WARNING: The following contains graphic violence and descriptions of injuries and gore, strong language, sexual themes, gaslighting, mentions of rape and suicidal thoughts, emotional shame (not smut), partial nudity, as well as rampant demon horniness... so yes, it's intended for mature audiences.

VIEWER/READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED!

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3rd Person POV (Short AN- A lot of switches between POVs this chapter)

A Few Minutes Earlier...

"What's this place?" Ayden asked once she and Den had navigated through a maze of tunnels before they reached the bottom of the last set of stairs only to be met with a dark room before he announced dramatically,

"Welcome to the De-Man Cave."

Before he flipped the light on to reveal what looked like a warlock's man cave; runes and sigils were drawn all across the floor, walls, and ceiling, there was a human pinball game in one corner, a corner reserved for some kind of VR gameplay with a headset and two ringed remote controls on a stand on a raised platform also with runes, an alchemist workshop in another corner, and another library corner with more papers and open books strewn across a long table.

"Eh?" Den looked at Ayden expectantly but she just gave him a deadpan glare before bluntly snarking,

"You'e really bad at namin' things." Looking around at all his stuff before she asked, "Did you name me Alinta?"

"No that was Ade's idea, I was lucky enough she let me have my name as your middle name."

"Mmmhmmm..." Ayden hummed with a 'yeah suuureee' tone as she poked at the pinball machine before asking, "So? What's the big story ya hafta tell me?"

"Right well..." Den leaned against the pinball machine while scratching his chin before starting to explain, "Don't wanna bore you with all the details so I'll try to keep it short; I met your mother while I was in the Living Realm searching for a way to.. enhance my budding powers, which I did thanks to her. As you can imagine, Ade and I hit it off quite well and-"

"Yeh I don' need ta hear 'bout how ya both made me..." Ayden cut him off with a grimace and a raised paw so Den continued,

"Anyway, after you were born, I had stayed with you both for a few months before I realized that my powers were still growing so I left to continue trying to figure out how to use my ever-growing abilities best since I thought 'hey I've got all these powers now so what the Hell do I do with them?'"

"Ok...?" Ayden spoke in questioning hesitation, not understanding where Den was going with this as he asked her,

"You may have noticed that you have certain advantages in certain forms, right?"

"Yeh I guess... human fo'm I can talk ta cats and heavenly weapons can't hu't me, wi'h this fo'm I can open po'tals and use hellfi'e, and hellcat fo'm makes wate' hu't less and keeps me ale't when I sleep."

"And your fourth form?"

"Don't know.. haven't b'n able ta change into it since facin' those suit-wea'ing shitestains."

"That form allows your powers, all of them, to amplify tenfold and, with enough practice and honing, a hundredfold; you could single-handedly battle a thousand Exterminators, call on an army of Heljins-"

"'T's not like I'm gonna be doin' any o' that though..." Ayden interrupted as she shrugged nonchalantly.

"What if I told you you were?"

"What...?"

Cut back to where the imps and Einar were trying to find the secret passage Den took Ayden to as Millie was asking Einar while searching a shelf of knickknacks,

"-exactly is his big plan here?"

"He plans to use Ayden to create a paradigm merge between the lower two realms against Zion."

"Fucking use Engli-ish!" Blitzø yelled at him as he was hanging off a torch with his feet braced against the wall, trying to pull on it like a lever but it just broke out of the wall and left him to faceplant on the floor with the torch still in his grasp.

"It means he's trying to combine Hell and the Living Realm against Heave-Got it!" Moxxie simplified before announcing as he pulled the same book out of the shelf from before to reveal the passageway and announced, "Let's go!"

With Einar leading the way with the imps following him while,

"Ayden," Den came over and put both paws on Ayden's shoulders as he told her, "You are a creature born of both the Living World and Hell, living proof that, with our two realms combined, we could overthrow Heaven and put a stop to the Exterminations-"

"OK but wouldn't that be a good thing for us?" Blitzø questioned as Einar had explained to them what Den was planning while they followed him through the tunnels, narrowly avoiding some of the traps.

"No! Such a power shift could destroy all of reality as we know it!"

