Chapter Text
The car door closed with a quiet thunk. Flug gazed up at the towering mansion before him, smiling at seeing such a familiar sight after what might as well have been months. It was nice to go out and do something every once in a while but at the same time...
It was called a comfort zone for a reason.
As things were, Flug was ready to go inside, slink into his laboratory, and tinker with whatever invention needed to be worked on for the next commercial. Sighing in contentment at the thought, he opened up the trunk of the Rolls-Royce and grabbed two small plastic bags, stumbling a bit in surprise from their weight. That free merchandise was a lot heavier than it looked. As he practically dragged them to the front door, his eyes darted over to Black Hat, silently pleading for his assistance.
His boss scoffed. "I was against the procurement of that rubbish since the beginning. You are responsible for bringing them into the house," he sneered, leaning casually against the side of the car and tilting the brim of his hat to cover his eyes.
"Right. Yes, sir," Flug replied, not bothering to hide the lack of energy in his voice. Thankfully, a thousand dollars' worth of swag was too expensive to take up too much space; in fact, Flug was pleasantly surprised to find that he only needed to carry a few bags of T-shirts and lanyards. Then he saw that there was still a mountain of luggage to remove from the trunk. Massaging his soon-to-be-sore arms, he found the suitcase nearest to the car's outside edge and, grabbing the handle, pulled with all of his strength. The soles of his sneakers scraping against the concrete, Flug heaved until the case fell to the ground. He tried tilting it back and rolling it until he remembered something: their luggage never had wheels.
Of course not, Flug thought, rolling his eyes. Why make things easy for your own workers?
Still clutching the handle, he began dragging the suitcase to the mansion's entrance. One step at a time, he inched closer and closer to the front door, the case slowly scraping along. Finally, after a minute of hard labor and several pulled muscles, he made it to his destination.
"Ugh! Could you not go any faster?", Black Hat growled, snapping his fingers.
There was a sound like the breaking of twigs, and Flug turned to see that the remaining luggage had grown spindly legs—not unlike that of an insect—and scurried to the entrance in a single-file line. Once they all emptied from the car, some unseen force threw open the double doors and the suitcases spilled into the room, their frantic motion obscuring Flug's view of the interior. Once they finally settled down, their legs bursting into green flames and scattering to the winds, Flug gingerly stepped over them and into the mansion.
"Unbelievable," he murmured, soaking everything in.
The entire living area was spotless. In fact, it looked cleaner than it had been before they left. The paintings were dusted, the floors were vacuumed... No one would have known that an unhinged womanchild and a giant bear had spent a week there, totally unsupervised. At least, if Flug didn't count the Hat Bots as supervision.
He didn't, by the way; those things were too agreeable for their own good.
Flug jumped as Black Hat rushed past him with his arms now full of merchandise, darting around the room and examining it like it was a crime scene. "Something is not quite right," his boss said, his neck then twisting 180 degrees as his eye stared off into the distance. "We seem to have had visitors."
Somehow this wasn't a very mind-blowing conclusion. Dementia had been known to invite "friends" over to party with her—with varying results, of course. Most people knew better than to enter the house of Black Hat himself without his permission, and those not sane enough to care would have had trouble staying alive when the demon found out about their intrusion. It looked like Dementia was smart enough to wait until she and 5.0.5 were alone to bring anyone here.
Black Hat then stormed off (literally, as thunder rumbled throughout the mansion with each step), Flug following behind with concern. He hoped his special little bear wasn't doing anything that could get him into trouble. Out of the three of them, 5.0.5 had the worst luck when it came to making Black Hat angry. Dementia, though... She'd be fine. Flug was pretty sure that she found that kind of thing attractive.
After passing through several winding corridors and one or two torture chambers, they finally found themselves in the kitchen. One quick look at the scene before him almost caused Black Hat to drop the bags he was carrying out of surprise.
"What is the meaning of this?", Black Hat asked, his tone a fine mixture of frustration and confusion.
In the middle of the checker-tiled floor sat Dementia, playing cards with a worried-looking 5.0.5. A tightly bound hero laid on his stomach between them, looking like he would rather have been anywhere else right then. It seemed like they were using him as a table for their game, his unnaturally broad back holding two juice boxes and a deck's worth of cards. All in all, it was pretty tame stuff compared to Dementia's usual activities.
The lizard girl tilted her head up at Black Hat and, upon making eye contact, jolted upright like she'd been injected with pure caffeine. "Ooh! You're back just in time! So... whattaya think?"
She gestured grandly to the hero, who tried to shrink away from Black Hat's gaze as much as he could.
