The year is 1987. The Extermination has just finished, and now the sinners of Hell rise up back from their hiding spots, ready to do great evil upon their fellow man.

Meanwhile, Plaze returns to his headquarters, the building slightly damaged, but not made dysfunctional.

Near the entrance, he spotted his 2nd best worker, Herta, carrying out a body that was slain by an angel.

The sight discomforts him, but he pushes down the thought. He didn't know them.

Eventually, the doll sinner spots Plaze's group of 10. She didn't call out to them, but she did acknowledge their existence.

Then, she unceremoniously dropped the dead body on the street.

Walking up to Herta, Plaze told her, "Alright, I already discussed this with everyone here, but we're moving out of Carmilla's territory and moving to where Sergeant Hammer's old territory was, got it? So we're gonna have to move all of our computers over there."

Her face told him that she really didn't like that idea, "Seriously? Moving out now? I get it, but what a hassle…"

"I'm trying to get this done today," Plaze said, Herta's face progressively getting more upset, "So, start now. Pack everything up, I'll come back to help escort all of our equipment to our new headquarters. You'll be in charge of this, I'll be securing our location and making sure people don't steal our territory."

With a tired salute, she obeys his commands, "Yes sir."

As Herta wrangled all of the newbies into helping her pack up, Plaze walked toward Jessie, who was still in a conversation with her mom.

While he didn't feel great about interrupting that conversation, Mehira repeatedly stressed the importance of getting back to work as soon as the extermination was over. There was no such thing as a vacation day in Hell, not even after the extermination.

Not to mention, Hammer's former territory was in the south western parts of Pentagram City, and Carmilla's territory was way up north. It takes roughly an hour to just drive across the city, so it was important that Plaze managed to get everything set up as fast as possible.

"Jessie," Plaze stopped their conversation dead in its tracks, "You're coming with me back north to set up our new headquarters."

Nodding, Jessie didn't seem that stressed as she confirmed, "Alright, I get it. I'll just follow you around for now."

Then, just to be polite, Plaze turned to Pam, Jessie's mother, "You're Pam, right? Your daughter has been a great help in getting me started. I assure you, you'll both be treated well here at The Plaza."

Pam smiled, "Why, thank you for recognizing the potential in my baby girl! She had a tough life because of me, and it's good to see her finally be able to climb up the ladder."

With that, he immediately pulled out his own radar, finding the nearest car that can drive him.

"Alright, Jessie, come with me," Plaze started making his way to steal a car, "Mehira told me that she's keeping an eye on the situation up north. So we'll meet her there and we can work from there."

With that, the busiest day of the year began.

Rolling over a corpse with his foot, Bendy, the Ink Sinner, grumbled over the ruined state of his favorite bar, "Those bastards and dumb sons of bitches. Why the hell did they stay in here, and why the fuck did those angels have to fight so hard and ruin the place?"

The Blues was an amazing bar with great singers and drinks. Now, because of some idiots, it was going to take days to fully fix and get operational again.

His friend, the owner of the bar, Sapphire, was similarly upset, "I just heard that one of my singers went and died! I can't believe it, I actually liked her! Now she's dead!"

The woman, a blue parrot sinner, was an Overlord specializing in picking up talented singers and funding them. Then she loaned them out to various businesses for favors, souls, and money.

Meanwhile, he was the owner of both an animation company and a TV company. The animation part was his main thing as an Overlord, while the TVs were simply for broadcasting his animation.

They worked together because of their shared tastes in both music and art, and became good friends and business partners.

And like clockwork every year, after the extermination they come together to bitch and moan about the problems that the exterminators caused them.

"Tch, who was it?" Bendy asked, picking up an angelic spear from the ground. That would be useful, maybe only just to sell to Carmilla, though.

Tapping her hand on her forehead, Sapphire willed the name to come to her head, "Her name is… Come on… Come on… Belinda! Right, Belinda. Damn it, I really hate these angels."

