Chapter Text
Cosmos on high, I will literally gargle molten glass just to make this stop.
With every half hearted and very unheard prayer, Starlet's broom swept one pile of sand after another into the thousandth dune in the mansion. It wasn't her fault she'd gotten so excited listening to Roll The Dice that her hourglass had spilled over, but now she was sweeping sand off the floor, out of the couch cushions, and even off her own head. Though her hair was wispy and glowing bright enough that finding and brushing it out was easy enough. No, it was just a matter of getting the pesky stuff out of literally everything else!
"And one cannibal says to the other cannibal, 'Does this taste funny to you?'"
Meanwhile, the radio show's youngest contestant, Cuphead, had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand. Starlet laughed along with them, wondering how the esteemed host felt about having his show hijacked by a child. Unfortunately, with her laughter came another spill of sand from her hourglass. With a huff, she ripped the damn thing out of her chest with a plop, stormed over to the kitchen, and smacked it down on the counter. Then she swept some leftover sand onto the floor.
"Roll the dice! Roll the dice!" the audience chanted.
The moment of truth! Starlet hurried back over to the couch to listen, but lost her footing on some sand she'd missed and fell flat on her back with a thump! that shot daggers through her already tired body. The broom jumped out of her hands and hit the radio on the way down, knocking it off its stand. Her sore backside and bruised ego would heal, but the radio looked in much worse shape.
"No, no no no!"
She dragged herself up off the floor and picked it up. It had certainly seen better days, but thank goodness it wasn’t wrecked beyond repair. Starlet breathed a sigh of relief and lifted it up oh-so-very gently … only for it to explode in her hands a second later.
Now it was wrecked beyond repair.
A sudden mess had intruded on her relaxation time, and now she couldn't even finish the episode! She hated this! She hated everything!
Starlet found herself throwing the heap of radio at the window on impulse, and cringed in realization of what she’d done as soon as it crashed through the glass and out onto the ground. Great. Now she also had a broken window to deal with.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
It wouldn't do her any good to throw a fit over this, so she tried to calm herself. But this mess was ridiculous! How had she let it get this bad? The damn stuff was on the furniture, in the cupboards, and even covering the ceiling for crying out loud!
Underneath one of the clumps of sand she conjured a portal, throwing it on top of a pile across the room. This way of getting rid of it kicked up more dirt than a dust devil, but right now Starlet was in no mood to even look at the endless dunes let alone clean anything up. So a bunch of portals at once would have to do. The sand all around the living room disappeared quickly and fell with a loud poof into one big, messy pile in the corner. She decided to push it all out the window later. For now, she just wanted to lay down.
She grabbed her hourglass off the counter to go plop down on the couch and bury her face in her hands. Calm down. It's just a mess. And a radio… and a window. It's fine. Everything’s fine. But the spark shooting through her hourglass said otherwise. Oh, perfect! She hadn't even used her powers that much today and it was already starting to ache!
With a wince, Starlet placed the broken appendage back into her chest. A wound over ten years old, and it still felt fresh.
"'Sprinkle, Sprinkle, Mr. Car?' Really, Cuphead?"
"Well maybe if my helpline hadn't frozen in terror, I'd be sitting on a pile of money in the Mystery Prize Room right now!"
"Well maybe if you didn't feel the need to leave with your dignity intact…" Mugman rolled his eyes and rummaged through some markers. "I, for one, would've swallowed my pride if it meant whatever prizes in there could've helped us out of this mess."
He proceeded to label a jar of dirt One Month of Worm Food; Please Feed Worm If Cuphead and Mugman Die. Across the room, Cuphead was playing with said worm, and did a double take when he noticed his brother being a ridiculously morbid goob. Ever since they went to that carnival, Mugman was being even more paranoid than usual. He'd been gathering food for the worm, putting together some Get-Outta-Dodge knapsacks, and even looking for a lawyer who might dictate the brothers' will (not that their belongings would go to anyone besides a worm, a goat, and an Elder Kettle).
"Mugsy, you're starting to scare me." Cuphead walked over to his brother, ready to offer a healthy blend of comfort and sarcasm.
"Good, you should be scared! You owe the Devil your soul! We have to be prepared for anything, even…" Mugman choked up a little. "...the possibility of our untimely demise."
