Chapter Text
'Here’s my day so far; went to jail, lost the man of my dreams and got my butt kicked pretty good. Still, things could be a lot worse.'
'Oh, that’s right…I’m falling to my death. Guess they can’t. How did it all come to this you ask? My end starts at the beginning, the very beginning!’
'I had a fairly standard childhood. I came from what you might call a broken home, literally broken.'
A small baby daemonium was playing quietly in his yard when he was suddenly grabbed up by his mother. She rushed to meet with his father, both of them taking him to a place he didn't know, and placing him into something he didn't know. Everyone seemed to be in a panic, except the baby daemonium, he wasn't old enough to comprehend the danger they were in.
'I was eight days old and still living with my parents. How sad is that?! Clearly it was time to move on.' The two adult daemoniums stared down at their child, holding back tears to keep him calm. The mother handed the child a clear sphere, inside a small rabbit-like creature smiled at the child.
"Here is your Minion, he will take care of you." The father handed the child a small object glowing red with power. "And here is your binky." He turns to hold his wife in his arms, smiling down at his son.
"You are destined..." The pod holding the child closed before he could finish speaking.
'I didn’t quite here that last part, but it sounded important. Destined for…what? I set out to find my destiny.' The pod soared through space, the baby daemonium watching the stars pass by with his minion until it dinged against a meteor, causing the daemonium to slam against the glass. He looked out, noticing another, yet more advanced, pod soaring across from him.
'It turns out a angelus kid had the exact same idea. That was the day I met Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes. And our glorious rivalry was born!' The daemonium watched out the window of his pod with excitement as a luxurious mansion came into view, steadily getting closer and closer.
'Could this be what I was destined for? A dream life filled with luxury?' At the last minute, before landing in the home, the angelus's pod knocked him out of the way and smoothly sailed into the mansion's front door.
'Apparently not! Even fate has it’s favorites. No big deal. A much different fate awaited me.'
That fate would lead to his pod crashing into the Metro City Prison. While prisoners gathered around the dented machinery and admired the bright red child inside, the angelus child was being held by his new human mother. She caressed his face and held him up to admire.
“A baby! How thoughtful.” She cooed at the baby and her oh-so-loving husband commented from his chair; “Oh yes, yes. I saw it and thought of you.” The woman didn’t seem to notice his slip-up, too immersed in cuddling her new alien son.
‘Luckily I found a lovely little place to call home.’
“Can we keep it?” The prisoners gathered the little red guy up and brought him and his Minion inside, more gentle than you’d expect from the criminally gifted. They set the baby up with the cleanest sheet they could find, made sure he was comfy, and looked him over.
The baby was obviously alien, much more so than the angelus child enjoying luxuries miles away. Firstly, daemoniums all had bright, practically glowing, red skin. Secondly, most were adorned with small horns. Horns could grow in all sorts of positions; they were located forward facing on our little daemonium, where one could assume his hairline would start to grow in a few months. Daemoniums also sported a flexible tail, short now but would grow with time, and small leathery wings. Unfortunately, daemonic wings were all show, too small and weak to do more than glide. And gliding was only possible with extreme effort and practice. Lastly, the prisoners noticed this small child, only days old, had the most beautiful yet strange eyes they’d ever seen. Golden like jewels, the prisoners would know, with slit pupils like scratches through space.
‘A place that taught me the differences between right and wrong.’
The prisoners took a few cards from a knockoff deck one of the guards brought in. They held up one with an image of a stereotypical burglar and nodded their heads up and down, waiting until the child imitated the motion. Then they did the same with a cop card, but shook their heads no, again making sure the child imitated the motion. The minion didn’t seem as eager to agree with them.
‘Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes on the other hand had life handed to him on a silver platter.’
Said goody-two-shoes was currently flying circles around his new home, carrying his mother with him as he enjoyed the high ceilings. “Our baby can fly!” Mrs. Scott exclaimed as she watched her son beat stunning white wings with grace. “Yes, yes, nothing but the best for you darling.” Mr. Scott still never looked up from his paper. Later he would realize his wife wasn’t just rambling nonsense and would join in the fun of carelessly flying with with a newborn.
