Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE
"WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW???" a particular irate TV-headed man yelled. His poor employees, already tired from the onslaught of technical difficulties that had plagued the network recently, had grown used to their boss, Tenna's, outbursts. In this particular case, they were in the middle of a commercial break and the microphone had just…decided it wasn't going to cooperate anymore.
Tenna, by all means, didn't intend to be this ill-tempered about these types of things, but things have been going haywire for the last few weeks. If it wasn't the microphone, then it was the connection, if it wasn't the connection, then it was the camera, it felt like all of hell was against him. Well, in these situations, a name always came to mind to call upon.
"WHERE'S MIKE?!"
The question rang out among the workers as they scrambled to find one of the Mikes. The original Mike was someone that Tenna barely spoke of, and most of his employees didn’t know who he even was. Mike, possibly an old colleague of Tenna’s, apparently disappeared from Pride Ring, and Tenna never really moved on. So, he appointed three of his more competent staff members to take over Mike’s role in the company. The "Mikes", as they were called, became higher-ups in the company, and responsible for fixing a lot of the technical difficulties nowadays.
The station was running out of time, they couldn't stall forever with commercials for various TenTech items, so when they found Mike P, dubbed "Pluey", they were relieved. Although Pluey was strange and actually acted like a cat when everyone knew he wasn't, he was the most competent with technology. His calmer demeanor greatly contrasted with his peers and was apparent even with the fact that he chose not to speak. This led to Pluey being the best during these dire situations when Tenna was about to burst. The frantic sinners started to tell Pluey the situation as quickly as possible.
"Pluey! Thank goodness! The microphone stopped working and we can't fix it ourselves in time. Tenna's flipping out and we need your help," a cacophony of pleading had came from the desperate employees, but that was the main discernible voice explaining the situation.
Pluey's eyes widened, quickly understanding the severity of the situation. Even if Tenna wasn't intentionally setting off his rage against his workers, him blowing a fuse was often not the best situation. See, whenever Tenna got mad, or really any strong emotion, he'd glitch out. This added to the chaos of fixing whatever originally went wrong because then everyone had to figure out how to get Tenna back to normal as well. It was one of the many drawbacks of the technology-based body he gained when he became a sinner. Pluey rushed into the newsroom and put a paw on Tenna’s shoulder in an attempt to calm him down. Next, Pluey examined the busted mic, sighing, he simply gave the mic a firm hit and it miraculously worked. This world was already pretty cartoony, so it really shouldn’t be that surprising that something like that actually worked. In any case, Tenna, and everyone else for that matter, was stupefied about how easily Pluey was able to fix it. Everyone sighed in relief that they could go back to regularly scheduled programming, albeit, a few minutes off. That could be easily fixed if they rushed a few bits. Tenna hadn’t fully blown up either, so that was also a big plus.
“Ending commercial break and going live in 3…2…1…” Everyone hurried back to their locations as the producers counted down.
“And we are back to T…V…TIMEEEEEE! Your host Tenna has returned after a small break and we can get back to the games! Remember, trust us with your entertainment as we move on to tonight’s activities…”
Thankfully, the rest of the night went on without any major difficulties, Pluey however, did stay on standby just in case. There was a minor hiccup with the princess of hell having a small…issue with her misguided attempt at advertising her "redemption” plan with her only client getting into a turf war. The fist fight that ensued was merely an annoyance though. The crew were aware that the Mikes were looking into their recent uptick in technology issues, but they also knew that nothing had come up yet. For now, they would just have to wait it out and fix whatever came up until either the perpetrator was found, or it eventually stopped. Tenna, however, was near the end of his rope, as this case reminded him of an old friend turned bitter rival, who had a knack for hijacking technology…
“LANCER! How’d you get involved in King’s and Queen’s fight?!” The Princess of Hell was already about to pull even more blond hair from her head and they were literally only 5 seconds into the conversation. Lancer, being quite the young boy, had gotten caught up in his parents’…unscrupulous business tactics in life. The gang or rather, mafia, his parents ran relied upon his financial and arithmetic instincts in order to keep track of debts. Lancer, despite not really knowing what he was doing was wrong, ended up following his parents into hell when their business blew up in their faces…literally.
“I dunno, I saw girl-dad throwing acid onto a ship and girl-dad let me join in, I didn’t know it was DAD-dad she was tossing acid at.” Lancer knew his excuses would fall on deaf ears, but he tried anyway. Noelle tossed herself dramatically onto the couch, looking worse for wear and displacing many pillows to a new home on the reception floor, but that really wasn’t anything he could help with. Lancer then produced a spade and started digging some holes into the hotel floor. He found them satisfying and less stressful than dealing with the spiraling princess who was essentially just babysitting him for free. He left that kind of emotional support to her girlfriend instead.
“Look Noelle, today might not have been…the best, but uhhhhh, there’s always next time?” The unsure tone that Susie took on certainly did the situation no favors.
“Nice job Susie!” piped Lancer, looking up from the 6th hole he was somehow already digging.
“Thanks but no thanks Lancer, go back to digging holes would you?” Susie really just wanted to make sure that the kid wasn’t eavesdropping.
“You got it!” and with that, Lancer went back on concentrating on his 7th hole of the day. Susie then could focus her energy on Noelle, joining her on the couch for a pep-talk.
“Just don’t lose hope Snowflake. I know that you're stressed, I am too, but I know you won’t give up. I won’t give up either, I believe in you.” The princess’s panic subsided soon after her girlfriend took her hands and held them together, also halting the nervous hair-yanking action that was happening earlier.
“You really think so Susie?” Her watery eyes betrayed her inner turmoil over the possibility of the dream ending before it even started.
“Of course I do! As long as you don’t get stag fright!” A bellowing laughter came from Susie filling the entire lobby.
…
Awkward silence quickly ensued.
…
“Eh???” Susie’s eyes shifted back and forth, trying to gauge the antlered-girl’s reaction to the dad joke. Noelle, after spending some time looking like a deer in the headlights, suddenly started laughing as well, louder than even Susie did, almost crying. Laughter is contagious, so soon enough, Susie joined in on the hilarity, and Lancer did it to feel included in whatever fun was going on.
“You’re doe funny, Susie!” Noelle retorted, trying to match the punny energy of the day. The dinosaur and deer ended up gripping onto each other in order to stop themselves from falling off of the couch and toppling onto the floor.
Knock. Knock.
“Huh? Who could that be?” With the disaster of an interview today, Noelle hadn’t expected anyone to be coming for anything, especially not today.
“Could be a new guest! You wanna open the door?” Susie could see the growing sparkle in the Holiday’s eyes, and felt that it was only fair to let Noelle greet whoever was behind the door. Noelle practically jumped off the couch and hopped to the door.
“Welcome to the Hazbin Hotel!” Noelle started on her fervently practiced script before she was interrupted by-
“HEL-” The man started to say, unfortunately, Noelle recognized the small sinner from various rumors around the Pride Ring.
“EEK!”
SLAM!
CREAK!
“-LO“ The man finished and was about to say something else before the princess freaked out once again.
“EEK?!”
SLAM!
“What’s wrong? Snowflake, you good?” Susie could tell that Noelle’s anxiety has returned after seeing whoever it was at the door. Could it be her dad? Or maybe her mom? Nah, her mom was too unlikely, she hadn’t been seen in 7 years. Carol wouldn’t make a random return just to come to her daughter’s passion project. Rudy was more of an option, but he locked himself in his house, doing whatever he was doing for all this time. Of all of the various options Susie was thinking of, she was surprised when she saw Noelle timidly turn around and just say…
“Um, email demon at the door?”
“WHAT?!”