"Ok less good I guess."

"Woah woah woah whe'e didja get all that from?" Ayden pulled away as she waved her paws around in disbelief.

"Think about it; Sinners were once human, yet because Heaven deemed them unworthy of their paradise, they became left to rule over us Hellborns here in Hell, forcing us, imps, and hellhounds to pick up their scraps, like your little friends back there."

Ayden's tail whipped a bit when Den mentioned the others before he continued his tirade,

"With Heaven gone, the Sinners would see that the only power they, the Overlords, those prissy royals, all of them had because of them is gone, leaving Hell to be ruled by its true denizens-"

"Lemme guess with you 's it's leade'?" Ayden cut him off to growl, getting defensive as soon as he mentioned royals and she thought of Via and Stolas.

"Led by us," Den reached out to Ayden but she pulled away as his voice started to teeter towards mad desperation, "I need your power to make it happen, only you can merge the two realms and give us the power to make all those tyrants pay for how they're treated us for millennia!"

"OK so if he needs her power so much and she says no then boom problem solved, no end of the world bullcrap, right?" Blitzø questioned as he, Millie, Moxxie, and Einar were running through a hallway avoiding some swinging weapons every few feet.

"Our father won't take no for an answer, if she doesn't join him willingly, he will force her to; take her life as he nearly took mine and as he's taken from our other sibli- WATCH IT!"

Einar yanked Blitzø down by his coat just as a swinging axe was about to go for his head.

"What did he ta-ake from you all?" Moxxie asked, voice cracking a bit when Millie had to scoop him up so they could leap above a saw that went for their feet.

"He took our powers, our other forms, their personalities and voices..." Einar trailed off when they came to another fork in the hall and he had to stop to sniff out the scents before continuing, "He stripped us of most of our beings to make himself more powerful before discovering that coupling with a human would yield the offspring he needed to drain their powers fully."

"Won't that process kill her?!"

"Yes!"

"Then let's get fucking moving!" Millie shouted as she slung Moxxie over her shoulder before doing the same to Blitzø and tossing Einar on top of her head as she sprinted across a rope suspended across a bottomless pit.

"Sorry, Den, but 's temptin' as it is ta give those self-righteous feathe' fuckas up top the power tu'n, I'm gonna hafta pass since some'a my friends a'e 'prissy royals.'" The last part was hissed in barely-suppressed defensive fury as Ayden readied into a fighting stance.

Den looked saddened for a second before he dipped his head down to where his eyes were shadowed as he muttered,

"Striker was right... you and your boss have both lost your potentials by joining with those royals..."

"What...?" Ayden growled when she heard him mention the cowboy cockhead who tried to kill them at the Harvest Moon Festival and the two started to circle each other like two predators sizing each other up before making a move.

"Hmmm... Y'know what the words inside your locket mean?" Den spoke up, suddenly changing the subject.

"Ya really wanna give me a language lesson now?" Ayden rolled her eyes but kept her claws out with a hand ready over her Glock and another reaching back toward her satchel to get her weapons out if needed.

"'Amor vincit omnia' translates to 'Love conquers all.' A sentiment I believe in veeeery deeply; it can overcome personal limits... boundaries... drive people to do things they would never think they were capable of..."

A burning feeling around her neck made Ayden panic and move to rip off her choker when a small fire spark sent from Den's snapping digits landed on the daisy in Ayden's hair making it rain down smoky embers in her face.

"Pleh! Ughhh..." Ayden tried to spit out the embers when she suddenly felt super dizzy and her vision went blurry, "What'd you...?"

"Don't you know daisies are poisonous to normal cats, but for us, they just make it reeeaaaal hard to think straight."

*Trrr...*

A rumbling sound echoed from down one of the halls getting louder by the second.

"Gu-AGH!" Ayden was about to stumble run to them when suddenly it felt as if she'd been immobilized by ropes and looked down to see streams of red energy rising up from the floor to ensnare her wrists, legs, waist, and neck.

