Chapter Text
Loneliness, Pentious learned, had a shape.
On Earth, it had been narrow and sharp—something that pressed between his ribs during long nights bent over drafting tables, ink staining his fingers, steam hissing from half-finished mechanisms that would never be admired by anyone but him.
Forty-one years alive, and not one soul he would have called a friend.
There were clients.
Acquaintances.
Men who wanted weapons and machines and power, but who never stayed long enough to learn his name without a label attached to it.
Pendelton—
Inventor.
Visionary.
Madman.
Hermit.
Labels fit more easily than faces ever had.
But never as Pendelton, the person.
So when he woke up in Hell—choking on sulfur and fire and humiliation—he assumed very little would change.
He was correct.
Hell did not erase his loneliness.
It expanded it.
The first years were chaos—learning how to survive, how to build again with scavenged parts and stolen scraps, how to defend himself from sinners who smelled weakness like blood in water.
He learned Hell’s markets.
Its currencies.
The price of silence.
He carved out territory inch by inch.
Laid traps.
Built walls.
And somewhere along the way, he chose a new name.
Sir Pentious.
A title bold enough to command attention.
Ridiculous enough to be remembered.
Safe enough to hide behind.
He found a client base again.
Not rulers.
Not gods.
Operators. Mercenaries. Sinners with ambitions larger than their skill sets.
They paid well—for discretion, for ingenuity, for weapons that worked.
Enough that his lair became something more than a hideaway.
It was clean.
Reinforced.
Stocked with high-quality tools and rare components.
He slept behind locked doors.
Ate regularly.
Stopped worrying about tomorrow.
And still—
Loneliness, Pentious learned, could echo even in a crowd.
Baxter had been… unexpected.
Another mind like his—sharp, curious, capable of following his ramblings and improving them.
Where Pentious’s strengths lay in mechanical engineering, Baxter’s were in bioengineering—flesh instead of steel, instinct instead of structure. He, too, claimed to be anti-social, in pursuit of the same thing Pentious quietly wanted: respect.
The first time Baxter suggested an enhancement Pentious hadn’t considered, he had nearly wept.
They built together.
Dreamed together.
Spoke in half-sentences and schematics and late-night mania.
“Mad scientist,” Baxter had called himself with a wild laugh—as if madness were a badge, not a warning.
For a while, Pentious thought:
Perhaps this is it. Perhaps this is the thing I was missing.
Something like friendship.
Something close enough to belonging.
But ambition curdled quickly in Hell.
Baxter wanted more.
Faster.
Crueler.
Where Pentious hesitated, Baxter acted.
Where Pentious fretted over collateral damage, Baxter laughed.
Where Pentious cared for his egg minions as friends—children, even—Baxter saw expendable materials.
He revealed a more sadistic, apathetic side when he began experimenting with the Egg Boiz—
Pushing limits,
Accepting casualties.
Risking lives that Pentious would have protected at any cost.
Pentious argued.
Then begged.
Then stopped speaking altogether.
When Pentious finally stormed out of their shared lab, Baxter did not chase him.
Pentious returned to his own home with the remainder of his Egg Boiz and years of work stuffed hastily into his bags.
Metal screamed under his tools.
Blueprints burned.
He salvaged what had been his alone, and melted down the rest until nothing recognizable remained.
He chose a new lair after that.
Safer.
Quieter.
Farther from everyone.
And for nearly a century, he told himself it was better this way.
Then—
Something exploded through his defenses.
Literally.
Pentious looked up from his workbench just in time to see the ceiling cave inward in a shower of sparks and debris, alarms screaming as a booted figure dropped through the smoke like a missile.
She landed laughing.
Bright.
Wild.
Armed to the teeth.
New.
“Oi!” she called cheerfully, voice sharp and rough-edged, accent unmistakable even through the smoke. She was already lighting the next fuse.
"What fuckin’ nerd built the pop-up death maze?"
Pentious stared.
At the single blazing eye.
At the grin sharp enough to cut glass.
At the way she radiated chaos like heat.
This—
this—
this was not a threat he had calculated for.
“…Excuse me,” he managed faintly, tail stiffening. “You are standing in a restricted area.”
She blinked at him.
Looked around.
Took in the reinforced walls, the traps, the weapons humming quietly with power.
Then she grinned wider.
She kicked a charge into the nearest support beam.
“Tough titty,” she said pleasantly.
The wall went up in smoke.
And just like that—
After ninety-nine years alone in Hell,
Cherri Bomb burst into his life.
Pentious’s mind lurched into motion.
Threat classification.
Weapon yield estimates.
Structural damage projections.
All of them failed to settle.
She was too loud. Too fast. Too deliberate in her chaos.
This was not a raid.
Not a power grab.
Not a challenge issued through Hell’s usual channels.
She hadn’t come to take territory.
She’d come to see what would happen if she didn’t ask.