Curvaceous Cardinal Vices

[SoylentOrange]

All "Your" versions?

[SoylentOrange]

So who's ready to see Sid's adventures in Hell? I'm almost done with the next chapter...

[cyero]

By all mine I mean my characters who are Death. Herp.

And YESSSS more things for me to poorly critique!

[SoylentOrange]

...How many versions of death have you written/drawn? @__@

(And it looks like the next chapter will go up tomorrow evening. )

[cyero]

Drawn, never!

Written, three. One was your standard grim reaper chap, the other two were a male/female pair that operated as Death.

Both were very attractive.

[SoylentOrange]

I might ask to see those at some point, Cy.
===================================

Sid woke up in bed, feeling unusally hot and sweaty. He turned to his side and groaned, wiping the sweat from his face. What a nightmare, he thought as he blinked the sleep from his eyes. I've got to get to the bottom of these stupid dates, they're giving me nightmares.
It was at this point that Sid noticed his sheets were silk, which he'd never had, and his pillow was a large purple cylinder, too thick yet soft to be his usual cotton pillow. He tried to sit upright, only to find his arm pinned under the not-pillow, spinning with eyes wide to look straight into Lust's cleavage.
"Hey there, hot stuff," The demoness cooed, winking. "Sleep well?"
Sid launched himself backwards with enough force to extricate his arm from beneath Lust's flesh, barely on his feet before he noticed he'd been stripped to his boxers.
"What- how-"
"Well, we couldn't just leave you on the floor there after your little show," Lust said as she rose from her bed, hips and bosoms swaying seductively with every step.
"But you- you can't-" He started, backing up.
"We can't haul off and hit you, true," Lust said as she closed the distance between the two, "But so long as we're not trying to hurt you, we can touch you all we like..." SHe breathed, her breasts softly pressing against Sid's bare chest.
"I- I don't-" Sid stammered, coming up against Lust's dresser and rattling all the various devices and toys piled atop it.
"Liar," Lust said, smiling. "I know your kind. You can feign piousness all you want, but I can smell your desire on you," She continued, pressing even closer. "Don't worry, I can be *Very* gentle when the mood strikes me..." She said.
Sid opened his mouth to protest, but his eyes went wide as he felt something gently tugging his boxers down, twisting away from the dresser with both hands on the waistband of his underwear.
"Hey! Wh-what's-!" He stammered, seeing the mouth with plush red lips and the bottom of Sid'w boxer's in its teeth, the ivy-like stem leading back under Lust's legs and connecting to her backside.
"Aw, c'mon, Sidney," Lust said as she watch her tail playing tug-of-war with Sid's underpants with amusement. "She likes you."
Sid wrenched himself free of the tail-mouth and dove for Lust's bed, grabbing a bedsheet to throw around himself before running for the door, leaving lust to pout at his exit.

"Ha!" He heard above him as he stumbled into the foyer, looking over to see Wrath drop from the catwalk onto the floor. Sid made to run down the opposite hallway, only to bounce off Wrath's shoulders as the demoness easily intercepted him.
"Lesse..." Wrath said, grabbing the bedsheet and throwing it up over Side's head, causing him to stumble backwards.
"Ah-ha!" He heard from his left, followed by a clopping sound coming down the stairs. "Told you she wouldn't be able to go all the way! Pay up."
Wrath harrumphed and started walking away, Sid able to get the sheet off of his head just in time to see Greed reach the landing and follow Wrath, still demanding her money.
Sid got to his feet, seeing Lust leaning against the doorway while holding his shirt dangling from a finger.
"Come and geeet iiiit..." She cooed, threading the garment between her breasts and languidly flossing her cleavage with it.
Sid shook his head, heart still pumping in his chest, and wrapped himself tightly in the sheet before heading out the front doors.
Sid made it about a half-dozen steps out the door before the rocky ground started to hurt, dancing across the landscape the way he'd seen tourists hopping across the hot sand at the beach. Seeing no other exits besides the winding path and the clifflike mountains, Sid had no choice but to hop back to the manor's steps, dropping on his rear on the steps. Rubbing his feet and blowing on them, Sid resolved he'd at least have to get his shoes back before he could attempt any sort of escape.

