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journey-to-the-attic · 3 months ago

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3rd anni FINALE: brothers / paws n claws

ao3 link

note: based loosely on the pop quiz of the same name, though with the requested change of levi being a snake rather than a giraffe - and since that was different, i decided to do something new with ik as well (this is what that random animal poll was for). this one's a proper long one, so i'm deeply sorry if the keep reading bar ever breaks

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You'd normally think that an event that makes Luke flee the House of Lamentation, tearfully shouting, “I’ll go get help!” must be some kind of catastrophe. Well, it still might shape up to be - but I'm hopeful that it won't. Right now, it's a situation at most.

Said situation can be summarised with one sentence: there was something wrong with the cake. This is vague enough to be misleading, though, so I’ll elaborate: there was a potion in the cake, and it made Beel grow fluffy ears and a tail, then shortly thereafter started doing the same thing to everyone else.

‘Fluffy ears and a tail’ might not sound too bad, but Luke wouldn’t have run like that if that was all. Beel has rapidly developed a mouthful of sharp teeth, a bone-shakingly powerful roar, and a sudden, even more pronounced taste for meat. Raw meat, specifically, because that is what lions eat. It'd be cool if it wasn’t for the fact that we had been the nearest sources of raw meat when the hunger first hit.

The only thing to do, really, was run and hide. And that probably wouldn’t even have worked (Beel is also now even faster and stronger than usual) if Mammon hadn’t suddenly sprouted new striped features of his own and pounced on him in return. Things just sort of went crazy after that.

I haven’t been able to keep track of them all, but knowing their track record, everyone else has probably been hit with the curse, too. Asmo definitely has, at least - I know that because it happened while he was rushing me to the safety of his room's two locks.

“It’s weird that the potion changed your clothes as well,” I say, trying to figure out whether that’s a dress or a really long blouse as he pushes me in. “Isn’t it?”

Asmo doesn’t answer for a moment - he turns the key, then peers fretfully through the peephole. After a moment, he hisses, “That doesn’t matter, does it? You know Mammon’s a tiger? There—”

There’s a knock on the door, and Asmo skitters backwards. After a moment, there’s another, mellower knock, then a plaintive, “Hello?”

Though it sounds closer to a ‘he-wo?’. Asmo frowns. “Levi? Why do you sound like that?”

There’s a shuffle. “I goh— got fangth. It’th… wha’ever, can I come in?”

Asmo doesn’t move for a moment, but relents quickly. Levi sidles in, head turning from side to side, tail dragging in behind him. It’s longer and thinner than in demon form, and iridescent green instead of deep grey - his pupils look narrower, too, and there are dark markings along his cheeks.

“Whoa!” I hadn’t gotten a good look at him when he first started transforming. “You��re a snake!”

“I notithed,” He says unhappily. He has fangs now - long, curved ones that keep catching on his bottom lip. “It’th a nigh’mare. Theeth teeth…”

“Are they retractable?”

“I’unno…” He scrunches his face in concentration. The fangs suddenly swing up into the back of his mouth. “...oh! Yes! Finally!”

“When did you switch?” I ask as he opens and closes his mouth several times with relish. “Asmo went a few minutes ago, I think he’s a panda… it looked like it hurt.”

He makes a popping sound, then releases a long sigh. “Eh - not really? It’s more like everything gets really hot and itchy for a bit. Isn’t anything happening to you?”

I look down at myself. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“Guess the potion only works on demons. Lucky…” Levi rubs his arms, then abruptly dives into Asmo’s bed. “Brr! Why’s it so cold in here?”

“Snakes are cold-blooded, right? So you need to get heat from somewhere else.” I lean over and plant my hands on his cheeks. “Is that nice?”

“Ooh… yeah…” He blinks at me. “Hrm. Everything looks so weird. It’s, like… fuzzy.”

I squint at his face. Wait - those aren’t markings after all. “Oh! You’ve got heat pits! You’re, like, seeing temperature. That’s so cool.”

Asmo looks as well, then recoils, hands flying to his mouth. “Eww! There’s holes in your face!”

“As if you don’t have a nose,” Levi snaps, but reaches self-consciously to cover his cheeks anyway. “...ugh. I’m still cold.”

I’m not large enough to be an effective heater - what we really need is either a heat lamp, or the sun, neither of which Asmo has in his room. He resorts to dragging Levi to his bathtub instead, and lighting candles in a circle around him. It looks like we’re using him for a nefarious ritual, but it seems to provide Levi with a little relief.

“It’s like I can see them way clearer than everything else,” Levi says, squinting, then covers his nose. “And they smell super strong. You know I’ve got venom now, too? I got some on the carpet and it started, like, dissolving.”

So the potion definitely isn’t just a cosmetic thing. I glance at Asmo. “Do you feel any different?”

“Hmm. Maybe?” He stretches, and for the first time his sleeves fall down enough for me to see his hands. The pads of his fingers look thicker, and his nails look more like claws. “Like, I kinda wanna go to sleep, I guess.”

He leans forward on the edge of the bathtub, then fumbles and slips down into a heap. “Ooh. Gosh, this whole thing is weird. How do you think everyone’s doing?”

“It might not have even worked on Lucifer.” Those candles really do smell strong. It’s making my nose tickle. “What animal do you th— achoo!”

I can tell something’s changed as soon as I open my eyes again, but Levi’s yelp and jerk backwards (dangerously close to the candles) confirms it. I look down. Those definitely aren’t the clothes I was wearing a minute ago.

“Oh,” I say, defeated. “So the potion did work on me.”

