I should've known Hell would be a place of eternal boredom...

Mirai no Juunanagou flicked irritably at a piece of lint on his shirt (why the hell they had lint in the afterworlds was something he was not yet bored enough to contemplate) and leveled a glare at the red hulk before him; Enma Daio flipped through another file and sighed, resting his head on his hand.

Juunanagou (this one, at any rate) had been dead for some time, but complications had risen immediately; no one knew where to send him. The difficulty was not him being Jinzouningen; it was that he was organically based. He had been human...half his soul still was. That posed a problem. Not that Gero's machines had no metallic souls; the purely mechanical creations, upon death, did indeed come here; their souls were simply erased. There was no hope of them changing and achieving anything better than that for which they had been programmed.

Mirai Juunanagou was a different story altogether.

"I can be bored just as easily somewhere else, you know," he grumbled. "Or is this supposed to be my torture, since your cronies couldn't come up with anything better?" Enma Daio shuffled his papers.

"This isn't your torture," he replied mildly. "If it were meant to be torturous you'd know. I'm afraid you're going to stay here until I sort this out; I want you put in your place, whatever that place is."

"So obliterate me. You want to, every other damned idiot I've met around here wants to. What's the problem, hmm?"

"The problem," Enma Daio sighed, "Is that there are still elements of your human soul that might be worth saving. I can't just throw that away."

"Why the hell not? You're in charge. Do as you please," Juunanagou sneered.

Enma Daio gave him a brief look of warning. If reports were to be believed, the smart-mouthed boy had brought himself close to obliteration on numerous occasions since his arrival. Perhaps it would be better for all if I just got rid of him…

Another heavy sigh. Enma felt distinctly uneasy sending an untried soul to the lower hells. There was stuff down there nasty enough that it really had to be earned, not defaulted. You just didn't send anyone down there that you weren't sure of. To say that Enma Daio was unsure of Juunanagou's makeup was dry understatement. The cyborg's sister had come through just before him, but they'd managed to break through her shields, get a good look at her soul and send her on her way before Juunanagou showed up. One of the guards had commented that he'd not seen a soul quite like Juunana's in all his days, and strictly speaking, it was true.

None of them could see it. Juunanagou was frame and attitude concealing a riddle. He wasn't soulless, that much was plain. What lay beneath, then, was their concern and their primary difficulty. Not that he'd shown much promise during his foreshortened life as an android, but there had been something rather vital missing there. Enma Daio had to wonder…

A short wiry ogre with a complexion like tapioca bustled in, looking important. Ignoring Juunana's disdainful glare, the messenger trotted forward, dropped a thin folder on Enma Daio's desk, and waited. With a bit of a sigh (Constant interruptions in this line of work…) the god flipped open the file and quickly scanned the first page.

Eyes a bit wide, he read the second and third more carefully. Juunanagou stood on tiptoe, trying to get a peek at what could possibly be more important than the fact that he was still waiting. Enma Daio snapped the folder shut and stowed it in one of his apparently bottomless desk drawers. He scrawled a hasty note on a scrap of paper and handed it back to the messenger, sending the small fellow off with a wave of his massive hand.

"So do I get to watch you play secretary for the rest of my kamidamned afterlife or are you going to get me out of here?" Juunana asked peevishly. Enma Daio rewarded him with a faint and very weary smile, eyes worried.

"I'm going to get you out of here," he answered, smiling just a touch more at the android's immediate response: Juunanagou went stiff, lips pressed together tightly.

"Okay," he muttered. "So how soon?" Enma Daio shut his eyes.

"Right now, boy. You'd better make good this time…your guardian's not going to tolerate much."

Juunanagou blinked, but before he was able to choose which of the dozen or so questions on his lips to ask first, Enma Daio flicked his fingers and an overwhelming darkness seized the Jinzouningen.

He awoke, breathing harshly, amidst the rubble of the last building he'd destroyed.

Welcome home, Juunanagou…