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The first time Vox felt the fizzle and spark of his body snapping into electricity was the first time he saw Alastor. Ever since he'd arrived in Hell, the Radio Demon's vicious broadcasts had become his addiction. Vox found himself doggedly chasing after reports of those rampages, dropping whatever he was doing to rush to the scene in hopes of arriving while the blood was still wet.
Over a fuzzy, composite-rigged video feed of carnage and clashing blows, Vox witnessed Alastor's barely legible form shift, a sickening cacophony louder than a hundred necks snapping as every part of his body warped. His silhouette stretched longer and larger until he towered several stories, limbs bending however he deemed necessary to snatch fellow sinners up like hors d'oeuvres. Abstract shadows sprouted from his back, then twisted into writhing tentacles. Vox's eyes went so wide he could feel the edge of his screen hindering their projection, and then, a surge of warmth and vertigo, his body melding into the air itself and dancing through claustrophobic lines until he was, all at once, simply himself again, somewhere else. His knees buckled beneath him, arms uselessly failing to break his fall onto the scorched ground, the weight of his own head too much to bear as his vision fuzzed into static.
Distantly, Vox could hear a commotion, people scattering and regathering in a flock, unable to decide if they wanted to run or ogle his vulnerable state. Everyone in hell was a goddamn opportunist.
Someone with a hoarse voice laughed. "Hey, free TV!"
Then hands – fingers scrabbling at his frame, palms pressing to the plane of his face for purchase as little flares of light glittered across his hindered vision.
"Poor bastard. Didn't know Alastor could electrocute people."
Pinpricks of pain skipping across the hard surface of his casing before cracking it and sinking in. Talons. Yanking. They were pulling at his head.
"Screen's fucked. Probably still works, right?"
Mocking laughter couldn't drown out the eerie rattle of his vertebra as they were forcibly decompressed. The noise reverberated into his brain. Something inside his neck slid and popped out. He couldn't move his fingers and toes. Somehow Vox managed to scream, and when he did, someone's hand slipped right into his mouth. He bit down as hard as he could. The rush of blood didn't surprise him, but the sudden disconnected digits that nearly gagged him did. For that moment, he didn't give a shit; he spat them out, and something about the force of the cough that followed made whatever two pieces had dislodged in his neck tap back together. Feeling returned to his extremities just enough that he could hoist himself up and brace his head with his left hand, eyes wide as he wildly took stock of the shitheads who'd made the mistake of assaulting him. One screaming, missing half his hand down to the knuckles, the others either bracing to rush him or standing uselessly, gawking like fish. Easy.
Vox lifted his right hand and called on the electricity from the streetlights above them, plunging the block into shadow. He spread his feet to ground himself, holding his head in place. He'd done this plenty, but never while being so fucked up, and it was proving hard to control. Whatever. Didn't need to be too precise. Sparks zipped across his body and jumped into the air without aim, bouncing between his antenna.
"Don't you know?" He growled, grin spreading to fill half his screen as bolts rose from the ground and spun up his body. The demons facing him who had just tried to fucking decapitate him spun on their heels like cowards. Oh, this was gonna be so goddamn funny. “Too much TV will fry your brains.”
They were quick work for how bold they'd been. One, two, four streams of hot light shot from his fingers, skittering over the rubble and up the legs then spines of each sinner, following nerves like wires until hitting the soft tissue in their skulls. They all straightened with a sharp jolt and a wet squelch, then fell to the ground in unison, a line of limp, smoldering bodies with blood pouring from their eyes and ears. “Ha … haha!” Served them right.
Bright, theatrical laughter leapt up from behind him as abruptly as if someone turned it on with a switch. Vox whipped around, right hand raised, sparks snapping. "Didn't see what happened to the others, you stupid–" Vox's arms dropped to his sides, his head lolling a little off to the left without the support. No fucking way. "A-Alastor?!"
“Hm?” The notorious and now very much humanoid Radio Demon was standing primly in the middle of the street, both hands crossed behind his back as he peered curiously at Vox, not a hair out of place. So it wasn't just his blurry video feed – Alastor really did have a fruity bob and fluffy ears. Vox had thought those rumors were just slander. "I assumed you'd heard of me, but I didn't suspect we were on a first-name basis." More laughter, then a little swish of his hand. “My apologies.” How did such a skinny bastard eat people whole?
Alastor bent at the waist to pluck up one of the digits Vox had bitten off and brought it up to his monocle with a musical hum, back remaining straight. Was he a butler when he was a human or what? He held the severed part out to Vox with both eyebrows arched in a pantomimed offer, and when the gesture went unanswered, brought the finger to his teeth and crunched down on it like it was a stuffed celery stick. Vox felt his screen sputter and flicker. The hell? Sure, everyone knew Alastor was a cannibal, whatever, but – fuck, that had been in Vox's mouth.
