Chapter Text
“Really? A crisis meeting?” Vox scoffed as he walked into his office. “What for? Everything’s perfectly fine.”
“Oh yeah, really?” Velvette shot him a scorching look. “Are you sure about that?”
Valentino’s antennas squeaked as he pointedly avoided looking at Vox.
“So that’s what it’s about? You’re upset I told you two to stay off the stage,” Vox rolled his eyes as he sunk into his chair with a frown. “Pissed off that you missed a chance to show off?”
“No!” Velvette snapped at the same time as Valentino’s sulky “yes!” reached his sensors.
“Then what the hell is your problem?”
“You!” she hissed. “You’re the fucking problem, Vox. If only you ever looked into the fucking mirror! What do you think you’re doing?!”
“I’m doing you a favour, maybe?” He recoiled, his screen glitching. An abrupt burst of static shook through his spine.
“Really? Is that what you think?!”
“It’s not just what I think, it’s the truth.”
“You’re fucking delusional, Vox.”
“I’m not!”
“You are! About that red thing!” Valentino interjected, making a crude gesture at the door, “I want to trust you, Voxy, but you’re acting like a crazed maniac.”
“So that’s your deal? You’re just jealous that I’m not spending time with you?” he growled, his voice glitching subtly.
“Maybe, so what?!”
Velvette’s hand came to rest on the moth demon’s shoulder, as he crossed his four arms. “You’re acting like you don’t need us,” she stated.
“That’s because I don’t!”
“Oh, we know you don’t!” she waved her hand dismissively. “If losing your shit to Alastor is your goal, then you really don’t.”
“Vel-”
“Vox!” Velvette slammed her fist down into the table. “Look at yourself! It was you who asked us to team up with you, and now what? Suddenly you’ve changed your mind because of what someone said? That-” she pointed at him, “is not fucking normal. Not with you.”
“Then tell me what your issue with Al is!” The chair clattered to the ground behind him, as he jumped up to get some leverage over Velvette. There weren’t many people who couldn’t threaten her with height alone. “I beat him, it’s over. He’s not interfering with me nor my plans!”
Valentino rolled his eyes. “Me, me, me,” he parroted quietly.
“My issue is that you’re fucking obssessed with him!” she screeched. “He’s ripping you away from us! Why do you think he offered you such a tempting offer, genius? Have you ever stopped to consider what you’ve gotten yourself into?!”
“He’s certainly not doing it because he thinks you’re oh so much stronger than him,” Valentino added smoothly.
“That’s why I have to show him, I have to prove it to him! When I become a god, he’ll see what he missed out on!” Vox’s right eye flickered and severed into three smaller slits, and the smell of ozone filled the room as his presence towered over the table. Another glitch rippled through him.
“Prove?” Velvette looked at him incredulously. “And what makes you think he’ll ever care?!”
“He h-has to-o,” a stuttered answer came.
Valentino and Velvette shared a quick glance. The moth overlord, for all his glory and strength hidden in lithe limbs and soft wings, watched with his mouth pursed and red eyes creased with worry.
“Darling,” he said as he got up and brushed off his coat. “If Alastor gave two shits about you, you’d have his approval already. Just look around.” With a soft twitch of his healthy antenna, he came to a stop right next to Vox, whose claws were now being buried deep into the steel of their table, mouth stretched into a pained grimace.
“B-but-t, A-l-” His screen flashed with colors.
“You’ve built a successful company, in hell of all places,” Velvette reminded him although her tone remained brusque. “Sure, maybe you can’t really punch that deer in the face when he’s on top of his game, but what can he say for himself? That he’s staying at the Hazshit Hotel?
Valentino grinned at her, full of sharp teeth. His movements stayed controlled, as he slowly approached his lover and one of his gloved hands carefully tested the air around Vox’s body. A spark erupted from his claw and he drew it back with a hiss.
“Can he say that he’s built anything except a shitty radio station nobody listens to?” Velvette pressed, her tone softening. “Look at your ratings Vee. Our ratings. You produce almost all tech in hell. You have all the influence Alastor doesn’t.”
Vox’s mouth forcefully tugged into a tense smile. “-with h-elp-”
“And?” she tssked. “‘s that so bad?”
