Sometimes Hell is romanticized, with its leader shown as a lonely and beautiful individual tempting all who gaze into his endless blue eyes. He lives not in a castle of dung but in a crystalline palace lined with the elegant ivory of past sinners.
... Both opinions of literature were way off the mark.
Satan sat on a throne of roses and carnations, yes, but no one expected the big floppy bow sitting on one of his horns.
"I think it adds to my 'cuddly' side, don't you think, Gaga?" Satan asked his most trusted steward. "I want the subjects to know that they can come to me if they need a hug. I want to look more accessible... perhaps powder blue would be a better color? It might clash less with my horns... I wonder when that polish I ordered will come in?"
"I--" Gaga paused to clear his throat, readjusting his grip on the mirror he held between his hands for the Demon King to admire his reflection in. "I'll be sure to check the recent deliveries again, your highness" One red eye stole to the chamber door occasionally, inwardly praying that at any moment Princess Glenda might kick it in and demand that he accompany her somewhere or other.
However, those days had grown fewer. No longer was he expected to tag along on exhausting excursions through the five realms all day and still have the strength in him to prepare her a midnight snack and have a story ready to read. No. NOW he'd been downgraded to being Satan-sama's fashion consultant. His days were filled with color comparing, ribbon buying, and bow straightening when he wasn't tending the domestic needs of the palace.
The elder steward bit back a sigh. Surely he deserved better than THIS.
Unfortunately, fate wasn't going to be kind to Gaga today. Then again, was it ever kind? To fate, Gaga was a sort of joke, like a clown in a silent film that was victim to the same joke over and over again.
One of those 'jokes' had been his "girlfriend": a fairy smaller than a Barbie doll that went by the name of Belbel. She had been sparse lately for God-only-knows what, probably at the beck and call of the fairy princess. Belbel hardly ever appeared in Hell, and when she did she expected Gaga to be at her side at all times. You see, Belbel was exposed more to the literature of Hell than the actual "cute" reality.
But fate wasn't going to be kind, remember? It prepared to drop the bomb in the guise of a happy event, that is a visit from Belbel. The fairy zoomed in from the halls, her eyes zeroed in on her catdemon loverboy.
"Gaga--" she stopped in mid-air, staring at Satan's lace-covered bow. She blinked a couple of times, as the leader of Hell looked at her expectantly. "-- It's a lovely color, yes..."
"You think so?" replied Satan. "I was considering a powder blue, but perhaps if you think this color is nice... I'm just not sure. Does it bring out my eyes?"
"Gagaaa!!" Belbel flung herself into the steward's hair. "I know I shouldn't interrupt your important business but WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE, yes! It's amazing, fantastic, oh it's wonderful yes!!"
One moment he'd been lamenting his lot in life, the next he had an overexcited fairy crawling about on his head. "Whuh--" he jolted, nearly dropping the mirror in the process. Several snatches later it had been caught and set safely aside on the arm of the king's throne of flowers.
"What are you -talking- about, Belbel-dono?" he asked, trying not to sound irked. It did no good, he'd learned the hard way, to get annoyed with a fairy. It only encouraged them.
"It's so pretty, probably the prettiest one I've ever seen, yes! Oh, it'll be here soon, just wait and see!" Belbel eventually latched onto one of Gaga's ears and hugged it so tightly that the older steward probably couldn't hear very well except for the occassional excited girl-squee.
"Oh come on, Fondue, bring it in! I'm sure Satan-sama would love to see it, yes! Come on, yes!"
The smaller of the two fairies was peeking around a pillar, her orange eyes shifting from one side of the room to the other. She wasn't what you'd call an experienced tourist, hardly ever leaving the Fairy World. Both of her arms were wrapped around what looked like an orb of jade that had been polished meticulously by a steward as picky as Gaga.
"I don't like bringing the egg here, Belbel... it needs sunshine."
"Just bring it over here, yes!!"
Behind her a larger head likewise peered around the doorframe, assessing the situation a moment before a largish white hand reached up to give Fondue a gentle nudge forward. She'd insisted he accompany her this far, it didn't seem to make sense to end the journey this close to its end.
....and it was just Gaga-san, after all.
From the start, Amnom had felt like an odd spectator to this entire fiasco...from the moment she'd told him she was HAVING an egg, to two afternoons ago when she'd actually laid it and now...
....well, it still hadn't quite sunk in for the younger catdemon.
The words "just Gaga-san" didn't apply to Fondue. Gaga-san was Amnom's evil slave driver, a cruel man with no heart and no sympathy. She didn't know how Belbel managed to fall in love with the Great Evil of the Five Worlds.
"Hmm? Is that some kind of gem?" Satan tilted his head, one of the ends of the bow flopping over one of his eyes.
Belbel quickly looked at the King of Hell, not sure if he was being serious or not. You would think that the leader of Hell would recognize an egg when he saw one.
Satan was still staring blankly at the whole scene.
"It's an egg, yes..."
That got the Devil's attention.
"Gaga, you old scoundrel, get over here!" The black cat found himself in a firm headlock, getting noogied by Satan. (That's not a sentence you type every day.) "Why didn't you tell me?! Oh, you were probably bashful, in your age. Well, you certainly can teach a tomcat some new tricks! Congratulations!"
For Gaga's part, he was petrified at this new turn of events. Wh-What?!?
"Stop...! STOP!! I'm not--" he complained, his indignation lost under Satan's laughter.