She looked back to see matching lines attached to Den as well as he stood over in the VR corner with the streams of energy being fed by a vial of inky blood and a tuft of red-tipped hair before they fully dissipated into the energy snares as Den tried to "reason,"

"Don't you get tired of wondering 'what's the point in all of this?' With me, you have your purpose and you don't have to constantly question your place in this or any other world... isn't that what you've always wanted...?"

Just as Ayden seemed to be letting her guard down a bit more from the promise of no more worrying-

"RAH!"

Millie busted through the wall on the opposite side of the room with Moxxie, Blitzø, and Einar in tow before they jumped off ready to battle only to halt when they saw Ayden and Den holding the same positions of battle-ready stances with Ayden in front lighting a fireball in her paws aimed at the imps and Den on the raised platform in the VR corner with the runes glowing around him.

"What the fuck Triple A?!" Blitzø shouted, thinking that Ayden had turned against them, when she shook herself out of the state she almost turned to to shout, still feeling whammied from the daisy's effects,

"'T's n-not meee!"

"~It's meeeeee!~ HAHA!" Den cackled as he tilted his head playfully to the side to look at them while waving a paw making Ayden do the same thing like some kinda twisted mirror.

"Well he dropped his 'pleadin' pops' act real quick." Millie growled as she whipped out her axe.

"Good luck fighting your friend in order to get to me!" Den sneered as he made a running motion and Ayden obliged, running toward her friends before leaping and slashing down at them, only narrowly missing.

"MROW!" Einar leaped up trying to attack Den but he made Ayden move to defend him and swing Einar back around toward the imps where he landed on his feet and told them while looking at the red glow coming from within Ayden's choker locket,

"We must get the cursed talisman off of her! It's how he's controlling and draining her!"

"What?!" Ayden exclaimed before she grimaced as the runes around the room started to glow and the scar on her shoulder from D.H.O.R.K.S. faded and her hair grew to its floor reaching length like it had been a year prior and darker red flashes of energy flowed from the runes in the direction of Den to show the energy leaving her and going to him.

"Sorry my little hellspawn but since you don't wanna work with your old man, guess your energy's gonna have to work with me." Den spoke in a faux apologetic tone before moving to make Ayden attack the imps again with them only barely dodging the hellfire throws as blows were exchanged by each group.

A minute or two later, Den was starting to look bored with controlling Ayden to attack her friends and brother and some sweat was starting to drip from his forehead so he flicked it away and commented mildly,

"Phew it's getting hot in here." Moving to take off the sweater he was wearing making Ayden do the same with her tank top as she shouted,

"No!"

But he didn't listen and soon Ayden was standing in front of her friends with stark pale scars streaking the skin underneath her black sports bra where it looked like at one point she had tried to claw out her own heart and nearly succeeded from the small divots still in her chest.

Moxxie and Blitzø looked more upset at the sight but Millie looked down in despair since she'd already peeked at them before and knew Ayden would talk about them when she was ready but the fact that her so-called father had outed her made Millie's blood boil all over again.

"Oh look at that." Den noted disparagingly as he jeered, "Guess you already realized you're not truly alive then huh?"

"Don't listen to anything else this asshole has to say!" Millie shouted to her as she rushed over to attack Den with Einar on her shoulder but he made Ayden grab her axe and spin them back around to crash into the pinball machine, tipping it over and pinning her nearly unconscious body to the ground underneath with the glass shards around her.

"MRROOOOOWWWW!" Einar unleashed a booming shriek before he fell limp to the ground with a glass shard in his slowly rising and falling stomach.

"Rah!" Moxxie leaped in to protect his wife and teammates by trying to restrain Ayden from her back but she was forced to grab him by the neck and kick Blitzø back when he tried to get past her while Moxxie acted as the distraction sending him back into a wall as well.

"Hr-rr!"

A cut-off sobbing made Moxxie look at Ayden as her face was twisted in anguish at being forced to hurt her friends as she choked out,

"I-I'm so'y..."

Before he was tossed into the wall next to Blitzø, knocking him out leaving Blitzø the only one left to fight back as he stumbled to his feet and spat out some of his dark blood before he snarked to Den,

"Heh... and here I thought I was the only one with a shitty dad... but you pretty much take the fucking cake."

