Part 4: Jesus wouldn't put up with this sh*t, and neither will we.

"I really think you should know, that no matter how this goes, my friend, I want you to understand that I will always view this little incident as being your fault." Adam Cahill placed his hand on Inazumi’s shoulder. The bat-winged, reptilian alien turned to look at him incredulously.

"My fault?"

"Sure. If we hadn’t had to rescue you, none of this would have happened. We wouldn’t have been in a pit full of military-grade genetic waste and six foot Caco-demons, we wouldn’t have fought a jumbo-jet sized severed demon head, we wouldn’t have contracted these...bleeding sores...and we certainly wouldn’t be marching across an Operation: Antichrist military installation with guns in our backs!"

"Quiet." Intoned the Defense Echelon Trooper who walked the two prisoners across the field toward the installation. DET’s as they are known, are nearly mindless, completely soulless Automaton homogenized into complete servitude by the GODHEAD. They do not eat, breathe, or think, and what’s worse, there are literally millions of them. Inazumi considered an answer, then decided against it.

"Where’s Dane?" Inzumi snarled. "That Dominion should have been here by now."

"Oh, you know Angels." Mumbled Cahill. "Never there when you need ‘em."

Dane perched on a ridge of the complex, stammering quietly. He unfurled his wings and turned, still mumbling to himself, and flew back in the direction of his friends. He dropped down behind the DET and blasted it with holy light. The trooper shuddered and fell as Dane grabbed it’s gun and continued to stammer to Adam and Inazumi.

"Buh...Buh...big. Buh...Big. Big. Big!"

"What’s he talkin’?" Asked Adam.

"Something big." Said Inazumi. "What did you see? What did you see, Dane?"

"Th...the...The body.I found the body. Not good"

"The what?" Adam and Inazumi looked each other in confusion.

With that, the ground trembled, then shook again. The sound of jackboots marching in perfect cadence joined the louder, more ominous thundering footfalls. Dane pointed excitedly at a shape that rose up from behind the complex to fill the grey-red Xibalban Sky. "That!"

The demon beast had to be the size of small town. Half a mile from shoulder to tail, with hooves the size of buildings, it’s neck terminated not in a head, but rather in a series of tubes and wires that connected to a control center mounted on it’s back . Great chafing sores surrounded the various cybernetically-implanted heavy gun turrets installed in the creature’s bulk, and a roaring bonfire burned in the creature’s belly. This Behemoth ran on souls--lots of them.

"Oh, guys...what I wanna know is...when did this happen to Jesus, hunh? When did Jesus Christ have to fight a giant battleship with feet, hunh? Or Bhudda? How come WE get the brown end of the Messiah stick, hunh?" Cahill punctuated his words with a spit.

Inazumi watched the beast carefully. "You know how those scientists were making those cockroaches into robots by cutting off their heads and putting electrodes on ‘em?" mumbled the alien, not taking his eyes off the creature.

"Here comes trouble. Follow my lead." Said Dane, shapeshifting into a DET. He jammed his gun into Cahill’s ribs. Cahill and Inazumi marched forward.

The beast lumbered slowly around the complex, as a battalion of DET’s carrying the war standard of The Regime marched alongside. Dane, still in disguise, approached the commander, a skeletal demon in what appeared to be original Third Reich regalia.

"Prisoner transfer from cell block 1138."

"Oh, good one, champion. You see that in a movie somewhere?"

Dane whacked Inazumi in the ribs with the gun.

The commander examined Adam and Inazumi carefully. "Take them to Processing. Section 34-D"

The three turned and started to march away. Suddenly, the commander stopped them.

"Wait! Is that one an Enlightened?" He pointed at Adam, who shrugged. Dane nodded. "Throw him in the pitfires, instead." The commander grinned. "Let’s see how much this thing gets to the gallon."

Soon, Adam and Inazumi stood at the edge of the bonfire on the War Pig’s back. Dane stayed near the commander on the ground.

"Wait! I should warn you we actually found these two in the waste basin. The impurities in the waste might have an effect on the pitfires. You’ll want purer souls to test this thing."

"Hmm." The demon thought. "Perhaps you’re right. Bring in the chemical scrub."

Inazumi looked down at the troopers, then over at Adam. "Okay. That’s it. " He cupped his hand to his mouth. "Can you all hear me down there?" he shouted to the bewildered Defense Echelon Troopers. "You all hear me? Good. Listen up! Screw you guys, I’m going home!" With that, the scaly alien flipped the bird to several dozen troopers and faded out of reality.

"They’re Messiahs! Execute them!" Screamed the commander before a beam of holy light took off most of his shoulder.

Up on the back of the beast, Adam’s twin pistols leaped into his hands, seemingly from out of nowhere. He jumped backward as a hail of bullets from the ground below narrowly missed him, popping a shot into the head and neck of the troopers closest to him. They tumbled to the ground screaming.

"There’s no place like home, There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home...Dammit!" Adam fired off a few more shots, but the Troopers were closing in fast. Cursing, he tossed his coat up over a guidewire, grabbed it with one hand, and kicked off, bellowing a tarzan-like war cry. He slid past the Troopers, shooting back at them as they fired.

Back on the ground, The commander screeched back at his troops. "No! Don’t hit the beast--we need it for the Assault on the City Of Chango! Lord Sihq’Huskar will have my head!"

Dane beheaded the Commander and grabbed the nearest Trooper. "Let me Tell you what it was like in Rykers...first of all, there was no fighting like this..." He slammed the trooper in the ribs, shooting it with his gun. The dead soldier slid from his grasp. "...or they’d cut your throat in the exercise yard."

With that he felt the burning lights and the sensation of being dragged underwater. When his head cleared, he was again in his mortal Coil, Tyler Capuzo. His soul, Dane, was safe. He sat up and surveyed his surroundings, somewhere in the Nevada desert. He looked over at Inazumi, now Gregory Ventin. "You okay?"

"I’m fine. You?"

"Yeah...where’s Adam?"

The sound of Adam’s scream came long before he did, landing face-first in the dust. He spit sand from his mouth. "Well, that sucked."

Peter looked up at me over Greg/Inazumi’s sheet. "The City of Chango. Isn’t that...New Orleans?"

"Yup." I smiled. I looked over as Nicole and Frankie’s smug expressions dropped.

Pete stood up and pointed. "Ha-hah! It’s coming for you next! No longer our problem!"

Dre placed Adam’s sheet flat on the table, and Mike put Dane down on top of it. "Yep. No WAY I’m dealing with that thing again."

Nicole gave me her best cute expression. "You wouldn’t do that to me...and Frankie...We’re your best artists, Remember?"

"Bite me." Pete sneered.

I gathered the sheets and grinned. "We’ll see. Maybe you guys with think of something more clever next week than getting shot at all the time."

"Yeah, right." Frank growled.

"Well, look at the bright side. At least I got a pretty good article out of it."

It’s hard to dodge anything over three people throwing stuff at you at once.