His mouth half open in a state of mild shock, Black Hat allowed an uncomfortable period of silence to pass before replying. "Just to clear things up, I leave you two utterly alone for days at a time... and you decide to clean the house and capture a hero."
Dementia giggled. "Yup! I did it all for you, hot stuff~", she said, furiously batting her eyelashes at him like he'd thrown dirt in her face.
This earned a shudder from Black Hat. "Might I ask how this filthy do-gooder managed to bypass our security in the first place?", he prodded, composing himself.
"Oh, y'know, he just kinda...", Dementia trailed off, deciding that the cards in her hand were much more interesting than their conversation. She took a moment to stare at them thoughtfully before choosing one and hurling it at 5.0.5 like a frisbee. The bear eagerly caught it mid-air with his teeth and set it down on the hero's back, taking care to line it up with the other cards.
"As a matter of fact," Black Hat said, stoic as ever, "I do not know. Care to elaborate?"
The lizard girl cleared her throat, pursing her lips in contemplation. "The...security was, um...turned off by dinosaurs! Yeah. That was the thing that happened," she explained, nodding fervently.
"Dinosaurs, you say?", the demon asked, his flat voice hiding his intentions. Flug couldn't believe a conversation like that could carry on for so long, but, hey, at least he wasn't the center of attention.
"Flug," Black Hat whispered, leaning close to him, "are dinosaurs still alive?"
Of course. He spoke too soon.
"...No, boss," Flug replied, ignoring Dementia's wordless protests. It didn't matter if he was, aside from 5.0.5, the most caring person in the manor—Flug didn't even want to imagine what would happen if the most powerful entity on the planet caught him lying.
"Aha!", Black Hat said as if he'd just uncovered a top-secret operation. "So you thought you could pull the wool over me?"
Dementia smiled as innocently as she could. "Maaaaybe. Or I turned the thingy off on purpose to get the hero to come inside. Maybe I kept it secret as a surprise!"
Black Hat considered her words and began pacing back and forth, the bags in his arms crinkling with every slight movement. "It seems to me that you and Flug have more in common than I had previously considered," he finally told her.
Flug almost jumped back in surprise. He and Dementia, alike? What on Earth was he getting at?
"Yes," the demon continued, "it appears that your primary instincts are to continue doing your jobs, no matter if it is necessary or not." He turned to the two of them, wearing a genuine smile. "Perhaps there is some potential in those thick skulls of yours, after all."
Wait. Was this... praise?
"Now, then, on to the task at hand," Black Hat said, adopting his typical businesslike voice. "Flug, bring the hero to the torture chamber. I'll want to deal with him later tod- What the devil?!"
The hero was gone, the only things left in his place being a mess of cards, some loose ropes, and 5.0.5, his head hanging down out of guilt.
Black Hat took a few steps toward the bear as columns of flames shot up around him. "Don't think that this will stop me from torturing someone!" He carelessly flung the paper bags behind him, one of them hitting Flug with so much force that he was knocked back against the counter-top, the bag bursting like a water balloon as its insides spilled out onto the floor.
The doctor, trying to reach 5.0.5, slowly shuffled forwards, but his progress was impeded considerably by the pain in his body. Through all of the whimpers, death threats, and the ringing in his ears, Flug could make out a surprised squeal coming from Dementia.
"Aww! You got us presents?", she asked, her eyes brightening with childlike excitement.
Those five words finally got Black Hat to stop what he was doing. He'd taken his hands off what could have been the bear's neck area and was now darting his eye back and forth between Dementia and 5.0.5, seemingly deciding whom he should kill first. After some kind of internal debate, he took a deep breath and crossed his arms.
"I have a... reasonable proposal," he said, glancing at the three of them in turn. "I will not speak of the godforsaken hero that got away, and none of you will mention those souvenirs."
Dementia grinned. "No worries. I already forgot about 'em," she said as she grabbed armfuls of merchandise off of the ground while humming a disjointed tune. Just as she picked up a mug with a lightning bolt on the side, everything that she was holding quickly turned into sand. She pouted as what used to be a pile of goodies literally slipped through her fingers, dirtying her already grubby clothes.
Black Hat strode past them, kicking up the sand into clouds as he went along and earning a few sneezes from 5.0.5. "Excellent," he said with a chuckle. "Now that our problem is settled... get back to work!", Black Hat snapped, slamming the kitchen door behind him.
It looks like everything's back to normal, Flug thought. They didn't talk about the merch, Black Hat didn't talk about the hero (along with the party that Dementia obviously threw while they were gone)...
And Flug didn't mention how their trip technically counted as a vacation.