But Den just gave an exaggerated yawn and spoke boredly,

"Yaaaaahhh.. this was fun but I think it's about time we end this don't you think my little hellspawn?"

Ayden couldn't answer from how hard she was gritting her teeth while tears threatened to streak down her cheeks as she looked over at Millie, Moxxie, and Einar's unconscious bodies before she looked up at Blitzø with a broken, hopeless expression.

Just as she lit a fire in each paw, her ear twitched and, when that happened, Blitzø's face lit up for a split second before he got an idea.

Getting up and brushing himself off, he complimented Den while walking closer to him and Ayden despite her micro head shaking to keep him from getting any closer,

"Well I gotta say this has been fun, 7 outta 10 as far as evil plans go; I mean don't get me wrong the whole 'luring us here by pretending to be the bad dad turned good only to turn bad again' was a little cliche, definitely not the best plotline to go with but all in all a pretty solid plan the-re!"

Blitzø was cut off when Den made Ayden surge forward and grab him by the throat with one paw while the other maintained the fireball on her index digit.

"Ah ah ah I know what you're doing," Den waved a digit in his direction as he boasted, "you're trying to stall to buy time for help to come but you have no other allies in this place."

"Agh!" Blitzø struggled for a second before smirking, "Wanna bet on that you literal motherfucker?"

*MEOW!* *MEOW!* *MEOW!* *MEOW!* *MEOW!* *MEOW!*

A wave of the hellcats from upstairs flooded into the room, forcing Den off the VR corner, breaking the connection between him and Ayden making her drop to the ground exhausted as Blitzø caught her in a hug, as they all surged toward Den to attack him.

While some continued their assault, others licked Millie and Moxxie's faces to wake them up with a few also helping Millie out from under the pinball machine and Einar with standing despite his injuries.

"C'mon fam let's get outta here while the cat-valry is here."

"'at was real bad..." Ayden softly laughed at the bad cat pun but Blitzø just chuckled while ruffling her hair,

"Atta girl," Millie and Moxxie rushed over to hug her as well before he suggested, "Now let's get-"

But a blast of hellfire kept them from moving any further toward the door.

"YOU'RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!" Den shouted as he rose up from the swarm of hellcats, tossing several of them aside to try to get back to the VR corner to resume control over Ayden, before Einar painfully leaped up, clawing his right eye out as he used him as a stepping stone to get to the corner himself as he shouted,

"Not this time father!"

The runes lit up again, but they felt different this time to Ayden as she felt her energy returning before Einar shouted again,

"To our youngest!"

All the hellcats circled in a mob around Einar before they all suddenly turned translucent and rushed over to Ayden to circle her as well before there was a large explosion of reddish-orange smoke that forced the imps and Den back.

The imps coughed and waved the smoke away trying to find Ayden when they saw something else in her place; a tiger-sized hellcat who looked like a combination of the form she tried to take at D.H.O.R.K.S. and the monster hellcat that attacked her and Blitzø in the city earlier with the whistle that Den gave her around her neck but there were small gemstones embedded on the choker lace that had also merged with it in this new form, one for each of her older siblings.

"Huh that's a new one..." Den commented from where he was trying to get back up while a blood-soaked sleeve covered his scratched-out eye, making Ayden turn to face him with a death glare.

"Well...? Finish it." When Ayden did nothing but narrow her giant eyes he yelled, "FINISH IT!"

Ayden raised a paw up before bringing it down to send a wave of hellfire flaring out in front of her, destroying the VR corner as a deep and powerful, but still familiar voice, echoed in everyone's heads,

*Come 'fter us 'gain an' I will...*

Before she went over to the imps and lowered herself a bit to gesture for them to get on and they did so before she roared and a portal opened for the four of them to leap through.

When the portal closed behind them, Den chuckled as he lowered his sleeve from his eye to reveal it had been completely gouged out but a pink light still shone from its center,

"Oh you'll be back... I still have answers to questions you haven't even begun to ask yourself... Ayden..."

Meanwhile, a portal opened back up in the I.M.P. office letting Hellcat Ayden and the imps through as she lowered herself back down to let them off.

