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In the blood-red haze of the Pride Ring's eternal dusk, the Hazbin Hotel loomed like a crooked tooth in the rotting jaw of Hell. Its neon sign flickered erratically—half the letters buzzing with dying electricity—casting sickly pink and gold light across the cracked pavement. Midas stood at the foot of the stairs, flyer in one stitched hand, comparing the cartoonish drawing to the real thing with a flat, unimpressed stare.
"Even if, for some reason… I actually feel like meddling with the plot," he muttered, voice low and smooth with that unnatural Mahito cadence, "this whole redemption scheme is still kinda… stupid."
He raised his fist and knocked.
Once.
Twice.
Then nothing.
Thirty minutes crawled by like a dying sinner. Midas didn't move. He simply stood there, calm as still water, while inside his closed left hand, something stirred. Three tiny figures—no bigger than large beetles—crawled across his palm. They weren't ordinary cockroaches. These were fragments of his own soul, carefully carved out using Idle Transfiguration and given independent form. Tiny, chaotic, loyal.
Joey, Marky, and Dee Dee.
His new "family." His eyes and ears. His Six Bullets in miniature.
Where most people in this body might have created a simple familiar or a cat-like pet, Midas had gone for chaos incarnate. These three lived for disorder, just like the cartoon pests he remembered from his old life. Only now they were smarter. Meaner. And bound to him by threads of his own soul.
"Alright… let's see if this works," he whispered.
Purple cursed energy—thin, flickering like cursed flame—ignited between his fingers. He closed his fist slowly, letting the energy seep into the three soul fragments, reinforcing the connection. This wasn't just creation. It was a backup. If the main body ever got destroyed, these little bastards carried pieces of him. A safety net woven from his own malice.
A tiny fist suddenly punched him straight in the eye through a microscopic gap in his fingers.
"Shit!"
Midas jerked his hand open. The trio tumbled onto the ground, already bickering in high-pitched, incomprehensible squeaks and insults. Joey (the red one) was clearly the culprit, throwing tiny punches at the air while Marky (greenish-blue) tried to calm him and Dee Dee (yellow) just laughed maniacally, rolling on his back.
Midas rubbed his eye, already healing it with a casual pulse of Idle Transfiguration. The heterochromia—gray and piercing blue—settled back into place.
"Well… welcome to the world, I guess."
He extended his hand. After a moment of suspicious chittering, Marky climbed up first, antennae twitching warily. Midas brought him close to his face and smiled—soft, almost gentle. Even Mahito, slumbering deep in their shared soul-space, felt the urge to punch that expression off their face. Too human. Too sincere.
"We're family now," Midas said quietly, stroking Marky's back with one finger. "You're my eyes. My ears. Don't be afraid to cause absolute hell. No Oggy here. No rules. You've got copies of the original memories, but you're perfect exactly as you are."
Marky leaned into the touch, surprisingly affectionate for a chaos gremlin.
A hesitant voice cut through the moment.
"Um… hello?"
Midas looked up.
Two girls stood at the top of the stairs. One was all sunshine and nervous energy—long blonde hair, red suit, eyes full of desperate hope. Charlie Morningstar. The other was shorter, sharper, with an eyepatch, gray hair, and a spear already half-raised in warning. Vaggie.
Midas placed Marky gently on the ground. The three roaches immediately scampered up his left arm and perched on his shoulder like tiny mobsters.
"Hello," he said, voice calm. "I'm Midas Vincent."
He approached slowly, took Charlie's hand with surprising elegance, and pressed a quick, respectful kiss to the back of it. Royal blood, after all. Old habits from half-remembered manners died hard.
Vaggie's spear thrust forward instantly.
"Don't you dare get any closer!" she snarled, positioning herself between him and Charlie. "We don't know if you're just another creep trying to get near her under false pretenses."
Midas blocked the spear tip with two fingers, effortless, cursed energy reinforcing his skin like invisible armor. He didn't look angry. Just… tired.
"Relax. I'm not here for redemption."
"Redemption?!" Charlie squealed with pure joy anyway, eyes sparkling.
"A room," Midas corrected flatly.
The three cockroaches on his shoulder burst into shrill, chaotic laughter, sounding like tiny gremlins cackling at a funeral.
Midas continued, voice steady but carrying an edge of something deeper—Mahito's cynicism bleeding through. "No offense, Your Highness, but this whole thing doesn't work. Not here. Not anywhere. If someone ends up in Hell, it's because they chose it. They wanted it. You think a few therapy sessions and trust exercises fix that? Thirty seconds after getting into Heaven they'd slaughter half the population again. I've seen human souls on the way here… they're not clean. They're twisted."
He didn't even realize how naturally the words came. It was automatic. Mahito's soul-view bleeding into his own.
To him, souls weren't abstract. They appeared like distorted suns. A pedophile's soul looked like a grotesque parody of a playground, all broken slides and bleeding colors. A murderer's soul bled like a dying star. A cannibal's was a slaughterhouse made of light. He had seen hundreds on his walk here.
Charlie's eyes widened with renewed hope.
"But look at you! You're barely changed by sin! Your body—your soul—it's so… almost human! I really believe sinners can change!"
Marky started to move aggressively, but Dee Dee promptly headbutted him, deforming the little roach's head like a stress ball before it popped back into shape.
Midas sighed.
"…Fine. Let's play your song. Seven years. If I'm not on my knees praying to Christ by then, amen, you win. I'll play along upstairs."
He casually used Idle Transfiguration on himself, reshaping the minor damage around his eye with a soft purple glow. The stitches across his body shifted slightly, alive.
Charlie let out an ecstatic squeal and tackled him into a bone-crushing hug. Midas winced at the physical pressure, but his soul remained untouched. As Mahito had once said in the depths of their shared mind: *You only truly suffer when your soul is touched… or when something far older and nastier than you decides to suck the life out of it.*
Over Charlie's shoulder, Midas met Vaggie's glare—pure, ugly suspicion carved into her face.
He already knew she'd be the problem. She was built for violence. He was built for something far more intimate and cruel: the violation and reshaping of souls themselves. Oil and water. Knife and throat.
But there was something else flickering at the edge of his vague memories. Something about an Exorcist. An angel who was supposed to die at Carmilla Carmine's hands during the next extermination cycle. A death that would ripple through canon like a stone in still water.
Midas's mismatched eyes narrowed slightly.
*Not this time.*
He had only blurry knowledge of the future—fragments from the second season he'd watched before waking up here. But if an Exorcist was meant to fall to Carmine steel… maybe he'd simply step in and break the script. After all, he wasn't bound by this world's story.
Not when he was the curse wearing human skin.
"Welcome to the Hazbin Hotel!" Charlie cheered, still squeezing him.
Midas allowed a small, dangerous smile as his three tiny chaos agents chittered excitedly on his shoulder.
This was going to be interesting.
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Do we want a angel waifu? RISE UP AND TELL ME!!