Once Baxter and I were fairly certain there were no other colors to worry about, my fishy friend pulled out another piece of paper and slide it over his clipboard. He took a deep breath and turned to me, as if he were trying to steel himself.

"Right. Now that we have some rudimentary understanding of the color spectrum we're dealing with, we now have to attempt to assign some meaning to each color. Clearly some sort of system exists to divide each individual denizen of Hell a separate aura; we need to figure out what that system is."

I raised an eyebrow at him.

"Sure, that makes sense, but uh… why do you look so serious?"

Baxter audibly gulped and glanced at the passing demons.

"Well… I have a running theory that the colors may be based on a demon's sins. Do you recall how the angelic energy reacts violently with demonic flesh?"

I nodded.

"Well, I hypothesize that it isn't simply the physical body that the energy reacts with. It's quite possible that demons possess their own form of energy, which in turn is infused into every part of a demon's body."

I frowned and remembered what Id had told me. Exterminators use their tools to kill demons and take their energy for recycling into Imps. It seemed that Baxter was, as usual, completely right. He just didn't know how dire the truth was. Regardless, I tried to maintain my usual expression and not let on that I knew more than he did.

"However, with this new seven-color revelation, it may be possible that demonic energies have a sort of sub-frequency. Going back to my theory, I believe that these seven colors may relate directly to the Seven Deadly Sins of the Christian believe systems. Are you familiar with them?"

Id and I exchanged a quick glance before shaking our heads quickly. Baxter managed to be relaxed enough to groan at our incompetence.

"I swear, the education in this quite-literally-damned place is lacking at best. I suppose for the sake of clarity I will try to explain it to you. As I'm sure you do know, mortal souls are either sent to Hell or Heaven after dying on Earth. For centuries demonic scholars have been trying to understand what exactly dictates where a soul will go, and what decides their fate. Naturally this requires a mixture of mysticism, cultural diversity and theology. Thousands of different ethics systems exist on Earth, and yet there are only two known options. Admittedly, some scientists suggest that multiple different realities exist for every individual belief system, but the evidence of that is dubious at best."

I just stared blankly at Baxter, trying to follow his speech. I admit, it was strange how seemingly everyone from Earth ended up in those two places… or in a jar, if Alastor had his way.

"I digress. As it stands now, Hell and Heaven are the only definite regions. Now, the majority of evidence points towards Christian mysticism being the ruling system. The presence of different angelic and demonic classes is in line with the Bible, the generally believed reasons for being sent to Hell follow the Christian system, and most visibly is the structure of Hell itself."

Baxter pointed up to the sky and I followed his gaze. Far above us, the Pentagram slowly rotated, bathing the entirety of Hell in its gentle rose glow. Baxter continued as we looked to the skies.

"The Pentagram is a prevalent symbol in Satanism, which is more-or-less the antithesis of Christianity. The generally understood theory for its origin is that a group of extremely powerful demons were forced by the most powerful beings in Heaven to construct it above the entirety of Hell. After they finished their task, these demons were slain by their masters and their souls scattered across Hell itself."

I grimaced. I wasn't about to tell Baxter that not only was that theory mostly true, but those same demons were still alive. The Immortal Demons were probably devising ways to regain power at that very moment.

"Furthermore, The Pentagram serves two functions: firstly, it allows newly chosen mortal souls to enter Hell. The process of how a souls re-forms into a physical demon is largely unknown, but it is assumed to be irreversible by any means other than redemption. Secondly, it serves as a one-way gate of sorts. No demon is ever able to leave Hell because of that force; yet angels are free to come and go as they please, as is seen by the annual Exterminations. We're all trapped here, in this eternal cage…"

I looked back down at Baxter, and not just because the thought of being trapped made me feel ill.

"Okay, so, that's all good and all, but what does any of that have to do with the colors?"

Baxter sighed, hal-annoyed at my question and half-resigned to our fate.