Alastor squinted, assessing the figure in front of him who had nearly killed himself out of sheer excitement, who was now stupidly staring instead of running like anyone with a sense of self-preservation would have. (Not that it saved those fuckers he'd zapped.) Instead, Vox was frozen, trusting the animal instinct that if he ran, the Radio Demon would give chase, and it wouldn't last long. Alastor’s voice dipped low, eyes narrowing until a faint glow lit each pupil. God, that looked really cool. "Were you planning to challenge me?"
"What?!" Vox held both hands out to his sides and tried to shake his head, but the loose plug in his spine just made his head bobble cartoonishly. "No! No, I came to see you– um, I mean– I'm Vox. B-big fan." A burst of smoke puffed out of the vent on the damaged side of his head as an internal whirring he'd grown accustomed to kicked off. His cooling fan. Great.
Alastor threw his chin up and broke into a guffaw, canned laughter spilling into the air behind it. "Splendid! It's rare for a man to make me laugh." That ever-present smile seemed suddenly less sharp. Vox should have known better, should have backed away at least. He knew Alastor liked to toy with his targets, but … he wasn't one. He was still a small fry. Not worth the effort of taking down yet, unless it was just to finish him off for fun. Alastor wasn't the type to squash a fly with no wings. Vox was confident in that. He'd been watching long enough.
Alastor melted quickly into shadow and reappeared only a few feet from him, tilting his head. Fuck, that keen focus stirred something in Vox's chest he couldn't place. Unease. Overheating from the fan going out. Something he wasn't used to feeling. He swallowed as best he could with an uncomfortable warmth and dryness in his mouth and jutted out one hand. "Vox."
Alastor didn't move at first. He eyed the hand suspiciously, then let his gaze wander over Vox's form once more like a cat deciding whether or not to pounce. The firm handshake granted after that might as well have been a brand pressing into the rough skin of Vox's palms. "Alastor." It lasted all of three seconds, and then he watched the other man wipe his hand across the lapel of his jacket. Asshole. "Tell me, Vox. Do you have a tailor capable of mending all that?"
"What?" Vox looked down at himself for the first time. His shirt and trousers were damn near threadbare in sections where his own electricity must have singed the cloth. An embarrassingly bright blush radiated across his screen. "Dammit!"
Alastor's snickering mingled with a scratchy recording of an audience doing the same. "Come then, I'll introduce you to one." He began to walk, expecting Vox to follow, and despite himself, Vox did. "'TV will fry your brains'! Ha! Couldn't agree more.”
—
Vox slumped into the overstuffed cushion of his chair, one claw continuing the same endless 'tik-tik-tik' against the surface of his desk that had simultaneously been driving him insane and keeping him grounded. Once upon a time, that soothing sound had been a ballpoint pen that he'd mercilessly click until he broke the spring. He wasn't sure of the last time he'd used a ballpoint pen now that he could summon screens with text at will. His employees had them around, sure, but not him. He didn't need that kind of pedestrian crap anymore.
There were at least thirty bright rectangular screens spread out in front of and around him in an arc, all playing footage from around Pentagram City. Old haunts, Cannibal Town, back alleys, tailors, individuals who either didn't notice or didn't give enough of a shit to acknowledge it. At first he had trusted his own memory, and when that yielded nothing, he had an algorithm built up and trained on it instead, seeking potentials he might not have considered, possibilities ranked too low in his own head to ever consider, and still, nothing. Drones. Hidden cameras. Hacking into individual phones. Accessing VoxTek security systems (which was well within the confines of the user agreement.) Decades of near-constant surveillance, and now, with no fanfare, fucking nothing. For three months. The streets were more congested than ever, but Vox would know if he were there. He should have been able to feel it. That rusty, shrill old signal that jammed his cameras and made his antenna stand up like hair on his arms. Fuck, he hadn't appreciated hair enough when he'd had it. But there were too many stupid little things he missed too fleetingly to bother counting anymore.
Alastor had vanished.