Rolling his eyes, he tiredly pointed out, "We all do, Saph. But we can't do anything about it, can we?"

Every sinner in Hell fantasizes about being able to take the fight to heaven and to be able to fight the exterminators head on. But they were just that, fantasies.

They didn't even have the capability to harm them. Maybe the strongest Overlords had a chance, but they never tried.

He himself was an Overlord, but even amongst his competition in the TV industry, he had none of the qualities that would launch him towards the top.

He wasn't as early as Vox, and nowhere as strong as him. He didn't have the desperation of Chroma, who well and truly threw everything at the wall in the hopes of something sticking.

He was just in the middle. Average. Doomed to be overtaken.

Letting off a hard groan, unbecoming of a great singer like herself, Sapphire leaned back onto a wall with a dumb hypothetical, "Say, do you think 2 Overlords, pick any of them, can beat a single exterminator?"

He scoffed at the question. It was just another random brain teaser that would get them to think about something unique for a minute before moving on.

But then he thought about it some more.

No, he didn't think that 2 Overlords would be enough to beat even just a singular exterminator.

But that got him thinking about Overlord team-ups.

Usually, they were formed by weaker Overlords looking to overtake a stronger one. Or occasionally, like just recently with Plaze and Carmilla, they were to split up the spoils of defeating an Overlord as it would create a massive target on your back to have too many fingers in too many different pies.

But those alliances usually broke up. The longest running example of an Overlord alliance was between two men, Vox and Valentino, who were able to bring their two industries together in an advantageous way that benefitted them both.

…Somewhat similar to what he and Sapphire were doing.

Just the two of them wouldn't be able to do much. But what about three? Four?

The Seven Deadly Sins of Hell. Bendy originally thought that they were all independent from one another, but he eventually found out that they all worked together on a few projects every now and then.

That was the template. That was the key.

But where was he supposed to find his sins?

Shifting his eyes to Sapphire, he slowly started speaking, "No… But if we had 7…"

Narrowing her eyes, Sapphire questioned him, "Huh? What are you talking about?"

Leaning towards her, he made the choice to alter the history of Hell forever, "Say, I have an idea…"

The turf war started again as though the exterminators had never come.

The petty Overlord in charge of the territory was killed in the extermination, not having recovered from his hangover the previous night before to retreat to safer places. Now, it was again a free for all as ambitious sinners tried to take over the free territory to start their journey of becoming an Overlord.

With a sly grin on his face, the dirtily dressed hair sinner brandished his Carmine-branded assault rifle, looking back at his teammates, "Alright, ready to raid this warehouse, men?"

Getting agreements from them, all holding their own Carmine-brand weapons, Dendro, the petty Haircut Overlord, shouted out, "Alright! Let's break in!"

Kicking the door down, he and his team rushed into the warehouse-

Only to see a Carmilla-brand tank, the fresh paint still in the process of drying, staring them right down barrel first.

"Oh, fuck-"

Their attempts to take over the warehouse fails as half of it disappears in a massive explosion.

Their failure means the turf war continues on for longer, as less territory is consolidated under individuals.

For Carmilla, this is wonderful news, as it means that more weapons will be sold to fools who believe that the winners of the turf wars would ever be able to stabilize.

There has never been an Overlord who managed to ascend much higher than a few thousand souls after winning a turf war. It was a bucket of crabs meant to keep you down forever.

Carmilla smiles, happy that her tanks are selling well despite only having been created mere hours ago.

Holding up the neck of a stickman sinner that was trying to take a single block out of Plaze's territory, he has to hear him hastily apologize, "Sir! Sir! I'm sorry, I'm sorry- I'm an idiot! I'm retarded! Please don't- I- I just have, uh. Please spare me!"

Looking at him, Plaze could tell that he didn't even own his own soul. He wasn't sure who had his soul, but it didn't really matter. He didn't even need him.

