On a filthy cobblestone hell-road outside the infinite walls of Double-Dis, the Super Wizard From Space stared up at the triumphant face of the Super-Devil. The monster's massive grin dribbled thick lava as he shouted out "Hey there, jerks! Welcome to Double-Hell!"
The super wizard stood up fully and began to glow with an internal star-fire.
"Oh no you don't!" barked the Super-Devil, and brought his massive golden pitchfork stabbing down. A booming crunch, the weight of the enormous weapon knocked the lit shape flat against the cobblestone, trapped among the three tongs. A stray star-bolt flickered up along the golden handle, dispersing harmlessly into the air as the Super-Devil laughed.
"Wow, I didn't actually think this would work!" admitted the hell-monster. "On your mortal realms, my hell-powers would be at quarter of their full strength. But if I could somehow trick you into coming here, to my realm where I'm at my full strength... well, shit... here in Double-Hell, only the Super-Devil can be victorious!"
The gloating was interrupted by a weak coughing.
All eyes turned to the grievously wounded Devil, still lying on his back in a pool of his own hell-blood. With a grit of his teeth, he finally managed to yank his two-pronged pitchfork out of his gut, letting it rattle onto the road.
"I almost forgot about you, you little asshole" the Super-Devil taunted.
Wiping hell-blood out of his mouth with the edge of his ragged red cape, the Devil slowly managed to work his way to a sitting position. "I have fulfilled my part... I have delivered you the Super Wizard From Space. Now release me from my death-punishment. Let me return to my Hell as we agreed in our bargain."
"Oh! Ha! You mean this?" the Super-Devil chuckled, snapping his fingers. A huge sheet of parchment unrolled from nothingness, the binding hell-power of an infernal contract burning the edges of the paper. "Ah, but if you read the damned thing, you'd know that you only get out from Double-Hell after I defeat the Super Wizard From Space in the cosmic tournament, in an official cosmic battle...
"Which I have absolutely no freaking intention of doing!
"He'll be joining you in several particularly excruciating punishments I've been planning! Why should I risk a fair fight with him and let you off the hook when I can instead run both of you morons through a million painful hell-tortures?" the Super-Devil laughed maniacally.
"You're double-crossing me?"
"Of course I am!" was the reply, sounding almost insulted. "It's not like this is the first time." { Diabolical Devilman #12 }
With a snap of clawed fingers that echoed like distant thunder, the flame-licked contract rolled itself up and disappeared. The Super-Devil sneered in disgust. "What, are you dense? Are you retarded or something? Who the Double-Hell do you think I am? I'm the goddamn Super-Devil!"
The Devil looked up at his oversized twin with a pain-filled stare. "No, I suppose I knew this would happen," he admitted as he reached into his shorts and pulled out a small piece of paper, barely the size of a crumpled playing card and smeared illegibly with ink. He contemplated it, as if holding that simple small scrap made everything all right.
The Super-Devil narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Whatcha got there?"
The Devil smiled with a dastardly satisfaction. "Insurance."
The little scrap floated out of of his hand. The edges sparked with hell-fire.
The Super-Devil's eyes widened. "Oh shit."
The cobblestone road cracked and shattered in orange fireworks. All three tumbled through a sudden inter-dimensional emptiness, falling through an infinity while also not falling at all. A heavy black mist seemed to yank at them, dragging them down past twenty-one and twenty-four and twenty-seven glome-like dimensions at faster and faster speeds. Sound was nonexistent, light was nonexistent, but they could feel the massive wooden gateway, the chaotic iron wall of the infinite fortress city, all of Double-Hell that contained it whisked up and out and away from them.
The black mist didn't so much as give way this time as turn into a slicing cold rain, slashing down from an angry nighttime sky. All three crashed into what looked like a swamp on fire, bouncing violently off petrified stumps and splashing in hot, sickly mud. No matter their size, no matter how much any of them flailed, none could seem to find purchase, none could seem to free themselves from the endless mud. It took all their effort to just keep their heads above the surface.
"What have you done, you little bastard? What have you done?" screamed the Super-Devil, belching lava fitfully.
The super wizard managed to wrap his arms around the massive three-pronged gold pitchfork, clinging to it like a drowning man would cling to a broken oar. Spitting slush and dirt from his mouth, wiping muck from his stinging eyes, he saw a wounded form struggling beside him. Without hesitation, he grabbed onto the red cape and pulled the Devil to the relative safety of the floating pitchfork.
"What happened?" the super wizard demanded, yelling to be heard over the crashing of the slashing rain and cursing of the panicked Super-Devil.
"I certainly couldn't trust him, now could I?" the Devil replied between coughs. "So I signed an alternate contract. A backup deal, just in case."
"Contract? With who? Where are we?"
"Everything can die. Everything. And there is a twice-terrible place reserved for the denizens of Double-Hell when they pass on, with punishments and sufferings three-thousand-fold more harrowing than anything found in their own realm..."
A bubbling appeared in the mire around the thrashing Super-Devil, a drowned booming from deep underneath the swamp's mud. Five great pillars of black rock rose up on all sides of him... and then clutched him as they were revealed to be massive jagged fingers of a stone hand.
Surfacing from the depths was a gigantic humanoid beast made of cracked granite and glowing embers. It had armour of jagged cast iron, two empty eye sockets that each had a burning deer skull for pupils, and three curving horns protruding from it's forehead. In one hand it had a massive wooden pitchfork, it's four prongs dripping crude oil. In the other hand, it squeezed the Super-Devil like it was a toy.
"WELCOME TO TRIPLE-HELL!" it roared with an evil smile.
The Devil managed to fish his own two-pronged pitchfork from the swamp mud. Lighting it with a hell-glow, he pointed it at the Super Wizard From Space. "With the Super-Devil not upholding his end of the bargain, I'm refusing to uphold mine. I will use my hell-powers to send you back to the mortal realms."
"What if this new monster also betrays you?"
"Oh, I'm expecting it!" the Devil laughed. "Let's face it, we're not a trust-worthy lot, are we. That's why I signed more than one contingency contract. Just in case."
The super wizard only nodded grimly.
A simple crackling came from the Devil's iron weapon, and a pentagram-shaped hole tore behind the wizard. On the other side lay the dark cathedral and piled corpses of the alien-cultists distant world. Then the Devil placed the two prongs on the wizard's chest and pushed him through the hell-fissure to safety.
The super wizard collapsed on the floor, the dark walls of the auditorium lit by the morning light filtering down through the collapsed roof. He was covered in grimy ice, dusty red clay, and black swamp mud, but alive. He looked up to see the Devil, still trapped in the terror-swamp of Triple-Hell, giving him a single friendly wave.
"Good luck in your cosmic tournament, old friend," the Devil said cheerfully before the portal snapped shut.