Chapter Text
This can’t be happening to him. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to people like him. It happens to Val’s whores. But not to him.
There's something a very fucked-up Angel Dust once said that stuck with him, even though the pornstar probably couldn't remember it, unsteady and blank-eyed as he was on that cigarette break - “With Val it’s never ‘if’, it's ‘yet’.” Vox certainly remembers it now.
This kind of thing doesn't happen to him. Hadn't happened to him yet.
He can’t move, can’t see, can’t speak. Stuck in a darkness with nowhere to go, he is being taunted by the senses he does retain, unable to do anything about what he can hear and feel happening around him, to him. This is what the safe mode does, cuts him off completely, so he doesn't accidentally wipe out anyone he gives a damn about. It was never supposed to be—
Used against me.
Somebody pulls his head to the side, hand carelessly wrapped within the sparking cables underneath the torn casing. Their thumb hovers sloppily close to the off-safety button, and the combination is not something that can be put in by accident but maybe…
False sense of security is what got him here. So he doesn’t waste a single moment thinking when the button’s hit, causing safe mode to glitch out for long enough to let him flash out of there through the nearest outer he can sense, the camera in the corner of the room.
He does it blindly, madly, not thinking where he is going until he’s actually out, outside of that cursed room and outside of the Tower, confused until he has located the prominent logo of it. Far, far fucking away.
Pulling out a cigarette, he tries to collect his buzzing thoughts. Betrayal burns in him, overheating until the warmth turns back into coldness and coils inside him like a slippery worm.
It’s not that he had never considered Val capable of this, no, he was plenty capable. Vox had seen him furious enough times to know how his anger stews, turning from explosive to scheming and then back to explosive. He had seen the bloody consequences of it too. But he had only ever seen it with Val's whores or other as lowly demons. And something, some little, dumb thing in him that just got broken and shot and everything else, had made Vox believe he was high enough above them that surely Valentino’s bouts of temper would never harm him.
Yet here he is, lighting an emergency cigarette from another emergency cigarette and telling himself that nothing too bad has happened, that he is still whole, mostly, still in control.
Except of course he isn't. He barely escaped, and only because of the utter incompetence of those who held him. That’s how he can tell the bastards were Val’s workers and not his – they were idiots who assumed his helplessness wasn’t something that could change.
He was lucky it did, of course. He was lucky nobody thought to switch off electric devices around him. He was lucky he was able to transport himself here in one piece, hurt and unstrung as he is. He was lucky Val was saving the angelic gun for later instead of starting with it. He was lucky on so many levels that he shudders upon realizing it and has to steady himself against the nearest wall as he takes another drag from his cigarette.
He has made it out of there, that’s what’s important.
Still, he isn’t safe yet. Although Val is probably taking out his anger on others by now, fucking or killing every miserable demon to cross his path, and those who Vox escaped from won’t tell him on their own unless they are suicidal, he will take notice of it eventually. Even before that happens, Vox is a recognizable face standing in the street with a broken screen, fuming and sparking, his clothing ragged and stained. People are staring. Valentino might well be running a rampage through the Tower or elsewhere, Vel doesn’t know anything yet, he has to start doing damage control—
He coughs, thoughts stuttering, and nearly falls to the ground, only to be reminded of his tottering before in the Tower, and have the words, “Oh, I’m not mad, ‘m más allá de fucking mad,” ring in his head like a faulty recording. The wave of nausea is almost too much to keep down.
Maybe damage control will have to wait. Or rather, maybe he needs to control the damage done directly to him, first.
He has to go somewhere, get help, fix himself. Which poses the question - get help from who? Who does he have outside the V Tower who he could trust? Nobody. Nobody has ever seen him in such a pitiful state except for Valentino and–
It is a testament to how desperate he is that it even comes to his mind. But once it did, it refuses to leave it, flaring up with every look he gets from a passer-by, every spark in his broken wiring. By the time he empties the cigarette pack, he has yielded to it. It’s not like he has much dignity left to lose.
***
He gets into the vicinity of that accursed Hotel on his last legs.
Using the city cameras is more exhausting than traveling within his own site, even though they are near-all his. Even worse, none are close to the Hotel itself anymore, so he is forced to walk the final part of the way. From nearby, a ruckus can be heard inside the Hotel - loud enough that he can hope it keeps the residents too busy to notice him passing by. Hurrying as much as his broken state allows for it, he rounds the place to stop by the Radio Tower.
