Chapter Text
Pete didn’t know what to expect when he walked through the gates of hell, but a young smiling human boy was not it. He’d heard the stories of the underworld, the unspeakable violence, pain and suffering. But as Pete walked through the gate, which was a lot smaller than he’d imagined, he couldn’t help but think it looked quite tame.
Sure it was warm, and had a slight orange glow from the fire that seemed to be raging in the mountains, but it didn’t look like the apocalyptic hell fire he’d been told stories about from his predecessors.
Pete shrugged and approached the smiling human boy, well human looking boy. Humans couldn’t survive down here, they’d be disintegrated the moment they arrived. So Pete could only assume this was a demon choosing to appear in human form.
It always intrigued Pete why the demons had human forms, they were creatures of power and pain, created by the lord of the underworld to torture the souls that got sent to his realm. But Pete supposed that humans could be pretty terrifying when they wanted to be. If he turned up to hell expecting to be tortured by some all powerful demon, and then it just turned out to be some guy, that would probably unnerve him more than the actual torture. It would make it feel more real, as opposed to something that could easily be passed off as a dream or hallucination.
Pete walked over to the young boy, he was a little shorter than Pete but had a kind smile. He seemed welcoming which, given the circumstances, felt a bit strange.
“You must be Pete” he smiles.
“I am.”
“I’m Macau, I’m here to take you into the mansion.”
“Mansion…?”
“Yes, the mansion, you’ll be living there during your stay,” he explained
“Oh. Ok”
“What were you expecting?” Macau gave him an interested look.
“I don’t know, maybe a hotel or something” Pete shrugs.
“A hotel. In hell?” Macau chuckles in disbelief.
“In fairness, I didn't really know what to expect”
“Clearly.” he rolls his eyes. “Vegas is going to have fun with you” he mutters under his breath. Pete heard the words but chose not to comment on it.
He’d heard stories about Vegas, lord of the underworld. He was the entire reason Pete was here, to keep an eye on him. It was technically a spying mission, although Pete knew it couldn’t really be called spying if the target had sent him a welcome party.
Kinn, lord of the overworld, was always paranoid that Vegas was up to something down here all alone. Over the past few centuries, increasingly more demons were being found on earth, but they didn’t appear to be doing anything, they were just there. Naturally Kinn assumed the worst, so he’d started assigning some of his descendants to go down to the underworld to keep an eye on Vegas, determined to make sure he wasn’t using his isolation to plan something detrimental to the other realms.
The job of monitoring Vegas was a hot topic among Kinn’s men. Given the nature of the assignment, which was essentially months of isolation with the devil himself, no contact with friends and not much to do, naturally there were never any volunteers.
It was seen as a punishment for those who were underperforming. This wasn’t the case with Pete, he was top of his game. He was a soul monitor, one of Kinn’s descendants that would monitor particular souls on earth to make sure they didn’t evade capture when they died. Pete was responsible for making sure his cases made it down to the underworld. His specialty was serial killers and murderers, so naturally he had a strong stomach.
After the fifteenth man came back from the underworld traumatised by the things they’d seen, Pete’s perfect record and tolerance for violent torture, made him Kinn’s first choice for recruitment.
He was surprised it took Kinn fifteen attempts to realise that his punishment approach wasn’t working, but it wasn’t Pete’s place to comment on his lord's decisions. Regardless, here he was, lucky number sixteen, determined to prove he was perfect for the job.
Pete’s entire existence was a mystery to him. He remembers very little of his human life. All he knew was that when he died, of a cause he couldn’t remember, he met with Kinn. Kinn offered him a job as one of his descendants, something that Pete was confused by at the time, but he’d thought he was dreaming, so went along with it. Turns out he wasn’t dreaming, and he’d somehow managed to get himself a job in the afterlife. Now he lives in the overworld realm with Kinn’s other descendants, taking trips down to earth whenever he gets assigned a new case.