“Alastor isn’t alone either, you know,” Valentino purred. “If the newest gossip from my new whore is true.”
Vox’s screen froze in one frame.
“I’ve had some business with Cannibal town recently,” he continued, observing his lover. “I exchanged some souls with Rosie. It is rumored that Alastor comes by often, and just how… suspicious it was that he first arrived into hell strong enough to slay overlords.”
Velvette raised a brow. “An ally of Rosie?”
“Mm, so I’ve heard.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no.”
Vox’s body slumped, his fingers digging deeper into the table. Someone is going to have to replace it later. “H-he wouldn’t.”
“And I thought you’d never say something this stupid, but here we are. Something like that isn’t below Alastor and you know it, Vee. Why is it so hard to understand?”
“He w-w-would–d-n’t-t” Vox stammered. “N-n-ne-e-e-”
A burst of electricity ran through him, before his screen flickered and died.
“Great,” Valentino remarked. “You crashed him.”
“I didn't think he'd just- switch off!” She defended herself just as the lights in the room slowly flickered off.
Behind the muted blue windows, the small speckles of illuminated windows and pastel billboards followed suit one by one, blending into the reddish darkness of hell's night.
The crowds, still distantly chanting in the streets, voices drunkenly singing in faint memory of the stage in the front of the Vee tower, delved into confusion and quiet panic, scattering across the city. Soon there was no sound but the light buzz of Vox, the flutter of Valentino’s wings and Velvette's clicky joints.
Huh, Velvette thought as she squinted around. Weird.
While Vox's powers were largely responsible for keeping the Tower running smoothly - mostly surveillance and WiFi - his circuits weren't connected to the main power sources for the whole settlement. They were designed and operated by VoxTek, but not Vox himself.
She was sure he explained it to her dozens of times when he pulled twenty consecutive allnighters to finish the blueprints for their construction. Which, by the way, could have been done by any of his many employees but Vox insisted they were too stupid to be entrusted with such an important commission.
But maybe she remembered it wrong, seeing as she could barely tell where Valentino stood and the generator was very obviously down. Or Vox must have short circuited something further in the city with his little tantrum.
“So now what,” she turned to Valentino. “You think plugging him in would help?”
The moth shrugged. “I mean, maybe. But if he throws a tantrum over being plugged in, it’s your problem, he hates this-” he waved his hand around, “computer shit. You know how pissy he got when he had to swap his head the last time.”
“No, actually.”
“Oh right. It’s been that long.”
“No shit, Val.”
She poked his lifeless form with the tip of her heel.
“I think it's best to do that and leave him overnight, so he can run repairs.” She only remembered hearing something similar very vaguely - it has been around seven years since Vox had a meltdown severe enough to be put out of service for days.
He had given both her and Valentino instructions about what to do if it ever happened again. But memory was a fickle thing, and memories that are not actively used simmer out. In hindsight, perhaps she should have taken notes. And she would have - if she wasn’t under the impression that Valentino was doing just that.
Looking back, at the time she had been a part of the Vees for long enough to know that Valentino would literally rather jump out of the window with his wings tied to his body than actively engage in notetaking. Instead, she was left gobsmacked when he proudly showed her doodles of… things better left forgotten.
“Mhm,” Valentino agreed. “But if he’s not fine in the morning, we’re disassembling. He’s got stuff for that under his bed.”
Velvette stared. “How do you know what’s under his bed?”
Valentino just lifted an eyebrow.
“Oh right,” she waved him off. “Don’t tell me.”
“Ugh.” He bent down, and started collecting Vox’s body slumped over the office desk. His limbs were sprawled everywhere, loose wires tangled and spread down from the back of his back from where he had failed to retract them. The screen stubbornly remained black.
Lifting him up effortlessly, Valentino turned on his heel and headed to the elevator. With a subtle nod, Velvette acknowledged his departure. I’ll meet you up there, she smiled.
A subtle knock into the glass walls of Vox’s office grabbed her attention. Shock.wav’s large and actually quite enormous nose gently poked into one of the panels of his aquarium. With those red eyes and glowing cyan teeth, Velvette was sometimes tempted to step back.