Decapitating the sinner, Plaze wiped his hands clean as he turned to Mehira, who had similarly killed the other sinners in that gang.

Except for one, apparently.

"This one's soul is still free," She said, pushing the deer sinner over to him, "You want her?"

Why would he ever decline getting a free soul under his command?

Smiling, he leaned down over to the terrified girl, "Alright, here's the deal. I get to own your soul, and I don't make your life a living hell. Do you accept?"

Knowing she had no other option, she took his hand, Plaze's signature forming in the land around them.

Tossing her away, he looked at Mehira, "Thanks for helping me with all of this junk, by the way. You've been a great help."

She brought in a lot of her own underlings to help secure his territory, and now they were just cleaning up the few who passed them.

Though, strangely enough, Mehira's underlings didn't seem too talkative. But he didn't pry.

Meanwhile, his workers were all busy setting up their new HQ, which was still a work in progress and he would definitely have to hire someone to expand it and make it unique.

That could be saved for later, though.

"Not a problem," The purple witch started to float, sitting on air, "That was the last intruder, wasn't it? I believe we should be getting back to your HQ."

Nodding, Plaze mentioned, "Yeah, we should. From the few phone calls I got from Herta, it doesn't sound like my new workers I got from Hammer are that good. But I'm willing to forgive them if they start getting better."

With an amused look on her face, she pointed out, "Aren't you trying to start a whole new industry? It'll be everyone's first time trying to use it. You should be more lenient on them."

Walking towards his HQ, he frowned, "That's exactly why I'm being hard. We need to make a good first impression on everyone, and I need the best. If I don't push them to work harder, they're going to give me garbage results. We're still working on simple games that take only a few weeks to create and mass-produce. When we get to the point where we're dedicating years on things, I want things to be perfect."

Mehira seemed as though she wanted to argue a bit more, but she just dropped the topic with a shrug, "Well, it's your souls. Do what you want."

A week came and went as his territory stabilized and his workers got to work, forgetting that extermination was just a week ago.

Entering the office, Plaze finds that all of his workers were working in groups on their respective projects, as intended.

There were more people working on converting the magic-created games into usable code than there were people creating new games through the magic he loans them through Herta, but that was fine, he supposed.

Herta seemed to be in her own office, since she wasn't around at the moment, so he took the opportunity to check in on his coders.

Leaning over the shoulder of one of his old guards, Yarati, a rooster sinner who was from Turkey, he checked his code with a quick glance.

He doesn't comment on how Yarati stiffened upon realizing his presence.

Finding an error, he scoffed, "Here, let me fix that for you."

5 minutes later, all still over the shoulder of the rooster, he fixed the code.

Then, he patted him on the back, "Do better next time."

Leaving for another coder, he decided to check in on one of the new coders. If he remembered correctly, the humanoid sinner with minor cat characteristics was named Himiko.

Satan, he really hated the fact that he had to come into Hell looking like a monstrosity, while this random girl came in basically as a human.

With that negative thought in his head, he pushed her aside, causing her to yelp, while checking her coding.

"Hm…" He hummed, making sure it was all correct, inadvertently scaring her.

"I-I'm sorry, sir!" She apologized in advance, on her hands and knees, "I'm still new so please forgive me-"

"No, you're fine," Plaze cut her off, causing her to 'huh?' in confusion before he elaborated, "This is all correct. You did everything right. How long have you been working on this?"

Blinking, she slowly responded, "I've been working on that for 2 days…"

2 days? Implying that she was working on something else for the other 5? That's impressive.

"Good work, Himiko," He praised, making her expression light up, "Keep it up."

It was probably some sort of genetic thing in Japanese people that allowed them to make good games. After all, a lot of those games that Plaze copied off of in Hell were Japanese. American games really didn't compare while he was alive.

With his workers visibly working much harder now, he decided that he had done his job and went into his office to draft up his newest ideas.

