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Ophira let out a mighty huff. This wasn’t going as planned - she normally did so well in her spell casting classes! She was meant to turn an object into its opposite and wasn’t sure whether she felt sorry for or relieved for her poor tortoise. It should’ve been a hare well over an hour ago… The professor had allowed her to take home her very un-hare-like tortoise to try and practise the spell, but she was just feeling pathetic now. And oh-so tired. She’d heard midnight chime ages ago.
“Well then, Aesop,” She stroked his shell and watched as he happily nibbled on the fruit that she had attempted to bribe him with, “Maybe you just weren’t meant to be a hare. The slow life is the life for you, hm? Nothin’ wrong with that. In fact, I might be a bit jealous of you - you wouldn’t begin to guess what happens in this household on the daily,” The human continued to chatter to the tortoise mindlessly in an attempt to keep herself awake enough to get him into his cage with fresh water and to get herself ready for bed.
Once tucked under her covers, cosy and warm, she was out like a light.
Come her morning alarm, she wasn’t sure that her mood had improved. She really didn’t want to face the professor after a whole night of not being able to master the spell (she didn’t even manage to give Aesop some whiskers or fur). As she stretched, she tried to put her finger on what exactly felt wrong this morning…
And then she ran her fingers through her hair.
She didn’t know who had the audacity, but she was going to kill whoever had hacked off her shoulder length mane.
Her hair was her pride and joy, the one thing that she was openly vain about...surely none of her demons actually had the gall?! The woman was so genuinely furious that she didn’t even have the mental capacity to wonder why her underwear were so uncomfortable or why the shirt that she had hijacked from Beel wasn’t fitting the way that it normally would.
At the vanity, her fingers fumbled for her glasses - and she was left reeling at what was looking back at her from the mirror.
At first, she wondered if her mirror had somehow become enchanted and that was why her twin brother was staring back with just as much shock. And then her senses started to settle back in - it couldn’t be Jacob. Jacob didn’t have Beel’s shirt or wear socks to bed. It must’ve happened last night, when she was trying to get the spell to work - it would make sense...to turn something into its opposite, and her opposite could either be male or her twin...oh, Asmodeus was either going to love or hate the fact that their hair style matched and that hers was so much curlier than his…
“Oh no,” The baritone that came out of her felt so foreign. She couldn’t let the demons see her like this!
Frantically, she went for her phone and texted the group chat trying to feign an illness. Ophira realised that she really should have thought through her words more thoroughly as her phone started to ping with notifications like mad - but she needed to lock her door and was trying to find something that wasn’t going to smoosh her new (wo)manhood in her drawers.
Before she knew it, Mammon was banging on the door. “OI, human! The Great Mammon’s here to check on ya ‘cause apparently ya can’t answer your texts - open up!”
A sigh of relief left her when the door handle wiggled but stayed locked. “I don’t think that’s a great idea, Mammon,” She finished her sentence with a pathetic hack of a cough, “I don’t want to pass this on to one of you.”
Ophira was overcome with guilt at her lover’s soft tone, “Aw, treasure. You really don’t sound yourself - can I getcha somethin’? It’s nothin’ fancy, but I reckon there’s some packet soup down in the kitchen that I can whip up for ya - or maybe I can get Satan to make you a thermos of that tea you like?” In any other scenario, the way that she clutched at her (now particularly flat) chest would have been comical.
“No thanks, love. I just need some sleep,” Oh, she felt even worse when she heard Mammon’s body thump gently against her door.
“Okay treasure - but you just lemme know if you need anythin’, anythin’ at all alright? I’m only a call away. I’ll let Luci know that you’re not coming to school today, okay? I love ya.”
Oh, she wanted nothing more than to fling open the door and pull the Avatar of Greed into a tight embrace and smother him in kisses for all of his sweetness.
“I love ya too, Mamms.”
She listened closely for the retreat of Mammon’s footsteps before she allowed herself to continue her panic. Surely her best bet was to try and look through Satan’s library once they’d all left for school - little did she know that her lovers were downstairs holding conference.
