#llucifer

Husker was glad to have dodged that whole mess, because he's sure kitten him would have been photographed to Wrath and back by now, and he'd never afterlive it down... but this does leave a real issue. Overlords are tough as shit, the Sovereigns moreso, but their bodies and minds grew to accommodate that power over time annd combat. Right now, these kids are like barrels of gunpowder with lit fuses, and no one knew when it would go off.

His keen eyes already noticed a few instances of accidental magicks going off, and unconscous chaos. Niffty was quick to put out fires or whatever, but this could only get worse the longer it went on.

Niffty mostly wanted to dress and feed and care for them, but in that manic way your childless aunt does when she's three days deep into no sleep and energy drinks. Nice intention, limited knowledge on how to go about it.

Lucifer (depending on if he did it or not) is mostly confused/amused. Children in hell, sinner children, are rare. Normally they pinged a set ward at the palace and he or Lilly would assess what the fuck happened for a kid to end up down here.

Cannibal Town had kids, of course, there was the Donner Party... and that whole time period of Great Famine for most civillisations. Bodies were meat... Lucifer can't say he's a real fan of cannibalism, but when your child was starving and looking at you in desperation, he knew why the parents had made those decisions. He still felt it shouldn't have damned the children... whose choice to eat it was obscured by parental need to keep them alive, but... Heaven were sticklers for 'rules'.

Other kids got assessed and usually placed under the direct care of one of the sinner-management divisions of goetia, or even an overlord, or family members who were identified as safe. It was rare, and mostly the kids were the purveyers of accidental sin (like stabbing the guy trying to do wicked things to you, still counted as murder apparently fucking Heaven and their uptight rules). But a few were genuinely evil.

Lucifer would like to clarify for the record that unbaptised babies were NOT, no matter what the feathered fuckers said, sinners. He'd never had a baby drop down for that... he did have one or two come with the cannibal party though, some technical nonsense about obtaining human flesh through breastmilk. He'd put paimon's most infuriatingly technical litigators on that one, because are you pulling his wing? How can you call that a sin???

This whole thing was giving Lucifer a headache. Finding any child in his realm was distressing to start with... and it brought up his fights with Heaven over them. On the other hand, he now had a half dozen all powerful children who seemed to be losing themselves to their new bodies, which was another very big, terrifying problem.

He could almost taste the moments that the real overlords fought to reassert themselves in the new bodies, and when they faded out in favour of someone the right age and mentality, with a hint of past personality and experience to flavour them.

Oooh, Husk having to use his polyglot skills to communicate with the kids when they forgot English/the common hell dialect.

Then the childhood maladies or incompatibilities of their forms start up.

Val's spit makes him sick because he's too young to manage it, leading to gastrointestinal distress. The food he needs is plant-based, but the hellplants he's craving poison him. They try to offset the instinct in his brain with vegetables and carefully disguised meals.

He's also compelled to make himself a coocoon. But given no one knows what would happen if he completed it, he has to be stopped several times because... that could make this so much worse.

Alastor and Vox periodically have a major discharge of electricity or static that seems to hurt the pair, as well as damage nearby equipment. Their biomechanical components constantly at war with one another.

Vox's screen is touch sensitive, and he can lose his face if the wrong breeze brushes past the [X] on his main program. His body sometimes fritzes, an arm or leg not responding, an exe error crashing on his 'lungs' / vents, and he can't breathe. They find out he had asthma as a child later on...

Rosie can't bite through things as harshly as before, her claws are less lethal, leading to miscalculations. Its simply a matter of course that either cannibal children hunt in a pack, or an adult goes with them when seeking sinner. Let's be real, there's usually two to three adults just 'in the areas' and definitely not tailing the children, when they leave the colony... it's so ingrained, she forgot. The bloodlust though, is as sporadic for her (and to a lesser extent alastor) that its impossible to predict. Vaggie has had to make up a combat dummy with meat inside as a means of keeping everyone safe in these moments.

