Hell's Employment Lawyer

MrN. Nomen, upon being told by his receptionist that the deputies are here, dives out his window. He runs off down the street, hotly pursued by Chuck and Rowena, with Lana close behind. Jeb gets his truck, which is way faster, and Tim pelts along behind, having paused to line up a shot but having been unable to take it because of the bystanders.

Nomen is tackled by Chuck on his doorstep, but throws him off with maniacal force. He rushes up to his bedroom on the secondfloor of his Pistolville house. Chuck busts down the bedroom door, which explodes in his face in a rush of wind and a thunderclap of noise. It's not a bomb, which is often compared to indoor thunder; it's an actual thunderclap with a massive blast of wind.

Chuck and Rowena are thrown into the other side of the house. Nomen shouts "ignificas!" and throws fire at Chuck, who is slightly set on fire but gets it put out. Nomen then animates the wiring in the walls and has it curl towards Chuck and Rowena, sparking eagerly. The magic words for this are "incarnis copore cupricum," in case that ever comes in handy around the house.

Chuck and Rowena get up on a chair. Chuck throws some ink on the wires, which make an inky puff of smoke. But then, Tim calls "fire in the hole" from below and throws a flashbang into Nomen's room. Nomen is stunned, but Chuck and Rowena aren't, and rush him.

Meanwhile, Lana has located Nomen's office on the first floor and is covering the back exit. A shed bursts open and four more bald guys with sewn-shut eyes rush into the house. Or rather, they try to. Lana slams the door in their faces and locks it; they hammer with their fists and shoulders. That should hold them a while. Lana looks around for weapons; their new freshman friend Milton has armed himself with a fireplace poker and shovel, but Lana spots a samurai sword. She scoops that up.

Chuck topples over a bookcase onto the stunned Nomen. The skull on the bookcase says, "Whoa! Watch out for the skull, fella!" which is odd behavior for a skull. Nomen is stunned, but bursts up from the bookcase, green eyes glowing on his forehead. He has begun to transform into a stubby-legged bearish demon form.

Chuck therefore drags over an even bigger bookcase and drops it on Nomen! By the time he's torn his way out of this new obstruction, Nomen has fully transformed into a demonic bear with curving golden claws. The demon yells at Nomen, telling him what to do, but Nomen's out of it. The demon snarls and declares its intention to deal with this himself, and punish Nomen for his slackness later.

Jeb shows up, having built a gasoline-powered flame thrower. Yes, I know that's a bad idea. He hoses Nomen with flames, getting right up in his face. The demon howls, badly burned, but swipes the side of Jeb's head. A whole ear comes off. Jeb hangs on grimly, roasting the demon from the neck down.

Rowena slashes the demon, and Tim shoots it, but it won't go down. Chuck pokes its burning green eye, which really ticks it off, then Chuck wraps Jeb's head in gauze. Jeb ain't runnin'. He does rush downstairs, but that's not runnin' away, that's attackin' somewhere else. Dammit.

The bald guys have broken in! Lana swipes at one guy's head, taking it clean off his shoulders. The sword gleams with silver light, washing away all the shadows and making the bad guys blink, even though they have no eyes. It's really quite beautiful.

Milton pokes another guy in the forehead, where Nomen's green glowing eye resides. Nomen, upstairs, howls. He felt that!

The skull, lying on its side in the debris, calls for attention. Rowena answers, and the skull says, "Will you be my friend?" She says yes and picks it up. "Cool, then you can defeat Ursiel by hitting him in the left hip," says the skull helpfully.

Rowena cuts at Ursiel's left hip. A coin rolls out of the wound, and at once Ursiel shrinks back into a badly dead Charles Nomen. Chuck picks up the coin between two books, careful not to touch it.

The burning roof (you can't shoot a flamethrower hardly anyplace these days, seems like) collapses. Chuck, Rowena and Tim go out a window onto the garage roof.

Jeb reconfigures his flamethrower into a bomb and shoves it at the bad guys. Lana bolts from the house with truly inspired speed, dragging Jeb along.

When the house explodes, no one at ground level is hurt; Rowena and Tim fell over, and Chuck hasn't jumped yet. The house explodes from bottom to top, so Chuck still has a moment to let himself down.

Tim takes charge of the crime scene (not sure of the details, but there was at least one crime here) and advises the kids to scat. They talk to the skull, whose name is Bob, and eventually come back to the jail with Ursiel's coin and the coin from Mr. Arbuthnot, the tentacle lawyer. It's an overlooked legal specialty. They throw the coins into the Hellmouth, and everything's fine ...

or is it?