The light isn’t on. Most likely, Alastor is involved in whatever has the other has-beens occupied. Still, Vox stays there for a moment, even throws a stone at the glass walls, as though he is a child on Earth again, asking a friend across the street to hide his contraband sweets from mom.
This is useless. Pathetic and useless and—
“Hello!” comes from his side in that dated, gleeful voice as Alastor appears out of black mist. “You don't look so well, T.V.,” he adds, even chirpier. Insult to injury.
“Look,” Vox starts without preamble, “if you don't kill me and help me out of this mess, I'll give you whatever you want, save for souls and anything to do with Vel.”
Alastor’s smile grows visibly. "Let's put a time constraint on that first one, shall we? I won't kill you before you are ‘out of the mess’. And which Vee was that again?"
“Velvette.”
“Ah. Just the one?” He narrows his eyes, probably putting it together without Vox's nodding. “Deal!” he then concludes, extending his hand too soon not to have some terrible other end to it in mind.
But it is this or getting jumped on the street or in his very own home, so Vox will take it, the whole voodoo shtick of flashing green lights included. He's still not processing sensations normally, so between that and the mist moving them both into the Radio Booth right after, he has to sit down.
"Come on in, old pal,” he hears Alastor say as the moving world around them settles and he lands mid-fall in an armchair that appears from nowhere.
“Thanks.”
“Nothing to thank me for yet.”
Alastor’s shadows surround him, numerous enough to make the small studio feel crowded. Yet, with the deal and Alastor's word on it, he doesn't feel unsafe here. Ironic, isn't it?
“–Will you have something?” Alastors asks, always the show-off, gesturing to the shadows as they appear with various items. “Snacks–” he points to some meat that looks worryingly like roadkill, “tea, coffee, whiskey–”
“No, th–” He swallows the word. No need is no need, and he is not putting himself down for the Radio Prick, not any more than he has to at least. “…Whiskey, maybe?”
The glass manifests into his hand, whiskey poured into it by a demon-shaped shadow that then melts back into the mist of them. Vox drinks it in one gulp, then opens his eyes to see Alastor watching him with a shit-eating grin plastered to his face. “What?”
“Nothing at all.” He sits down as well, the side-to-side tilt of his head telling otherwise. “Simply - it is always refreshing to see you lose your facade.”
Vox angles the glass to have it filled again. “Says you.”
“Ah, but we are not talking about me! We are talking about how imprudent of you it is to reveal, to me specifically, what's troubling you and how much–”
Having drunk another few sips, Vox meets his eyes. “You're going to find out sooner than later anyway. When I get my hands on that motherfucker, you can bet it'll be on TV. Every bloody second of it.” He takes a breath, broken cabling sparkling as the room glitches into blurriness. “I don't just want to make him regret it. I want to make him FUCKING PRAY, and know that won't help him.”
“How very… up my avenue. I would have thought it was, as you say, ‘a bad look for the brand’.”
“You know what's a bad look for the brand? The fucking brandname bearers sticking knives in eachother’s backs.” He downs the rest of the whiskey and puts the glass away for the shadows to take, then raises his gaze again only to see Alastor's lack of surprise. “What can I say, I have rotten luck choosing business partners.” He laughs.
Alastor does too. “Or just terrible taste,” he suggests, his smile sincere for a moment in a way that makes it hard not to reciprocate it. Vox had forced himself to forget he used to actually like the man - and now it's hitting him like a forgotten 5 a.m. alarm on a Sunday. “–Well, at least you didn't lose your head this time.”
“Arguably, I did. Just not literally.” Literally hurts less. “But no matter…”
“If you were to, say, need the help turning that unsightly Tower to dust–”
Stunned by the offer, Vox takes his time to answer, “No. He's not the only one inside it, and no, I don't think I want to see it all burn. I WANT IT BACK,” he says with his voice, ignoring the glitching it causes, “I WANT IT BACK MINE. And I t-think I can guess what's in it-t f-for you, so no, thanks, I'll deal with it-t myself.” He tries to smile to cover up his shame over the stuttering, but even that doesn't go as planned. There's something wrong with the display too. “This, how-ever–”
“–you aren't able to deal with on your own,” Alastor completes, getting up from his seat while the one underneath Vox morphs into something straight from an old timey hairdresser's.
“Yes,” Vox admits grudgingly while the Radio Demon circles around him, staring at the twist of cables he calls a body, currently partly bared by the torn up shirt.
