Chapter 56: Elia, the Eloquent

“You should have denied it immediately the moment he called your name.”

Days later, in Avengers Tower, Iron Man was sprawled on the sofa, speaking casually. “Then tell him, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy, pal, I’m actually Captain Britain’... No wait, you’re already Captain Hell, that title is a bit repetitive. Better just say you’re Steve Rogers from a parallel universe; everyone understands that.”

Steve, pounding the punching bag behind him, kept his mouth tightly shut without replying, though his punching grew somewhat more ferocious.

Black Widow looked at Iron Man with exasperation. “I honestly can’t tell whether you’re comforting people or pouring oil on the fire.”

“I swear I’m comforting people,” Iron Man said earnestly. “I wouldn’t dare make our Captain angry for a while, lest I turn the swearing Captain America from the demon’s mouth into reality, and then I’d end up on the front page having to apologize to the entire nation.”

Black Widow asked, “Why?”

Passing by, Falcon shot Iron Man a glare. “The public would definitely think he was the bad influence who corrupted the Captain.”

“But actually, it was a bunch of demons who corrupted the Captain.”

“Speaking of which, the Captain returned to his own body with the help of the Bernese Mountain Dog raised by Elijah Esposito,” Dr. Banner poked his head out from not far away, asking curiously, “Where did the Red Skull go? Has anyone been paying attention to that?”

“He’s in Arkham,” Captain America finally spoke up after a long silence. “The Lord of Fate hasn’t figured out a way to get the Red Skull’s fate back on track yet. After Bob the Bernese Mountain Dog resurrected me, the Red Skull reverted to a state of death, but since he still occupied the destiny of ‘Captain America,’ it was just like when I went to hell...”

He wore a subtle expression, exasperated yet amused. “The Red Skull got taken up to heaven by ‘Death’.”

His words harvested a bunch of gaping mouths.

“But he didn’t get to stay in heaven for long,” Captain America added. “Those angels with astonishing combat power seem to have a different set of vetting criteria. They quickly realized the Red Skull didn’t make the cut, so they figured he had tricked the ‘rules’ somehow and kicked his soul right back out of heaven.”

“That is truly bizarre, so the Red Skull went to Arkham?” Iron Man couldn’t help muttering. “I’ve never heard of that prison having soul-containment facilities.”

Captain America replied, “This stems from another recent accident—word has it that Sam Hathaway’s ritual went slightly wrong, causing that prison island to become an isolated magical domain.”

Not every member of the Avengers had paid attention to the recent *Captain America’s Tour of Hell*, and someone immediately pursued the question: “What happened?”

“The ritual materials Sam Hathaway used directed the demons he summoned toward the sacrificial offerings required for the ritual, which included many of Gotham City’s famous criminals. Quite a few of them died at the hands of demons and were extradited to hell by ‘Death.’ You all must have heard that major news about the inmate ward of Arkham Asylum being more than half emptied out by now, right?”

Everyone nodded one after another, and Captain America continued, “Later when Simon—that’s Sam Hathaway’s father—wanted to close the gates of hell, he discovered that a portion of the demons couldn’t go back. They couldn’t leave Arkham because Sam’s cult had messed up the material needed for the final step of the ritual. Sam had originally intended to swap the angel feathers mentioned in the magic book for demon fingernails to direct the summoning target to hell, but when Batman checked it, he found out those weren’t demon fingernails at all.”

He sighed, saying helplessly, “They were the Joker’s fingernails.

“An Arkham guard driven by greed picked up the Riddler’s note while taking out the trash and smuggled the Joker’s fingernails out, putting them up on the black market under the guise of possessing mysterious criminal power. After professionals inspected them, they found they could indeed cause death—heaven knows if the Joker’s fingernails still harbored remnants of the Joker virus, but people didn’t know that, so they dubbed them the ‘Demon’s Nails,’ though buyers actually used them for assassinations and poisoning.”

“…”

This time he harvested a bunch of gaping mouths and widened eyes.

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

“To be fair, isn’t that method of murder a bit disgusting...”

“I am not kidding,” Steve said with a very solemn expression. “The problem lies right there in the Joker’s fingernails. The gates of hell were opened, and the transactions between demons and humans were underway, but the Joker became one of the sacrifices—to complete the contract, the Joker had to be killed, yet for some reason the Joker was unkillable. Some demons fired a dozen shots at him to verify this. If the sacrificial process hadn’t been initiated, there still would have been room for redemption, and Simon Hathaway would have had a way to cancel the contract. But the demons, led by a Lord of Hell, charged into Arkham and dragged dozens of criminals down to hell. This action activated the power of the contract, yet without fully activating it...”

Hawkeye, getting a headache from listening, interrupted him and said, “Just tell us what the situation is in Arkham right now, Captain.”

“It has become an extension of hell, a ‘hell on earth,’” Steve said with an upright expression while uttering something absurd. “The scope is limited to Arkham. As long as criminals are locked inside, just like ‘sinners’ who cannot leave the Ring of Pride, they have no way to leave Arkham from the inside by conventional means. Everyone else is unrestricted and can come and go freely. This can pretty much be considered a good thing; it saves Batman a lot of effort.”

