oh yes, he does. He believes with all his heart.
After getting a few swipes of his Soulcutter sword on Logan, the Devil stands over Logan and tells him that he understands him not. He is not so sly or clever after all, is he. He is instead, quite simply, an ignorant jackass? Too simple-minded to even realize the full extent of what’s befallen him. Does he have any idea why he’s here? Or the magnitude of the mess he’s left behind in the world above. He thinks he can prove something to him simply by being obstinate. Yet all he has managed to prove is his own insignificance. He is an insignificant speck of excrement to be scraped from the bottom of his sole and flicked away into nothingness.
As he brings his sword down for the final blow, the Devil tells him that he shall scrape him now, goodbye. Holding up his bloody claws, Logan states that he guesses this speck did prove one thing – even the devil can bleed. Touching his neck, the Devil surprisingly asks what? Impossible! That’s… no…
For a moment, the Devil turns around to see the demons of Hell circling. Once the Devil turns back to face Logan, Logan tells him he’s right about one thing. He can be an ignorant jackass. But it don’t take no genius to see that he ain’t the one with something to prove there. The Devil begins to call him an arrogant… but Logan cuts him off and asks him “You got another round in ya, hoss? I know I do.” At that moment, Logan leaps up and attacks the Devil again.
Nearby, Puck’s mysterious associate tells him this is it. They’re all watching now, every demon in every circle of Hell. They can all sense his weakness. The whole damn place is at the tipping point. Puck says good, let’s get to tipping this over. After the unknown associate asks Puck if he’s sure he knows what to do, Puck tells him not to worry about him. He’ll bring the chaos, soon as the time is right. He just follows through on his end. The associate says he’ll keep fanning the flames, best as he can.
As Puck heads off, he says yeah, and playing his own secret angle too, no doubt. Just know that whatever sort of aftermath he’s hoping for, Logan he won’t be around for it. Soon as this place boils over, they’re gone. Once Puck has left, the associate asks gone? Gone where, ya stupid runt. Once you been down there as long as him, you’ll realize ain’t nothing up there to go back to.
On Earth, on Utopia, Hellverine lunges at Colossus and takes a swipe at him. When he does, his claws clang off the Russian’s metal chest. Backhanding Hellverine away, Colossus tells his friend Logan that he doesn’t want to hurt him. Whatever came over him, he must fight it. Hellverine proceeds to ask Colossus that he doesn’t know much about demons, does he. He then asks him where that hell-tease of a sister he has. He bets she could enlighten him.
Grabbing him by the throat, Colossus lifts him off the ground and tells him not to speak of his sister. Smiling, Hellverine tells Colossus that after he’s killed him, he’s going to lay with his sister on a bed of his viscera. How does he like the sound of that? At that moment, Colossus slams Hellverine on the ground and then picks him up and tosses him through the roof and outside the compound. Once he does, Kitty Pryde says whoa. Turning to her, Colossus tells Kitty to go and get Scott. Kitty replies that she doesn’t wanna leave him alone with that… that… Colossus implores her to do so. He’ll be fine.
Before Kitty even has a chance to leave, Hellverine returns and tackles Colossus with great force. When he does, they crash through the floor and into another corridor where Iceman and Angel are congregating. As he stands over the fallen Colossus, Hellverine points out that he sees blood. Where there’s blood, there are soft red squishy parts. It’s time to open him up and have a look at him.
Before Hellverine can jam his claws into Colossus, Kitty proceeds to kick him in the back of the head. Colossus weakly tries to warn Bobby and Warren to stay back, but they do not listen to his pleas. After tossing Kitty away with ease, Hellverine turns his attention to Bobby and spews fire out of his mouth and onto Bobby’s ice form. Standing in front of him, Angel starts to ask Logan what he is doing. Hellverine gives him no response and appears to phase through him, leaving Angel’s eyes bloody.
Making his way over to a weakened Colossus, Hellverine tells him when he took this body, he made a pact. He swore to kill everything his friend Logan had ever loved. What does he think about that? Colossus answers that he thinks whatever he is; it is an abomination against his friend. Smiling, Hellverine thanks him and then tells him that it’s time to die now. At that moment, Hellverine viciously begins to attack Colossus with no refrain.
In Hell, Logan continues his fight against the Devil. As he does, he thinks to himself that the worst part of Hell isn’t the pain. Pain is pain. Pain he can live with. It’s the shame. Every time he closes his eyes, it’s the shame he sees. The shame that threatens to drown him. He sees his own regrets. He sees the ghosts of people he killed who didn’t deserve to die. He sees the faces of the children he was never there for. Daken and others he doesn’t even recognize. He sees the endless parade of his sins. And even as he fights, he can’t help but feel… he deserves this pain and suffering, this torture and torment. He deserves Hell. He deserves it all.
Standing over Logan, the Devil tells him that he thought he could stand against him, you pathetic little wart of a man. No one defies the great red dragon. He is the Morningstar. He is the lord of the pit. He is the god of the end of all things. Grabbing hold of him, the Devil tells him that he casts him out, now and forever, James Howlett, son of curs, king of fools, lord of all jackasses. He condemns his soul to the depths of oblivion from now until the end of time.
Before the Devil can finish Logan off, he hears a large commotion behind him. Turning around, the Devil is consumed by a number of demons who converge on him. Fighting them off, the Devil calls them traitorous vermin. They dare defy their master? He will see them all boiled in their own stinking blood for this. Impudent fools, he will have their wretched hides. All of them, do they hear him? He is the rightful ruler there. He alones the fit to wield the sword. There would be no Hell without him. They would all still be lapdogs in heaven if it wasn’t for him.