“You’ve got a tail!” Asmo squeals, trying several times to scramble to his feet before succeeding, and immediately reaching for me. “And your ears!”

“Whoa whoa whoa—” I think I can empathise with Hyde when Aunt Lisa rushes him now. “Wait, wait, wait— put me down for a sec—”

Asmo (somewhat unwillingly) releases me, and I hurry to the mirror. White ears, a bushy red tail, distinct markings across my cheeks… am I wearing gloves? No - that’s straight-up a paw. It’s alien trying to move my fingers and watching the claws flex instead.

…my right hand is still normal, though. That one is just wearing a sort of glove. It’s like the potion got mad about not being able to do anything to the prosthetic and doubled its effects on the intact one.

I lift my paw as if to swipe at the mirror, then bare my teeth at it. “Rarrgh!”

Behind me, Levi’s reflection soundlessly pretends to get shot in the heart and collapses backwards into the tub. Asmo isn’t nearly so quiet - he squeals again, twice as loud this time.

I give him a moment to compose himself, then turn and announce, “I think I’m a red panda.”

“Ooh! So we’re matching?!” He slides over and sets his head on the crown of my head, then brandishes his own claws at the mirror as well. “Oh, we need to get pictures. Or film some videos! We can’t let this go to waste!”

“Hey, hey, slow down.” Levi emerges from the tub again. “What about everyone else? If the potion even works on humans, then Lucifer’s probably…”

“Oh, yeah! We totally need pictures of him, too.”

“That’s not the point—”

Levi pauses to yawn, but it’s nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before. He just keeps going, wider than should really be possible. His fangs click out, and the entire roof of his mouth seems to turn inside out for a moment - then everything realigns, and his jaw swings shut again.

“What?” He asks after a moment. Asmo is staring at him in horror - and I with fascination.

“What happened to your bones?” Asmo asks in a hush.

“That was so cool,” I say with the same intonation. “And gross.”

“...you don’t sound like that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not.”

“That potion really is crazy,” Asmo whispers. He looks haunted. “Should that stuff really be allowed? What’s Solomon doing in that lab? Am I gonna start doing that?”

“You’re fine, Asmo,” I reassure, patting him on the arm - he latches onto me like a stress blanket. “Pandas don’t do that.”

“You promise?” He asks tearfully.

“Promise.” I think of all the videos I’ve seen over the years. “And everyone loves pandas, anyway. They’re super cute.”

Levi crosses his arms over the edge of the bathtub and rests his chin atop them, then heaves a melancholic sigh. “And everyone’s scared of snakes ‘cause they think they’re gross.”

“Oh, don’t be a spoilsport,” Asmo scolds - though, to be fair, that’s easy for him to say. “We don’t think snakes are gross.”

“Uh, yes you do. You went ew about my heat pits.”

“That’s not the same thing!”

“I love snakes,” I declare. “Anyway, every animal’s kind of gross sometimes. You should watch Planet Earth.”

All while we’re saying this, I’m beginning to worry a little about the others. Levi’s the only reptile so far - if we’re lucky, that’s the furthest up the evolutionary tree anyone else has gone, but if we’re unlucky, one of them could be a fish. If the potion’s capable of giving Levi heat pits and the bone structure to actually unhinge his jaw, there’s no reason it couldn’t give someone gills.

I wonder how the potion decides what it’s going to turn us into. Levi being a snake makes sense… but Beel being a lion and Asmo a giant panda feel more arbitrary. (Though I couldn’t imagine what it’d look like if they turned into a fly and a scorpion.) And I don’t know why I’m a red panda, either.

“I think I’m gonna go look for Beel,” I decide after a while. He’s probably sated himself at least a little by now - he knows where the fridge is. “You guys stay here.”

“You think we’re gonna send you to the lions?” Levi asks in disbelief, and starts attempting to get out of the tub. “No dice! You’re staying here, where it’s safe. I’ll go check on Beel.”

“You have to stay here, though - you’re cold-blooded now, remember?” I push him back down, which takes surprisingly little effort. “So you have to keep warm.”

“Come on, d’you really think these candles are doing anything for me? They’re tiny.”

Now that he mentions it… “Hmm. Maybe we should run you a hot bath.”

“You want me to take a bath while you go talk to a lion?”

“He’s right, hon.” Asmo interjects. “We’re not the ones who need protecting.”

“Come on, we do this every time something—” I sigh loudly and try to compose myself. “—okay, look, you know you never win this fight. Nothing’s happened to me before. And it's just Beel, anyway.”

They exchange a look. After a moment, Levi huffs. “Fine - but you’d better not do anything stupid, alright?! I’ve seen this go wrong in way too many shows!”

“And if it looks like trouble, you’re coming straight back here,” Asmo adds. “Or I’ll cry. I mean it.”

I sigh, but smile at him anyway. “Sure, Asmo. Take a nap or something.”

It’s finally business as usual. We have an impromptu team handshake - which is nice, that’s never happened before - and then I let myself out into the hall, and into the figurative jungle.

It’s eerily quiet out here. Or it is for a moment, at least, because then something crashes in the kitchen.

I can take a guess at who it is. I hurry downstairs - I feel more agile, somehow. I don’t think my feet are paws as well, but these boots definitely look like them. I’d thought having a tail would feel stranger, but the sensation seems to have settled in seamlessly. It feels as if it’s been there the whole time.

Beel, just as I’d thought, has his head in the fridge when I get there. I can hear glass clinking and plastic crinkling. Several containers are already lying empty on the table. The only real difference between this and his usual fridge raids is that he’s gone exclusively for the raw meat.