"Didn't think you'd make it far," Sid heard from behind him, seeing Gluttony at the door with a huge milkshake concotion she was drinking through a long straw.
"You can't keep me here," Sid said, standing up and cinching the sheet around him again, the red silk making him look like an under-dressed vampire.
"Well, until Pride stops sulking in her room, that's the plan," She said, shrugging as she took another gulp of her milkshake. "Besides, you don't wanna go out there, not without a guide."
Sidney simply "hmph"-ed and wednt up the stairs, Gluttony side-steping in front of him as she swallowed.
"For what it's worth," She said before Sid could open his mouth, "I did enjoy our date."
Sid's eyes narrowed. "What was the purpose of all that? No lies, this time."
Gluttony barked out a laugh, giving her jiggly countenance a brief yet dramatic shake. "No need to lie at this point. We were supposed to tempt you, to corrupt you enough for us to stake a claim on your soul."
"So all the extra food..."
"Was to try to get you to eat enough that I could claim you as a glutton. Just like Wrath tried to pick a fight with you and Lust, well, she's always been the most obvious of all of us."
"I'll say," Sid said, looking away and scratching the back of his head as he recalled waking up with his head between her thighs.
"Anyways," Gluttony said, opening the door for Sid, "I just wanted you to know I thought you were a nice guy. I meant what I said about the chair and stuff, no one's held a chair out for me that wasn't a butler since before world war one."
Sid shook his head, saying nothing as he went inside. What was he supposed to make of it? 'I think you're swell, now let me damn your soul to hell?' It was too much to process all at once. First things first, though, he needed to reclaim his clothes, somehow.

He'd almost made it to the doorknob when a low moan reverberated out of the room, and Sid blanched, figuring he'd rather not walk in on whatever Lust was doing, else he'd be in danger of losing what little clothing he still had on.
"...I don't suppose you'd have anything that would fit me?" He asked Gluttony as she made her way to the kitchen.
"You kidding?" she laughed. "You're the first man, mortal, celestial, or infernal to come in here for over a millennia." She turned back to the hallway, then quickly turned back. "But you're welcome to anything you want in the fridge," She offered. "Plenty for everyone."
Sid shook his head, following Gluttony on the assumption that the kitchen would at least have a knife or a pair of scissors he could use to modify his sheet.
As he passed under the second-floor catwalk, Sid saw the two deep cracks in the wall where Pride had pounded her fists, the black marble pulverized like it had been hit with a pair or small but powerful wrecking balls. He shook his head as he followed Gluttony into the den, stopping as he saw Who he assumed was Sloth sitting on the enormous plush couch watching television, her head and shoulders propped above the back of the couch by her equally enormous rump.
"...Sally, right?" He asked as gluttony turned into the kitchen behind him.
"Who, me?" Sloth asked, looking over at Sid.
"Yeah. The one who wanted me to skip work," Sid said, her desperation no longer as goofy and charming as it had been the first time.
"Yup," She said simply, turning back to the television.
"...What was it I grabbed onto when I first woke up?" He asked, his brow furrowing as he remembered the spongy handful he had taken hold of before finding himself on the floor.
"Oh, that?" Sloth replied, giving the barest of backwards nods. "That was the 'shroom," She said, as if the enormous mushroom cap envelloping her hair and horns was self-evident.
"Yeah, but... I mean..." Sid started, before realizing Sloth's neutral expression hadn't changed the entire conversation. She quite simply didn't care.