The superheroes looked at each other in dismay.

Long afterward, someone remarked, “Not gonna lie, Arkham turning into a ‘hell on earth’ actually sounds pretty reasonable...”

Black Widow said thoughtfully, “This is an interlocking chain of events, wondrous to the point of being somewhat absurd. Missing a single link in the middle would have brewed a severe disaster. Yet, discounting the psychological trauma suffered by certain individuals (Cap: ?), the result can be called a happy ending for all, as if a hand had gently nudged the railway tracks of fate slightly to the side, sending the passengers riding the train toward entirely different directions. Does the Lord of Fate still deny that he orchestrated all of this?”

Captain America fell silent for a moment, then shook his head.

“He said that even if he really did something, it happened forty-two years ago... and all the good fortune people are encountering now has nothing to do with him, but is merely the result of their own continuous efforts.”

Listening to these philosophical words, everyone could not help but wear thoughtful expressions.

A few breaths later, Iron Man suddenly jolted awake from his deep contemplation and said, “Wait, isn’t he quite good with words? When he called out your name in public, he definitely did it on purpose, right?”

“…”

**

After the upheaval caused by hell came to a close, Superman flew up to the familiar small building on a bright and sunny day when neither of Elijah’s son nor daughter was home.

As he landed, Elijah’s upstairs neighbor happened to be leaning against the windowsill enjoying the scenery. Upon seeing him, the neighbor asked curiously, “Did someone from their house commit a crime again?”

Superman shook his head. “Nothing like that, sir. Why are you still at home? Don’t you need to go to work during the day?”

The neighbor immediately pulled his head back, muttering strange nonsense like, “Work? What work? Doesn’t staying at home count as work?”

Superman ignored him, walked straight to Elijah’s front door, raised his hand, and knocked three times. The moment the door opened, he immediately put on a warm yet polite smile, swiftly thrusting his foot into the gap of the door to block it, and said, “Elijah... I hope you don’t mind me calling you that, but I think we need to talk.”

Elijah, standing opposite the door panels, took a deep breath, stroked his hair with a hint of anguish, and turned to make space for Superman, saying, “Please.”

—This was the first time Superman had ever entered Elijah’s home.

Curious, he quickly swept his gaze around. Beneath the living room windowsill sat a fluffy, massive, shallow dog bed resembling a twin mattress. Bob the Bernese Mountain Dog was lying on top of it taking a nap, occasionally emitting various tones of woofs that probably came from its different heads. At the kitchen entrance sat a pile of newly bought vegetables and fruits that hadn't yet been packed away into the refrigerator. A few pieces of underage clothing were scattered across the sofa, and half a painting by Ophelia rested on the coffee table.

This scene made Superman hesitate for a second, but he quickly withdrew his gaze, stood in the middle of the living room, and looked straight at Elijah. Thinking for a moment, he decided to break the ice with a relatively safe topic: “Long time no see. How have you been lately?”

“Not bad,” Elijah answered flatly, the expression on his face roughly translatable to ‘couldn’t really say it’s good either.’ “Is there something you need?”

Superman blurted out, “I thought you were the one looking for me.”

As soon as he said it, he felt his phrasing might not have been quite right. But remembering that all the messages he had sent Elijah on WhatsApp had been marked as read with no reply, he instantly regained his full confidence. Composing himself, he looked over and asked with the solemn tone of a Justice League chairman discovering an alien invasion, “I haven’t been able to reach you lately and was worried you might have run into trouble, so I decided to come take a look.”

Superman currently had two phone numbers, both of which had added Elijah as a friend, except one number nominally belonged to Superman while the other belonged to Clark Kent. Recently, in the single, wealthy bachelors’ retirement group chat shared by Clark, Bruce, and Elijah, Elijah could still occasionally be seen bubbling up—mostly asking Wayne’s butler for recipes (both human and canine)—yet Superman’s side had completely lost contact, making him almost suspect that Elijah had blocked his main account.

That made no sense; clearly, everyone liked Superman much better than Clark.

Superman puffed out his chest and let his arms hang naturally by his sides. His handsome face gleamed brilliantly in the sunlight, the cape behind him fluttered in a bio-electric field with a perfect arc, and even the curl of hair on his forehead carried a golden ratio.

Elijah looked at him, words failing him.

How should he put it... Was he supposed to say that the past ‘Lord of Fate’ had paid too much attention to Superman, making Elijah feel it necessary to emulate that just in case an accident happened one day and he didn't have time to deal with it, but that this idea had brought him massive psychological pressure, making him feel agitated lately every time he saw Superman’s name?

It felt as though a terrifying yet inescapable deadline was looming right in front of him.

“Sorry, that’s on me,” Elijah said simply. “Though I actually do have something to remind you of: remember to tell Luthor to be careful.”

“I’ve always been careful about Lex Luthor... Huh?” Midway through his reply, Superman realized something was amiss. “Did you say ‘tell Luthor to be careful’?”

“Yes.” Elijah genuinely didn’t know how to explain, so he simply dug several pages of Gale’s script for *The Boys (Villain Edition)* from beneath the coffee table and handed them over. “As far as I know, the promotional trailer will be launching in the next few days.”