I’ve never seen him get food poisoning, but that doesn’t mean he can’t. Well, maybe the potion gave him a lion’s stomach too... “Uh - Beel?”

He makes a sound of surprise that isn’t that different from a cat’s ‘mrrp’ - just a lot deeper - and pulls back from the fridge with startling swiftness. There’s a scrap of something pink hanging out of his mouth.

“...are you having fun?” I ask after a moment. Ignoring all new features, his demeanour looks about the same. Maybe his eyes are more dilated than usual.

He makes a rumbling sound at the base of his throat and swallows the rest of the scrap in his mouth, slamming the fridge shut with his elbow and moving to the sink. He cups his hands under the faucet and drinks deeply - every move is poised and purposeful. Then he closes his eyes and shakes himself all over, like a wet dog.

When he opens his eyes, they look normal again. I can’t say the same for the rest of him - his hair is longer and poofier, as if in imitation of a mane, and there’s fur around his neck that makes him look almost twice as large as usual.

“You switched, too?” He asks after a moment. I catch a glimpse of sharp, bloodstained canines, and recoil before I can stop myself. “...hm? Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah, peachy.” Do red pandas’ tails fall between their legs when they’re nervous, too? I feel like mine’s trying to do that. “What about you? Do you like being a lion?”

“I don’t like… liking all this,” He says after a moment, gesturing at all the empty boxes. I try not to think too hard about the image they conjure. “I mean, it’s way better when it’s cooked. You can put all sorts of different stuff on it to make it tasty. But it’s the only thing I feel like eating right now.”

“Well, that’s how a lion eats.”

Beel looks at me for a moment. Then, unprompted, he reaches up and scratches my fluffy new ears. I feel my shoulders fall. “Hey. It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I hadn’t even noticed myself tensing up. It’s not like I thought he ever would, but… actually, I can’t tell if those were the red panda’s survival instincts, or my own. I’m fairly sure the latter hasn’t been working for a while.

“Yeah, I know,” I sigh after a moment, sitting down with him. Using my tail as a cushion, I can’t feel the chill of the kitchen tiles at all. “I just… I dunno. Do you know what happened to everyone else?

He thinks for a moment, then looks a little alarmed. “Uh— I think I was chasing Satan for a while. He was moving all fast and funny, and I just— I don’t know. It felt like I had to grab him. I don’t think I caught him, but…”

“We’d better see, just in case,” I conclude, getting up. “I need to check on everyone, anyway. Asmo’s with Levi already…”

“Belphie went to the observatory,” Beel says thoughtfully, following me out of the kitchen. “And I haven’t seen Lucifer since we split up. He looked like he was gonna follow you and Asmo, but then…”

“Did it look like he transformed?”

“Uhh…” He looks mildly guilty. “I don’t know. I stopped thinking straight. Mammon bit me, and then I was chasing him instead…”

“He bit you?” I saw Mammon jumping at him, but I didn’t think he’d gone that far.

“Yeah. Pretty hard, actually. It only hurt for a bit, though.” Beel points to his shoulder. “I think he thought I’d go after you first, so he was trying to chase me off. I don’t know where he went after that…”

I sigh. “Well, he’s got to be somewhere in the house. Let’s go find Belphie first.”

“Mmm? Sure.” He pauses to yawn. It isn’t quite as spectacular as Levi’s, but it’s impressive all the same. The teeth are still a little unsettling. “Be careful. I don’t know what he turned into.”

He rubs my ears again, then moves away with long, languid steps, tail trailing lazily behind him. My own tail swishes anxiously for a moment before I steel myself and follow him.

It turns out Belphie didn’t even make it into the observatory - he got into the music room, then apparently couldn’t be bothered to walk any further past the divider and just curled up under the piano. Beel very nearly stands on an extended arm before he seems to smell his presence.

“Belphie?” He crouches down and reaches for the thick brown tail he’s using as a blanket. “Wake u—”

As soon as his hand closes around the fur, Belphie’s entire body goes rigid - the underside of the piano presses his ears flat against his head as he rolls out from under it and flips upright in an instant, poised as if to pounce. It’s all so quick, all so alarmingly sudden, that my entire body tenses, jerks backwards, and I find myself with both hands raised high in the air.

I don’t know what I expected to do, only that I had to make myself look as large as possible. Belphie - eyes wide open in a way that they almost never are immediately after waking - looks at me for a moment, then laughs so loudly that Beel jumps back this time.

“Where’ve you been?” He asks, grinning. His teeth aren’t nearly as pointy as Beel’s, but his smile is a lot more devious. “Hey, I’m just messing with you.”

“Uh huh,” I say, trying not to look too scared. For some reason, I can’t bring myself to bring my hands down. I just look like I’ve long since surrendered. “I knew that.”

Belphie snickers. His tail curves up behind him, ears swivelling to the side of his head. “C’mon, relax. Let’s play a game.”

On the last word, he hops just a bit forward, and I take a great big step back. Beel glances between us, then commands, looking mildly concerned, “Be nice, Belphie.”

“I am being nice,” Belphie says with a sniff, baring his teeth at me again. The longer I look at his grin, though, the more it begins to look playful. “Hey. Hey!”

He darts forward again, but this time I’m ready for him - I pounce straight at his chest, knocking him within an inch of smacking his head on the piano, then quickly get up and scurry to the other side of the room. Belphie springs straight back to his feet and rushes so swiftly at me that there’s little I can do before he scoops me up with deceivingly gentle hands and tosses me a fair distance across the room.

