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“Uh. Sure, Lord Diavolo.” MC had definitely been a little concerned when their tea with Diavolo had been not only devoid of tea, but the reason happened to be the absence of one almost flawlessly and tirelessly faithful Butler.
Far be it for the Crown Prince of the Devildom to get up off his royal arse, so MC had in fact been tasked with going to find and fetch him.
Truth be told, MC honestly couldn’t help but feel a twinge of unease. The last time Barbatos had been anything less than a perfectly composed servant had been the time they’d almost died at the hands of Belphegor. Or had died. Hell, this was a man who couldn’t even relax on his own birthday or a sanctioned day off (...which honestly made them wonder how far down the ‘basic functioning person’ needs Diavolo was actually able to take care of on his own. Best not to go down that rabbit hole too far.) They removed their hand from where they’d been unconsciously rubbing their throat and knocked on the door where Diavolo had indicated Barbatos would most likely be.
Receiving no response, they tried the doorknob. Diavolo had given them no indication of how deep into the castle or which kind of room precisely he had been sending them, so they truly hoped they weren’t walking in on something untoward or personal.
Well.
They’d certainly walked in on -something-. Of all the somethings, Barbatos ‘Beautiful Minding’ up the walls and windows was definitely not even close to the weirdest or worst thing they could imagine.
Or…
They prepared to back out and tell Diavolo that Barbatos was...ill. Given a good second look at his disheveled appearance, it was starting to feel less ‘A Beautiful Mind’ and more ‘The Shining’.
Barbatos slowly turned to look at him with a grin that could have put Jack Torrance to shame (and Jack Nicholson out of work). Right. That was it. If Beel and Belphie were standing in the hallway asking them to come play with them they were straight-up finding Solomon and holding him hostage until he took them home…
...But Barbatos had seen them now.
Well shit.
“You humans. You are SO. STUPID.”
MC blinked. Where was THIS coming from?
“I mean seriously. Right from the beginning. You had one bloody rule. One bloody job.” His voice switched to a sing-song. “Don’t eat from the smart tree! And you STILL can’t get it right!”
The fact that Barbatos was evidently losing it aside, as MC’s mind switched into ‘flight’ mode, they looked past Barbatos to the writing-laden walls surrounding him. ‘Eaten by Beelzebub’ featured prominently among them. ‘Tripped over Mammon’ a few times. It wasn’t until they got to ‘Failed Leviathan’s trivia contest and drowned’ did it finally dawn on MC.
They knew this was a question that most sane people DID NOT want the answer to. It was the sort of question that was right up there with ‘what is in Solomon’s cooking’ and finding out if Asmo’s conjecture that Levi slept with a Ruri-Chan body pillow in a bathtub for ‘easy cleanup’ was fact.
But MC had already died. Had already seen their own lifeless body. MC was not just ‘most sane people’.
So they took a breath and against all better judgement, opened their mouth.
“...Barbatos? How...many times have I died?”
The look on the butler’s face shifted from ‘manic’ to ‘outraged’ to ‘hysterical’ so fast that it gave MC whiplash. And then, he started outright laughing.
“Uh maybe I’ll just get back to Lord Diavolo. He was wondering where the tea was and sent me to come look for you.”
“Oh you opened the can of worms. This one time…”
---
“Hm...well Beel seems to have gotten to the kitchen first, as per usual. Let’s see if we can dig somethin’ up anyway.” Mammon bent down to get into the fridge.
MC happened to notice the view was particularly nice from this angle.
“Oh pudding. This is good.”
“It uh says ‘Eat it and Die’ on it. Maybe, we you know, possibly should listen to the sign?”
“So?” Mammon shrugged. “Beel ate everythin’ else. Turnabout is fair play.”
“I really don’t want to piss off that guy.” MC shuddered. “We need to put it back. It’s still early, we could do a snack run.”
“Dare ya.” Mammon peeled the lid off and all but shoved a glob of pudding in MC’s face.
And then, as though summoned by some sort of magic pudding theft-related vibes there was a roar of rage.
“Run. Run like hell.” Mammon gulped.
MC did exactly that, a crash that was part of the wall breaking resounded behind them.
As it happened, in spite of the punishment related to the situation Beel seemed to be a good roommate. He was gentlemanly enough to insist he take the couch and indeed his room was immaculate.
He always seemed grouchy and certainly his rage had been something to behold, but he seemed genuinely contrite over the situation, and once he started to talk, honestly he was good company and clearly had a lot of hidden depths.
So, it didn’t take long to feel for him and get to this point: “Hey, if you want, the bed’s big enough for both of us?”
MC scooted up against the wall and allowed Beel to slide in….
---
“He SLEEP ATE ME?”