He spent a lot of time on earth, in the human realm. Time moved faster down there, he would disappear down to earth for several months, upon his return home it would have only been a week in the overworld. Pete stopped considering the concept of time after the first few centuries, he was almost immortal now, time didn’t really mean anything anymore. Even if the human realm crashed and burned, the overworld was forever. Granted he’d have much less to do if that happened, but his eternity would continue nonetheless.
Given his job, he worked closely with the underworld. He knew a couple of the courier demons, but he’d never actually been down there before. When Kinn brought up the new assignment to him, he was intrigued. His cases down on earth were all getting a little too samey for his liking. There’s only so many ways he can watch someone die before it becomes a little mundane. He craved something new and exciting, what better than a whole new world to explore?
So here he is, in the depths of hell, standing outside the devil’s office door like it was the most normal of occurrences.
“Come in” a gruff voice was heard from inside.
Macau opened the door and gestured for Pete to enter.
“I brought your new babysitter,” Macau smiled as he sauntered over to the man sitting behind the desk.
The man looked up from his papers and rolled his eyes. Pete had heard stories about Vegas, but he hadn’t expected him to look this attractive in human form. He had a cold expression, but that somehow just emphasised his dark eyes and strong jaw.
“Khun Vegas” Pete greets him politely.
Vegas just groans, he stands up from his desk and walks over to Pete, standing directly in front of him in a way Pete assumed was meant to be intimidating. He’d expected the lord of hell to be taller, but in reality he was about the same height as him. As he stood in front of him, he looked Pete up and down, assessing his body with a disinterested expression.
“Much too soft. I doubt you’ll last a week down here” he chucked to himself.
Pete just continued to give him a polite smile, choosing not to appear overly confident for the moment.
“Well you can disappear and do whatever it is that bastard sent you to do” he shrugs, clearly losing interest in the brief conversation.
Pete nodded, “understood Khun Vegas” he smiled.
Vegas made a dismissive wave of his hand and turned back to his desk. Pete noticed a chair in the corner of the room and went to sit on it, deciding to make himself comfortable.
Once Vegas was seated in his chair again, he looked up to see Pete sat smiling at him from across the room. His face became a scowl. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I am doing what Khun Kinn told me to do Khun Vegas”
“And what is that?”
“Watch that bastard’s every fucking move” he grinned innocently as he recited his order word for word.
He heard Macau laughing from where he was leaning against the wall, watching the whole interaction with amusement.
Pete could see the rage surging through the man’s eyes. He could now understand why his predecessors had described him as intimidating. Pete wasn’t intimidated though, it took a lot to get under Pete’s skin. This moody demon would have to try a lot harder than a hard scowl and some aggressive words to make him uncomfortable.
Pete smiled. Vegas already seemed to be much more interesting than the souls he was tasked with following on earth, Pete was sure he’d end up enjoying this mission. Vegas somehow looking even more attractive when he’s angry was just an added bonus.
-
Vegas glared at the man that had invaded his realm, in the hopes that his disintegration powers would work on him if he just concentrated hard enough. Much to his disappointment, the man remained sitting in his chair, grinning at him with a much too innocent expression.
Was Kinn running out of dogs to send down here? Why else would he send what appears to be the biggest fucking ball of sunshine down to the depths of hell?
He had to get rid of this idiot, the one good thing about this eternal existence was that he didn’t have to spend it with other people. Macau was an exception of course, since he’d actually become quite fond of the small shapeshifting demon, but he was the only exception. Little mister sunshine had to go.
Sunshine had balls, he’d give him that, not just anyone was capable of standing up to him. Although, he expected that Kinn’s protection was probably largely responsible for most of his confidence. Unfortunately, Vegas couldn’t kill him, he wasn’t human, he was one of Kinn’s weird beings that were similar to demons. Similar in the powerful immortal sense, but they still kept parts of their humanity, annoyingly not the part that made them fragile and easy to kill.
