Before Chroma even hit the ground, Bendy shouted out, "WHAT THE FUCK!?"
His friend, Sapphire, flinched as she slightly moved away from him as he began to ooze more ink out of his body.
This was meant to be a simple press conference made on a whim to have an official counter to VoxGames. Maybe Chroma would've launched a new phone branch of Varvideniye. Or maybe he has an insider that allowed him to make some of his own games.
Instead, Chroma was assassinated by an angelic weapon. He's now permanently dead.
For Bendy, this was a disaster for his long term plans.
He wanted to recruit Chroma for his Syndicate in order to consolidate their opposition against Vox in the TV industry and get ready to expand the Syndicate into other areas. But instead, Varvideniye would implode on itself and Bendy was not in the correct position to be taking advantage of it.
The blue parrot sinner next to him grumbled as she also figured out what Chroma's death means for her, "Agh, Stardom is about to explode into chaos, isn't it?! I have to get my resources out of there!"
Thanks to Chroma's fairly significant power, he had managed to keep most major Overlords out of the city, even if their products were sold there. That meant Stardom was one of the more stable cities in Hell. Even accounting for the common turf wars that often took place there due to the lack of any strong Overlords.
Now that their stabilizing hand was gone, it was likely those turf wars were about to become much more destructive as the rewards of victory grew higher.
But the question is, who killed Chroma?
Turning to his partner, Bendy asked, "Saph, do you think Vox was behind that kill?"
Sapphire was in the middle of punching numbers into her phone, but she paused to answer his question, "Ah… Nah. Even Vox can't shake off the massive stigma of killin' someone like that."
Ah, that was true.
Since Carmilla revolutionized angelic weaponry, there's always been a bit of a stigma surrounding the use of angelic guns. Namely, the way they make killing Overlords too easy.
Because angelic weapons cut through the toughest sinners like butter, many assassinations back in the day used to use angelic spears and basically threw themselves into an Overlord in an attempt to cut their head off.
But with angelic guns, the risk was essentially gone as you could kill someone from hundreds of meters away.
So, once every Overlord realized this, they essentially had an unspoken rule put into place. If anyone kills an Overlord like that, they couldn't be trusted, and everyone would immediately gang up on them to kill them.
Of course, it still happened, and the enforcement of the gang-up was spotty at best. Usually the stronger Overlords could get away with it as long as they didn't straight up claim they did it. But it still helped lessen the amount of Overlords that would be shot without being able to defend themselves.
Being the supplier of these weapons, Carmilla basically pinky promised to keep track of who has what guns, but then didn't keep up with her pinky promise because it was basically impossible to do in Hell.
So what would most likely happen is Carmilla would apologize that their weapons got into the wrong hands, and then do exactly nothing about it.
In fact, Bendy could probably already recite the statement Carmine Industries would put out following this assassination right now…
Feeling a nudge, he faced Sapphire as she asked, "So, with Chroma gone, who are we going to recruit instead?"
Crossing his arms, he hummed and thought about it out loud, "Well… I think with Vox's attention about to be entirely on me, we're going to need some more protection. We can't really go to Carmilla, she'd laugh us out on principle. So… We'd have to look towards someone a bit more desperate, but still in the weapons industry."
Sapphire followed the logic, but pointed out, "The weapons industry is basically a monopoly by now. Carmilla was ruthless in kicking out her competitors."
"Right, but you know those veteran cities? Carmilla doesn't want to try and fight them and waste a bunch of resources on them. They usually produce their own guns," Bendy said, recalling someone he met a long time ago, "There's someone I know who used to participate in the Scramble for Hell for the weapons industry. If he's still kicking around in one of those veteran cities, he might join us."
She looked somewhat displeased at the idea, "He wouldn't be that strong though, right? We'd basically have to carry him and protect his company for, Hell, decades until he gets strong enough."
Bendy agreed, "Right, but it's not like we're going to start shit soon. This is a long-term plan. So we have a few decades to spare."
"...Alright, fine, who are we looking for anyway?" Sapphire caved in and asked.
"He's an old crow named Hans Krieg."
Holding the title of the 2nd strongest Overlord in a city should've been a prestigious title. It should've been the sort of title that, as long as you could maintain it, basically meant you could do anything except try and mess with the actual strongest Overlord.
Unfortunately for Irving, an alligator sinner, he lived in Stardom. That meant his position really didn't mean anything as he only lived in Stardom with Chroma's permission.
Although his soul wasn't actually owned by Chroma, it sure did feel like it sometimes.
His company, Melbouria, was the biggest carnival company in Stardom. Meaning they controlled how the festivals in Stardom take place. The food, the venues, the rides, the attractions, everything.
Now, in terms of souls, Irving didn't actually have that many. Just a bit shy of 2,000 souls that he gained over the course of about 3 decades since ascending to the CEO spot. Unfortunately, people aren't very willing to give up their souls for the carnival.
Where Melbouria really shined, though, was in its cash. Their carnivals generated millions of dollars in revenue as middle-class sinners take the few vacations days their Overlords grant them every year in order to enjoy their days in Stardom at one of their fairs.
But even with this comfortable and quite frankly unbreakable position Irving was given…
…He still wanted more.
He was a sinner. How could anyone blame him for wanting to rise above his current position?