---
“You tryin’ to say that she’s lyin’ to me, Luci? ‘Cause our human’s a lotta things, but a liar she ain’t.” The other brothers continued their breakfast as the two eldest stared each other down.
“I said no such thing, Mammon. I simply stated that I find it difficult to believe that she could go from being completely fine yesterday to being struck with plague today. Unless you have some insight that the rest of us don’t?”
That sent Mammon into one of his spluttering fits, “What, you think that our little goody-two-shoes of a human would skip class? Nuh-uh. I don’t believe that for a minute. Any time someone suggests it, she gets more anxious than a rabbit in a wolf den.”
“Are you saying that you’ve been trying to persuade her to skip class?”
“Wha- me? Never!”
Satan rolled his eyes from his seat and interjected before Mammon spun completely out of control, “If she’s skipping school, it might be because she performed very poorly in Spell Casting yesterday.” That caught the attention of the table.
“Our Ophira?!” Asmodeus looked perfectly scandalised at the very thought, “But she always does so well! The poor thing, her confidence must be shaken - what happened?!” The Avatar of Wrath shrugged, “She couldn’t turn a tortoise into a hare. The professor let her take it home for homework - I assume that if she is skipping, she probably hasn’t made any more progress and doesn’t want to face the music.”
Beelzebub frowned through a mouthful of griffin egg, “That’s not like her either though.” Lucifer gave a tut at his brother talking with his mouth full, which made the younger demon blush.
“You’re quite right, Beel. That isn’t like her - she owns up to her mistakes quite readily…” With that, the eldest got up from the table. “I’m going to go see what’s really going on.”
Shyly, Leviathan spoke up, “If she’s really that embarrassed, Lucifer, maybe we should leave her be. I’m doing home study today, so I could check on her later?” The Avatar of Pride shook his head, “No. Something’s going on and I intend on knowing exactly what.”
And that was what kicked off the demon parade toward the human’s bedroom.
---
As her beloved demons bickered below, she was busy wondering if she was on some demonic version of Just For Laughs or Candid Camera or Punk’d or something.
The polite rapping on her door nearly made her jump out of her skin. Wasn’t Mammon supposed to be letting everyone know that she was ‘sick’? She couldn't let her demons see her like this!
“Ophira, I’m going to have to insist that you open the door,” She grimaced when she heard Lucifer’s stern tone. Before she had to reply, the chorus started:
“Don’t worry, darling, I’m sure it wasn’t that bad-
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, I’m home anyway-”
“Don’t let him bully ya, Fi-”
“I’d be happy to pick up your homework for you-”
The concern had her smiling and she had to fight back a chuckle when she could hear Lucifer’s angry whispering - threats, no doubt.
However, the dread settled back in when the first born cleared his throat and her little helpful chorus went quiet. “Ophira - I am rather serious. I am going to give you five seconds to unlock this door before we either pick the lock or Beelzebub takes it down.”
She was beginning to toy with the idea until she heard her gentle giant’s soft protest of, “But I don’t want to take her door down.” Lucifer’s long suffering sigh made her tempted to open the door just to give him a reassuring pat on the arm and to apologise for making such a fuss.
But, on the other hand, he was being a patronising ass and wasn’t endearing himself to her.
“One.”
Her panicked little dance in her room wasn’t helping.
“Two.”
Shitshitshitshitshitshit-
“Three.”
How could five seconds pass so slowly and yet so quickly?!
“Four.”
As a desperate last-minute attempt at keeping up with her original lie, she flicked her lights off and dove back under her covers, curling up to look as small as possible.
“Five.”
A beat passed as she tried to totally cover herself with blanket. She could hear the murmuring behind her door and a firm but soft, “No. I won’t.” from Beel and then whining from Asmo who, judging by how her lock clicked, caved to the eldest’s whim to pick the lock.
Lucifer tsked and turned the lights back on as he entered the room, “Come now. Blanket off - if you’re truly sick, I need to check your temperature.”
“No.” Had she peeked out from underneath her fluffy sanctuary, she would have laughed at the shocked expressions around the room. Mammon gestured wildly with his hands, “Ya see?! She sounds like she’s got a throat cold or somethin’. Just leave her alone!”