"Puh-lease. If he really wanted my soul that bad, he'd be here already. And look," Cuphead walked over to the bedroom window and drew back the curtain, moving it back and forth across the window to show Mugman the calm and quiet forest. "Nothing out there! No critters, no monsters, and certainly no silly, mean ol' wet cat who calls himself a-"
"Devil!" shouted Mugman as he pointed at the window.
Sure enough, a dark, horned figure floated in the night sky, and Cuphead immediately plopped to the floor, chuckling a nervous "Well, when you speak of him…"
BOOM!
An explosion shook the cottage and knocked both the Cups down. Mugman was the first to get back up, using what little time he had before his body would start panicking to grab the emergency knapsacks. Putting his on and handing the other one to Cuphead, he tried to sneak a peek out of the window without being seen. A patch of the forest was suddenly burnt to a crisp, but no Devil.
Mugman gasped. "He's gone!"
"Where'd he go?"
"I don't know! It's dark and all the trees are scorched black. He could be anywhere!"
By the time Mugman realized his brother had left his side, Cuphead returned with a giant rocket. Flint and steel in hand, he slammed the rocket down in front of the window, pointed it toward the sky, and lit the fuse.
"Forget running. Hop on!"
"And wake up Elder Kettle?!"
"He slept through the Rat War, he'll sleep through this."
Mugman agreed, and was too hellbent on escaping to worry about jumping on a dangerous rocket. But as they prepared to board, a familiar poof sounded in the room. Out of a plume of smoke right next to the rocket appeared a grinning Devil, who licked his fingers and immediately put out the fuse. The Cups' hearts sank as they stared at the Lord of Darkness for what felt like a century. He raised his claws, but Cuphead in his quick thinking struck his flint at him, sending the sparks right into his eyes.
With no time to light the rocket, the cup brothers grabbed it and jumped out the window while the Devil was doubled over in a painful, hissing mess. They landed on the barrel below their window, crushing it and nearly their backsides completely. Scrapes and dings aside, it was time to skedaddle! Into the forest they ran, zigzagging through trees and clearings they'd trekked a thousand times, hoping to death the Devil didn't know the land as well as they did.
Muscles aching, hearts pounding, and lungs bursting, the Cups found themselves on more rocky terrain overlooking water. They looked around, and no longer saw familiar land.
"Where … are we, Mugsy?"
"Definitely not …. at sea level. Woo," Mugman doubled over trying to catch his breath. "No wonder … we're so winded. We must be somewhere up near the Ridge."
"Oh … that really narrows it down!" Cuphead threw his hands up. Neither of them had been to Rugged Ridge before, but they both knew it cut through the entirety of the two center isles.
Mugman plopped to the ground in exhaustion, his brother following suit. Time to let out all the panic he'd been holding in.
"He knows where we live! We can't go back! We're fugitives!" Mugman started pacing, panic pumping a second wave of energy through his body. "We're gonna have to live under a bridge and ride a train back and forth between jobs and end up falling asleep on matts of hay!" Anxiety overcame the little cup, whose breath was starting to come out in sobs.
"Don't give up like that. We ain't gonna be homeless!" Cuphead put a hand on Mugman's shoulder. "All's we gotta do is go to some fancy business downtown, act all sweet and innocent in front of a well-to-do respectable-type couple, and boom! We get adopted into a rich family with new names and an easy life!" Cuphead put a finger to his chin and thought about the next step of this plan as if it held any water. "We’ll be the Lutz’s. I’ll be Teacup, and you can be my twin sister Muki."
Mugman sighed. "I'm gonna need a new dress for that. My flapper outfit's at the cottage."
"We'll make you a new one! Out of…" Cuphead rummaged through his knapsack. "What's in these things?"
"Oh, the usual survival stuff. Food, water, blanket, fire starter-"
"Leaves?" questioned Cuphead, pulling what he now realized was camouflage gear out of the bag, followed by a rope attached to a hook. "Hey, a weapon! This is perfect! We just sneak up behind the Devil, wrap this thing around his neck, tie it to a cinder block, and-"
"It's not a weapon! It's a climbing rope. I thought about it during that episode of Dirk Dangerous the other day. You know, the one where the evil mummy tried to trap Dirk in the pyramid."
"Oh yeah! And when he lost the flint he needed to light the explosives, he took his trusty pocket knife and…"
Elder Kettle had given Cuphead a Dirk Dangerous pocket knife for his last birthday, and Mugman had packed it for him in a side pocket on the knapsack. Now that he thought about it, most of this survival equipment had belonged to Elder Kettle during his war days. Cuphead felt a tug at his heart.
