P**K!

Axel glances warily at the bird-thing, tracing the edges of the phone’s buttons with the pad of his thumb for a few fortifying seconds. Then, he puts on a smile unfitting of a man whose face is explosion-adjacent, and punches in a long number.

The call rings two or three times before he gets an answer.

“Hey, ma! I just wanted to check in on how everyone and — oh. Axial? Could you put ma on?” he pauses to listen, “Well, pass on a message for me, yeah? It’s about that money I’m sending home… yeah, yeah, I know she does, but I…” an anxious, startled expression tugs at his confident grin, “I will be! I promised, didn’t I? You’re gonna be blown away by my success in no time! Just keep on watching TV!!”

“Oh, and could you call up the Immortal TV Network and send the Director over? I don’t feel so good about working away from home anymore. All the roles out here are too low-calibre for someone as awesome as me. It’s not that I’m lonely or anything.”

He remains facing away, trying to pay attention solely to his cast redoing their work. But, if one looks closely enough they might notice the bird’s ears droop little by little as the call goes on. He can empathize with the struggle and family values. Maybe he should cut this idiot some slack...

-Or not. At that ‘low-calibre’ comment he whips around, jaw dropping in shock. It’s obvious that Axel is just trying to hide his personal failures and worries with such a remark, but the Conductor isn’t about to just let the guy throw his career under the bus! He crosses his arms, gripping his sleeves tight with frustration, and waits impatiently for the demon to say his piece.

The low lights on set do nothing to improve Axel’s dejected appearance. His face wet and stained red, ink dripping from his obscenely-shaped eyebrows and a shadow cast over the angles of his face, the ex-star looks like a soaked rat as he arches his back and up-faces his palms in plea.

“But…! But…! I’m the Dark Hero! Come on, baby, I’ve gotta be on something — anything!!” he stresses, but stops himself short. A brief spark of rational thought informs him that if he keeps begging, the Conductor is likely to choke him with the chain of his necklace.

Frankly, he doesn’t need the strain on his vocal chords. Or his emotional state.

So he sighs, and he slumps, and his voice tweaks like the sound of exhaustion on a vinyl record. “Can I at least borrow a phone? I can’t afford to pay for service anymore.”

A wise decision. Vying for sympathy isn’t an approach he’s prone to giving into. Even now, with Axel looking so pathetic the Express Owls were trying not to get upset on his behalf, every fibre of the Conductor’s being just wants to tell him to hurry up and shove off.

The only thing that stops him is the fact that he knows full well that it’d be even harder to get rid of the demon if he’s effectively stranded at the studio.

“Fine.” he concedes. The Conductor reaches into his coat and rummages around before abruptly shoving something into Axel’s hand. Looking at it more closely, it’s pretty clear to see why the old bird has no quarrels palming his own phone off to a complete stranger; it’s one of those chunky Old People™ mobiles with oversized buttons and absolutely no functions besides handling texts and calls. The most advanced thing about it is probably the fact it can play Snake.

Rejection has an uncanny likeness to being hit in the face with a board. Through his dismay, Axel feels his heart as it pounds with humiliated fervour – heating his face to the very tips of his ears.

He flicks and shakes his hands free of loose dye, clearly in grief of its mark on his face and its quiet drip from his claws. It rivulets from his hairline, platinum blonde dyed bloody and fragmented like ink spilled onto sand. If all else failed, at least he could lay back down on the floor and pretend to be the scene’s corpse.

“What?!” he yowls, a sound bubbling from his throat that could be a laugh, if only it wasn’t so small and tested. “B-but that was clearly just a mistake! Not even mine — someone left all this blood lying around! Was it a prank?” 

“You’ve gotta give me another chance, man,” he grovels, just short of getting back down onto his knees. “I’ll do anything!!… I can wear a swimsuit!”

The Conductor chooses to willfully ignore that swimsuit comment. Any begging accompanying it similarly fell on deaf ears. All Axel’s excuses do is dig him an even deeper hole; at this point even the role of ‘uncredited dead body’ might be beyond him.

“I’m. Not. Interested. I wasn’t interested when you barged onto me set and I’m definitely not interested now that yer tryin’ to pin your screw-up on my crew!” the bird hisses, every feather on his body bristling with his flaring temper. He marches up to the demon and stands directly before him in a blatant attempt to square up. “Scram already!! I have work to do- just do us both a favor and quit while yer ahead!”

“What? N-no, wait!” Axel yelps, but quickly roughhouses his expression back into self-confident smiles.

“I-I can see you’re impatient,” he continues, coughing a little to even out his stutter – the susurrus of the owls stopping dead at the awkward sound. “Which is only natural, as you are in the presence of greatness! So, I’ll just… move it along… ah-hem.” 

“Sit down, relax, and soak up the Axelness! I’ll show you the full force ferocity of my talents!” Striking a theatrical pose, Axel places one hand over his chest and cranes his head down at an angle to match every show-pony and Mother Mary to ever humble a crowd. With admirable vigour, he launches into song, stepping — and slipping, and falling, voice pitching, face-first into the puddle of faux blood with all the charm and grace of a flamingo strapped into roller-skates. 

THUD. 

Food colouring splatters his face and stains his hair. Oops.

There’s a chorus of shocked gasps and winces as the demon gets well-acquainted with the floor. A couple owls even flinch forward with the instinctual intent of helping him up, but are ultimately too stunned to act on it.

It’s then that the Conductor just about keels over laughing, his guffawing cutting through the awkward and pained silence the studio has fallen into. Unfortunately for Axel though, the bird regains his stern composure before he’s even fully back on his feet.

“Hahaha! Please, director, your praise is too much!”

Axel’s loudness only serves to prove the point further, but apparently he’s heard all but three words as pure static. He’s blissfully oblivious towards the Conductor’s attempts to herd him off-set, over-invested and with a personality so electric that the higher powers had etched lightning bolts into his eyebrows; parading in front of the cameras as if he were invited to Dead Bird Studio for any reason besides standing stock-still in the wings.

“Everyone knows that a Main Character has to steal the stage, after all,” he spins a hand with flourish, “maybe now we can try the singing audition!”

“Oh, the singing audition(!) You must mean the one I never called for.” the bird jabs, mocking Axel’s intonation. “Unless you actually have some semblance of talent, get off my set before I make you!!” He stamps one foot down, the ensuing splash drawing attention to the fact that they’re both standing in (fake) pooled blood.

None of the owls even want to know what kind of auditions Axel had been to in the past.