They shot him, those fucks!
Velvette and Val, those absolute fucking traitors--he was right to cut them loose, and a fool not to have done it sooner. At the top of V Tower, just as ascension was upon them, Velvette had dragged an angelic knife through a fistful of Vox's cords and Val put a bullet through the corner of his screen before blowing Vox off the uppermost level of the ziggurat with a great beat from his enormous wings. And now, he's falling to meet the bitch daughter of the Morningstar waiting below with an angelic goddamn weapon.
Vox scrambles for purchase anywhere, angling his fall back toward V Tower like a skydiver, but he's too goddamn far away--without a plug or USB cable to reach out and snag a column of the building he falls at the speed of a star to his end, with just enough time to flare an incandescent blue in his rage.
"You fucks are using me to distract the Puritan Posse? That's such bullshit!" This was his plan! His triumph! Those assholes are nothing without him, heaven is gonna eat them ali--
His descent abruptly ends, but not with the screen-shattering explosion across the concrete that he expected. Instead, his leg and shoulder are nearly ripped out of their sockets and his head whips forward into his chest as two familiar tendrils of smokey shadow snatch him from the fall.
"Fuck!"
The shadow of antlers climbs up the side of V Tower and an icy laugh echoes from every direction--off the tower, the pavement, even out of Vox's own speakers. A very different dread cools Vox's vents as he regains his senses.
Alastor tuts, dangling Vox upside-down by the ankle as he takes his place in the Princess of Hell's ugly little ensemble. Vox's eyes are still watering from the wind whipping at his face as he fell. "Now now, that won't do!" Shadows climb up from beneath Al's boots. "We need much more pomp and circumstance for my former protege's exeunt!"
"Fffuck," Vox huffs again. "You," he adds a beat too late, trying and failing to salvage a shred of dignity. "Off you go, Charlie! There are an awful lot of stairs between you and making sure those screwballs don't find their way to the throne of heaven. I'll take care of this one," Alastor growls. His shadows wind around Vox in an embrace not unlike the grip of a straight jacket, clamping down on his mouth and speakers hard enough that the cracks in his screen spiderweb further across his face. "We're taking the express elevator," the ex-orcist girlfriend unfolds wings from who-could-care where and catches Charlie's hands as she takes off, hurtling into the sky and up toward the top of V Tower. The cat follows with Valentino's whore cradled against his chest and that bug thing on his back. "Dad, get Cherry!" the princess bellows, leaving Vox at Alastor's mercy without so much as a backward glance.
The Morningstar himself whines audibly that he was hoping he'd get to watch Bambi and the idiot box kill each other, his voice layering with that of the cherry-blonde bimbo with a lit bomb in her fist.
"No, put me down! I was gonna bring those otha' fuckheads down to us--let me bring the whole bloody towa' down!" her voice fades into the distance as Lucifer scoops her up and takes off with a boom that rattles the sound barrier. Alastor's hair whips around his head in the wake. "You look surprised, Vox!" the Radio Demon sing-songs. "Why, because the Vees that actually have something to offer got one over on you, or because I saved your pathetic little life?"
Alastor giggles, "Certainly it can't be the former--you raised yourself in my image, after all! What, you thought you could escape the turning of the wheel? You thought you could sing my tune and not find your little sycophants off-key, the way I did with you?" He turns his staff end over end like a baton and Vox rotates in time as he is lowered.
Alastor gazes up at V Tower as he lowers Vox to the ground, flattening the Television Demon out onto his back so all he can see is the imposing monument at an extreme forced perspective, jutting up into open red sky. "You've been building on the backs of their power, all the time hoping they were beneath you," Alastor saunters into view, crouching over Vox's head to look him in the eye. "That's where we differ. I've always known you were beneath me."
"Bullshit! I'm about to be a GOD!" Vox's eyes pop and fizz with manic static. "When I ascend, everyone is gonna be beneath me." He thrashes in his bonds, "Even you, you obsolete fucki--" Alastor lunges into his face and a shadow rushes past, filling Vox's mouth and muffling his speakers. "Hush, puppet. Teacher's talking, and I've had more than enough of your self-aggrandizement for one afterlife."
"To the point at hand," Alastor muses, standing abruptly and swinging his staff up into a resting position at the small of his back. "Regardless of their utility, I can't let your little team act above their station." He yanks Vox back up off the ground to his knees and looks back over his shoulder with a cutting glance. "You, Vincent, are mine to kill."
"Oh, look at that," Alastor pouts at him, teasing through a pinched smirk. "Still so desperate for my attention! God, it's pathetic--you'd just hang there and let me kill you if it meant putting my hands on you on purpose, wouldn't you?"
Vox finally relaxes in his bonds, his gaze flickering from incensed to almost smug. He looks down to his gag, suggesting that Alastor let him speak. The radio demon rolls his eyes and the head of his staff in turn, giving Vox his voice. "Maybe I would. And maybe that means I've finally got the upper hand. You," he laughs, and it builds quickly into a manic cackle, "you give a shit." Alastor's rage is immediate and palpable, sending static through his hair. His neck and legs lengthen, torso distending like a billowing circus tent until he's so large he has to crouch over Vox at a sickening angle. Vox smiles up at him, satisfied, finally. "Otherwise you'd have just let me fall."