She could never understand this part of Vox. His obsession with ugly fish that had more fins than Valentino had functioning brain cells, and tacky mechanical markings was weird. When she first saw the Tower, she was ecstatic until she learned about how the underground was basically a giant aquarium with a few offices, just so Vox could watch those monstrosities while he worked.
But as time went on, she learned to appreciate it more. As much as Vox rambled about his pets, it was more pleasant to listen to than Valentino complaining about a random whore that decided to test his temper that day.
She shook her head as her phone buzzed. In the end, it didn’t matter. Those sharks weren’t going anywhere as long as Vox was alive. A small smile crossed her face when she saw a notification from Shock.wav.
If there was any tolerable part about those smelly animals, it was Shock.wav. As ugly as he was, he got privileges from auntie Velvette because Vox blessed him (via a string of code) with the ability to send texts.
,BARK BARK’ it said.
She rolled her eyes fondly. “He'll be fine, okay? He just got a bit tired.”
Shock.wav seemed to be contemplating that information for a few seconds, before her phone pinged again. ,TREAT’ he asked and she could swear he looked eager. Well, as eager as a fish could look.
“Nah, can't do, babe.” She shrugged at the glass. Talking to fish? Really? “Vox doesn't want you to get fat.”
A low grumble echoed through the room as he flicked his fins and sulkily swam away, to somewhere deep below the office. Auntie Velvette was such a disappointment, she knew, but it wasn’t like he was starving. Vox gave him way too many treats anyway.
She found Valentino sitting on the edge of Vox’s bed, meticulously pulling one dark blue arm through a pyjama sleeve. His lower pair of hands busied themselves with untangling a heap of thick wires with distinct V-like markings, stretching far across them and softly gleaming in the ambience of the room. Although the panels hanging over the headboard were dead as well as the rest of technology at the moment, the shimmer of hell’s red sky with heaven perched atop, softened the darkness.
“Still dead?”
“What do you think?”
Velvette rolled her eyes. “For fuck’s sake, I was just asking, Val. You don’t gotta rub it in my face.” For a short moment, she watched him fumble with the wires. “Do you know which one it is?”
“Yes!”
“Uh-huh.”
“Dammit! I know which one! It has a red circle on it, I’m not stupid!” he hissed at her and yanked the cables to his face, squinting at them. “I can still tell colors apart, you know?”
“Of course you can,” she giggled.
“Oh, I’ll show you-” His fingers closed in on a very specific one with a triangular plug. “This one.”
“Congrats.”
Valentino shot her a nasty look and jammed it into the electric socket. Loud silence stretched between them as they waited, the low buzz from Vox being the only other sound in the room besides their breathing.
They expected a small flicker of static, maybe even just something stupid as a VoxTek logo, but nothing came for what felt like hours. Velvette leaned down to peek under his bed to check if the plug was in correctly, before she stopped abruptly. “Val,” she said slowly. “Val, we’re out of power. We’re so stupid.”
The moth stared at her blankly.
“We can’t fucking charge him when there’s a blackout,” she repeated.
“I heard you fine the first time,” Valentino hissed.
“Well can he charge himself or something?”
Valentino blinked at her very slowly.
“Oh of course he can!” Velvette ran her hands through her hair. The fancy hairdo she wore for her morning meeting with a client had hair sticking out already. “Why would he need charging?! Why are we charging him?!”
“It would make him wake up faster?” Valentino mumbled.
“Would it really?”
“I don’t know!”
“I mean, not really.”
“Oh wow Vox, thank you for your brilliant input as always-” Velvette’s mouth shut with a click. The seams on her neck rippled as her head rotated away from Valentino and towards their beloved sentient TV, who was very much sitting up and watching them as if they were crazy or something.
“Oh you bastard!” she screamed and jumped at him, her fingers closing around his neck. She gripped him and violently started shaking him.
“Ow!” Vox's cable tentacles weakly tugged at her ponytail. “Leave me alone, woman!”
“Do you have to obliterate my hair even more?!” Velvette snapped at him, but her hold on him loosened and she couldn’t quite suppress the wave of relief when her phone went off with hundreds of notifications in her pocket. Thank satan.