It wasn't the first time Alastor had slipped from public view. As much of an attention whore as he was, he still seemed to value whatever passed for a private life for himself too. Most sinners wasted that time moping, doping, or fucking, or on the same dumb hobbies they had when they were alive. Too many people didn't take advantage of the possibilities in Hell. Alastor had never been one of them. Even the potential for a decent fight made that golden grin curl upwards like a hungry beast, salivating at the promise of meat. It was how they'd first found common ground. Both were bloodthirsty sons of bitches, one literally. (He'd made that joke more than once, and Alastor had laughed like it was fresh every time.) Disappearing for a few weeks wasn't out of character; he would leave no trace, only to show up at their favorite bar on their usual day and time, where Vox would predictably be waiting. The habit had scared the shit out of him back then, but he would still go. If Alastor noticed the relief he felt, it went without comment. If Alastor was relieved to see him waiting, he didn't show it. They would chat and rough house like nothing had happened.
Vox sucked in a deep breath, eyes shut, and slammed his fists into the desk. His empty mug clattered to his feet. ‘Fuck Alastor.’ A gag gift from Valentino had somehow become his mantra over the decades. But right now … he sneered at it and kicked it away, leaning onto the desktop with both arms crossed and resting his chin on the edge. “Where are you, you little shit?”
A thunderous crash and rattle of shattering glass behind him sent Vox halfway to the floor before he caught himself and zapped up into the tiled televisions that lined the wall. An entire panel of bulletproof glass reduced to shards. He gritted his teeth and landed across the room from where a VoxTek drone lay in the debris, crushed like a soda can across its center. “Real dumbass way to pick a fight!” he yelled out, holding his ground while accessing all of his video feeds from the lower levels of Vee Tower to pinpoint the culprit as if he didn't already know. Nothing. Goddamn it, how? His nerves prickled, his antenna vibrated as the airwaves in the room began to waver. “Unless you're just wanting attention. Then congrats! I'm tuned the fuck in!”
“Aren't you always?”
Vox hated the way that voice still made his stomach flip.
He stood up straighter and clasped his hands behind his back, smile as corporate-approved as the stock photos he'd taken for the Marketing Department. “Couldn't use the door? What, you think you're special?”
“Perhaps.” Alastor's laughter was hollow, mocking, emanating from the corner through the crescent yellow glow of an eternal shit-eating grin. The rest of his body was masked by unnatural darkness. “Unless you have these little toys chasing everyone around these days.” A black tentacle whipped out from behind the smile to slam another drone into pieces at Vox's feet.
He didn't flinch. “Yeah? Surveillance is kind of our thing. I know you don't watch TV, Al, but for fuck's sake, our ads are plastered everywhere in Pentagram City. Your head can't be so far up your own ass that you missed all of them.”
“Your advertisements are indeed quite brazen.” Alastor finally materialized properly, wearing the same old red suit, still tattered around the edges, unchanged for nearly sixty years now. And the last time he'd claimed he got a new suit, the only difference was a white trim around the jacket lapel. The man saw the march of progress and simply said ‘no.’ “Purging them from my memory is the only way to regain my sense of decency.”
“What do you want, Alastor?” Vox recognized the attempt at banter and cut through it, claws digging into his own wrists where he kept them hidden behind his back. This wasn't like those times before, where they could just fall into habit and pretend it was normal. Not even their usual pre-fight verbal exchange was excusable this time. Three months. Three months, you fucking asshole.
Maybe his face wasn't as well controlled as he'd hoped, or maybe he was unintentionally broadcasting the thought across the shared overlap in their frequencies, because Alastor's faux air of whimsy faded. Static cut through his otherwise well-practiced delivery, and he took a few lazy steps forward into the center of Vox's office. “What business is it of yours what I do in my private life? You have no right to tag along behind me with your ludicrous little … helicopter cameras.”
“They're drones, old timer.”
“They're a nuisance.” The slight snarl that accompanied a tapping of one sharp fingertip against his microphone staff made Vox snort.
“Ohh, not comfy being recorded? If you want, I could have you sign an opt-out form so we don't store your likeness in the cloud. The footage is useless shit anyway.” He turned to meet Alastor's bright red glare with a matching one of his own. “Or you could just not go missing for months at a time. Your choice.”
Something about that is what did it. Alastor's usual composure broke, and Vox was faced with the unchecked frustration of the Radio Demon who had become a legend all those years ago. The monster who had slaughtered dozens of overlords and taken their souls as his own, who had once laughed at Vox’s goofy ass wordplay, sent out a tendril so fast even the speed of lightning teleportation wasn't enough to escape. It slammed into Vox's chest with a nasty thwack that would've broken his sternum if he weren't full of metal and wires beneath the cartilage. He was midair, then a strong coil of cold muscle wrapped around his ankle, halting the trajectory enough that his neck snapped back. The tentacle whipped Vox into the floor, his head slamming against marble tile with a crack. His casing pulled apart at the edges and blurred his peripheral vision as his gills desperately gaped and contracted. Fuck. Fuck, fuck. He tried and failed to call Shok.wav. The signal jammed before even reaching the walls.