"Anybody else's bones vibrating?" Moxxie asked as he stumbled a bit when he dismounted to where Millie had to grab his arm to balance him and herself as the portal closed behind them.

"I mean I've had sorer spots from longer fuck sessions." Blitzø commented mildly as he brushed himself off, making Moxxie and Hellcat Ayden grimace in disgust.

A bright light flashed from Hellcat Ayden before it dimmed down to reveal her back in her demon cat form, still with the floor-length hair and her tank top still gone to show off the scars she re-received, but otherwise back to more-or-less normal.

"Here, you almost left this behind back there." Millie pulled out Ayden's tank top since she managed to snag it before they left and she took it with a grateful nod as she was about to pull it back on when she noticed the imps still trying to comprehend all the self-inflicted scars on her torso and she looked down in something akin to embarrassed shame.

The air was thick with tense suspension before the door was slammed open and Loona came in with a box in one of her hands while she was scrolling and paying attention to her phone in the other hand when she started to say,

"Almost stepped on this on the way.. in?"

She looked up to see the four of them looking like they'd just been in a fight and questioned,

"Do I even wanna know what the fuck happened?"

"No." The four of them chorused blankly at once.

Loona saw Ayden, still topless, before she made a realizing face and hurriedly pulled her tank top back on, struggling with her long hair, before crossing her arms to face away from Loona, things still tense between them from their argument earlier.

To bring attention off of her, Millie noticed the box in Loona's hands and asked,

"Wait is that-"

"Yeah it's the cake for-"

"Wait already I thought it was-!" Moxxie interrupted before he rushed over to the window to see that the pentagram was setting in the distance, signaling nightfall, and he pulled his hair as he exclaimed, "What?!"

"Uhh wh't's goin' on?" Ayden questioned with a raised brow.

"Well before we all got pulled into that whole.. thing we were planning this." Millie pulled her over to the break room where there were some streamers hung around the room and a banner reading "Happy 1 Year-aversary with I.M.P.!"

"Ooh hang on!" Blitzø took a marker out of his jacket pocket and hopped onto a chair to scribble "+ 16th bday" under the main text in his scribbly handwriting.

"Wait, it's your birthday too?" Loona questioned in disbelief.

"Yeh..."

"Aren't you just the luckiest..." She muttered as she went back to her phone and Ayden wanted to argue back but found she was too tired to do so as she instead turned her attention to the table where Millie set the box down to reveal a white and red frosted cake.

"Is that-?"

"A spice cake? Yyyyep!" Millie answered cheerfully before Moxxie added matter-of-factly,

"Or Hell's version anyway."

Ayden smiled as Moxxie handed her a kitchen knife to slice the cake and the afternoon-turning-night was enjoyed eating cake while mindlessly chatting as Blitzø caught Loona up on everything that happened earlier that day.

An hour later, everyone had gone back to their homes and Ayden stood in the bathroom of the couple's apartment, with the door slightly ajar, in front of the mirror with a pair of scissors in one of her paws while the other grabbed a chunk of her super-long hair.

"Tsss..." She raised the scissors up to be on level with her neck but stopped when she saw the locket and all the gemstone beads now on the choker lace and put her paws on the sink edge to catch herself as her breathing started to speed up and her eyes ached with the tears fighting their way to the surface.

*Knock...* *Knock...* *Knock...*

"Ayden?" Moxxie softly knocked on the door and Ayden, quickly pulling herself together, used her free paw to open it to reveal him standing there before he asked, "What are you doing?"

"Jus'..." She hesitated before saying while pulling on a chunk of hair, "Tryin' ta figure out wh't ta do with aaalllll this..."

"Well I'm not too experienced with hair styling, I think Millie might have more experience if you want me to go get her..."

"No I jus'... she's gonna wanna talk 'bout all o' it and I kinda don' wanna..."

"Oh..." Moxxie didn't think Ayden holding it all in was the best way to go about coping but he also didn't want to push her further outside of her comfort after everything she went through earlier so he responded with a simple, "Alright then."

A few seconds of silence passed before Ayden held the scissors out to him and told him quietly,

"Jus'.. do your best."