So when the news of Chroma's death reached his ears…
Irving smiled, for he knew that his time had come.
Picking up the angelic spear at his side, a relic from almost 200 years ago passed down to him from his old mentor, Irving called out to anyone listening, "I'M GONNA BE THE KING OF STARDOM!"
To the ones who had been with him for the longest, this sounded like a promise he would fulfill no matter what.
To the tourists, it was just another delusion that they understood, even if they all knew it would lead nowhere.
"Chroma is dead?"
Vox was in the middle of checking out the progress of his new flagship game for VoxGames when one of his secretaries suddenly told him about the news of one of his so-called rivals.
Meelo, some kind of plant monster, nodded, "Yes sir. He was shot by an angelic weapon seconds into his press conference today. We are still not sure about who shot him, however."
It didn't even take him 5 seconds to figure out who shot Chroma.
"Plaze is in Stardom?" Vox mumbled as he thought of the implications of that.
He actually wasn't expecting Plaze to get back into the ring so soon. It's barely even been a week, and he's already trying to take over Stardom? For how stupid he was, the robot sinner sure did work fast.
Maybe Mehira really did have some sort of crazy plan. He would have to account for her presence a bit more in his future plans, then…
Looking at his secretary, Vox commanded him, "Send some people to Stardom, figure out what's going there and blast it on the news. Turn that place into an active warzone so it screws over whoever is trying to rule the city, got it?"
"Yes sir!" Meelo quickly departed without delay, ensuring he remembered every single word his master spoke.
Putting his hands behind his back, he wondered what Bendy would do now that he was the sole competitor against VoxTech's TVs. The trio had been in a comfortable stalemate where Vox was basically just keeping them alive for fun while the other two were sharing about 20% of the market together. Now that it was just Bendy, will he become desperate, or will he fold?
Animation would be a nice thing to have on his TV.
Although Bendy lived in Pentagram City, it would still take a serious amount of time to deal with him if he really wanted to bring him down. After all, Bendy has built up a very good relationship with the Overlords around him and bringing it all down wasn't going to be easy.
But maybe it'd be better to try and find Plaze again instead?
He had seen his new worker's progress on what he wanted to be his newest flagship game, Vox Adventures. Basically a game all about his greatest accomplishments. But the game itself was a buggy mess that barely worked half the time it was on.
According to the workers, all of the most competent coders ended up staying with Plaze or weren't there when Vox came.
It was suspicious, and Vox didn't like it.
So, if Vox were to just find Plaze again, he'd find the most competent coders and he could take them by force.
It wasn't a bad idea. In fact, he couldn't really find any argument to not do it. Maybe they'd rather just kill themselves instead of working for VoxTech?
Although, if Plaze or Mehira had that angelic gun in their arsenal, and were willing to use it on Chroma like that…
Well, even Vox wasn't invincible.
Best case scenario, Plaze became a puppet of Mehira and would be super willing to join Vox as an underling, maybe the head of the gaming sector, now that he understood how bad it could be without him.
Most likely scenario, he has to avoid angelic gunfire while fighting the two.
Worst case, he gets hit in the head by their angelic gun and fucking die.
Humming, he decides to wait it out for a while.
He'll wait for things to stabilize in Stardom before committing to a decision. Maybe see if his current coders in VoxGames would get better before deciding to find better coders.
Patience is a virtue, one that he had in spades…
"Sir!" A different secretary suddenly called out to him, "Alastor was just spotted taking a break in front of one of your TVs!"
"Seriously?!" Vox grinned as an opportunity to pester his rival fell into his lap, "Oh, I'm going to make that idiot regret it!"
He quickly rushes to his control room, manifesting himself into the TVs as fast as possible as he already had a script in his mind.
He couldn't fight the Radio Demon just yet. But he sure could make his life more miserable!
"Lord Marbas, a report has come for you," One of his imp butlers came to him holding a stack of paper in hand.
Using his mechanical arm, Marbas quietly took the report out of his hands as he raised it to his skull head, reading what had come for him.
It was related to the city nearby his estate. Apparently, the Overlord that had ruled over it for several decades had died and the entire city was erupting into chaos.
While Marbas usually didn't give a damn about most sinner politics, that particular Overlord… What was his name…
Ah, it was scribbled on the top of his page. Chroma. He was one of the people who decided what appeared on the TVs made by sinners.
As someone who enjoys viewing the advancement of technology by mortals, he did have some slight favor for people like those. It's a shame he died.
Anyway, the city is erupting into chaos…
"Block the road that connects from here to the city." Marbas ordered, getting a submissive nod from the butler, "I don't want those dirty sinners trying to escape onto my estate."
"It will be done, my lord," His imp butler said, departing elegantly.
He had created his estate here precisely because it was far away from the center of the pride ring. It would be annoying if he had to move again.
Well, at least this gives him an excuse to use the plane and helicopter more often.
Ah, right, the petition to create special Hellavators for those vehicles. He had better finish it and submit it to the rest of the Ars Goetia as quickly as possible…
AN:
The great thing about the Ars Goetia is that they have a lot of cool and unique designs and since they don't have words or even names, I can pick and choose the coolest and decide what their deal is.
Written April 3rd.
[That guy appeared in Helluva Boss, Mastermind for like 1 second. I should probably tag this as a crossover with Helluva Boss, now that I think about it.]