"Poor Elder Kettle. What's he gonna do without us? Who's gonna look after his vegetable garden? Who's gonna make his bed when he falls asleep in the recliner?? And who's gonna talk him down when he has war flashbacks and runs around the house screaming about rats trying to eat him???"
"Wait a second, Elder Kettle has never been paranoid about people trying to kill him. And we don't do any of that stuff anyway."
"Yeah, 'cause now we'll never get the chance."
“So you agree we’re doomed.” Mugman accused.
“Hey, I never said that!”
“No, but I agree,” a voice exclaimed from a cloud of smoke above them.
The Cups looked up at the Devil grinning at them from over a ledge. Mugman started sputtering his brother’s name, but snapped himself out of it and sped over to him. Even though it was Cuphead’s soul the Devil was after, and even though he was trembling, he stepped in front of Mugman and put his arms out to shield him. A lot of good that would do. But then Mugman looked back at the cliffside not too far behind them and had a glimmer of hope. So he grabbed his brother and jumped.
The last thing Cuphead saw before his vision plummeted was the Devil gaping at them in disbelief. He thought for sure he and his brother were falling to their deaths, but barely a few feet below the cliff's edge they landed on something smooth, hard, and metallic. They slid down its round base and into a group of bushes on the ground. For what must’ve been the hundredth time today the Cups brushed themselves off and rubbed their sore limbs, but they didn’t have time to celebrate being alive before the Devil jumped down looking for them. Mugman took the camouflage leaves out of their knapsacks and made himself and his brother blend into the other bushes, then waited for the Devil to pass by.
With bated breath they watched their pursuer get fed up and go to look somewhere else. Cuphead and Mugman slipped out from their hiding spots and stood back to look at whatever the Devil had been staring at. Apparently they’d jumped down from a gigantic dome with a telescope attached to the top.
“Oh, we’re at the old observatory.” Mugman pointed out, turning around to look out at Isle 1 far off and below, realizing they’d run through the forest, up into the Ridge, then jumped back down. “I…guess we ran in a big circle. We might as well have just gone up the road the connects to bridge.”
“Eh, too much running. That road just keeps on curving around the hill.”
Cuphead circled around the observatory and found the front door, turning the handle to find it locked and in surprisingly good shape. He and his brother looked at each other knowing someone must either live or work there. A sudden cackle from the distance let the Cups know they’d been sighted, and they turned around to see the Devil's horns come up behind the rocky horizon. They desperately started banging on the door.
"Let us in!" Cuphead yelled.
"This place is huge! Even if they heard us, they might not get to the door in time."
"Then we're busting in." Cuphead took out his pocket knife and wedged it between the lock and the door frame.
"What are you doing? That's breaking and entering!"
"Not if it's for self defense,” Cuphead said matter-of-factly, twisting the knife this way and that.
Mugman fidgeted. "Fine. But we do this quietly and don't make a mess."
Cuphead rolled his eyes. “Sure, I’ll try not to make a mess while we’re running for our lives.”
The lock clicked open, and the Cups hustled it into the house, locked the door back up and looked around at the … wait, a living room? If this was an observatory, why did it look like a normal house on the inside? Come to think of it, the inside looked bigger than the outside. Not to mention all the furnishings and decoration looked wildly expensive and artistic, with marble art deco tiles, a glass moon-shaped coffee table, several sun-shaped mirrors, and many other space-themed items (except for the floral chandelier, abundance of potted plants, and a single broken window). Coupled with all the sand dunes everywhere, this was starting to feel less like a normal house and more like the museum of a whimsigoth witch.
The brothers moved deeper into the house- no, mansion - and gaped at all the interesting collectables. Some were modern, like the autographed vinyls framed on the wall, and others looked ancient, like the Greco-Roman statue in the corner of a hall. A picture caught Mugman's attention, one of a woman with gold eyes and blue skin speckled with stars. Her glowing blue hair was put up in a boyish bob and held together with a feathered headband, and her lipstick and eyeshadow were midnight black. It was a picture of her on stage singing into a microphone, the neckline of her dress swooped down to make room for a glowing gold hourglass.
"Hey, I know her!" Mugman pointed at the picture.
"You do?"