“He sleep ate you.” Barbatos pointed at a various part of the wall.
MC sighed. “Yeah, that tracks.”
“Really Diavolo must honestly think I got lost. Maybe I should go back.”
“You aren’t getting away that easily.”
MC settled themselves in for a grim afternoon, but after Belphegor, what was a little bit more trauma? “Alright fine. I’m picking the next one.” Their eyes darted around the room. “What’s this one? ‘Not a little death’?”
Barbatos’ slightly manic smile was back. “You’ve heard of the phrase ‘le petit mort’? Well…”
---
The first indication that MC was going to be interesting had been Asmo’s seductive gaze failing to work on them it seemed.
However the Avatar of Lust was a charmer (if a bit narcissistic) even without his devildom magic and certainly was extremely attractive.
“Oh MC!” Asmo purred. “You simply just join me in my beautiful bathtub. We’ll enjoy the lovely water...and then perhaps we’ll bathe.” The insinuation was pretty loud and clear, but MC wasn’t making it that easy for the Avatar of Lust.
It had started with wearing a bathing suit and sitting at the other end of the tub followed by a trip back to their bedroom for a clothing change. Then, it had been allowing Asmo to wash their hair. And then their back, and finally it came down to MC lying back on the Avatar of Lust’s canopy bed.
“I am not ‘giving in’.” MC insisted. There was just something about Asmo that had made each of those little ‘concessions’ okay. After all, what was one more, and one more and...crap.
“Oh, honey. I knew you would fall for my charms eventually. I can play a long game when I need to.”
As it turned out even for someone as experienced as the Avatar of Lust, demon cock was a bit...too extreme for humans to handle.
---
“Are you telling me that I died by orgasm?. That’s what you’re telling me isn’t it.”
“Went out with a bang, MC.”
MC blinked. This new Barbatos was making them very nervous. He kept smiling in a very manic way.
“Am I done now? Because Diavolo is going to think I have died, no pun intended. Also I’m starting to suspect he may not understand the basic process of making tea.”
“Ah well, I suppose that the young Master will be wanting his lunch. We can continue this little story telling session over tea. Pardon me just one second.”
Barbatos stood and walked into a door that MC remembered well.
And as it closed behind him, there was a loud, oddly reverberating scream.
Wait...did he just manage to scream across timelines?
---
“Yes.” sighed Lord Diavolo, holding his cup of tea. “There ARE bound to be a few snafus in any new program. And you’re just fine so all’s well. I was a little worried you’d come back wrong after the beheading, but well, well as you can see, you’re just fine and nothing got put on backwards.”
“Beheading? Backwards?”
“Okay I’m okay with being fucked…” MC just barely managed to remember who they were talking to, but somehow they weren’t caring too much about niceties at this point “...er sorry um...well, ‘Asmo’d’ to death and at least I wasn’t awake for the sleep eating incident, but HOW did I get beheaded!?”
“You did that to yourself.” Barbatos spoke up.
“Oh that’s worse. That is so SO much worse.”
“You don’t stand up on a roller coaster. Ever. But especially not in the Devildom.” Barbatos was starting to get a manic glint in his eye.again.
---
Barbatos marched down the street in the human world up to the human dwelling, four weeks prior to the start of the exchange program, and knocked on the door.
“Hello. I’m Barbatos, a demon, personal aide to the Crown Prince of the Devildom and here is your official Darwin Award. Don’t stand up on roller coasters. Ever. You utter, utter moron.”
He then had to reset the timeline, but it was cathartic at least.
----
“Okay. That one’s on me…”. MC shook their head. “I really did deserve that Darwin award.”
“I can give it back to you if you want.”
“I’ll get it framed. Also, uh, nothing against you Barbatos, especially now I know how much you’ve put up with but I really don’t think I can eat anything with meat in it.”
“Indeed, that was certainly not intentional.”
Great. Manic and apparently mildly vindictive Barbatos was back.
“Alright. Let’s have the next one. What’s the worst. Let’s get it out of the way first.”
“Well that would be the bisection.”
“Oh PLEASE tell me that one wasn’t my fault too.”
“No, that would be the work of Lucifer and Satan.”
Diavolo meanwhile was shaking his head like a disappointed parent, as opposed to someone in the middle of a discussion about MC’s increasing slew of violent deaths. “Yes, I was most distressed with their behaviour on that timeline.”
“Oh boy this is going to be a shit show.” MC muttered, trying at least to curb the consistent swearing in the presence of the prince. Yeah maybe they deserved that Darwin Award big time.
---
It had been readily apparent from the beginning that Satan had something to prove when it came to Lucifer.