‘The power of flight, beautiful feathered wings, invulnerability and grace! But I had something far, far greater. My natural magical talent! A knack for creating objects of mayhem.’
You might be wondering why a baby, let alone an alien baby, was allowed to be kept in a prison, and no one really knows why. Perhaps the baby got attached to the prisoners, maybe there were darker forces at work, but most people who knew about the kid would chalk it up to the fact that he was simply too dangerous to be kept at an orphanage. Only days after crash landing in the prison the child had used smuggled chemicals, the corpse of a large bird that got too close to the electric fence, some grime and slime, and just a pinch of stardust for his pinky to create a fully functioning skeletal tricycle. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he managed to burn a hole through one of the walls when he got firecracker hiccups. His minion encouraged these acts, embracing the choices his partner made, but the warden looked down on them for it. Quite literally, looked down on them.
At least for a few years. The warden wasn’t the tallest, or the cleanest for that matter. Their dark hair was always greasy and unkempt, too long and too short at the same time. Their suit looked old and ragged, covered in small holes and occasionally the home to a family of flies. A completely unprofessional look, but the most professional mindset anyone had ever seen. Most believed this to the the only reason warden Beelzebub was able to keep their job, because they did it and they did it well. Even if it meant keeping an alien child in check.
‘After a few years and with some time off for good behavior, I was given an opportunity to better myself through learning at a strange place called ‘shool’. It was there that I was once again ran into Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes. He had already amassed a gigantic army of soft headed groupies.’
The prospect of going to school and meeting other kids his age was exciting, but actually getting there and having them all stare you down? Not so much. They didn’t stare with awed gazes like they did for the angelus child, they glared with uncertainty at this demonic looking newcomer. Just wanting to fit in, he sat down off to the side and joined their show-and-tell group. Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes had brought a stovetop popcorn pack, but heated it up with golden lasers from his eyes. The kids cheered as they were showed in popcorn.
‘He bought their affections with showmanship, extravagant gifts of deliciousness. So I too would make this poppet corn and win over those mindless drones.’
Studying magic and spells through the night wasn’t hard, especially with the light from his stardust pinky he kept at all times, but convincing one of the guards to give him his own stovetop popcorn pack was a piece pf cake. The one that drove the prison bus felt especially sorry for the lonely alien kid. In front of the class, with Minion’s encouragement, the daemonium focused his breathing and resulting fire breath on the popcorn pack. One of the kids booed however, and he lost focus, causing himself to cough up a fireball that exploded the now burnt popcorn and caught the rug on fire. No one was hurt, as he was thrown in the corner, Goody-Two-Shoes had already started blowing out the flames.
‘That’s when I learned a very hard lesson. Good receives all the praise and adulation while evil is sent to quite time in the corner. So fitting in wasn’t really an option. While they were learning Itzy Bitzy Spider, I learnt how to create and control semi-sentient gelatinous blobs. Some days it felt like it was just me and Minion against the world. No matter how hard I tried I was always the odd man out. The last one picked. A screw up! Black sheep! Bad boy! Demon-child! Was this my destiny?’
‘Wait…maybe it was! Being bad is the one thing I’m good at. Then it hit me; if I was the bad boy, then I was going to be the baddest boy of them all!’
The time-out corner was luckily next to the storage cabinet. With a handful of chemicals and the right set of words, a neon red exploded through the building. The daemonium smiled as he was shoved back into the prison bus, holding his minion close.
‘I was destined to be a super villain, and we were destined to be rivals! The die had been cast! And so began an enduring epic lifelong career…and I LOVED IT!’
As the angelus child picked up the schoolhouse and slew off with it, the daemonium let slip a small frown that said otherwise. Not that he’d ever admit to it. Years later, he’d say things were going better than before if you asked him.
'Our battles quickly got more elaborate. He would win some, I would almost win others! He took the name Guardian Gabriel, Angel of Metro City. I decided to pick something a little more humble; King Khaos, incredibly handsome criminal genius and master of all villainy!’
‘But my friends call me Crowley.’