Chapter Text
“Cherri! You are not going to BELIEVE what I found!” Angel Dust declared, bursting into her apartment.
“Hey, what have I said about warning me before coming in? I could have been working on a delicate trigger!” she chided, although she wasn’t actually that angry with him. Worst case scenario she blew herself up, which she’d already done plenty of times when figuring out how to use her powers.
“Look at this!” he said triumphantly, holding up his phone. “Val got this book of photos of old burlesque performers and look at this pot that has been calling the kettle black by insulting me for my line of work.”
The photo taken from the book was slightly blurry, with a white spot where the flash had reflected back, but the photo was clear enough regardless. “Holy shit, is that Edgelord?!” she asked.
“How many other black and yellow cobras with red eyes do you know?” Angel asked in return.
The photo was of an old poster. There were two snake demons in the photo. Both had their hoods slightly flared. One of them was clearly Cherri’s familiar rival, although missing the hat they’d grown accustomed to seeing and wearing what appeared to be women’s clothing. The other was a very pale white snake, body covered in crystalline baby blue eyes, with four arms. “Ghost and Shiny Penny, appearing live,” Cherri read from the poster. “The venomous beauty that can tantalize and hypnotize.”
“I mean, I know burlesque doesn’t have to involve stripping, but look at that outfit. That’s a stripper outfit if I’ve ever seen one, and I should know.”
“Let’s ogle their stage name,” Cherri suggested, pulling out her own phone and bringing up hell’s porn-oriented search engine. “Maybe we can find out more about them.”
…
Over a hundred years ago
…
The white snake, an albino king cobra by the name of Thaddeus, had been on his way home. Hell rain was coming down hard, burning at his skin while simultaneously freezing him. The wet pavement was harder for his scales to dig into than usual, making his return home a painfully slow one.
His head perked up when he heard a scream. He distinctly recognized the scream of another snake. His tongue darted out and licked where his lips would be if he had them. His diet consisted of other snakes, so hearing one screaming in distress was like ringing a personalized dinner bell for him.
He hadn’t expected to turn into an alley and find another of his kind fighting off an attack by six mongoose demons. Two were already on the ground in bloody piles, but it was clear the other snake demon was too badly injured to continue fighting the other four. There was ripped clothing and blood everywhere, although it was impossible to tell how much each demon had contributed to the finger painting of gore on the walls.
He set down his bag and cracked his knuckles. “Hey! I knew you were a bunch of weasels, but six on one seems a little one-sided even for you, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“This doesn’t concern you,” one of the mongoose demons growled back at him. “Keep slithering along and you don’t need to get hurt as well.”
“Ah, well, you see… you all appearing on my turf has changed my dinner plans,” he hissed.
“And you appearing on OUR turf has changed OUR dinner plans. Guess we’re having a double portion of snake dinner.”
For an inexperienced snake, they would have been more than a handful despite their own inexperience. For someone who had already been doing it for several years, knocking them down was as easy as knocking down bowling pins. That, and his four arms certainly gave him an advantage.
“There, I’ve taken care of them, you can- whoa!” he said, his hood flaring as he had to dodge a trash can that had been thrown at his head. The other snake, a black and yellow creature with an extra red eye in the middle of its chest, was hissing at him between pained breaths. “Hey, calm down!” he was surprised the other snake had enough left in it to move, let alone throw a full garbage can.
“I am not interested in being your dinner, either!”
“I’m not planning on eating you!”
“Do not lie to me! I can see what you are, and I heard you say that your dinner plans had changed,” the black snake snapped, coiling back as much as it could with its injuries.
“No. I meant… as distasteful as I find it, I guess I’ll be having mongoose tonight,” he said, swatting at one limp demon with his tail. It could barely groan in response. He looked the black snake up and down. Thaddeus couldn’t quite make out the sex of this new snake, as the figure was feminine, but the voice had a masculine edge. He wasn’t even sure how he knew they were the same species, other than something inside him told him so. He’d eaten other smaller cobras before, but something just told him this one wasn’t on the menu. He realized what little tattered remains of fabric it had left around its shoulders were the remains of a funerary shroud. “You… you must have recently arrived in hell?” he asked.
There was a very long pause, before the other snake lowered down from a raised defensive position to be closer to the ground. “Is this… is this really hell?” it asked, multiple pink eyes darting around. Thaddeus was somewhat taken aback when the other snake started to laugh. “I… I guess I really shouldn’t have tested that flying machine myself.”
“Why don’t you come with me?” the white snake finally asked, picking up his bag as well as two of the other demons. “Let me at least get you warmed up and get your wounds dressed.”
“Ha… and why should I trust you?”
“Well, being hell, you really shouldn’t. But right now, can you afford not to? Do you think you could take another attack in your state?”
When they returned to the leaking one-room shack the white snake occupied, he offered what little he had available up to his nervous companion. He wasn’t sure why he’d bothered to bring the other snake with him. Hell wasn’t the kind of place where you just helped strangers out of the good of your heart, and he barely had enough space for himself.
“Here, drink this,” Thaddeus said. “It’s just tea, and it’ll warm you up. You’re cold blooded now, so you’re going to have to be more careful about your surroundings. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Pen… Penuel,” the black snake answered, shaking beneath the blanket. Water leaking from the ceiling dripped down next to him.
“WRONG!” Thaddeus snapped, nearly startling Penuel into falling onto the floor of this shack of a living quarter. “That’s your mortal name. You must guard that with your afterlife. Knowing that can give other demons power over you. Now, my stage name is Ghost. We need to come up with another name for you.”