Sid sighed and turned to the kitchen, finding a number of dishes already arrayed on the countertop as soon as he came through the saloon door separating the kitchen from the Den. Gluttony was enthusiastically fixing up food, her slimy, worm-like tail just as enthusiastically gorging itself on whatever she wandered too close to.
"So!" She said cheerfully as she licked the batter from a spatula, "What are you in the mood for?"
"Er, nothing yet," Sid said as he watched her dump the batter into a cake pan and stuff it in one of the three ovens she had set into the wall of the kitchen, her worm-tail stuffing itself inside the discarded bowl and lick all the remaining batter off the sides.
"Now don't you go thinking the food here is cursed or anything, like those Greeks did with that pomegranate story," Gluttony said as she dusted her hands on each other. "Everything here's just the same as it is up there." She paused, her head tilting a bit as she thought. "Though it's murder getting ice cream without it turning into soup, I'll say that," She said.
Sid just shook his head as he scanned the countertops, finally finding what he was looking for in a rack of knives. He pulled the first one out, seeing it was a bread knife with a blunted tip and large serrated teeth. Her slid it back into the holder and pulled another one out, this one a sharply-hooked paring knife, which also wouldn't do. On his third attempt, he pulled out a more normal butcher's knife, long and straight and coming to a sharp point. Sid moved around the countertop, heading for the long table on the other side of the kitchen. He stopped just short of the table, an eyebrow rising as he looked at the seven chairs arranged around the table.