MC could get that. Maybe they weren’t made out of the ripped out wings and wrath of an insanely powerful fallen angel but anyone would hate being dismissed as just a weaker carbon copy of their ‘parent’ or ‘sibling’ or however the best analogy for that relationship worked.
However, all things considered for a being that was made of ‘Wrath’ even if they were a little false in their interactions Satan was shockingly good at self-control. Which was kind of funny as Lucifer seemed far more prone to reacting with anger at relatively minor provocations.
Well ‘funny’ and ‘minor’ were relative.
However Satan’s propensity for enjoying books - even if they were cursed had landed himself and Lucifer in a ‘Freaky Friday’ Flip scenario
“I don’t know. It might be good for them.” MC had confided to Levi privately who really couldn’t be less upset about the fact that if they had to be playing out the ‘stuck in a video game’ trope, it was a nice, quiet Dating sim. “You know: Walk a mile in another person’s shoes?”
Predictably Levi had responded by immediately launching into “Leviathan’s Lecture Series on Anime Stories And of Course the Corresponding Scenes in TSL That Had Precisely That Trope.”
However the purpose was to get out of the video game. Which meant, of course wooing the main character - ie: MC, and probably some kind of confession to get out.
And naturally that had sparked competition.
Privately MC wished they’d just leave it to Levi, he obviously knew these kinds of games. Wouldn’t letting him do his thing be the obvious path of least resistance?
However with Mammon, Satan!Lucifer and Lucifer!Satan along for the ride, it was never going to be that simple.
“Look, Sa--er Lucifer, Why don’t we just ---”
“Hang on.” Oh Satan-in-Lucifer’s body was still here. “Clearly I’m the strongest now. I can get us out of the game. Come here MC. We’ll just play by the manual. Leviathan told us the rules and we simply follow them. There’s always a formula.”
And just like that MC found themselves the role in a literal tug of war. How was a virtual world ACTUALLY painful? Really starting to get painful as above MC’s head the duo were still squabbling, turning quickly into yelling.
“Guys? Uh, Guys you’re hurti---”
The very last thing MC heard before their whole world exploded into excruciating pain was Levi’s distressed shriek.
“DON’T YOU KNOW ANYTHING? IF YOU DIE IN THE MATRIX, YOU DIE IN REAL LIFE!”
And then there was blissful black.
No, not just black.. “You have died.” flickered red in the darkness.
---
“Well it is rare that I have to punish Lucifer.” Diavolo mused thoughtfully as though he had sent him to the corner for drawing on the walls instead of literally ripping their exchange student in half.
At least this time it felt good to be on the same side as Barbatos, whose face was schooled back into stoicism, but it was hard to miss the way he was digging his fingernails into his palms or the subtle twitch of his eyebrow.
MC quietly would imagine both Satan and Lucifer being flogged within an inch of their miserable lives every time they looked at them from here on out.
At least it couldn’t get any worse than being ripped in two or having their neck broken by a pissed off Belphegor...wait. There were two left. And one of them was...well, MC knew Mammon wasn’t exactly as stupid as his brothers liked to paint him as, but whatever death he’d led them into was going to be terribly, terribly embarrassing. They just knew it. And what and how was Levi going to get them in trouble. Despite the setting of their bisection, Levi’s dating sim itself hadn’t been the cause of their death…
“Okay let’s have the next one.”
---
After the TSL fiasco, Levi had calmed down considerably and while his otaku ranting and self-deprecation could be a little much sometimes, he had pretty good taste and was a good player two. Or player one.
“Okay MC. You HAVE to check out this Sucre Frenzy live concert taping. It’s from your 1999, but it’s the definitive one. Oh! I’m even in it!”
“Hey, that’s pretty cool. You must have gotten really good seats.”
“Front Row!” Levi puffed his chest out. “But we need one more thing to watch the concert.”
“Snacks?” MC asked.
“No! COSPLAY of course! How else will we be able to most accurately perform the dances?”
Oh boy. “I’m sorry Levi, I’m not much of a dancer…”
“But you have to. It’s in the Para Para style from your Japan from the human world! I need someone to do it with me like a real idol show!”
MC frowned. At least it was just them and Levi. “Alright. I’ll try.”
“Okay here’s the costume.”
“Uhhh….how did you get my exact measu---never mind.”
Levi at LEAST turned away to change. And promptly blushed red upon seeing MC in their costume. How he was ever going to be able to try dancing if he was paralyzed with embarrassment.
“Okay let’s start the video!” He popped in the DVD and a crowd shot began. Indeed Levi was almost front-and centre.
And then the girls began their dance. It was a lot more involved than MC had thought, but they tried.
After a good twenty minutes into a lot of stamping and waving. A hammering came on the door. “Geez what the hell’s goin’ on in there!? Somma us are tryin’ to work out here!”