It wasn’t impossible to kill them but the only real way he’d found that was effective was to get them to terminate themselves. That took effort and wasn’t something he could be bothered to waste his time on. It also would be a whole lot of hassle to deal with the aftermath from Kinn’s side if he killed one of his own, especially as even if he doesn’t do the actual killing, it would be obvious that Vegas was the cause.
So Vegas decided he would have to resort to his usual way of getting rid of his babysitters, which was to drive them away. Most of the men Kinn sent down here couldn’t stomach the realities of hell. All Vegas had to do was take them for a tour around the torture department and they ran away pretty quickly, this one would be no different.
Vegas couldn’t help but smile to himself imagining the mortified look on that little sunshine’s face when he watched a man get ripped limb from limb, repeatedly.
-
That afternoon, he'd taken the man down to the torture department and they were approaching the cell of a man being tortured. He had over 100 knives in his body, a demon was painstakingly twisting each one. The victim seemed unfazed by it, which was annoying as this was already the tenth method of torture they'd tried on him. However, Vegas was happy that it would at least prove useful in scaring off the little ball of sunshine that was following along after him.
Vegas nudged the man towards the cell, but to his disappointment, his reaction wasn’t a terrified scream. At first he thought the man was stunned into silence, but he was quickly proven wrong.
“oooh, I know this guy!” the man grins excitedly.
Vegas blinked a few times as he tried to come to his senses. The man’s exclamation was not what he’d expected.
“How could you possibly know this guy?”
“He’s the one who kept the hearts in jars in his basement wasn’t he?”
Vegas pulls up his file and looks at it in disbelief. [Convicted serial killer, committed suicide in prison, killed 17 people in 2 years, keeping their hearts in jars in his basement]
The file was something that had to be summoned, there was no way he could have seen it before.
“...How the fuck did you know that?”
“He was one of my cases on earth” the man shrugged.
“Cases?”
“Oh yeah, I was a soul monitor, mainly for serial killers, it was my job to make sure they ended up down here, so I guess even before I came here, we kind of worked together.” He smiled.
Vegas didn’t know what to say, and when he went to look at him again to ask some follow up questions, he’d wandered off. He was approaching the man in the cell like he was having a fun day out at the zoo looking at the animals.
“Hi Jack!” he smiled and waved at his prisoner.
What the fuck?
Vegas took in the sheer horrified expression on the victim's face as he looked at his newest babysitter, and couldn’t help a shiver of delight go up his spine. They’d been trying to crack this guy for months, and one look from Mr sunshine over here, and he was shaking in fear?!
“Y-y-you” the man stutters in terror.
“Did you miss me Jack?” Mr sunshine has a sadistic grin on his face, it was so completely unlike his other smile that Vegas had to take a minute to appreciate it.
The victim started screaming and thrashing uncontrollably as he tried to look away from the man.
The man looked away from the tortured man and turned back to Vegas. “This place is so cool” he beamed excitedly.
Vegas groans to himself. Who the fuck is this guy?
-
“So how did it go?” Macau smiles.
Vegas groaned, rubbing his palms over his face in frustration. “He enjoyed it! For fuck sake he even greeted one of them like they were old friends and the guy nearly went insane, who the fuck is this guy?”
“Chay said he was special when he sent his files over” Macau smirked knowingly.
“Give me those files, I need to see what we’re dealing with.”
Macau poofed out of existence before quickly returning with a thick binder, letting it fall onto Vegas’ desk with a large thud.
“Enjoy” he smiled before disappearing again.
Vegas skimmed through the pages, looking through Pete’s past cases and his personal notes. It became apparent rather quickly that Vegas was going about this all wrong. In fact, if anything, his current approach was going to prove counterproductive and just make him want to stay. He had to give it to Kinn, he’d definitely learnt from his past attempts at sending his people down here.
Pete was going to be a challenge. Vegas liked a challenge.