At the far end, the most plain and simple chair was probably Envy's, because the one opposite, though of the same make, had a short, extra-wide seat and an extra-tall back that could only have been made for Sloth's plus-sized posterior. The next pair of facing seats, Lust's was rather... obvious, given the strategically-placed bumps and ridges no doubt meant more for stimulation than for comfort. Gluttony's seat was in the middle, both for the practical reason of being able to reach all the food for once and for the cosmetic reason of nearly all the corners of the chair having been rounded off by incessant chewing, as though an infant had been teething on it for years and years. The two spots next to the head of the table were even easier to pic out, the contrast between Greed's gilded, opulent seat and Wrath's scratced-to-hell chair as obvious as night and day. Only Pride's chair at the head of the table, more a throne than anything else, outshone Greed's pristine lacquered and inlaid seat.
"Oooh, I thought I heard a knfe," Sid heard wrath cackle as she stuck her head around the kitchen wall. "Gonna cut up Pride's chair? That'll really piss her off, I can't wait," She said, coming up to Sid. He took a step back as she approached, almost fogetting he had the knife in his hand. He didn't even have time to react as Wrath suddenly grabbed his shoulders and lurched forward, Wrath's knee stopping mere inches from his solar plexus, just like Pride's fist had.
"...Aw, nuts," Wrath sighed, stepping back from Sid. "I thought maybe if you had a weapon in your hand it wouldn't count."
Sid merely stared wide-eyed, realizing that even though Wrath was smiling, her eyes showed nothing but malice.
"It really is something," She said, running her hands up and down sid's sides. "I tried giving you a few good kicks when you fainted like a sissy, but that didn't work either!" SHe continued, grabbing Sid's head in her hands, her claws stopping less than an inch from Sid's flinching eyes. "Touch? Yes. Hurt? No," She continued, clasping both hands above her head and hamming the down on Sid's back as he turned away, the impact once again blunted at the last second.
"...Heh," She snorted, hands on her hips. "I'll be seeing you around, Sidney Arthur Graham," She said as she turned and left, her spiked tail swinging back and forth. "The other girls might be content to let you go now that Pride's officially screwed the pooch on this mission, but not me. I'll be seeing you later," She said, pushing through the saloon doors with a bang.
Sidney put a hand to his heart, feeling like he'd been beat up even though none of Wrath's blows had connected. Does being scared to death count in this whole celestial war thing, he thought?
He was startled out of his thoughts by a long, low wistle from Gluttony, Sidney turning to see her with her lebows on the counter as her tail dug into a still-steaming meatloaf pan.
"That's a new one," She said, looking at the still-swinging saloon doors as she popped a chocolate-dipped strawberry into her mouth. "Never seen her happy to *not* be able to hit something."
Sid blew out the breath he'd been holding, finally taking off his sheet and spreading it across the table. Using the knife, he cut three holes- perhaps not strictly circular ones, but holes nonetheless- in the middle of the sheet, one for his head and two more a little ways from that for his arms. It wasn't exactly a great fit, and his "sleeves" kept slipping off his shoulders, but at least he could use his arms for something other than preserving his modesty.
"Nice duds, Anton," Gluttony teased as she looked over from the stove.
"Better than having to face Lust," He said as he looked for something to fashion a belt from.
"Oh, it's not that bad," Gluttony said, waving Sid off. "Just wait 'till she's in the office, she gets bored of playing by herself real quick."
"Office?" Sid asked, turning.
"You don't think you're the only job we've got coming down the pipe, do you?" Gluttony asked, looking over her shoulder. "Sure, when you get a missive straight from the low office you drop everything and do it, but now that you're here it's not like all seven of us need to hang around. We'll probaly all be getting back to our normal rounds pretty soon."
Sid shook his head as he went through the drawers of utensils and cooking supplies. "YOu make it sound like it's just a job."
"It's more than *just* a job," Gluttony said, turning to face Sid, even her worm-tail facing it's eyeless mask at him. "Being one of the seven vices is very important. Do you know how many people are out there every day, getting tempted and struggling with resisting or giving in? How much rides on getting them to our side versus theirs?"
"...So it's more a duty," Sid said.
"Well, I mean," Gluttony shrugged, turning back to her stove, "It's not like we're the only ones, but we've still got quotas, yeah. And we've got our offices, where we keep the worst of the worst. That'll probably be your best bet for getting your clothes back."
"And when will that be?" Sid asked, finally finding a roll of twine in one of the drawers and unwindng a loop long enough to tie around his waist. "What time does she normall leave for work?"
"Time?" Gluttony asked, arching an eyebrow without taking her eyes off her skillet. "I don't know if you've noticed, Sid, but there's no day or night here. Time just is, or rather isn't, and we all do things when we feel like it. As I siad, we've got quotas, usually based around a week as the mortals reckon time, but in terms of day and night, monday to tuesday, summer to fall, there's none of that here."
"So the short answer is..." Sid trailed off, cinching the sheet to his waist.
"The short answer is she'll do it when she feels like it, just like the rest of us do," Gluttony said. "Oh, gimmie that, I need it to tie the cordon bleus together," She said, reaching for the roll of twine.
"You sure seem casual about this," Sid said as he handed it over to Gluttony, watching as she tied the meat and cheese arounf the chicken breasts. "When I first... appeared, Envy and that centaur-lady were really flipping out. So was I, I guess," He added.
"Centaur-lady? Oh, you must mean Famine. Nice girl, kind of dour, and *way* too skinny. I keep telling her to come over here for dinner, but she keeps making excuses. Pestilence once told me she's afraid I'll try and use her whear and barley in my recipies, like I'd ever use ingredients so far out of freshness," She said, rolling her eyes. "But yeah, I'll admit it's really, really, *really* odd to have a mortal wandering around here before they're dead. *Super* against the rules."
"Which I guess begs the question of why you're so unconcerned," Sid asked, folding his arms and leaning against the countertop.
"Ultimately, it's none of my concern, so long as I'm not responsible for you dying or whatever," She said, shrugging. She set a lid on a pot of pasta and walked over to the countertop where she'd been setting out the food, grabbing a fork and spearing a huge slice of roasted beef on the tines. "For as much as Pride might want to- oompf- pin thith one on uth," She said, one cheek bulging like a squirrel's as she talked out the other side of her mouth, "When thhe goeth to expwain thith- gulp- to the big cheese, she's the one that got the letter, she's the one that decided how this was all going to go down." She picked up a fork and held it out handle-first to Sid. 'YOu sure you don't want any? It's really good." When Sid gave Gluttony a quizzical look, she rolled her eyes and returned a simpering look of her own.
"It's pretty obvious I'm not on the clock right now," she said, "and even if I was, if I couldn't get you to gorge yourself when you thought I was nothing more than a jovial fat girl, do you really think I'm going to try again when you're literally in the eighth circle of hell? The jig is fairly up, as they say, but that doesn't mean you can't eat *anything*," she finished, offering the for to Sidney once again.
"Okay, okay," Sid said, taking the fork and looking at the half-eaten buffet in front of him. Finding a relatively untouched dish- a salad, naturally- Sid speared a piece of chicken off the top, tasting it with the tip of his tongue before finally taking a small bite.
"Okay, this is getting silly," Gluttony said as her tail scarfed down on some pasta behind her. "If I'd tried to poison your food, you wouldn't be able to bite down on it. YOu saw what happened with Wrath and Pride. We can't hurt you. I mean, what do you want, me to promise?"
"A promise from a demon," Sid answered flatly.
"Demon*ess*, thank you," Gluttony corrected, "And I'll have you know the contrcting department is *very* serious about our promises being kept. We've got a reputation for twisting words and wishes, sure, but that makes people think they can outsmart the contracting department. If we got a reputation for not following through on our promises, that'd be disastrous for us. If people thought they could sell their souls and possibly *not* gain fabulous riches or sleeping with the mate of their dreams or whatever, no one would do it. The contracting department relies on a 100% success rate to do business. The part where the riches come as an inheritance from a loved one passing away suddenly or making the right mix of drugs and desperation for you to go along with the lay of your life being through rape- Lust hates that, says it takes all the fun out of the experience- that's where the contracting department is working the angles and loopholes of where the client didn't specify the hows and whys. But you *always* get what you want, at least in some form, when you sell your soul, that's the deal."
Sid just shook his head, spearing a tomato from the side of a seafood dish and eating it. "It's like the Mafia or something..." He said.
"Actually, we've taken a few pointers from them over the years," She said, pointing at Sid with the meatball she had speared on her fork. "YOu'd be amazed at how ingeneous mortals are at instilling fear and desperation into their fellow man."
"...No I wouldn't," Sid replied, shaking his head yet again. It seemed like all he could do sometimes, shake off the insanity before it coated him too thickly.