"Right, back on topic. If we take it as fact that Christian values rule over the selection process, then it is very likely that the colors you're seeing are related to a principle in Christianity known as the Seven Deadly Sins. This list of seven unforgivable grievances is said to be the underlying cause of Hell's selection process. From least to most severe, the sins are as follows: lust, a twisted version of someone's usual sexual desire; gluttony, the desire for an endless supply of sustenance; greed, an intense need for material possessions; sloth, the lack of desire to achieve or do anything; wrath, pure fury and rage to an extreme degree; envy, coveting what others have, even when you have enough; and finally, pride, the highest form of self-love, in which one values themselves above anything else. If my theory is correct, each of the colors you see encompassing demons is a reflection of the sin that best describes them."

I nodded slowly, starting to get the larger picture.

"So… every demon is in Hell for one of these seven sins, and that sin decides what color their energy is. Makes sense. In that case, how are we going to figure out which color means what sin?"

Baxter's face contorted into a grimace.

"I am afraid we have no other option than to do a horrible, heinous task. Ego, my companion… we have to talk to people."

Sure enough, a few minutes later Baxter and I were standing in the middle of the garden path. Baxter visibly shook, his pencil clicking against his clipboard nervously. As much as I tried to assure him that I would do all the talking, the very idea of being near unfamiliar demons seemed to chill him to the core. We waited in trepidation for a few moments before a demon came jogging near us. She was wearing overly-revealing sportswear, and strongly resembled an anthropomorphized komodo dragon. I leaned over to Baxter and told him that she had a distinctly red aura. As she neared us I stuck out my hand and waved to her.

"Uh, excuse me, miss!"

She stopped next to us, breathing heavily. It seemed like she was intentionally breathing in a way that made her ample chest move more than was necessary. She looked down at me and licked her lips, a small amount of purple saliva coating her plump lips. I immediately felt nervous around her; her demeanor felt like a sexual predator in the most literal sense of the words. She spoke with the intonation of an adult phone operator.

"Yesss?"

I heard Baxter whimper next to me, but I tried to remain steadfast. Plastering on a fake smile I looked up at her.

"Th-thank you for stopping! My friend and I are taking a survey for… uh… product research."

The lizard woman chuckled seductively and reaching into a pocket on her revealing shorts, pulling out a lollipop, which she sucked seductively.

"Go ahead, sssugar."

I nodded.

"Well, first and foremost, if it's not too personal, would you tell us what you arrived in Hell for?"

The woman chuckled again and knelt down to my height. I could practically smell the pheromones she was giving off, and I began to sweat almost as much as she was. Fluttering her eyelashes at me, she reached up to her lollipop, took it out, and shoved it in my mouth before I could object. She giggled, both menacingly and seductively.

"My bassstard boyfriend killed me for sssleeping with the football team. The whole football team."

Baxter and I just stood there like mannequins, so the lizard demoness laughed a final time, stood up and started walking past us.

"Oh, and by the way, you two really need to get better at lying…"

She slapped my rear end with her tail, making me yelp, before she jogged off again. Baxter and I continued to just stand there for a while before he spoke up in a near-whisper.

"So… lust?"

I nodded slowly, still dazed.

"Yes. Lust."

It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized I still had her lollipop in my slack-jawed mouth. I pulled it out, and realized in shock that the stem had her Hellphone number printed on it.

About an hour passed with Baxter and me attempting to get decent data from passing demons. For better or worse, we didn't get a single straight answer; instead, nearly every demon assaulted us in some way. Most of the red-mist demons made sexual advances on us, violet demons just told us how great they were before and after death, yellow-aura demons wanted us to pay them for answers, etc. In this way, we actually got better information than we could have hoped for by asking questions. Eventually Baxter and I weakly moved over to the bench and sat down, supremely exhausted. My clothes were disheveled from numerous blue demons trying to beat me up for bothering them. Glancing at Baxter, I couldn't help but sigh heavily. He looked like he had just come back from a war: his expression was blank with a frightening thousand-yard stare. His face was covered in lipstick marks from when a particularly frisky red-aura'd eel-like demon had taken a fancy to him. I managed to speak up after a few minutes of rest.