“Stage name?”
“I’m… well, in life I was a Shakespearean actor,” he explained. “Problem is, hell has no shortage of those, including ones who actually worked with Shakespeare, so… I’m trying a new theater form that just started getting popular. They call it vaudeville. There’s a dedicated theater in this town, but the REAL action is in the big cities. Once I gain enough notoriety here, I’m going to head to where the money is.”
.
Thaddeus tried very, very hard to come up with his ultimate winning routine. Magic acts, plate-spinning, singing… if he could figure out how to do it, even badly, he tried it, all while his bemused new friend watched from the shadows. “I don’t get it,” he sighed, leaving yet another show without an offer to become a returning act. “What am I doing wrong?”
“Hey, you two!” the manager of the theater shouted. He was a stout badger, a man who constantly stank of cheap cigars and gum disease. Thaddeus’ head perked up. Was this it? Had they finally been recognized? “Or rather, hey, Shiny Penny. Our machine that raises and lowers the curtains is stuck. I hate to keep bugging you to keep this place in one piece for me, but can you give it a look over and fix it up? I’ll pay you for your time, as usual.”
.
“It’s a simple chain out of place,” ‘Penny’ informed him. “This will be an easy fix.”
“Thanks, Penny, if I called any of the so-called actual repairmen around here, they’d act like the whole thing was broken and needed to be replaced,” the badger grunted, taking another long pull from his cigar. “What rip-offs. Say, Ghost, I’ve been thinking. You know what your act needs? A lovely assistant, and you’ve got one available right here. It’s not fair to Penny to keep such a beauty constantly putting my broken-down theater back together when they should be dazzling the stage.”
“Who would want to see an act that consisted of two guys trying to juggle plates?” Ghost snorted with a shake of his head. Never mind that there were several successful acts already that followed that format…
“No, no, you’re not getting my picture. With a figure like that, you could easy pass Penny off as a lady.”
“I… I think someone would notice.”
“My friend, a little spell to change the voice to a more feminine tone, and… well, you can’t really tell male and female snake demons apart unless you get right up in their business. Why don’t you at least give it one shot and see how it works out? I’ve even got an outfit that should fit that I’ll let you have as a goodwill gift for how many times Penny has saved me a hefty repair bill.”
.
“Oh, don’t pout, Thaddeus,” Penuel sighed, neatly hanging up the one performance-worthy outfit Thaddeus owned. It was starting to get thin in places, and he was worried about how they were going to afford to replace it. The ‘beautiful assistant’ routine had been surprisingly well received, with quite a few inquires as to when they would see ‘Shiny Penny’ on stage again and whether she might be willing to take on more… risky routines.
“With the money we earned in tips, we have enough this month to pay rent and buy actual groceries for once. I’m getting tired of eating whoever we can find wandering through the alleys at night. Too much… screaming. That, and I think a lot of the smaller snakes have gotten the idea that this neighborhood isn’t safe. We’re going to have to move on soon if this keeps up.” A few times, they’d eaten the same demon more than once. They were just always very careful not to let their victims see them before they were able to strike and unload their venom. Having a demon come back to life and remember they were the ones who had previously devoured it would be… problematic. The few times a victim had accidentally seen them, Penuel had taken care of this issue by erasing their memories with the hypnotic eyes in his hood. That was one of the major differences between their power levels. Thaddeus had the ability to tell when anyone was lying just by listening to them; Penuel had hypnotic abilities.
Wearing only his stained white undershirt, Thaddeus leaned up against the wall and looked out the window, which was held together with whatever bits of tape they could smuggle out of the theater after Penny’s various odd jobs. He was throwing one of his literal hissy fits over the attention his ‘assistant’ had siphoned away from himself, but he knew it was necessary for them to make enough to keep going. “We should thank the manager,” he said bitterly. “If the button hadn’t popped off that cheap outfit he gave you, we’d only have gotten half those tips.”
“Please don’t be jealous, Thaddeus. You saved me and took care of me when I first arrived in hell. I don’t want to fight with you. Let’s… let’s change the subject. You know, I think it would actually be nice to eventually live somewhere with more space. I… I get a little claustrophobic here, constantly surrounded by gossipy neighbors sticking their noses in our business. I want somewhere I can spread out and work on my machines. I don’t want to spend my afterlife just fixing broken theaters.”
“Your machines killed you in the human realm, and you’re still set on tinkering with them?” Thaddeus snorted, stretching out and preparing for bed. “Ah, my skin feels really tight. I’m going to have to shed soon, but we’ve got three shows lined up next week and I can’t afford to miss any of them.” He flopped down on what served as their shared “bed”, a pile of discarded ragged clothing and straw with a single patched-together blanket on top. “You going to get changed and come to bed?” he asked.
“Hmm? Oh, soon enough. I just want to get lost inside my own thoughts for a while,” Penuel answered. “I just feel… uneasy. Do you think a storm is coming? My coils won’t relax.”
Thaddeus lifted his head and stiffened up. “I feel it too. Something isn’t right. And… do you smell… smoke?”
The already broken window was smashed completely when a burning bottle came sailing through it, lighting up the table where it landed. Thaddeus grabbed Penuel by the wrist and the two fled out the front door, only to find a gathering of very pissed-looking smaller snake demons waiting for them. “There’s the two bastard cobras who keep attacking everyone! Get them!” someone shouted. “Let’s tear them apart for once!”