A ‘fair distance’, however, is not long enough to prevent me from running straight back at him (for some reason, my hands end up in the air again) and bowling into his knees to knock him over. He lets out a sound between a yelp, a yip and a laugh, tumbling back onto his stomach and forgoing even getting back to his feet before he charges again.

“Wait—” Beel’s head swings back and forth until he’s blinking from the whiplash. “You two, come on—”

Belphie swipes at my feet at the same time that I seize his hood, sending us both back to the ground in a tangled heap. I recover first and unpin myself from beneath his unexpectedly heavy limbs, and register Beel standing over us - without stopping to wonder if it’s a good idea, I reach up, hook my claws into the fur around his shoulders, and scramble up him like a tree.

He only wobbles for a moment before balancing himself again. I adjust myself onto his back, then peer triumphantly down at Belphie through his mane.

“That’s cheating,” He complains, sitting up. “C’mon, are you really doing this?”

“You started it.” I muffle through Beel’s mane.

“What? You literally jumped at me first.”

“You’re bigger than me, so it doesn’t count.”

Beel makes a deep, rumbling sound that I’ll take as one of amusement. Hmm. I’m a lot closer to his ears from here.

Belphie yawns and flicks his tail about, then wraps his arms around it like it’s a toy. “Whatever. Bet you’re only getting away with it ‘cause you’re cute. Right, Beel?”

Beel lifts his hands innocently. Meanwhile, keeping my right hand latched to his mane, I reach up with my left to touch his ears. “I’m just standing. I can’t control what IK does.”

“Uh, yes you can. You can literally just pick her up. Any time.”

Beel’s fur is softer than I was expecting, but still coarser than any dog I’ve ever pet. I turn around to look at his tail. It’s sort of similar to Belphie’s usual demon tail - sleek along most of its length, but with a big fluffy bit at the end. He’s holding it too far down for me to reach from here, but if I twist a little more…

“Whoops—” Turns out I twisted too far. My claws detach, and I rapidly start slipping down his back.

Belphie’s eyes flash up. As smoothly as if he’d anticipated it, he ducks forward and cushions the landing with his tail - then draws in a breath through his teeth and scrunches his face up. “Oww. That hurt.”

“No one told you to do that,” I counter, but hurriedly shuffle off anyway.

“And let you break your tail? I don’t think so.” He reaches over before I can get far enough away and squishes my cheeks inward, then puts on a voice that he reserves for his most infuriating bits. “You gotta be careful, you’re just a little baby. Look at your cute little ears. What are you meant to be?”

“Not telling you!” I try to wrestle my face out of his hands, but he’s a lot better at this game than either Beel or I am. “Hey! I’m gonna bite you if you don’t stop!”

“Fine,” He sighs with unnecessarily gloom, and acquiesces. “You’re so mean to me. Well, do you know what I’m meant to be?”

I fold my arms and regard him for a moment. It’s not as obvious as the others have been so far. “I dunno. A weasel?”

He gives me a look. “Be nice.”

“I am being nice. What’s your problem with weasels?” I lean forward and pick up his tail at the tip. It’s heavier than it looks. “...well, your ears are the wrong shape, anyway. Um… you could be a hyena. Do a laugh?”

“Ha ha ha.”

“A proper one.”

“That is my proper one.”

“What do you think, Beel?”

He starts. He doesn't seem to have been paying attention - just watching us with a warm look on his face. “Uh— a cow?”

“A cow?” Belphie repeats incredulously. “Have you ever seen a cow? You just want steak, don’t you?”

Beel’s face says ‘guilty as charged’. I prop myself up on my knees and start ruffling Belphie’s ears without permission. They feel like they could be extra-big cat ears.

“I think you’re some kind of desert fox,” I announce. “Try barking.”

He looks offended. “No way.”

“I command you to—”

“I think it’s time for Beel to have a snack,” He says loudly, and gets to his feet. “We’re going now.”

“It’d be easier if you just do it on your own,” I say persuasively, following behind as Beel gets unceremoniously pushed out of the room. “It’s less embarrassing. It’s on your terms.”

“I’m not barking!” He insists, moving a little faster, as if that will stop me from speaking. “Make Lucifer do it. Wolves are way closer to dogs.”

“I d— oh, so the potion did work on him?” My attention is successfully shifted. “Where did he go?”

“I dunno, I wasn’t looking— where are you going?”

I’m already in the other room when I realise I was meant to answer that question, but it doesn’t matter that much. There are only so many places to be in the House of Lamentation, and Lucifer’s pretty predictable. He might well have gone back to his office to do his work for the day.

I look into the common room just in case, which is empty - but, rather suspiciously, there’s a lot of grey fur stuck to the cushions in Lucifer’s usual spot. The common room has a pretty distinct mix of scents to it, and Lucifer’s is strong enough that he can’t have left too long ago.

I’m not sure I enjoy having such strong senses. It’s easier not to pay attention to it all when I’m in the middle of something else, but it’s overwhelming as soon as I stop and try to dissect everything.

I sit down for a moment, close my eyes, and listen carefully to the silence. There’s some distant clanking and conversation from the kitchen, but other than that it’s just quiet…

…the weird thing is that we all still have our normal ears, on top of the new animal ones. I can’t tell which ones are doing the work.

Garden, a voice in the back of my head suddenly supplies, and I open my eyes again. I don’t think I even heard anything - not consciously, anyway - but it feels like the right thing to do.

And apparently it is. Lucifer is sitting out on the grass and doing absolutely nothing.

Which is quite suspicious, really. But all I can think about is how he doesn’t seem to have heard the door open, and that it would be really funny if I snuck up on him.

