Calliope's halfway through teaching Emily how to deal with curly hair like she now has when suddenly her phone goes off. Shoving it between her head and her shoulder, she asks "Hello?"
"I'm calling to inform you that Heaven will be sending a delegation down to Hell in a week's time."
Calliope freezes in place in utter shock, and the brush she was holding slips from her hand and clatters to the ground. After a moment, she asks "Sera? What, exactly, do you mean you're sending people down to Hell?! Who?!" She wouldn't be that stupid, would she?! Just sending a bunch of people through a portal to Hell and hope it'll all turn out alright?!
"We're still selecting Winners, but three Heavenborn have already volunteered. They'll arrive at approximately ten o'clock in seven days."
A thought strikes Calli like the lightning bolt her scar looks like, and she whisper-hisses "It's not Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel, is it? No, do not hang up, Sera! Is it those three- Godsdammit!"
Emily twists around to stare at Calli, and asks "She hung up?"
Calli pinches the bridge of her nose, and says "She hung up. Emily, do you have any idea who might be coming? Anyone at all?" Those three idiots wouldn't be so stupid as to come down here…right?! No, wait, of course they would - they Fell Lucifer without a scrap of concrete evidence against him, after all! Shitshitshitshit…
When Emily shakes her head, Calli runs a hand through her hair and says "Alright, to be continued. We gotta find Luce, and now…"
Emily nods, and the two start running.
Thankfully, Lucifer's in his office filling out some paperwork - even with the way Hell's set up, mostly self-sufficient as it is, it still manages to come with its share of paperwork to do. Lucifer looks up when the two skid to a stop, asking "Everything alright?"
Calli shakes her head, saying "Not quite. Sera just called, you remember when Emily said there would be a delegation from heaven coming at some point?" When Lucifer nods, she says "Well, they're coming in a week. Three Heavenborn volunteered."
Lucifer blinks, then says "Three…oh, fuck no…"
Calli nods, saying "She didn't say who had volunteered…hung up the phone when I asked. So…it's probably them."
Lucifer runs a hand through his hair, muttering "Shit…you think her hanging up is revenge for me not picking up before the trial?"
Calli rolls her eyes, saying "It wouldn't surprise me, Sera's petty like that. Even though you'd barely been able to function enough to get the meeting set up in the first place."
Emily frowns, asking "Come again?"
Lucifer gives her a shaky smile, saying "I'm…let's just say my Fall really messed me up. Some days are better than others…but Sera - or anything to do with Heaven, really - makes me spiral in an instant. Most of the time, anyway." If he's angry when trying to interact with anyone up there, like that call they made before Extermination Day, he manages well enough - if he's anything else, though…it's not good whatsoever. He spirals, he can't breathe...he's come close to reliving his Fall on more than one occasion.
Calli runs a hand through her hair, then sends a text to Sera saying 'How many, Sera? I need a number, else we won't be held responsible for anyone you send down here ending up corrupted due to Roo's energy.'
Predictably, there's no reply - not even anything acknowledging that she's seen the message.
Calli hisses for a solid minute in Parseltongue, then says "I'll make twenty crystal pendants. Any others come, it's on her."
Lucifer mutters "This is definitely revenge…at least there couldn't have been any doubt about who was coming with Charlie for that so-called meeting!"
Emily asks "How so?"
Lucifer deadpans "Calli went down to Hell with me when I Fell. In front of the whole Council, no less. And Lilith was an only…well, could it still be called an 'only child' when she was fully-grown from the first instant she awoke?"
Emily frowns, thinking, then says "Good point."
"But, uh, yeah, it was just the three of us at first. And Humanity took a while to get down here, so…I really don't know who they thought would've been Charlie's Aunt other than Calli."
Sera, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael all jump when Azrael loudly announces his entrance into Sera's office…by practically knocking the door off its hinges, he opens it so hard. Once everyone's gotten past his attempted heart-failure, Sera runs her hands over her hair to straighten it some and asks "Azrael, what brings you here?"
