A cold day in Hell!

Mephisto fumed on his throne, wrapping himself more tightly within his robes, scowling out into the wastelands of hell and oblivion. He was still recuperating after the failed plot with Susan Storm several months ago. Licking his wounds, the demon lord sat shivering, wondering why the fires did not burn as hot as they should be. If anything, Hell had become rather… Chilly.

“Why has the temperature dropped?” Hissed Mephisto, glaring down at his court of demon subjugates and sycophants who kept him informed of events in the outer planes. All of whom shivered either due to the sudden cold or the even colder stare their master gave them.

An imp fluttering in the fume choked air adjusted his glasses and scrolled a parchment in his hands to review the numbers over the last 3 months. “It is strange my lord, but for some reason the income of damned souls has been… Well… Coming short.”

“Coming short?” With his hands up and shaking his head in confusion, Mephisto stood from his throne and walked down the steps to snatch the scroll from the tiny demon and read the results himself. “Suicide has gone down, rape has gone down, marital fidelity has gone up? Mortality rates have dropped… fifteen percent?!” Throwing the scroll into the fires, Mephisto grimaced at his court. “WHAT THE FLYING HELL IS GOING ON UP THERE?”

“Well… We may have an idea on that my dark lord.” Shivered a pestilence demon, his maggot riddled skin crawled as he conjured a seeing mirror for all the court to see. Looking down at the images flowing from the smooth silver surface, it quickly focused on a blonde woman in a jogger’s shorts and top running through Central Park in New York. To everyone else around her she appeared as a stunningly beautiful blonde supermodel on her daily jog, but the seeing mirror revealed her true nature to the demons watching her.

“A succubus?”

“Why is she blue?”

“I have no idea…”

At first, they all didn’t know what they were looking at until she stopped for water and looked over at a fighting couple at a bench. Blowing them both a kiss, the couple suddenly stopped fighting, instead they began to make out furiously until they decided to get up and head to the public washroom together.

“No, no, no, NO, no, no!” Mephisto screamed, gripping the seeing mirror like a coffee table. “They were supposed to break up! HE was supposed to hang himself 3 days later and SHE was supposed to end up a heroine addict with her new ass-hole boyfriend!”

Continuing to watch, the demons became more and more disgusted with every second, their lord and master freaking out with every good deed the succubus was performing. “NO! Stop it! Don’t save that little girl from on coming traffic! That dog is SUPPOSED to have rabies, what is she doing now?”

Looking more closely, they zoomed in on the succubus as she stopped at the doorstop of a local church and pulled out a check book. “What the hell…” Handing the check to the confused nun, the succubus waved goodbye and went off on her run, the elderly nun looking down at the check and nearly fainted.

“She… She committed charity!”

One of the demons suddenly looked dizzy and staggered off to the ledge of Mephisto’s cliffside where his throne stood, falling to his hands and knees to throw up hard over the ledge.

“This… This is unthinkable…” Whimpered the famine demon, shaking in shock while his boney frame rattled and pulling away from the seeing mirror. “Do you know what happens when a demon commits charity?”

“Hell freezes over!” Answered Mephisto, blind raging in his fiery eyes as he glared down at the seeing mirror, still watching as the blue skinned succubus continued her jog, eventually she came to a stop at the front doors of a sky scrapper and entered. Narrowing his eyes, the image turned to a living room in a high rise loft in that building, where the she-demon closed the door behind her and smiled, falling to her knees and hugging a boy and girl before moving up to give a man sitting and reading in the living room a kiss on the forehead. “Hello Suzie, enjoy your jog?” Asked Reed Richards as his wife smiled and stretched. “Exhilarating Reed, I think I improved my time.”

“SUSAN STORM…” Mephisto’s voice carried over hell like a storm cloud. It all made sense to him now. She was never returned to human form after his plot had been foiled, now with the powers of the damned, she was twisting it into something constructive, something… Good. The word formed a lump in his throat.

“She’s the reason it’s getting cold down here?!”

“I don’t understand, Succubae are supposed to be seducers who feed off male lust and desires, why isn’t she performing evil?

“Because she doesn’t have an evil bone in her body… Not anymore, THAT ended up in the body of a human named Christie Chang.”

“You mean she’s a succubus with a heart of… Heart of… Goll-buh-bah-BLARRFFFF!” Throwing up again, the pestilence demon barely registered the complaint down bellow as he passed out in disgust.

“Drastic actions must be taken to rectify this, if her actions continue, Hell will completely freeze over!”

“Please tell me she’s the only one down there.”

“What shall we do master?”

Turning and returning to his throne, deep in thought, Mephisto scowled until a smirk finally crossed his black lips. “Send the Dominator, he will be tasked with corrupting her back under the wings of hell or break her under HIS!”

“Oooh, the Dominator; the Incubus Duke of the plains of suffering, I hear he has grown bored of his harem of late.”

“Then he will appreciate a new addition then.” Chuckled the dark lord as he commanded his court to disperse. The Dominator was one of the most powerful Incubi in Hell, a master at breaking women and twisting them to his will, there was no way he could fail.