"So..." He started,looking at Gluttony, "If I wanted to come to one of these 'offices' of yours-"
"You- hurk- you can't- hoch- do that!" Gluttony said, choking briefly on the mouthful of food she had in her when she began talking.
"Why not?" Sid asked.
"Because those are our private offices! The worst of the worst! They're supposed to be one-on-one sessions with the most irredeemable sinners!"
"Okay," Sid said, straightening up, "Let me put it this way: Is there anything you can do to *stop* me from coming along?"
GLuttony's eyes darted from side to side as she took a step back, twirling her pigtails nervously. "Uhm... Pretty please?" She offered, not knowing what else to say.
Sid snorted. "You guys dragged me here, so maybe if I bug you enough you'll take me back. You made my life hell for a week, and now I think it's time I return the favor," He said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

[vidgamer85]

Reading now, read the Juggalos chapter as well. Will comment on them more tomorrow when I'm less half-dead-from-sleeplessness.

[SoylentOrange]

I'm genuinely eager to see what you have to say for both of them.

[cyero]

Ooh, a fun chapter. It's nice to get some worldbuilding in.

And Gluttony is just fairly adorable |D

[vidgamer85]

Agreed, fun chapter. Shorter, but packed with information and characterization. I do get a kick out of how, more and more, its turning into a twisted version of a harem anime, or rather its using certain aspects of those to great effect.

[SoylentOrange]

Harem anime? Do tell.

(And thanks to whichever mod finally moved this. The General section ain't what it used to be... ^^; )

[vidgamer85]

I'm sure you know; like Love Hina, the basic concept of one guy living in a place with a bunch of girls who all have the hots for him on one way or another. Hilarity "ensues" (put in quotations because I'd hardly call most of what anime considers comedy to be funny at all).