Azrael puts the box he's carrying on the desk, saying "Oh, you know, making a drop-off, making sure my favorite little sister doesn't poison herself by spending much more time up here, being amazed at your utter ridiculousness…you know, the usual." Actually, Calli's currently passed-out from sheer exhaustion - between planning Charlie's birthday party, searching all the other Rings high and low for an immortal shapeshifter who clearly knows how to stay hidden, and everything she does to help with the Hotel on a daily basis, she finally managed to hit her limit after creating the pendants with a large crystal set in the center of each of them and Warding and Enchanting the crap out of the lot of them.
Sera purses her lips, asking "And what, pray tell, ridiculousness would that be?"
Azrael flatly asks "You got any idea what Roo's energy does to a person? Any non-demon that enters Hell is going to have a really rough time by themselves. Heaven and Hell's energies are polar opposites, they act as a kind of poison to those from the other realm. Those that don't die an agonizing death, in either realm, are twisted and adapted to survive in the new environment if they spend enough time down there - unless, of course, they're like Calliope and have both Angel and Demon inside them. And, even then, unless they spend all their time in both realms, they're going to be more adapted to one or the other. Something we were all real sure you must've known, Sera, considering how long Adam and his Exorcists were coming down every single year. He had to have brought up the detail that Hell was awful for them to be in at first, or that they slowly seemed to be getting used to it." Eying Sera with his arms crossed, Azrael off-handedly says "I honestly wouldn't be surprised if you weren't just a little bit corrupted yourself, Sera, having spent so much time with that moron."
Raphael frowns, asking "What are you talking about? Poisoning people? We wouldn't-"
Azrael shakes his head, saying "You remember the woman we saw, right?" At all three of their nods, Sera frowning at not knowing what they're talking about, Azrael adds "You remember when we learned she created Hell?" Again, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael all nod. "Well, even Calli going up and down the entire place a few hundred times hasn't managed to erase the traces of her magic permeating the very realm. Diluted them, perhaps, but they're there to stay. And, trust me when I say, Roo does not like our Father or anything or anyone he created. And that includes all of Heaven. Any Angelic or Divine beings that head down there fall ill, and they either die or they get twisted…mutated would be another word for it. Their body, their powers, their very being. Happened to Lucifer, happened to me…hells, the only reason Calli didn't get it full-force is because she was already half-demon thanks to Fate and Magic. And even she got sick from Roo's power trying to turn her into a full demon. Which makes meeting anywhere but the holographic embassy rather impossible without some help, considering the detail that anyone that's been down in Hell for longer than a few months will start throwing up all over Heaven's golden gates and anyone up here that goes down to Hell is going to be in feverish agony within days if left to their own devices."
Raphael sucks in a sharp breath saying "Charlotte, her girlfriend, and Calliope were up here for hours-"
Azrael deadpans "You don't seriously think Calli didn't cast a spell to keep the worst of it from hitting Charlie, did you? Aside from that, Charlotte's half Fallen Angel. She's lucky enough to be able to tolerate Heaven's energy for a time. Lucifer, to, probably."
Gabriel asks "What about Calliope, then?"
Azrael raises an eyebrow, glancing at the three of them, then shrugs and says "Best we can tell, each side filters the corresponding energy for the other. Obviously, her demon half is a lot stronger than her Angel half by now, but there you have it."
Michael sighs, surprising even himself when he realizes he's actually relieved about that, and says "So, she wasn't being poisoned up here, then."
"Oh, no, she absolutely was. It was just slow-acting in her case. Her Angelic half hasn't exactly had to process Heavenly energy in a while, has it?"
Raphael asks "So…what do we do, then? About keeping everyone that goes down there from…"
Azrael says "Simple, we use Calli's devices. She made these," he gestures towards the box, "you see, specifically for whoever comes down as this delegation I've heard about. Wear 'em, don't take 'em off for even an instant, there's twenty of them. Any others over that number that insist on coming, either tell Calli or it's on you guys what happens to them." He then takes his phone out, and turns off the audio recording he's turned on before sending a copy to both Calli and Lucifer.
At everyone's glances, he shrugs and says "Proof. Call everyone paranoid, but nobody actually thinks you're going to listen. Now, I'm out."
He leaves, only to find the nearest group of Winners and share the audio recording with them for good measure - the more people that know Hell actually made an attempt at accommodating Heaven's Delegation, the better.