As he orders them to stand down and go back to their holes or suffer the eternal consequences, Logan picks up some bones off of the ground, leaps on the Devil’s back, and proceeds to pin the Devil up against a wall as his demons watch on.
On Utopia, Colossus weakly tells “Logan” to fight this. He can win. Hellverine points out that he still has hope. How quaint. Let’s see how long it takes him to carve it out of him. With that, Hellverine jams his claws into Colossus’ chest. Before he can do any further damage, a Ghost Rider appears on his motorcycle with Mystique on the back. After hooking him with a large hook attached to a chain, the Ghost Rider and Mystique begin to drag Hellverine off and away from Utopia. Once they have departed, Cyclops looks around and sees the devastation. Kitty is crying as she comforts Colossus who is bleeding from his chest, and Kavita Rao and other X-Men doctors tend to Iceman and Angel.
In Hell, the demons fight over the sword. After the Devil orders them to unhand his sword, he calls Creed a worthless mutt and tells him to get over there and free his master. Snarling, Creed instead begins to attack the Devil. Across the way, one of the demons grabs hold of the sword and claims to be the new lord of Hell. At that moment, Puck tosses a rock at his head and tells him he doesn’t think so. He then asks the demons what you get when you take every murderer who ever lived and put them all in one place. One hell of a badass army, that’s what. Attacking the demons, Puck calls out to his army and tells them charge. Charge or be damned forever.
As Logan watches on, a voice behind him asks him if he’s thinking of joining the fun, he wishes he wouldn’t. He didn’t pull all this off just so he could go and get his damn soul torn to shreds. He did it so they could have a moment alone. He just wants to talk, man to man, father to son.
(2nd story)
In Madripoor, when violent offenders come up for sentencing, they’re given a choice. They can either serve their sentence in one of the island nation’s many jails, all famous for being among the crudest and most barbaric prisons in the world or they can take a job at a local establishment currently operated by the island’s ruler. Almost all of them choose jail.
Sleeping in an overcrowded, rat-infested hotel of a prison while surrounded by murderers and cutthroats may be dangerous, they all say, but working as a bouncer at the Princess Bar… well that’s downright crazy. The ones who do take the job are the real psychopaths, the sadists and the butchers. The inhuman monsters who thirst for violence and delight in pain. Every night when the factories let out in Lowtown and the bar fills to the rafters with drunken bruisers and knife-wielding harlots and all manner of shiftless, sleazy thugs, the bouncers at the Princess Bar clench their fists and pray for war. And every night their prayers are answered.
Yet every morning, the bar will still be standing. Never once in all those years of brawls and bloodshed and savage beatings has there been a morning when they couldn’t simply drag out the bodies and mop up the blood and do it all over again. Never in all those years have the bouncers at the Princess Bar faced a threat they couldn’t handle. Until about five minutes ago.
They’re called the Mongrels – Gunhawk, Cannonfoot, Sawfist, Shadowstalker and Fire Knives. After having already disposed of some of the bouncers, Gunhawk points his guns at the remaining bouncers and tells them if he were them, he believes he’d clock out early and call it a night, while he was still upright and conscious and in possession of all my bodily fluids. One of the bouncers tells him to go to hell, American dog licker. They picked the wrong bar to make their trouble in. Firing his guns at them, Gunhawk says no, actually they picked the right bar. And he’s Canadian. Grabbing hold of a jar of alcohol, Gunhawk leaps over the bar and tells the others to do what they want with them. He’ll find what they’re looking for.
Just then, Cannonfoot drops a stone ball on his curved shoe and flings it through the stomach of one of the bouncers. Speaking in Spanish, Sawfist kills another. Draining the blood from another of the bouncers with her fingers, Shadowstalker tells him to give her just one kiss and she promises to kill him quick. After killing other bouncers, Fire Knives recites the nursery rhyme the “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” The Mongrels are agents of the Red Right Hand. They are marauders on a mission of vengeance, precise motivations as yet unclear.
Slicing through a back door, Gunhawk enters and is confronted by Tyger Tiger. Pointing her gun at him, Tyger tells him to put his guns on the floor or he’ll die where he stands. Gunhawk says that’s one idea. Here’s another. She moves outta the way and lets him have what’s behind the door situated behind her and him and his friends don’t squeeze the guts outta her entire crap-ass little country. How does that sound? Tyger tells him he has no idea what lies behind the door or the fury that will rain down upon him if he disturbs it.
Gunhawk replies actually, he knows exactly what lies behind the door – a bunch of trinkets and doodads and photos and such. Things a man might gather over the years when he’s forgotten his whole life story and is trying to piece it together, little by little. Things he might hide away, so that no one knows what a hopelessly pathetic romantic he really is. With a concerned look on her face, Tyger says he knows. That must mean… he’s… Moving her out of the way, Gunhawk tells her no, not dead, just burning in hell.
Entering the room, Tyger informs Gunhawk there’s nothing of value there. Not to anyone but him. She then asks him why he’s there. What does he intend to do with the place. Gunhawk says he intends to burn it, this and everything else in the world that means anything at all to him. Tyger tells him he will kill him for this. His rage will know no bounds. Gunhawk asks does she really think so. Does she mean just because he made his life a living hell and burned his whole world down around him? Good. Now he knows how he feels. After torching the room, Gunhawk tells Tyger to tell Logan that he’ll be waiting.