"Well, I know of her. That's Starlet Nightly. She was a huge movie star and singer. Though no one's seen her perform in years; since before we were born, I think."
"This must be her house then. No wonder everything's so fancy. I bet she's loaded." Upon that revelation, Cuphead looked at his brother with a big smirk.
"We're not getting adopted by a rich stranger, Cuphead."
"Ah, fine. She's probably an old hag by now, anyway."
Someone spoke from behind the Cups. "Who you calling an old hag, little man?"
The brothers' feet gave way underneath them, and instead of falling through the floor they fell into pitch darkness. When they got their vision and their bearings back, the room was upside down. They were hanging by their feet through dark portals and facing a starry skinned figure. Their eyes met the woman from the picture, who looked like she hadn't aged a day, besides her eyes having dark bags and her hourglass having cracks that Mugman had never seen in her movies.
"You have about three seconds to tell me what you're doing in my house."
Caught off guard with no prior knowledge of her strange power, and knowing the Devil was right outside the door, Cuphead and Mugman begged in unison.
"We're sorry! We just needed a place to hide!"
"Hide?" asked Starlet. "From what?"
The answer came in the form of an infernal cackle followed by the front door breaking in. Starlet gasped in instant recognition of that fiendish voice and ran to look around the corner of the hall, letting the brothers fall face first into the ground. After getting visual confirmation that the Devil was in her house, she turned to glare at the Cups.
"You prepubescent porcelain idiots owe the Devil your souls? And you led him to my house?" she scolded.
"He does!" Mugman corrected, pointing at his brother. "I don't! I'm clean!"
"I didn't know! There was a carnival, we ate food, rode rides, threw up, I was nailing it at Soul Ball, Mugman jostled me, I lost-"
“Okay, slow down,” Starlet held her hands out, but Mugman interrupted.
"Not my fault the Devil scared me!" he shoved Cuphead. "Turns out the carnival was for stealing souls. I grabbed Cuphead's soul and stuffed it back in. Devil found our house, we ran for our lives, and we're about to die!"
Their words came out fast and frantic, and Starlet tried to shush the frightened children. “A carnival, huh? He never did play fair, but that’s low even for the Devil,” she sighed, pushing them away from the direction of certain death. "Looks like you didn't hide well enough. Don't sweat it, I'll help you out."
The three hurried down a hall just as the door was completely broken down. Starlet led them to what looked like a laundry chute and opened it, gesturing for them to get in.
"This'll lead you to a secret spot in the attic."
"Wait, if we're jumping down," Cuphead said, looking down the chute. "How are we going up?"
"Space magic? Don't question it." Starlet held up a cushion she'd grabbed from a chair in the hallway and handed it to the Cups. "You'll have to share, but trust me, it's gonna hurt without this."
"Works for me!" Cuphead ripped the pillow out of her hand and opened the chute without even a hesitation.
Mugman anxiously but quickly grabbed his brother's back and slipped into the chute, thanking Starlet on the way.
The last thing he heard before sliding down was, “Any time, Muki."
Starlet waved, and with no time to see Muki's reaction, she turned the corner of the hall to face her foe.
The Devil froze when he saw her, eyeing her up and down. "You live in this hovel.” He grinned smugly. “So, you finally crawled out of your hole in the ground."
"Anything to put you in one."
"Tell me where that cup is. I stole his soul fair and square!"
"Oh, and I suppose you broke down my damn door 'fair and square', too?"
“That’s what I do. Hello? I’m the Devil.”
“Not a very good one if you can’t catch one kid.” Starlet polished her nails against her suspenders.
“Then just- I don’t know -move out of the way so I can rip his soul out.”
Starlet groaned. “Fine. Be my guest.” She stepped out of the way and gestured toward the chute at the end of the hall.
The Devil eyed her in suspicion. “Well, well, well. Could it be you’ve learned your lesson from last time?” he asked, not taking his gaze off her as he slowly walked by.
He tried not to look away, but the instant he blinked, Starlet sent him falling through a portal and flying into the nearest wall, leaving cracks in it as he fell to the floor. Starlet, meanwhile, was pointing and laughing at how, against all odds, that actually worked.
The Devil picked himself up and growled, “Apparently not.”
“Oh, please, Old Scratch…” Starlet conjured a portal in each hand and shot a malicious grin. “You should know exactly how this song and dance goes by now.”