I take a slow, careful step onto the lawn. He doesn’t give any indication that he’s noticed anything. Maybe he can’t hear me over the rustling of his own tail swiping idly through the grass. I think this is about as close as I can get away with. Can I jump that far? Only one way to find out.

I crouch back and adjust myself. Then, using the soft grass as a springboard, I launch myself ever-so-gently at his shoulders and grab him by the head.

Lucifer doesn’t scream - I wouldn’t have expected him to, and if he had, I’d have been very alarmed. But he does let out a loud, gruff ‘heurgh!’ and nearly topple straight over, which is about as good as you get with him.

“Hey,” I announce, into his regular ear, then lean up and do the same into the wolf ones, just in case. “Hey!”

“Yes, I can hear you,” He sighs, catching himself on a hand and trying to act stern. (His tail is wagging.) “And what do you think you’re doing?”

“Dunno.” I lean forward until I’m just about hanging over his shoulder. Lucifer has to switch from hunching forward to tilting back to keep balance. “What’re you doing?”

He’s quiet for a moment. I get the feeling that he doesn’t know, either. “Keeping watch.”

“Watch on what?” The only thing in front of us is a big hedge and some flowers. “There’s nothing here.”

“Hmm,” He says, which isn’t an answer. “Shouldn’t you be inside?”

“Well, I was looking for you—” I tip further forward still, and at this point Lucifer seems to decide that it’d be more prudent to just lie back, so that I’m lying on my front instead of attempting to fall head-first into the grass. “—oof— ‘cause I didn’t think the potion would work on you. And I wanted to see what you were like.”

“You wanted to see me do something embarrassing,” He concludes, and waves off my defensive ‘nooo’. “I didn’t think it would work on you, either. What are you, exactly?”

“Red panda.” I reach across his chest and poke at one of the straps running down his shirt. “Wow. Your suspenders are kind of ugly.”

There’s a short, sharp exhale, and then he remembers to be offended. “I didn’t choose them.”

“Well, I was saying - it’s weird that the potion knows how to make clothes, isn’t it? I mean, it’s adding bones and everything…”

“Which is exactly why I’d like to question Solomon about what he put in it,” He says, and now he does sound genuinely severe. “He’s lucky it hasn’t done any damage. I don’t know how Luke managed to bake it into a cake.”

The tip of his tail - the rest of it is trapped under his back - has started lashing angrily at the grass. I wonder if scratching his ears would help calm him down, or just make him madder.

“It’s not his fault,” I say in what I hope is a persuasive voice. Maybe it’d help if I sounded more pitiful. “And I helped him bake it, too.”

He gives me a look. “You’re the one I’m most worried about. A human body shouldn’t be able to handle the same kind of magical stress as a demon, and it wasn’t exactly comfortable when I transformed. Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

“Funny story, actually. I just sneezed and then it happened.”

“You just sneezed,” He repeats.

“Didn’t feel a thing,” I confirm. “Anyway, it’s cool, isn’t it? Like - Levi has heat pits now.”

“We still don’t know how long this is going to last,” He says, but he does look less tense. “...well, you might as well have fun with it.”

“Do you feel like howling at all?” I ask, looking up at the moon. I mean, I know it’s not actually a thing, but even so… “Actually, do you feel any different? Like… is the wolf within talking?”

“You make it sound more dramatic than it is,” Lucifer says with another little exhale. “But yes.”

“What’s it saying?”

“To hunt, mostly. Feed the family, or something along those lines. But we’ve been grocery-shopping this week already - and I’m not sure what I’d hunt even if I listened. What about your… ‘panda within’, then?”

It’s nice that he’s playing along. “Mmm… I think I really wanna climb up something.”

“Something up high?” He gently pushes my head off his shoulder and gestures to the end of the garden. “Will that do?”

It’s not the tallest tree in the Devildom, but to someone of my stature it’s an intimidating enough height that I’d probably feel a little dizzy at the top - which is perfect. I hadn’t realised how much I wanted to do this until Lucifer pointed it out, but I’m moving before I can even stop to think about it.

There’s something liberating about this new agility. Scaling the trunk comes about as second nature as taking stairs - so smoothly that it feels like the air is parting around rather than rushing against me. It’s only once I’m crouched contentedly on the highest sturdy branch I can find that I notice Lucifer standing at the base of the tree, ears pricked and eagle-eyed in apparent trepidation.

The bark is rough, but for some reason it doesn’t bother me at all. I lie forward with a leisurely sweep of my tail and give him a winning smile.

He huffs. “Proud of yourself, are you?”

“Yup.” It’d be better if this was an apple tree - then I could pick one and toss it down to him, and it’d be extra cool.

Alas, the tree just has regular leaves. Which… look kind of tasty, actually. It’s not like I have access to bamboo down here, so this might be the next best thing.

“Don’t,” Lucifer warns. I can only assume that I was wearing a Beel expression. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I’m not doing anything,” I insist, then pause. Something’s just sped past one of the windows upstairs. “...huh? Was that Mammon?”

I can hear Lucifer’s tail swishing agitatedly as I edge closer to the end of the branch to get a closer look. A moment later, another blur goes by.

“He’s just running. Okay—” I quickly unlatch from the branch and drop down, landing neatly in Lucifer’s arms. “—I’m gonna go check on him.”

“Was a warning too much to ask for?” He asks, as if he hadn’t reached up as soon as I let go. “Alright, but be careful. He’s… energetic.”

“You aren’t coming?”

“In a moment,” He says, and an odd look comes over his face. “I might have a walk. I need to…”

I feel like ‘patrol’ might be the word he’s looking for, but Lucifer seems pretty adamant that he’s the boss of the wolf and not the other way around, so I won’t tease him. He sends me back to the house with a nod, then sets off - turning his head first, then the rest of his body, tail pointing out behind him.