"Oh ok if you think so..." Moxxie, even though he was surprised she was trusting him with something like this, took the scissors as Ayden faced forward but didn't meet his eyes in the mirror as she opted to blankly stare at the sink instead.

After grabbing a bottle of Millie's hair detangler and a comb and moving the trashcan to be closer, Moxxie carefully sprayed Ayden's hair to gently comb through it before he caught sight of Ayden taking the photo out of her choker locket.

"Woah what are you doing?"

"He was using this to control me, I hafta get rid o' it..."

Ayden curled her claws around it, poised to crush it in her grasp, but she couldn't seem to bring herself to do it as her paw started to shake.

"Ayden?" Moxxie questioned as he finished brushing through her hair and grabbed the scissors again to start cutting when he noticed her silent struggle.

"Why can't I do it...?" She half-sobbed through gritted teeth before continuing, "My mum tried ta keep me from bein' this and my dad tried ta make me like this but wo'se.. so why can' I move past it and ev'ry. o'her. shitty thin' that's happ'ned?"

Moxxie had finished chopping off her hair to be just below shoulder length before working on thinning it out a bit more and making the ends stop just above her shoulders when he answered,

"Cause, deep down, we know that, without the bad stuff they put us through, we wouldn't have the good things we have now... we can't change our past but we can decide just how much of it we choose to live by or grow from..."

"Hmm..." Ayden hummed thoughtfully before she admitted, "I really thought he was gonna make me kill you all if Blitzø ha'n't d'layed so the o'hers could help..."

"Heh sounds like he saved you again."

"''Gain?'"

"He was the one who pulled you outta the ocean before during the Spring Break mission, Millie told me about it once I uhhh.. recovered."

"Oh... heh..." Ayden chuckled lightly, remembering how loopy he'd been drunk, when Moxxie announced quietly,

"And.. there!"

Her super long hair had been chopped off and turned into a stylish short, slightly wild, shag hairstyle barely brushing her shoulders with the red highlights reappearing as slightly longer streaks instead of tipped ones.

"Well... how'd I do?"

"I like it..." She whispered as she brushed a paw through her bangs.

"Haaah... good.." Moxxie gave a sigh of relief before he put a hand on Ayden's shoulder as he recommended,

"You should get some sleep if you can.. hopefully this weekend it'll be slow again or you could just ask Blitzø for a break if you need it or-"

"Ok." Ayden cut him off with a murmur as she went to grab her pj's from her drawers to go change into them, leaving the family photo underneath her other knick knacks... for now...

When Moxxie joined his wife in their bed, Millie asked him in concern,

"How is she...?"

"Still pretty rattled, she said she doesn't wanna talk about it but it's gonna keep eating at her if she doesn't let it all out..."

"We can't rush these kinda things..." Millie reminded him and Moxxie agreed hesitantly with a tired,

"I know I know... But what about our surprise?"

He looked over to a folded-up sheet of paper on their nightstand that Millie grabbed and they both looked over again before saying with some remorse,

"We'll hafta wait on that... till she's ready..."

Back with Ayden, she was settling in on the couch under her blankets when her phone vibrated from her bag and she pulled it out to see Via texting her again-

*Sale at Stylish Occult this weekend!*

*Wanna come with?*

She smiled for a second but it soon fell to a frown before she texted back-

*Hey Via...*

*can't hang this weeknd*

*sorry...*

The bubbles indicating she was typing popped up but Ayden shut off her phone after putting it on the charger on silent as she turned away and burrowed under the blankets to silently cry to herself.

*Ba-Bump...*

A softer thumping came from her choker to send a comforting pulse into her chest but the motion only made the tears fall more as she shifted to hellcat form to tightly curl in on herself before falling asleep.

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5058 Words

AN- And that's the end for now...

Nothing new to really announce... "Seeing Stars" gets posted next week with some Loona, Via, and Ayden bonding ^^ (as well as the reappearance of a familiar face 0.0 ) with "Exes and Oohs" having been finished and almost three quarters of "Western Energy" done over the break so update streak should still be going strong : D

Hope you all had a great week for Thanksgiving, if you celebrated, and until the next one, Bye!