He was getting a hang of this work cycle, and as soon as the profits kicked in with their newest release at the end of the month, everything should be smooth sailing from here.

Herta was a prodigy. Anyone who has ever worked with her immediately figured it out and treated her accordingly.

By accordingly, she meant that everyone expected her to have the solutions to every problem.

In Plaze's world, she did not have the capability to provide solutions for every problem. It was simply too much.

See, she respected Plaze a lot. Really, she did. He was almost everything she wanted in a boss.

He was actually skilled in their field of work. He was capable of pointing out mistakes and fixing them. Lastly, he was allowing her a lot of creative freedom in how she wanted to do things.

But the problems he had…

Well, he was a prodigy as well. In fact, he was almost too prodigious, as once he heard of the rest of the studio falling behind his own schedule, he believed it was their fault for not being able to learn fast enough.

Then, at some points, he would just take a look at the code and fix it himself. The issue was, he coded a lot better than almost everyone here, and after he fixed something, half the day after that was usually spent trying to understand what Plaze did and how to fix it.

It was slightly better when he took over the magical side of coding. That was usually easier to decipher. Unfortunately, magical coding was infinitely easier than actually reverse engineering it into reproducible code, so it wasn't much of a consolation prize when he did so.

Then, of course, she was granted the position of manager. The problem with that was that because of Plaze's expectations that couldn't be met by the mundanites, they increasingly went to her for help.

While she wouldn't call herself a great teacher, Plaze was arguably worse in that he didn't teach at all.

So, a lot of her day was simply trying to get her workers up to a standard that would, at the very least, be acceptable to their Overlord.

They've reached that standard, but his expectations are rising almost every day. People were falling behind and he was pissed.

That being said, they were able to pick up the slack to make the 7 games he wanted by the end of the month. 4 copies of things Plaze saw on Earth, and three Hell originals, with the flagship game among them being Clyde Bot.

It was a platformer game, similar to Mario, the game Plaze brought down. But he wanted to convert everything to original characters since he claimed that it would build his own brand.

She thinks he was just being prideful and not wanting the majority of his image to be tied to already existing characters not created in his image.

Though, Clyde Bot wasn't all that similar to Plaze. In fact, she thought it kind of looked like Vox…

Well, only so far that his face was a screen. Everything else about Clyde Bot was different.

Either way, she carried the report to Plaze's office, where he was hard at work gossipping on the phone to Mehira about…

Listening in for a second, he hears her boss make the outlandish claim that he could take on 3 Overlords at the same time. She doesn't hear the succubus's response but she imagines she's laughing at him.

Well, everyone deserved breaks. As a manager, she has a ton of hours saved up where she could do whatever she wanted. She just doesn't use them because she's both a workaholic and her team would collapse without her.

Opening the door, Plaze quickly told Mehira, "Alright, Herta just entered, I'll talk to you later."

Then, Herta placed the reports on his desk, "Here are all of the information about the games, sir."

Smiling, Plaze picks up the paper, "Good! Good! I'll take a look at these and play through all of them right now…"

Then, he remembered, "Ah, right. Jessie is making a new console with more data capacity, so our games can be bigger, got it? Be ready for that once she finishes it."

Given how they were already struggling with what they had right now, unless that new console came with an easier way to code things, all it was going to do was hammer the morale of her team.

But alas, that's her duty to fix.

Suddenly, his secretary, Alha, entered the room with a nervous expression on his face.

Quite frankly, Herta did not envy him. She knew what news he had to bring to Plaze. It was the most obvious outcome of not being allied to Carmine anymore.

So, she quickly made her way out of the office, savoring Alha's betrayed expression as he wanted someone else in the room with him.

Hopefully, for his sake, Plaze takes the news of having very little profit this month well.

AN:

Oh look, Plaze is doing Overlord things.

This will last a whole chapter before his canon event kicks in.

Written December 24th.