Zeezi occasionally has moments of blank expression where you can tell her younger dino brain is checking you out as prey. She's not great at spacial awareness right now either. Too small and too big all in one. She has moments of territorial chaos that involve usually Charlie or Vaggie fighting her off until the thinking part of her brain reasserts.

Carmilla seems the easiest, quiet, watching, vigilant. But she reacts violently at the slightest provocation. (We still have no real detail on What she is modelled on, so it's a little hard to ascertain if she'd have instincts or soemthing that impact little her - I thought, given her claws and violent parenting strategy to all threats, polar bear maybe? Owl?).

Zestial seems most vexed by it all, and alternates between formal speech and chasing flies over the walls and furniture. He gets exhausted quickly, now, from a time when one in ten siblings might live past 5 if they were lucky and there was still little to feed them.

Velvette is frustrated, her new body doesn't have the mobility of her previous one. her fingers and toes are almost fused, unless she puts i na lot of effort. She feels trapped in her body, and it sends her into a spiral of panic regularly. Her limbs still pop in and out, which is a whole other issue.

Alastor has to contend with heightened deer nonsense. The fawn instinct is pretty strong at this point, and he has to choose not to hide and stay quiet until a safe adult comes to get him. Not to mention, he was going to make Angel Dust eat that flashlight when he got more control over himself, being flashed in the eyes to see if it 'really worked' was science the first time, but excessive the following fourteen attempts so far.

They're all frustrated, and too small to contain the power inside. Some of their chains come to investigate the silence from all the Sovereigns... and some take their chances to kill.

Some are killed or thwarted by the small overlords themsselves, but it always seems like a fluke, because the reactive power never acts in proportion to the threat. Bodies filleted when a stab would do, sinners incinerated by a wide-eyed overlord who didn't mean to use that much power, flesh peeled off a screaming would-be sovereign as the would-be victim seems to zone out to Envy and back.

Charlie is not so enthusiastic anymore... especially not when the anecdotes the overlords drop, and their reactions when they fell into 'childishness' started to get... soul crushing. She thought... well, she knew some people preyed on children, or treated them badly or neglected them... but all of the sovereigns?

Not everyone in hell could have tragic backstories, right? They made decisions as adults, and that's how they got here.

Angel and Husk have a 'come to satan' talk with Charlie about the realities of Earth, and that sometimes just being ignored or belittled could be as bad as beating a kid, when it came to setting their feet on a dark path. Backstory time for Husk and Angel.

The moments of child-like reactions and words and responses are increasing. Lucifer and Charlie can sense the Self of each overlord is being subsumbed and mildly rewritten...

What can they do?

What will Heaven do if they find out?

All the networks are down, internet and radio and tv.

What if Vox feels pressured to try and fix it? And really fucks himself up so bad Lucifer has to ward the kid out of his own network and radio waves to ensure he's safe?

What if Valentino already understands what is 'expected' of him, and only Angel can stop him? Having the most fucked up 'don't do it' coversation of his life?

What if Carmilla is so hypervigilant, that Vaggie has to sit beside her bed all night awake to ensure she sleeps? What if her reflexes are the only way to avoid being stabbed when he little warrior wakes from a nightmare she'll never speak about?

What if Lucifer initially is an ass to Al, before he realises that he's basically tormenting a kid, and has to go Think About His Actions? What if He also has to block Al from the radio waves to stop them waking everyone anytime the kid has a nightmare or is startled awake?

Warding Vox and Al from something so ever present as the radiowaves, that they've had like one does oxygen for the last 70-100+ years, causes some Adverse Panic Reactions. And that was fun to deal with!

What if Velvette has to rely on Niffty and the kindness of Charlie to get things done, and it's causing her great distress because she's never been able to rely on anyone like this before? What will they ask for in return?

What if? What if? What if?

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How does it resolve? Who knows! I don't know how it happened in the first place! Chaotic though!