I’m expecting to hear the thunder of feet as soon as I get inside, but apparently tigers are lighter-footed than I’d thought. I barely even sense Mammon approaching until he suddenly springs out from around the corner, coming within less than an inch of slamming tie-first into my face before yelping and jerking away.

At the same time, as if struck by invisible lightning, I half-twist and half-leap backwards, hands flying above my head again, and it’s only a moment after the weird, chattering sound that I realise I was the one making it. Mammon skitters several feet away, eyes wide with alarm, then catches himself on the wall and realises what’s going on.

“Whoa whoa whoa!” He holds out his hands in supplication. “Chill, it’s just me!”

I blink at him, mildly out of breath, then say, “I knew that.”

“...are ya gonna put your hands down, then?”

“Yeah.”

He waits. It takes a little effort, but I manage to regain control of my limbs and bring my arms back down to my side.

Mammon cocks his head to the side. His tail goes from pointing down to up, and begins to move idly from side-to-side as he sets his hands on his hips.

“Didn’t scare ya that bad, did I?” He steps closer, then motions for me to look up. “C’mere, lemme get a look at ya.”

“Why were you doing upstairs?” I ask as he pokes at the new markings on my cheeks, then leans back and tilts his head from side to side, squinting at me. “I saw you in the window.”

“Runnin’,” He says after a moment’s thought, squashing both my ears flat against my head. “I kinda… bit Beel. I was sorta worried I’d start bitin’ everyone else, so I was tryin’ to blow off steam. Actually, I was takin’ laps around the garden first, but Lucifer said it was makin’ his head hurt.”

“So you came back in?”

“Well, I did wanna start runnin’ faster,” He admits. “Like, I was there first. But then he growled at me. Figured it wasn’t worth pissing him off after that.”

He swipes a hand across his face, then sighs. “Man. I’m beat. Let’s just find somewhere to chill.”

“Aren’t you hungry at all?” I ask, following him back to the common room. “You were running for ages. Tigers eat a lot even when they’re just sleeping all day.”

“Eh, I’ll manage,” He yawns, slumping onto the sofa cushions and turning onto his side, like a leisurely cat. “‘Sides, I’m pretty sure Beel cleaned out the fridge. And it ain’t like there’s anything to hunt around here.”

“Ooh— actually, do you want a fun fact? Tigers kill their prey by biting onto their throats until they suffocate.”

Mammon lifts his head and gives me a look. “That’s a fun fact?”

“A lot of people think they maul them to death. Well, they can, but the throat thing’s easier. ‘Cause it saves energy.” He looks uneasy, so I try to comfort him by adding, “It’s just what they do. Tiger’s gotta eat.”

“Tiger’s gotta eat,” He repeats, but his face stays creased. “Okay, now tell me something nice.”

“Alright.” I sit down on the carpet in front of him. “Every tiger has a unique pattern. So these are your special Mammon stripes! They’re the same under the fur, too, so you’d still have them even if you were completely bald.”

“Ha! Reckon I could pull it off?”

“Uh... I dunno, your head’s pretty big.”

He smacks me on the arm. “I told ya to tell me somethin’ nice.”

“I’m not going to lie - that’s the nice part. If you did go bald, Levi wouldn’t stop calling you an egghead for a week.”

“Ain’t that mean someone’s smart, too? Hey, I could live with that.”

“But your head would be so shiny. And an eagle might think it was a rock and drop a tortoise on it.”

He snorts incredulously. “Yeah, ‘cause that happens all the time to bald people.”

“It’s happened at least once,” I assert. “Historically. According to one guy two thousand years ago. The bald guy died, by the way.”

“Be a hell of a way to go.” He twists up, so that his chest faces the ceiling, and folds his arms with a deep sigh. “Fine. Guess I’ll hold back, just for you.”

His tail lolls over the edge of the sofa as he closes his eyes. I watch it for a while, glancing periodically up at his ostensibly absent expression, then reach out to catch it.

Like a spider on a string, it flicks backwards, and goes to lying barely an inch away. I try again, then again, then again, and yet it keeps bouncing away, as if it can sense the movement. No matter how fast I move, it’s always just a little faster.

I refuse to give up. I keep batting at it with mounting frustration, switching from quick jabs to slow, careful ambushes before finally turning a glare to Mammon’s face - and belatedly notice that his eyes are fully open again.

We look at each other for a moment. Then I realise that he’s not paying attention, and instinct takes over. Before he can react, I seize his tail and - for some reason I can’t fathom - bite it.

But I suppose I can’t have bitten it very hard, because Mammon usually makes it very loudly known if someone so much as pinches him. This time, he just stares at me. Then he starts laughing.

“Hahaha, oh man—” He reaches forward and gives both my ears an aggressive, adoring rumple, declaring, “Aren’t ya sweet? You havin’ fun with that? Hahahaha!”

“Quit it,” I mumble, pushing his tail away from me with perhaps an unnecessary amount of force, then decide on a whim to climb up onto the sofa with him. “Move up.”

“Oof!” He ends up squished against the back, but I’m too embarrassed to care. “Sheesh, give a guy some breathing room.”

“No,” I muffle into a cushion. “Die.”

“Fine, then. Have it your way.” He burrows one arm under me, then uses that as leverage to make himself some more room. I bury my face in my hands and pretend not to hear his pleased chuffing. “Wanna tell us a bedtime story?”