Amnom opened his mouth to intervene, and then closed it. ...opened it again, and closed it again. He felt he really ought to say SOMETHING to correct His Highness, but...
....well, it wasn't every day one got to see something like this.
While it seemed amusing to Amnom, Fondue looked like the malevolent Leviathan rising out of the darkness. Belbel wisely drifted away from the fuming fairy.
"That ... is not HIS egg!" Fondue was gripping the egg so hard that it probably would have claw marks, the poor thing. "It is not HIS egg, it is not Belbel's egg, it is not your egg, it is not your Uncle Timtam's egg, it is not your Grandpa Jojo's egg, it is not anyone's egg but MINE! It is my egg and Amnom's egg, it is MY BABY!!"
Satan stared at the fairy with wide eyes. No one had spoken to him like that (except Princess Glenda) in years! He wasn't quite sure how to react.
And then Gaga was dropped and Amnom was picked up.
"Amnom, you young scoundrel, get over here! Why didn't you tell me?! Oh, you were probably bashful, in your youth. Well, you can certainly teach a youngin' some tricks! Congratulations!"
Amnom made a strangled noise as he suddenly found himself in the same predicament his elder had been in a moment earlier. Served him right.
Gaga regained his feet, spluttering and coughing, as he collected his scattered wits. "Is THAT why you've been unable to finish your work lately??" he demanded to know of his apprentice once he was able to speak again. "It isn't that you're incompetent, its that you've been slacking!" ....among other things, apparently. Gaga's eye wandered distastefully to the small jewel-like egg Fondue clutched
The silver-white catdemon may have made a few attempts to say something on his behalf, or maybe he was trying to catch a full breath. It was hard to tell.
"Slacking?" Fondue's wings drooped for a moment, just a moment. Then, calmly, she twiddled something in-between her fingers--
And suddenly she was full-sized and stomping over to Gaga.
"SLACKING?!" With the hand that wasn't cupping the still-tiny egg, she grabbed Gaga's fur underneath his chin and tried to drag him down to her height. "This isn't SLACKING. This is taking responsibility for what happened! Or would you be too busy to stay with Belbel if SHE had an egg?! This is why you disgust me, you don't understand anything!"
Satan, meanwhile, had simply put Amnom on his lap and was scratching his head like he was in his kitty form. ... He wasn't, so it looked a bit odd.
"I'm going to be a grandpa..." he said proudly.
Gaga flinched as he was seized by the front of his person by the suddenly human-sized Fondue before quickly remembering himself and swatting her hand away. "DON'T you touch me!" he snarled. "And if you would like to touch on the subject of disgusted, from the start all YOU'VE been is--"
"G-Gaga-san....?" came Amnom's rattled voice from nearby where he was still being lovingly petted, skritched, and generally manhandled on Satan's lap. "I apologize."
The elder demon cat's eyes narrowed as he watched the younger transform himself into a small white winged cat, taking the opportunity to leap off of the Demon King and flutter before the head steward. "When I was told, I thought it best that I leave. I hadn't wanted this to cause any trouble." ....though clearly the situation had caused its share of trouble even now.
"So you abandon your post without a word??"
"I had thought you would want it that way...." the small white feline fidgeted. "That when you found out, you'd discharge me and--"
"After all of this, I -ought- to!" Gaga snorted, folding his arms and turning from Amnom in a snub only cats were capable of. Amnom flinched, sagging a bit. ....so that was it, then. Years of training for nothing. "....which is why you're fortunate that I don't have the time OR patience to start from scratch."
Fondue's nostrils were flaring. How dare Amnom lower himself to this vile creature's level! In a puff of fury, she went back to her normal size and listened to the cat demon berate the father of her egg. When it looked like the older steward relented, she zapped up into Gaga's ear and hissed: "You're lucky he respects you, old man."
She couldn't say anymore, though, because Satan grabbed her and plopped her on his knee, proceeding to put a pretty scarf around her like she were a doll.
"Pink isn't really your color, maybe you should wear green to match your egg... Grandpa Satan will take care of you!"
Fondue wasn't sure whether she would be horrified that she was sitting on Satan's lap, or elated that the fabulously wealthy King of the Demons was going to buy her designer maternity wear (even if she didn't need the belly room).
So she just sat there, eyebrow ticking, and tried to ignore how Amnom was humiliating himself for his boss' sake.
For Amnom's part, it wasn't entirely just to appease the situation that he was attempting to appeal to Gaga's better nature. Truth be told, his apprenticeship meant the world to him, and had been all he'd known for years since leaving the Nekomata grounds. If someone had asked him even a few months ago to walk away from it, it would have refused. If Fondue herself had asked, he would have refused. .....but she hadn't asked. He'd decided, on his own, it had been the most peaceful option now that a child was hanging in the equation.
Because surely the palace did not have room for another young person in it. Surely, now that Glenda was of-age, the battered veterans of child rearing that lived here weren't willing to go through it all a second time.
......surely that wasn't Satan dressing his girlfriend up like a doll.
Amnom did a double-take, then cleared his throat, reassuming his proper demon form in a plume of smoke.
"Thank you, Gaga-san. I won't disappoint you again." he said, bowing respectfully to the other steward, who was not even listening. He was too busy glowering in Fondue's direction, which made an uneasy pit roil in his apprentice's stomach.
Even a favorable outcome, it seemed, didn't plan to be an easy one.
Cube
To celebrate the first completed roleplay, Cube bestows an item upon the couple!
A sweet roll baked by the butler himself!
A sweet roll baked by the butler himself!