Then Alastor was over him, blocking the overhead light, sharp edges of his silhouette illuminated by the cyan glow of digital screens. Vox's own backlight was dim, barely enough to catch in Alastor's eyes. The shine of enlarging teeth glinted in the flickering blue when he leaned down too far, accompanied by the familiar symphony of snapping bones. His antlers grew long and thorny, his neck bent like a double-jointed limb. Vox snatched at whatever he could reach; he managed to grab Alastor's leg enough to dig his claws in and send 5,000 volts directly through the muscle. It did nothing. It used to.
The enormity of his body shifted so Alastor could lift the leg where Vox still clung, claws drawing rivers of blood. Thick, sharp toes had torn through Alastor's shoes, and as Vox regained enough breath to protest, a huge hoof pressed over the flat expanse of his face, covering his mouth with hard, ridged keratin. Everything wobbled and rotated through sickening iridescence across Vox's vision. He snarled and brought both hands up to Alastor's ankle to sink his claws as deep as they could go, through thick skin down to bone. 10,000 volts. Burnt hair stuck to the fabric of Alastor’s pants, then half-melted skin. Still, the hoof didn't budge. The grin didn't change. Red sclera had been drowned out by black. What the fuck? Was Al really about to kill him again? It took so long to come back last time. Goddammit, not like this. Not because he'd made the rookie mistake of trying to talk.
“Listen here, Vincent, you idiot box.” Alastor's voice was too deep, laced through with echoes of others he didn't recognize, and whatever it was that always kept his voice maddeningly low fidelity made his words jump and skip like a bad signal that refused to be tuned. “Leave me be. Stop following me. Stop looking for me.” He ground his foot harder and sent pangs of panic and heat through Vox's body as he writhed beneath the oppressive weight. Alastor shouldn't have been able to bend enough to get his face so close, but he could, he did, and a string of red, ferric saliva stretched from his mouth onto Vox's forehead. “I have run out of patience with your constant bombardment of my frequencies.” A hairline fracture spread across Vox's screen from the tip of one pointed toe, followed by two more, then too many to count. Alastor leaned in so close, their labored breaths mingled. Vox's gills fluttered and heaved to keep up. “Your relentless pursuit is distracting me from what I need to do, and your bothersome voice won't get out of my fucking head.”
Some insane, desperate part of Vox latched onto those words, and he barely regained enough composure to give a harsh, rasping laugh. “Well. You … you know w-what they say.” It hurt to smile, more to speak. It ached, it burned, it made his chest rise and fall trying to pull in enough air. “About … too much TV.”
Alastor blinked, the black gaze instantly back to red. The pressure against Vox's head lifted, restoring most of his sight, and he choked and coughed against the pain in his chest between warily glancing up at the starkly silent Radio Demon. Alastor's brow furrowed and tiny crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes, aging him just enough to make him actually look his death age instead of an eternal twink. Vox stared, transfixed by this new expression he couldn't define, and then, Alastor shrank back to his usual size, put together again, ready for afternoon tea or whatever the hell it was he did for fun these days.
“Cease this.” Alastor kicked at the ruined drone as if clarifying for himself more than Vox. “Mind yourself, not me, for however long you have left before you lose your – status. If you attempt to seek me out, I will devour you next time.”
Vox flashed him a glitchy, half-flickering smirk that fragmented into particles of multicolored light at the corners. “Promise?”
“Deviant.” With that, Alastor was gone, sunken into his own shadow and into whatever realm he used to travel within it. Vox had always thought it was funny how he moved in light, and Alastor in darkness. Opposites attract or whatever. Maybe they should've known things would go sour from the start.
He hoisted himself up into a sit and was met with a pounding headache. He groaned and slowly laid on his back, trying to hit his panic button with a stray bolt. The downside of soundproofing was no one came running when shit went down. (That was also the upside.) His screen had broken through the layers, leaving his left eye with warped vision that was starting to make him nauseated. He'd be in Medical soon, then Repair, then his body would gradually replenish what was damaged, same cycle as it ever was. And even after all that, even already aware of the incoming lecture about letting go from Val and Vel, he knew himself too well. He would keep looking. Sixty-two years of observing and tracking wasn't that easy a habit to break. Vox would keep searching, and Alastor would keep running. It was who they were.
Vox gave a bitter chuckle, covering his fucked up eye with one hand. “That was a good goddamn callback, asshole. Why didn't you laugh?”