I peek up at him through a gap in my fingers. “...all the stories Dad told me about tigers end in the tiger dying.”

“Oh, don’t tell me, lemme guess—” He snickers. “—some little red thing tries to eat its tail and—”

Before he can finish, my hands shoot up and tug both of his tiger ears down. This time he does yelp. “Oi! Okay, okay, you win—”

“I don’t even know why I did that,” I grumble, letting go and shielding my face once more.

He chuffs again, pinching my nose with just enough force to be annoying. “Yeah, well, it was funny. Don’t even worry about it. Y’know Levi used to bite my arm whenever he got excited? Man, that was ages ago…”

“You shouldn’t let him bite you now - he’s got snake venom. You’ll get necrosis and your arm’ll fall off.”

“That bad? Yikes.” He yawns, then abruptly tucks me under his chin like a glorified teddy bear. “Good thing you’re gonna guard me, right?”

“I can’t do anything when I’m stuck here,” I complain - knocking my head affectionately into his at the same time, like a hypocrite. “I can’t die valiantly in battle if you don’t let me go.”

“Against a snake? Nah, leave it. That’s not even a cool thing to fight.”

“How dare you say that about Saint Patrick…”

The conversation continues in that vein for a little longer - until Mammon finally runs out of energy to keep coming up with responses, and instead starts responding with a series of low, growling hums. He dozes off soon after that. Considering how long he was sprinting around for, I’m impressed he managed to stay awake for that long.

I’d like to stay with him for a while, but I don’t feel sleepy at all, and it’s also getting kind of warm. I carefully wriggle my way out, then stand up and survey the scene. I reckon I’ll build a few cushions around him, like a fort, and that way he’ll be extra safe…

Once I’m done with that, I decide to go wandering again. Satan’s the only one I haven’t seen so far, and I can’t tell if the ongoing silence from him forebodes well or poorly.

The first place to check is, as usual, the library, which is empty at first glance. Then I catch a pair of vivid green eyes staring at me - a large demon-shaped cat tucked neatly into a high-up gap in the bookshelf.

“...why are you in there?” I ask, even though I know the answer from Hyde, and it’s just that he can, and wants to be.

Satan stays there for a moment, then slips out, landing softly on all fours, and sits gracefully back on his haunches. I’d be worried about the lack of response if it wasn’t for his tail pointed straight up behind him, waving slowly like a happy flag.

“Hello,” He says, perfectly serene.

“Hey.” I give him a knowing look, which he ignores. He’s not fooling anyone who knows him even a little - let alone me. “Are you having fun being a cat?”

“You would not believe,” He replies, and at this point the giddiness starts to seep into his voice. He leans forward a little. “Come here. Scratch my ears.”

There’s a weirdly intense look on his face. I wrinkle my nose at him. “What?”

“Scratch my ears,” He says again, as if it was the instruction that was the problem.

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

“Not if you’re gonna be weird about it—”

“I can purr now,” He says impatiently. “Come on, come on, I’ll show you.”

“Okay, okay—” I bend down a little and give the base of his ears a rub. They’re sleeker than Hyde’s - more intact, too. “Is that good?”

He shuts his eyes, ducking his head so that I get the angle correctly. A familiar sound starts up, even louder and deeper than I’m used to, like a little motor in his chest.

It’s hypnotic. I kneel down beside him, and in turn he starts dipping his head even lower, until it looks like he’s contorted in a funny yoga pose. Eventually he just gives up on supporting himself and flops over onto his side with a content little smile.

A voice in the back of my head comments that this must all look incredibly strange. The voice in the front of my head replies that it’s really cute, so it doesn’t matter.

I mess around with one of his ears and turn it inside out. He doesn’t seem to notice, but the ear itself starts twitching restlessly, as if trying to reverse itself. “What’ve you been up to? What else can you do?”

(It’s kind of hard not to start baby-talking him, but I’m not sure he’d forgive me if I did.)

“Well, Lucifer left his office unlocked, so I went in and got some fur on his chair,” He says triumphantly, opening his eyes for long enough to offer a slow, happy blink. “Then I just took a nap. Sleeping as a cat is much nicer than sleeping as a demon. No wonder they always look so happy.”

There’s no way Satan didn’t spend at least a little time just basking in the bliss of his feline transformation, but I won't force him to admit that. I pick up one of his hands and turn it over. Like Asmo, they look mostly the same, but with little pads on the ends of his long fingers.

Satan yawns, then slowly sits up again. “What are you looking at?”

“Trying to see if your hands do the…” I press down between his knuckles, and his nails do indeed seem to protract. “Whoa! I wonder how that works?”

He looks down, then lets out a shallow gasp and wrenches his hand out of mine, reversing the positions so that he’s holding my left hand instead. His ears are pointed straight up - I imagine a pair of whiskers fanning out from his cheeks.

“You’ve got paws,” He whispers in awe.

“Paw,” I correct, showing him the right one. “This is just a glove. I don’t think the potion works on prosthetic stuff.”

“Interesting..." He frowns. “I wonder if we have any textbooks about this kind of thing.”

I know he prefers spellwork over brewing, which I’ve heard Professor Baal vocally complaining about in the staff room before, so this is a good sign for them. After a moment, though, the scholarly look on Satan’s face vanishes again, and now he’s wearing the same expression he watches kitten videos with.

He tweaks my nose, then starts combing his fingers methodically through the hair I messed up on the sofa earlier, beginning to purr again. I’m suddenly put in mind of those videos of cats grooming each other.

He shifts to better reach the back of my head, and I hear a quiet chime. I look down. There’s a bell tied around his tail.

