Epilogue: Week 20

Blaze had gone out for pickles and ice cream. Lois Lane was on the couch, surrounded by the boxes and boxes of household goods they still had to unpack. They had closed on the house only last week, and here they were...their new home.

The reporter smiled as she picked up the framed photo they had taken, the first one when they had been together after that night out five months ago. It was weird to think that even in that picture, she was already pregnant. The reporter rubbed a hand over her bump. Twenty weeks with triplets and she was carrying it in the front, as her mother would have put it. The dark line had already crept up from her crotch to her belly button, which was threatening to become an outie any time now.

Lois Lane heaved herself to her feet and, hammer in one hand and picture in the other, found just the right space on the wall to hang it. At home like this, the reporter found it easier to wear athleisure wear than anything else: the elastic top was more comfortable than any of the bras she had outgrown, and the elastic bottoms accommodate her swollen ass and thicker thighs, while leaving her distended abdomen free.

A few well-placed whacks drove the nail into the wall. The pregnant woman carefully hung and balanced the frame...she knew she should get one of those laser levels, so it would be properly straight...and then she saw a reflection in the glass. An unfamiliar figure. Male. Coming up behind her.

Twenty weeks of pregnancy had cost Lois Lane some of her athleticism and grace...but hadn't affected her reaction time at all. With a sudden mama bear surge of strength she twirled and brought the hammer down with both hands...only to bounce off the metal helmet, barely leaving a dent.

The figure that stood before Lois was at least a head and a half taller than her, and twice as broad at the shoulder. His face was mostly shadowed by metal the helmet, which had cut-outs for the dark horns that curled up from his brow. He was bare-chested except for a kind of white kilt, and a white cape. Black boots and black leather bracers completed an outfit that showed off more of the ripped, bodybuilder physique than it concealed...and there was something familiar in the unnatural leanness and boney nature of that tall body, the color of the skin was a very familiar shade of red...and the eyes were pure white, without pupil or iris.

"You are not Blaze," the intruder said, voice accusing. The accent was very familiar.

"I'm...I'm Lois," The pregnant reporter licked her lips. She held the hammer in front of her. "Blaze is my...partner."

The helmet lowered as he looked Lois up and down.

"Ah, I see my mistake. I traced her energy here, but it appears it is only a...part of her." He stretched out one hand, then hesitated, pulled it back. "I am Satanus. I will not harm you. Where is my sister? We must...talk."

Lois hesitated. She didn't like how this literal demon had just appeared in her home...but then again, if Satanus did want to hurt her or the babies, there wasn't much Lois and a hammer could do about it.

"She...went out to the store," Lois lowered her hammer, though it took an effort. Instinct warred with upbringing, and eventually civility won out. "Would you like some tea?"

"...and I told her we were going to have a hell of a time when the boys hit puberty!"

Blaze found them in the dining room. Satanus had to remove his helmet to sip from the tea cups; his face was not quite as Lois had expected it. He and Blaze favored one another strongly, though his chin was more prominent, and he smiled more and wider. There was almost an androgynous aspect to his wide cheeks and the dark hair which spilled down the back of his neck.

"Ah, sister!" Satanus stood up as Blaze returned. In her mortal guise, she was about half a head shorter than him, the blue jeans and rainbow t-shirt a market contrast to his somewhat more outrageously sword & sorcery aesthetic.

"Brother?" Blaze hesitated, confused. "What do you here?"

"I wish to speak to you on a matter of some...urgency. We should meet in private, I..." He said.

"I have no secrets from my mate," Blaze said. Lois knew that tone of voice. Her demon lover held herself stiffly, shoulders set, not ready to give an inch.

Lois waddled around the table and took one of the bags from Blaze's hands. She made a happy chirruping noise when she saw that Blaze had managed to score both Triple Rocky Road and Sea Salt Praline Butter Pecan. Blaze did not take her eyes off her brother, who stood there awkwardly.

"It is...good to see you," Satanus said. "However, please, we should speak alone...there are things I must show you, and..."

"Anything you can say to me, you can say to Lois," Blaze said...and then with a shake she shed her human form. Dark horns curled up from her brow, slender and not quite as prominent as Satanus' own. Seeing them together in her kitchen, Lois was struck how utterly similar the two looked.

"Are you twins?" The reporter asked as she popped open the carton of Rocky Road.

"Yes," Satanus said. "We are bonded together. That is part of the reason I have sought you out."

Blaze's forehead crinkled between her horns. "What?"

"It is easier to show you," Satanus said with a sigh. He hooked a red thumb into the waistband of his white kilt, and unwound it, let it fall to the floor...and Lois, a gob of chocolate ice cream in her mouth, leaned across the table to look.

There was no cock there. A bald crimson cunt rested between the thickly-muscles thighs and below the well-defined abs. The clitoris was, perhaps, unusually large and protuberant, but the reporter could clearly see the cleft. Satanus' cheeks darkened to a deep purple, the way Blaze's did on those few occasions Lois made her lover blush.

"You see...ours is a metaphysical connection. As my sister has waxed masculine, my body and spirit have shifted in balance," Satanus said.

Blaze blinked.

"Oh, brother," she said. "I did not know. But..." she looked at Lois. "I need my cock! To satisfy my mate."

Satanus snapped his—or was it her?—fingers. A black spark briefly flit into existence, and unseen hands picked up the white kilt and wrapped it back about their waist.

"I did not...say I was unhappy with the development," Satanus said carefully. "In truth, I have long been questioning my...what do the mortals call it? Gender identity? Sexuality? I do not know. I have been finding myself thinking more of such things of late. Of who and what I am attracted to, of who I am. I think I wish to...explore this aspect of myself. Yet I cannot do it in Hell. Our enemies would surely take advantage if they knew I was a...cuntboy."

The purple flush spread across the bridge of the demon's nose. Lois swallowed her ice cream.

"You know...we do have a guest room, next to the nursery," the reporter said. "And it might be nice to have another set of hands, when the baby comes."

Blaze looked back and forth from Lois to her brother.

"You...would not mind?" she asked of Lois.

"I mean, he is family," Lois said. Then looked at Satanus. "It is 'he,' right?"

"That is my preferred pronoun," Satanus said. "For now. I still have much to learn."

Blaze visibly relaxed she stepped forward and gripped Satanus in an awkward hug.

"Very well then! Welcome to your new home!"

Though the sky was clear in the suburbs outside Metropolis, thunder echoed ominously...and lightning flashed in a cloudless sky...for every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and the forces of good and evil were no longer quite in balance...