Chapter Text
'And what does this... button... do?' said Alastor.
Vox restrained himself. 'It starts the program,' he said evenly.
Alastor delicately rearranged the mouse. Nothing happened.
'You need to click,' said Vox.
Alastor clicked.
'No—double click. Do it twice!'
Alastor clicked once, then—after a pause that seemed to last a full century—clicked again.
Vox was too busy displaying the homescreen to make an expression, which was fortunate, because it probably saved his life. 'Quickly,' he said, fighting to keep his voice even. 'You have to do it quickly. Click-click. That fast.'
It took Alastor seven attempts to successfully double-click, but at long, long last, the Radio Demon successfully opened Microsoft PowerPoint. 'Oh!' he said. 'Isn’t that just fascinating. And what does this do?'
'Like I said,' Vox said, through his invisibly gritted teeth, 'this is how you make the slides.'
'The slides,' Alastor said. 'And what are those again?'
He was fucking with him. He had to be fucking with him. There was no way he was actually this bad at this. Was there? 'The slides,' Vox said, after pausing long enough to keep his composure, 'are where you are going to put the pictures. And the dot-points. You should click around, explore the program, get a feel for what it’s capable of.'
'I see,' said Alastor, chin resting on his fist, and then all was quiet. Vox watched through his webcam: Alastor’s eyes flicking around the screen (around Vox’s screen), the faint crease in his brows, his grin gone grimace in the depths of his concentration.
'I wonder... what happens if I click this button?' said Alastor.
And then he closed the program.
Vox’s cooling fans audibly accelerated. 'That is the ‘close’ button,' he said, with the patience of a fucking saint, 'And now you need to open it again.'
Alastor nodded. 'And how do I do that?'
Vox tightened his grip on the table. 'You click it,' he said, impatience bleeding into his voice—and Alastor’s nose twitched.
'Now, now, my dear, no need to be rude,' said the Radio Demon, demonically.
Vox changed his cooling mode to performance. 'My apologies, Alastor. As I told you—' he checked his internal clock, and nearly screamed '—forty-four minutes ago, you just need to move your cursor over the icon—'
'The—curse-or?'
'What? No.' Although, now that he thought about it, that did make... an odd amount of sense as a Hellish rebrand. Velvette had always loved that sort of thing. 'The mouse. What you were using before.'
Alastor peered at Vox’s face—at the screen. After a pause, he tilted his head. One of his ears twitched. 'And where, exactly, do I find that?'
Once Vox had pointed him in the right direction, it took Alastor thirty-four seconds to remember that the cursor moved in the same direction as the mouse, and another twelve to actually find the PowerPoint icon, but he did find it.
And then the Radio Demon clicked.
Once.
Vox’s claws dug into the desk with a screeech.
~*~
It was an odd position to be in, he had to admit. Saying ‘Alastor did not own a computer’ was understating the problem; Alastor did not own anything that could be considered even remotely computer-adjacent. He did not own a TV. He did not own a monitor. In short, he did not have in his possession any technology dating beyond the second world war.
Anything, that is, besides Vox himself.
Hence, their current position: Vox, reclined against Alastor’s desk and running his own personal edition of Windows NT on his fucking face—and Alastor, perched atop the back of his chair and pecking impotently at the keys, like a man who had died in the 1930s and decided that was quite enough technological progress, thank you!
It should have been a legendary collaboration. It should have been the pinnacle of his afterlife—of both of their afterlives. Radio and video, united at last; the Radio Demon and the Television Demon working towards a singular purpose!
'Why does this little program insist on my using a sans-serif font?' said Alastor, who had no intention whatsoever of playing his assigned part in Vox’s daydreams.
Vox did not sigh. 'You can change that. Here,' he said. 'Would Times New Roman work?'
Alastor was silent for sixty-three blissful seconds. “The kerning is off.”
Vox did not claw the desk again, but it was a near thing.
In retrospect, there were probably other, better decisions he could have made after the fiasco with the Might of Lilith, decisions that did not involve selling his soul to his worst enemy. Probably. But as galling as it was to be stuck playing Windows NT tech support for a man with all the tech literacy of a sea cucumber, it beat the alternatives.
Vox was alive, he was still an Overlord, and he had his body back. It was worth it. It was.
'Would you be a darling and fetch me one of those new slide creatures?'
'As you wish,' said Vox, and fetched the Radio Demon a new slide.
Before the dust had even settled on Pentagram City, Velvette and Valentino had divided Vox’s share of the company between them, leaving him destitute and very nearly powerless, with just nine souls to his name—nine! Even if they had promised to give his share back—once things cooled off, his popularity ratings recovered, the cows came home, heaven stopped calling for his head on a pike, and hell froze over.
They hadn’t been letting him regenerate, either—Velvette said he had ‘lost body privileges’, whatever that meant, and it wasn’t like the Television Demon needed fingers to do his job; ‘just plug ‘im in and ‘e’s good to go!’
Given all that, escaping Vee Tower had taken a minor miracle, even if the miracle ended up being ‘neither Velvette nor Valentino anticipated Vox doing something that colossally stupid as trying to teleport his way out’.
They hadn’t known he could teleport on nine souls.
Vox hadn’t, either—the first time around, he hadn’t managed teleportation until he hit thirty souls. It was lucky he only had to transport his head, this time; he came out missing a corner-piece. If he’d tried it with his whole body, he’d probably have lost an arm.