Weird choice of accessory. It’s not attached very securely - just loosely looped around with a strong string. Satan pauses as I detach the bell, then lift it up and give it a jingle.

I open my mouth to say something, then realise that, based on his expression, he won’t hear a word of it. Satan’s completely frozen in place, eyes fixed on the bell. His now-unadorned tail swishes restlessly behind him.

Holding my breath, I jingle the bell again. The pupils of his eyes expand until there’s barely any green left in them, and he crouches back unconsciously. I think he’s actually trembling a little in anticipation.

I give it one last shake, then toss it away. Satan follows it with a sharp turn of his head - then, wiggling as if to calibrate, pounces at it like— well, like a cat at a mouse.

As soon as he lands beside it, his hand strikes the edge at just the right angle to send it spinning away, and this time he doesn’t even try to adjust before leaping at it again, then again - head held close to the ground, digging his claws into the carpet to keep himself from skidding and then getting them stuck when he tries to keep going. Each time, the bell seems to evade his grasp, right up until he lunges for it a little too rapidly and runs head-first into the wall.

“Oh no—” I’d been covering my mouth to stop myself from laughing, but now it’s more out of shock - I hurry to prop him back up as Satan stares at the ceiling, dazed. “—are you okay?”

He blinks deliriously for a moment, then gives himself a shake and flushes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine—”

He hurriedly gets back to his feet and, for want of something to do, starts flattening the fur on his ears. The bell lies, discarded, a few feet away. His eyes keep darting back to it again.

After a moment, deciding that he doesn’t seem like he has a concussion, I get up to retrieve it. Satan watches me in close anticipation as I toss it in my hand for a moment, then roll it over to him.

His hand shoots out and slams it to the ground. Then he smacks it my way again, and without thinking I dive to the side to catch it.

With each pass, he gets a little more boisterous, and the bell starts moving in wilder, faster directions, criss-crossing all over the library, passed back and forth with barely enough respite to actually jingle. I bounce this way, Satan bounds that way - knocking into furniture so frequently and loudly that it’s not really a surprise when someone comes to see what’s going on.

The door opens, and Satan stops himself short. He sits up straight, replacing his playful expression with a completely serious one, and Levi eyes us both suspiciously.

“What were you doing?” He asks after a moment.

“Nothing,” lies Satan, getting up. His eyes dart down to the bell again, and he discreetly kicks it away. “What’re you doing here?”

He scratches his head. “Well, Asmo got hungry. And I didn’t wanna just sit around in his room.”

“Are you still cold?” I ask. He shrugs.

“I think I’m getting used to it,” He says, coming further into the room. “I mean, it’s still chilly, but it’s like… outside chilly.”

“That’s good. Oh, have you tried eating anything yet? Do you reckon you could swallow stuff whole like Gerald does?”

He grimaces. “Do I have to? That sounds gross. Do we even have anything big enough?”

“Uhh… a big loaf of bread, maybe…?”

Satan, listening to this with interest, glances to the side and spots Levi’s long snake tail, and abruptly shoots into the air - so high that it looks as if a helicopter took off with a rope tied around him. Levi yelps and dives to hide; a moment later, Satan lands on his feet, a good ten feet away from where he started.

Levi peeks warily out from behind the armchair. “What was that?”

Satan clears his throat and refuses to make contact. “Ahem - do you hear people in the common room? Let’s go to the common room.”

The common room is a lot busier than it was since I left it. The twins have arrived, and the scene looks like Mammon’s swapped personalities with Belphie - while the latter is playing a chase game with Beel around the sofa, he has his head propped up on a cushion, blinking reproachfully at them for disturbing him.

Asmo shows up soon after we do, throwing himself into the seat next to me with a metric armful of some leafy vegetable that I can only assume is the Devildom equivalent of celery. He offers me a stick and keeps crunching loudly throughout Levi and Satan’s bickering, cheeks perpetually full like a hamster.

With everyone else gathered here, it’s not long before Lucifer slips in as well, and immediately gets dragged into Belphie’s game with Beel. Lucifer waits until he’s tuckered himself out (which doesn’t take long, because it’s Belphie), to finally call a family meeting of some kind so that everyone can get their bearings.

Though there isn’t much to say - we're all more or less settled into ourselves now, so it’s just a matter of getting used to everyone else. That doesn’t take long, either, and soon enough, certain demons start getting bored. Within the hour, they’re all running around the house again like excited puppies.

…I say ‘they’, but that includes me. Levi’s the one who opts to stay sitting calmly by the fireplace. Belphie keeps collapsing in the middle of the hallway for a five minute nap before he gets up to join in again, and Lucifer has to try to keep up with us to make sure we don’t start breaking everything.

Such is the commotion that no one hears the knock on the door, which Luke left unlocked when he fled. That also means that no one thinks to stop Mammon when he makes to use it as a launchpad - Solomon steps inside and immediately gets bowled over, sending the carefully corked bottle in his hand flying. Behind him, Luke lets out a short squeak and covers his eyes, but it lands safely on the carpet, its momentum carrying it down the hall.

And then it comes to a stop by Satan’s feet.

He stares at the bottle, eyes dilated. His tail flicks restlessly.

“Satan,” Lucifer starts, ears pricked in caution - none of us are close enough to grab the bottle to safety. “Don’t—”

Satan reaches down and bats the bottle cleanly into the wall. It smashes it into about a million smithereens. The rest of us watch the violet potion inside drain into the carpet.

“You know,” Solomon says, cross, “Sometimes you bring this on yourselves.”

#3rd anni event #writing #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #jtta ik #finally done!! woohoo!!!!

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