While Lucifer continued to try and persuade her out from under the blankets to check that there wasn’t anything ‘seriously wrong’, Satan peeked into Aesop’s carrier.
“Oh, so you did manage to change the tortoise in the end!”
The excitement washed over her before she even had the chance to think against her traitorous mind, “Really?!” She had shot up in bed and thrown the blankets off the top of her - only to immediately regret it. Had it not been for the sheepish smile and how she tucked into her shoulders once she’d realised, the brothers would have instantly taken her for an intruder.
“No, not really. I just thought that it might actually get you out of bed.”
An expression of disdain fixed on the human’s face once her eyes found the fourth born, “You crafty bastard.” That only made Satan smile, clearly pleased with himself.
She groaned and rubbed her face as the brothers continued to stare.
“I’d like to know how you managed to change yourself but not the tortoise…”
“You and me both.”
Lucifer narrowed his eyes at her, “And how exactly did you imagine you were going to fix this?”
“...Um, I was going to leaf through Satan’s books to see if there wasn’t something helpful?”
A collective groan from her lovers made her blush and fiddle with the edge of her blanket, “Well! I didn’t want you to see me like...this.”
Asmo quickly intervened, pushing Lucifer to the side some so that he could sit on the bed. “Darling, you look gorgeous either way. In fact, I wouldn’t complain if you were stuck like this - you look very handsome and we even match!” A playful tug to one of the curls did make her smile, “I wouldn’t mind so much if I didn’t look exactly like my brother - I’m not sure if the spell took ‘opposite’ to mean opposite gender, or my actual opposite in my twin…”
Before more speculation could be made, Lucifer stood. “Mammon, I think one of your spare uniforms should fit Ophira fine.”
That had both the Avatar of Greed and the Human spluttering.
“Whaddya mean ‘one of my uniforms should fit Ophira fine’-”
“What?! Surely you’re not sending me to RAD like this-”
“What’re people gonna say, huh!?”
“How am I supposed to explain this to people?!”
“Someone’s gonna have to make sure that they’re with her durin’ all her classes-”
“What am I supposed to do if I do something stupid like sit on my balls?!”
That made the room stop. Suddenly, six pairs of eyes were looking at her, every pair reflecting a different kind of surprise. The silence was broken by the raucous laughter from all six of her demons, but Ophira clearly didn’t find it funny.
“I’m serious!!! Is that something you can do?! I’m not skinny, that’s a lot of weight to put on a lot of delicate cargo! Or what do I do if they decide to stick to my thigh? Is it acceptable to just - it’s not funny!!!” Asmodeus was clutching her and petting her hair through his tittering laughter, but the resident human simply pouted in his arms.
“Fine,” Even Lucifer hadn’t been unaffected by the unexpected questions, a gloved hand wiping at one of his eyes. “We’ll talk about your twisting of the truth later - but as you’re clearly rather...anxious about your current anatomy, I’ll talk to Diavolo about having this marked as a sick day. We might have to look into the spell - Satan, is it meant to be permanent?”
The Avatar of Wrath didn’t look at all his part, still chuckling away. “I don’t think so, but I’ll check with the professor and report back. Shall I take the tortoise back to RAD?”
“No, I’ll take Aesop back when I’m back to normal. I’d like to continue practicing -”
The scattered chorus of ‘No!’s from her lovers made her pout again and Satan swiftly picked up the tortoise carriage, “Love, I think that’s a terrible idea so I’m simply going to remove the temptation.”
“We’d best get going if the rest of us are going to get to RAD on time. You might want to borrow some clothes from one of us to get more comfortable - hopefully this is a twenty-four hour incident and we’ll have you back to your regular self come tomorrow.” Lucifer placed a kiss on her head, “Let us know if you need anything.” Leviathan grumbled in the background, “Don’t say that like I won’t be around to help her out.”
Kisses were handed out as her lovers made their way out and she sighed once they were gone. It felt like not even a single day could go by without some sort of incident in this household.