“Stop trying to strangle me then.” Vox rubbed the edge of his screen, feeling it carefully with the underside of his claws for any cracks. “Ugh, I feel like I got hit by a car.”
“Yeah, I wonder why that would be,” Valentino retorted. His red eyes narrowed into a sulky frown.
Vox turned to him with a questioning gaze. “What the hell's your problem? Is it-” his mouth made a small o-shape. “Shiit,” he breathed out. “Where's Alastor?”
“OH HERE WE GO AGAIN!” Valentino threw his hands up with an irritated squeak. “AGAIN! ALASTOR!”
Velvette shot him a nasty look when a lamp flew just a hair from her head, narrowly missing her and smashing into the wall. Heels clicked as Valentino paced the room, undoubtedly searching for something to sacrifice to his fit.
“CAN YOU STOP TALKING ABOUT THAT STUPID DEER FOR A SECOND!?” The moth screeched hysterically into Vox's blank face. “IT'S ALL I EVER HEAR! I CARRY YOU INTO YOUR ROOM, ALL KNOCKED OUT AND NOT EVEN A ‘THANK YOU-’”
“You-”
“IF YOU'RE SO SMITTEN WITH THAT RED BITCH, THEN WHY ARE YOU EVEN DATING ME?!”
Vox blinked at him with his jaw hanging. “I'm not… I'm not in love with Alastor.”
He scoffed. “Sure, Vox.”
“I-” he buffered, his screen briefly flickering. “I'm not.”
Valentino’s face twisted into a sour grimace. “Yeah, right. Go tell that to someone else! I don't fucking believe you, pendejo!”
The sound of his heels echoed through the room as he turned around and stomped out, the red expanse of his wings fluttering angrily behind him as he drew them around himself. He could barely steal a glimpse of the way they merged together into his coat before the door slammed closed.
“...you do realise that literally nobody here does, hm?” Velvette crossed her arms, giving him a pointed look. “Believe you, I mean.”
Vox stared at his hands, glowing cyan claws weakly picking at themselves with soft clinking. “...I'm not.”
“Sure and I'm the prince of China.” Velvette sighed. “Look, just… you have to do something about it, whatever it is you're feeling.”
Vox’s shoulders sagged. A loose threat caught the tip of his thumb, weaving itself free from his pyjama cuff. “Once he admits I won-”
“But he won't, Vee!” She grabbed him by the shoulders again and gave him a firm shake. “He hasn't been doing anything but laughing into your face and trying to talk to me and Val-”
He looked up numbly. “...what?”
“You haven’t noticed?” The light reflecting in her eyes from the screens on his headboard dimmed, as her brows furrowed more. “When you turn away, he's trying to fucking manipulate us.”
His mouth opened and closed mutely. What?
“Oh, miss Velvette,” she parroted Alastor, her sharp nails curling into air quotes. “Miss, with such outstanding talent, it is a wonder you're still stuck in this crude establishment! A fine artist like yourself has no space to flourish with that blubbering TV maniac by her side!” She shot him a pointed look. “You have it somewhere on camera if you want to check, I'm sure.”
Vox's vision blurred around the edges. Faintly, he could feel the static grazing his casing too. He pulled at the wire that directly connected him into the tower's power lines, gently tugging it out of the socket. Since he was awake again, the warm influx of power flooded his systems, but the familiar warmth of electricity didn't promise good. Not with him upset, not with Velvette close.
Instead, he clenched his sleeve tight in his fist.
“And Val?” he asked quietly.
Velvette scoffed. “Take a guess.” She frowned deeply at the door Valentino stormed out of. For all his bravado and displays of violence, it was often his temper tantrums that pushed Vox to work overtime.
A long suffering sigh escaped Velvette's lips. "Look, Vee... you have to do something about him. I'm not... I don't know what happened between you, but this? This isn't the answer."
"It's complicated," Vox offered.
"Shit's always complicated with you."
He shrugged. Who was he to dispute what was objectively correct.
"Just. Think about it. And promise me, that whatever you decide to do won't piss off Val. If you want a fashion show after that audit you’re planning, and I can't afford having any of my models torn apart."
"I'll see what I can do," Vox announced with forced cheer to an already empty room. The lock clicked as the door fell closed.