"I feel like something big is happening," Ethan said seriously.
The statement would have sounded more convincing if he weren't sitting on the ground drawing shapes into the ash with a stick. What had started as a wolf had slowly turned into something else entirely after several minutes of boredom.
Wednesday looked down at the drawing briefly.
"Yes," she said flatly. "Your artistic decline is deeply concerning."
"I'm bored," Ethan replied. "And before you complain again, I already searched over a hundred miles in every direction." He gestured toward the wasteland around them. "There's nothing here except burning land and screaming."
His irritation was becoming obvious now.
Even if his body didn't tire easily, his mind still did, and hours of wandering through endless Hell terrain without finding anything useful had started wearing on him.
"I didn't find a single intelligent demon, a structure, an exit, or anything remotely helpful," he continued. "What exactly are you expecting me to do?"
Wednesday crossed her arms.
"Stop looking like an irritated spouse and search another five hundred miles."
Ethan looked at her blankly.
"No."
The refusal came instantly.
"If you want more searching done, then go do it yourself."
Then he leaned back against the rock behind him with clear determination not to move again anytime soon. At this point, waiting seven days for the dimensional system to finish mapping the realm sounded significantly more reasonable than continuing to wander through endless wasteland.
Morticia watched the exchange quietly before speaking.
"Wednesday," she said gently, "you should treat Ethan better."
Ethan nodded immediately in agreement.
Finally.
Someone sensible.
Morticia's smile softened slightly as she looked toward her daughter. "Sometimes encouragement is more effective than threats. You do have a lovely smile, darling."
Ethan's expression immediately lost all hope.
Of course Morticia would take Wednesday's side.
She was her mother.
Still, this time Ethan genuinely had no intention of moving again. He had already searched more than a hundred miles of burning wasteland and found absolutely nothing useful.
It was the equivalent of trying to find a single fish somewhere in the middle of an ocean containing billions of them.
Then the ground directly in front of him shifted.
The scorched soil bulged upward slowly, dirt pushing aside as though something underneath was trying to crawl its way to the surface.
Ethan stopped talking immediately.
Wednesday's eyes narrowed.
Morticia stepped slightly backward as the earth cracked open further beneath their gaze.
A red hand suddenly pushed out of the dirt.
Then a head followed.
The creature crawled halfway out of the ground while muttering something under its breath.
"These idiots should've already gon—"
The words stopped instantly.
The demon froze completely after finally noticing Ethan sitting directly in front of it.
For several long seconds, neither of them moved.
The demon stared at Ethan.
Ethan stared back at the demon.
Somewhere far away across the wasteland, a crow cawed loudly into the silence.
"Konichiwa…" the demon said nervously.
Then it immediately started sinking back into the ground.
Ethan grabbed it by the head before it could escape and yanked it straight back out of the soil.
"Where exactly do you think you're going?" Ethan asked calmly while holding the struggling demon in place.
The demon visibly stiffened beneath his grip.
"And another thing," Ethan continued while narrowing his eyes slightly, "why do you speak Japanese?"
The demon looked seconds away from panicking completely.
It had crawled out thinking the monster would be gone by now.
It watched the entire slaughter from hiding, watched this fucking creature tear through demons with his bare hands, bodies exploding apart under punches that didn't even look serious, and only after the screaming stopped did it finally gather enough courage to move again.
Then it came out—
And found him sitting directly in front of it.
Its mind blanked for a second trying to process the sight before it.
The pale man sat there in the middle of Hell itself, one hand gripping a severed demon head while the other rested casually against his knee, his expression carrying mild irritation instead of exhaustion, like the massacre surrounding him had been inconvenient rather than impossible.
The demon remembered older times.
Mortals used to collapse in terror at the mere presence of demons, fragile beings that broke screaming the moment Hell touched them.
Somewhere along the way, humanity had clearly gone very, very wrong.
The demon glanced nervously between Ethan, Wednesday, and Morticia before swallowing hard.
"You know," it said carefully, forcing a strained smile onto its face, "this could still become a very peaceful interaction if we all remain emotionally balanced."
"Yeah, I'm listening," Ethan said as he pulled the demon closer by the head. "Start talking."
The demon's forced smile twitched violently under the pressure.
"Ethan, dear," Morticia said smoothly from behind him, "that isn't how one properly conducts an interrogation."
Ethan glanced back at her. "You say that like there's a polite way to question demons."
"There is," Morticia replied calmly. "Fear works far better when it's elegant."
Then she extended her hand toward him.
"Give me the glove."
The demon visibly relaxed hearing that.
Anything sounded preferable to staying in Ethan's grip.
Ethan raised an eyebrow but handed over the holy glove anyway. The moment Morticia slipped it onto her hand, golden lines spread faintly beneath the fabric before a thin silver blade materialized elegantly into her grasp.
The demon's relief immediately disappeared.
"Wednesday," Morticia said pleasantly while stepping toward the demon, "now seems like the perfect opportunity to teach you some of the interrogation methods passed through the Addams family."
The blade turned slowly between her fingers.
"Techniques capable of making even the most hardened killers confess things they didn't technically do."
The demon stared at her in growing horror.
Somehow—
this family kept getting worse.
***
A/N: And on Patreon, The Boys arc started.
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