And after all that, Alastor hadn’t even had the grace to look surprised to see him. Bastard.
Vox had been careful. He was not a stupid man, even if he could be... impulsive, at times.
I will be your obedient servant, he had said, for the completion of twelve tasks, and not more than a duration of twelve years, with two conditions. He had agonised over the wording, naturally, in fear of Alastor exploiting another technicality, but so far the Radio Demon seemed entirely capable of making Vox’s life miserable without straying from their original arrangement.
The first condition: You will not harm me, or through your own action or inaction allow me to come to harm. In this, Vox had underestimated the Radio Demon.
'Vincent. I appear to have misplaced the ‘save’ file. Would you be so kind?'
He could have placed a condition prohibiting torture, psychological or otherwise, or deliberately causing him distress—but the deal was made, and he had not been eaten yet.
The second condition: You will not take from me, or allow anyone else to take—by force, bargain, or trickery—the remaining souls on my chain. So as long as Alastor held his chain, his position as an Overlord was secure—if somewhat reduced in stature. Nothing in their deal technically prevented Vox from adding to his chain, either, but so far he hadn’t had the opportunity to try anything. It had taken three weeks for Vox’s body to regenerate, but Alastor hadn’t waited a moment to put him to work.
The hardest part had been convincing Alastor to take the deal. And why would I do that, Vincent, when I could kill you now and broadcast your screams to all of Hell?
Because I’m more use to you alive. We’ve never seen eye to eye, which had been understating things, but I have skills that you don’t. Sales statistics, advertising metrics, focus groups. Experience with modern technology and modern media.
I don’t have any use for modern technology, said Alastor.
You can’t use what you don’t understand. You don’t know what you don’t know. But I do, said Vox.
Alastor had smiled down at him. Then, without a flicker of doubt or hesitation, he said, No. And his shadow lengthened behind him, antlers sprouting and spreading like a black canopy over the roof
Alastor—wait—you need me!
I do not. You have exhausted my patience, Vincent.
I’m an Overlord—
Not much of one, I see. Your friends’ work, I presume? No matter. You were a fool to come here.
Vox’s vision had distorted into unintelligibility, filling with arcane symbols and interference. I’ll give you power and connections. I can help you! I can teach an old dog new tricks, he said, increasingly desperate.
You are nothing to me, said the Radio Demon, as his claws closed around Vox’s screen-bound skull.
And Vox, who had already exhausted his meagre powers getting his foot in his arch-nemesis’ door, had nowhere left to go. I’ll give you my soul, he said at last, forcing the words past gritted teeth.
Alastor paused.
Vox pressed forward, spinning the sales pitch, selling the story of his own enslavement. You can have my soul. You can have the Television Demon on your chain, another Media Overlord. What will they call the man who owns the strongest sinner in hell? Same terms, same conditions, but you own my soul for the duration. What do you say?
Because Vox hated losing, hated ceding ground, hated surrender and compromise and sacrifice—but he hated being powerless more. It would take him years, decades even, to recover the power he had lost, but if he stayed with the Vees he would never get there at all. There would be no forgiveness from them, no concessions to mercy or friendship—he knew that much. He had obliterated that bridge the moment he lowered Might of Lilith towards his own city.
There were no friends in hell.
But if Vincent couldn’t have friends, he could still have enemies.
I say we have a deal, said Alastor, and for the first time Vox had ever seen, the Radio Demon’s lips peeled back into a genuine, delighted, honest-to-God smile.
~*~
And in the end, the presentation was only mediocre.
'Truly, the wonders of modern technology know no bounds,' said Alastor through a broad smile, and snapped his fingers.
Vox, muted and stiff with exhaustion, clicked through to the next slide. He had tried to persuade Alastor to use a remote, but to no avail. And, naturally, the presentation was to be displayed on Vox’s face, but he had never had a hope of winning that argument. Vox had been somewhat mollified by the suit; Alastor had insisted—I will not be seen in your company otherwise, the Radio Demon had said—although the colour scheme did leave something to be desired.
And so Vox stood in the hotel lobby wearing an immaculately tailored but unfortunately crimson suit, with his hands clasped behind his back, his head held high, and his face replaced by Alastor’s impressively terrible PowerPoint presentation.
Through his webcam, he had an excellent view of Charlie Morningstar, Princess of Hell, staring open-mouthed at them. 'Alastor,' she squeaked, pathetically. 'Alastor, what is he doing here? Why is he here? What did you do??' while at the same time, her angel girlfriend was hoisting her spear and saying, 'Alastor, what the Hell were you thinking? He can’t be here!'
Alastor was unmoved. 'Not to worry, my dears, I have everything under control, but pray do not interrupt me again... now, where was I? Ah, yes.' The Radio Demon coughed, and when next he spoke, his voice had deepened into a rich and melodious tenor, grandiose and solemn all at once. 'What words can there be for such a catastrophe? Nearly six hundred lives lost to the march of so-called progress; man was never meant to fly, and this terrible tragedy stands as a testament to mankind’s hubris.' Alastor snapped his fingers again, and Vox dutifully flipped through to the next slide. 'It was a misty morning in the month of March when the flying machine arrived at the island of Tenerife...'
The Princess closed her mouth, and sat. A moment later, the fallen angel joined her, still glowering, and all around them gathered a half-dozen souls, sinners, would-be redeemers. Watching him. Watching them.
And even with a chain around his neck, even behind the worst PowerPoint in the history of powerpoints, Vox felt himself grin.