Helluva Boss X Reader

Overlord Intro Part 1: The Hanged Man XVII

"Aw shit, it's a bitch that works the desk. I should've known the quality of this place was gonna be shit the moment I heard it could access Earth. I guess that's what I get for trusting ads that look like they were written by a fucking child," he said, accusing you of being the one responsible for the horribly misspelled ads that plagued I.M.P.

You bit back a deep growl. You had learned to manage your anger in Hell, especially after the incident in BarkBucks. However, the way this guy was acting was making you seriously reconsider holding back for so long. You wanted to rip his throat out. Loona wouldn't mind if you did. In fact, she'd probably encourage it. Still, you had to keep it together for the sake of professionalism.

"Our business is the best at what we do, sir. If you have a problem with the perceived quality, I'd be happy to bring it up with my boss," you said through clenched teeth, it taking every ounce of effort not to scream at the sinner.

What followed was the sinner shouting at you, insulting your intelligence and lack of ability to do your job properly. You snapped back, not being able to hold back your anger any longer. You retorted that if he was so smart, he would've seen that you were the best damn receptionist he'd ever had the pleasure of meeting, and that you had given him a chance, the benefit of the doubt. Another insult, aimed directly at your perceived status of being a Hellhound, him not even caring about I.M.P., or the hit anymore. It escalated from there, becoming a screaming match, and you lost yourself.

Your mind was pulled back into a time when you didn't work at I.M.P., to your first days in Hell, when you didn't quite know what a Hellhound was yet. People threw things at you, yelling at you to go back to your owner. When you tried to get a job, you had been turned away at the thought of being a Hellhound, and were screamed at when you tried to tell them differently. When they did listen, it became a priority for them to sign your soul away, which was a different kind of terrifying. You were on the streets for a while, and had been muzzled when Hell's equivalent of animal control was called on you. You had been dragged to a shelter. There, you found out about the existence of pounds for younger Hellhounds, from older Hellhound survivors, and that had horrified you further. You couldn't be sure if you were even different from them, until you were told that they had been born in Hell, while sinners always came from Earth. You learned about the general hierarchy of Hell, and that they were at the bottom of the metaphorical totem pole, and you realized how unlucky it was that you had been killed by wolves, thus taking on their appearance as a sinner, further adding to your growing hatred of the animal. You became disgusted by your own body, the trauma of your death, as well as your experiences causing you to scare yourself every time you looked in the mirror.

When you had gotten out of the shelter, and had finally gotten a job, you found more reasons to hate your form. Children would use your tail as a napkin, grab your whiskers, and push hard on your nose, "booping you," and you couldn't snap back, or even say anything, for fear of losing your job. You hated this form that you had been cursed with.

The sinner was still shouting at you, and you him. Blitzø had at some point stepped in, and had thrown them out for how they were treating you. You had been wrapped up in your own little world to really pay attention, and thanked him absentmindedly. You sat back down in your chair, mind still buzzing with memories of past jobs and people that had treated you like shit. Blitzø tried to say some comforting words, but fell short of succeeding. He shuffled awkwardly back into his office.

You tried to remember a time when you didn't look like this, but could barely remember your past life. How long had you been in Hell? A few months at most? You were horrified that your previous life had become a distant memory, alien to your present. You couldn't imagine yourself as anything other than what you were now. Distressed, you started tugging at the fur on your arms, hatred of your appearance manifesting as self-destructive behaviour. You started weeping, and you were almost grateful for the tears that obscured your vision, preventing you from seeing yourself.