"Baxter… did we get any answers?..."

He didn't speak but passed me his clipboard in silence. I looked down at his scribbled notes and say that he had actually managed to complete our task: the seven colors were arranged in their prismatic pattern, and beneath them were the seven deadly sins, in order from least severe to most deadly. It was a direct correlation: red went with lust, orange went with gluttony, yellow with greed, and so on. I grunted and passed the clipboard back to him haphazardly.

"Great. All that work and it turns out to be that simple. Good."

A few more minutes passed before I managed to get to my feet.

"Alright, Baxter, let's get back to the hotel and-"

I looked back at the mad scientist, who still sat there catatonic. Id chuckled.

"Shit, he's broken. Do we know anyone that fixes fish? A vet maybe?"

I sighed and walked over to my friend. Crouching down, I put his arms over my shoulders and lifted him onto my back. Thankfully his thin frame wasn't that heavy. I grumbled to myself as I moved back towards the Hazbin Hotel.

"Come on, genius. Let's get you back to the lab."

I must have gotten a lot of strange looks from passing demons as I half-carried, half-dragged Baxter back home. Honestly I hardly registered their faces anymore; the passing demons were more like multicolored flames to me now, each one telling some story of how they arrived here. It took a conscious effort not to start making judgement calls on everyone I passed; how could I look at a blue demon without worrying about their brutality? How could I smile at a yellow demon when I knew they might just want something from me? I sighed and tried to focus on other things. Eventually I focused on the sounds of the city: cars whizzed by on the street to my right, demons chatted on their Hellphones, music blared from nearby bars, and the TV's in the electronics store I was passing showed a multitude of unsavory channels. Id groaned, seemingly reading my thoughts.

"Ugh. Such a racket makes me wish we were back in the junk ya-"

Id stopped mid-sentence. Pausing in my tracks, I turned to look down at him.

"Id? What's wrong… what?!"

The shadow at my feet seemed to be frozen mid-sentence. It wasn't simply that he had stopped talking; his entire being had been stopped. Above his head floated two parallel vertical lines, which seemed vaguely similar to a typical "pause" symbol on a VCR. Looking around in shock I realized that Id wasn't the only one. The music had stopped playing from the bars, and the cars had all stopped in the middle of the road. Frantically I scanned the demons around me, and sure enough, everyone had that same pause symbol above their head. Placing Baxter gently on the ground, I saw that he had it too. Trying to remain calm, I looked more closely at my surroundings. In addition to the symbol, every demon's aura was slightly different as well. The usual ever-present swirling pools of energy had stopped spinning completely. Glancing back to the cars, I realized that it wasn't just living things. Yes, the drivers had all stopped, but the cars themselves had stopped as well. There were no crashes, as if momentum had stopped entirely. I attempted to calm my breath and listened out for any sort of movement. Eventually I heard a slight crackling to my left. Turning around in growing fear, I saw that the screens on the TVs were still active. Their screens displayed nothing but static and emitted a light crackling sound, before they all suddenly turned off. I waited a moment in shock before the largest television in the center flashed on again, now displaying a demonic face. Two red eyes stared back at me, the left eye possessing concentric black rings with a jagged pupil. A grinning maw of light-blue, jagged teeth seemed to be amused by my anxiety. I knew immediately who it was. The most powerful Overlord in Hell. The Electricity Demon himself. I couldn't help but whisper his voice aloud.

"...Vox…"

I just stood there for what felt like an eternity as the television stared at me. I had no way to know if he could actually see or hear me, so I decided just to be quiet. Eventually his mouth opened and he vegan to talk. Much like Alastor, Vox's voice was filled with static. However, unlike radio interference, this sounded more like trying to get television signals during a storm.

"You know, most demons bow when they see me."