“You? Work? Don’t you mean more like ‘scheme’?” Levi had launched himself across the floor to hold the door closed from the other side...and suddenly his eyes went wide with horror.
Either the rattling of the door or the dancing or a combination of both had knocked down the hanging jellyfish right onto MC’s head.
---
“I was crushed by a jellyfish?”
“Not so much ‘crushed’ as ‘fatally poisoned with your face burned off’. Apparently this particular breed is highly toxic.”
“What kind of IDIOT decorates their room with poison jellyfish!?”
“...to humans.” Barbatos finished up and gave a long-suffering sigh.
“So I can’t even visit Levi the shut in otaku who rarely leaves his room because one might fall on me.”
“Well we did think ahead on that one. The current ones in this timeline are quite harmless actually.”
“Alright, Alright. Well let’s have the last one. This is gonna hurt. Or did hurt.”
---
“Right, MC, ya seen my toothbrush?”
MC made a flying leap back into bed given that they were only at this point wearing underwear, yanking their covers to their chin to cover up. “Why would I have seen your toothbrush? And later we are going to have a crash course on knocking. Because it is a very very useful skill here.”
“Eh think I left it in yer room.” Mammon wandered through to poke his nose into MC’s bathroom. “Yep. Found it. Huh. Gotta bunch of other crap here too. Not that that’s important or nothin’ but y’know gotta be available ta protect ya. Anyway - just a second.” The door slammed behind Mammon.
MC bolted back out of bed, desperate to get themselves dressed.
A few minutes later Mammon came strutting out, grinning. “Oh good yer dressed. So here’s the plan for the day. We’re doin’ breakfast a’course and then it’s off on a day trip. I gotta great plan and I need a partner. I mean in a business sense.”
MC rolled their eyes. All this time and Mammon couldn’t just admit he was MC’s friend or whatever was going on under that mop of snowy hair. Not to mention whatever this idea or plan for the day was had to be huge, given how the guy was practically vibrating out of his seat.
Never mind having Beel steal food, Mammon had inhaled whatever he had plucked from the table and practically hauled MC bodily out the door with such incredible speed that they managed to get out the door and through the gates of the House of Lamentation before Lucifer could get the first syllable of his name out to call them back. The guy wasn’t an idiot and Mammon wasn’t terribly subtle.
“Okay, what ARE we doing here today?
“I have found an untapped resource. Out in the Haunted Forest!” ‘
“Not what I was expecting to be honest. What are we getting from the forest?”
“Mushrooms! We can totally pick ‘em and sell ‘em to Ristorante Six. There’s a ton of ‘em!”
“Oh boy. Um do you know anything about foraging for mushrooms? They can be totally poisonous. Or have weird side effects.”
“Hey, HEY, I did my homework. Already asked Satan an’ everything.”
MC considered. Satan could make mistakes - a few cursed books had a few things to say about that...but then, it was rare that Mammon went into that level of research. Maybe this would be safe enough.
Sure enough there were indeed a lot of mushrooms littering this patch of the forest.
“Alright, get pickin’. We gotta get enough to sell for a good profit! Brought a couple bags.” He pulled two large plastic bags out of his pocket and handed one over.
MC frowned and hung back. Something said this wasn’t a great idea. Maybe these mushrooms belonged to...Lord Diavolo or something.
“C’mon. They’re safe. See?” Mammon plucked one out of the ground, dusted it off and popped it in his mouth.
MC watched carefully. Indeed, no warts, rashes, growths or weird physical attributes were forthcoming. Tentatively they followed suit. Huh. Maybe Mammon did have a good idea this time. Still a little bit extortion-y but not to bad. And at least a little bit legit this time.
As it turned out the bags were pretty large and of course there were only the two of them. There was no way that Mammon would share profits. Thanks to being ripped from any kind of substantial breakfast, they were pretty hungry to be honest.
With a shrug, MC picked up a mushroom and took a tentative bite. And promptly found their airway closed. Not from poison, or an allergic reaction but the bite had gone down the wrong pipe.
Mammon unfortunately, did not know the heimlich.
---
“So there were no casinos or crazy schemes or illegal activities? I just choked to death and he didn’t know how to get a hunk of mushroom out of my windpipe?”
Barbatos was nodding from his spot stood by Diavolo’s seat.
“Crap.”
“Oh MC, I know this wasn’t the ‘teatime’ you were expecting when I asked for you to visit me.” Diavolo frowned. “However you did take the knowledge remarkably well. Quite a bit better than our first human exchange student.”
“I supp---wait what?”
Barbatos at this time excused himself with a bow. To go bang his head repeatedly into the nearest hard surface for an extended period of time.