That brought be back to my senses somewhat. Clearly he could see and hear me, and he was obviously the reason everything had stopped. I stood my ground, my fear hardening into defiance. As a grimace formed on my face, Vox just laughed menacingly.

"Ah. I suppose you aren't most demons then. Then again, I already knew that, halfblood."

My grimace deepened. He obviously knew I was part angel now. Remaining silent, Vox continued.

"Although even before your makeover you were an oddity, child. Two souls attached to one body. What a novelty."

As much as I tried to remain emotionless, I must have revealed my surprise on my face. Vox knew about my origin before I ever did. Vox chuckled again.

"Oh, I know a lot about you, halfblood. More than you know about yourself, it would seem. More importantly, however…"

His smile dropped in an instant, his expression turning to a look of pure rage.

"I know you've been a thorn in my side for far too long."

I recoiled slightly at his change in tone. True to his appearance, he seemed to change personality on a whim with no warning. He continued, his voice filled with anger.

"Do you have any fucking idea how much you're costing me?! Valentino's lost face, both literally and metaphorically, has cost the Overlords much of their reputation! I still have workers trying to get Rosie out of that fucking debris pile!"

I couldn't help but smirk at the comment about the insect-like Overlord that Alastor had trapped, much to Vox's fury. He opened his mouth to speak again, but stopped to compose himself. His expression rapidly shifted back to one of happiness.

"Regardless of if you take the situation seriously or not, I'm here to tell you that your meddling ends. Now."

As he finished his sentence, the other screens in the store began to turn on one after another. Each one had the same demon in different pictures: Niffty. Her smiling face was plastered over and over again: pictures of her sewing, or cleaning, or writing. Some of the pictures showed the two of us watching movies or eating together. I grit my teeth, immediately growing angry and speaking for the first time.

"Don't you dare-"

Vox snarled at me again.

"You are in no position to command me to do shit!"

He paused and composed himself again.

"Now then, if you understand what is at stake for both of us, I think you'll be much more reasonable to follow my demands, yes?"

I ground my teeth together but remained silent, glaring at the television demon. His expression flipped again as he shouted at me.

"Answer when spoken to, you freak! Do. You. Understand?!"

I let out a choked reply.

"Crystal clear."

Vox grinned at me and continued.

"Lovely. In that case, you should have no issues following my instructions perfectly."

The screen nearest to his face flickered, changing from a scene of me and Niffty eating dinner to the clock tower. It was a current image, displaying that only 190 days remained until the next Purge.

"On the day of the Extermination I am going to send my associates to raze the Hazbin Hotel and anyone that is foolish enough to stop me. I don't intend for you to be one of those fools. Do I make myself clear?"

I nodded slowly, rage in my gut.

"Excellent. It's quite simple, really. I don't even need you to partake in the destruction; for all I care, you can take your girl and anyone else you want to save and flee to the other side of Hell."

Vox's eyes lit up like neon tubes as he spoke.

"I'm sure this is redundant, but you are not to tell anyone about my plans. We can't have Alastor getting word, wouldn't you agree?"

I nodded again, showing no emotions.

"Ah, I see why that idiot chose you as his apprentice now. You're good at following directions. Until next time… halfblood."

With that the screens flickered back to their original broadcasts. Sound and movement returned all at once, making me jump slightly. Id continued speaking at my feet.

"-rd. At least the Hellrats were quiet."

I looked around in a panic before trying to regain my senses. Id looked up at me quizzically.

"Yo, what the hell is your deal? When did you put fishdick down?"

I looked down at Id, then back at Baxter, who was still awe-struck by the interaction with other demons. Attempting to steady my breathing, I chuckled slightly.

"Oh, uh… he's heavier than he looks, haha."

Picking Baxter back up and slinging him over my shoulders, I continued trudging back towards the hotel. Id made some comments about Baxter's weight and I tried to listen to the world again, which was easier said than done.

190 days. I had only 190 days to think of a plan to save the hotel.