Alastor is just assessing the damage, and at Vox's own request, but that doesn't make him feel any less like prey. He hates every second of it – Alastor being near, the sickly sweet, morgue-like smell of him in the room, and the tiny bursts of static in the air around them. He hates it; yet the hate is shaped suspiciously like longing. He had thought, hoped, that having to be at Alastor's mercy would make him angrier, but the only way it feels wrong is through being not enough. It cannot be enough, even as Alastor's Shadow takes the jacket and the scraps of his shirt off Vox, revealing the closest thing Vox has to entrails, and Alastor examines them, as absorbed as though they really were that. In a way, they are, Vox supposes. They do make him feel exposed and vulnerable, spitting sparks and sending him spiraling when they are eventually touched.
He’s not sure if it is relief or irritation that he feels upon realizing only the shadows have started to fix his cabling, not their master. "Do you do everything with those now?"
"Why,” Alastor parries, standing too close to him, “would you rather I put my hands on your throat?"
I might, Vox thinks to himself. Or at least he has assumed that was private, until he sees in Alastor's widened eyes that it very much wasn't. Even his smile warps, sharpening and losing teeth for a moment.
“I-I said that aloud, didn't I?"
"Worse, you broadcasted it on your screen for the world to see,” Alastor explains, tone somewhere between annoyed and amused. “Which does at least let me know what the nature of the malfunction is–”
"Fuck. Though it's not like you didn't know anyway."
"Didn't know what?" Alastor wonders with the naivety of someone who’s definitely fucking with Vox on this.
“Come off it. You know what I'm talking about.”
“I don't think I do.”
There is a soldering tool involved by now and the burning heat of it on Vox's neck isn't helping him act reasonably. “Fucking fine – me being into you. What else did you think ‘be with me and build it with me’ meant? And you rejected it, on both accounts.”
“Hm…” Alastor hums, a slight distortion to it, but his shadows continue their work uninterrupted. “I suppose I have. I would, knowingly as well - but indeed I wasn't aware that was, ha, implied in your proposal.”
“You weren't?” Vox asks dumbly. Resentment wakes up in him like the seven years-old injury. Cursing under his breath, both at the pain and their conversation, he throws, “Well, whatever now, happy sailing with the Princess of Hell!”
Alastor's ears draw back. “Oh, no, it's not that type of entanglement. None of mine have been as of yet.”
It's not a relief to hear, exactly. It stings, that Vox had to spend years deluded with hope, then in a hurt-fueled rage and, finally, be near-murdered around him twice just to find that out. But he is glad the bait worked, that Alastor finally admitted to it simply to avoid being mistaken for that fallen angel the Princess values so.
Whatever the shadows are up to, it must be working, because something clicks in Vox's mind and he replies, “You know, this might sound strange, but I think you should ask someone, say - Angel Dust, what an ace is. Outside of cards.”
Alastor glares at him. “I've no idea what you're talking about.”
“That’s kind of the point.” I'd offer you to ask Velvette about it, but first I need to ensure she'll still want to talk to me at all after I tell her the news. The thought of her reminds him to check his watch.
He had forgotten about it completely. But the watch, although cracked much like his own screen, is working normally. Save for a judging look, Vox focusing on it doesn't seem to bother Alastor or interrupt the shadows in their process. In the silence that fell after his last comment, he needs something else to distract himself from the pain. Therefore, he leans back in the armchair, scrolling through his notifications from the past few hours to find that most of them are increasingly badly punctuated texts from Vel.
“And we’re finished!” Alastor announces in a while, pulling him out of the scrolling. “There, good as new, minus this–” his Shadow gestures over the crack on Vox's screen. “But I don't have anything to mend that available.”
“It'll wait. Thanks. One other thing–” Vox checks his watch again, specifically – the nonexistent reception bars. “You wouldn't happen to have signal here, would you?”
“I don't have your signal,” Alastor replies smoothly. You'd think the smartwatch had offended his mother, how he glares at it. “I can, however, offer you the telephone.”
“I'll take it,” Vox gives in, not surprised to be handed an antique. They used to have one just like that at his family home. He must have been little, but rotating the dial comes as a reflex to him anyway. At least this one skips the switchboard operator and connects him straight to Velvette's phone. Please pick up.
She does, at the very last second before her usual, “Hello! You know who you're calling. Is this important? If it's not SUPER important, just fucking TEXT me,” would have switched on.
“Hello Velvette, this is Vox–”
“Fucking finally! Did you get ANY of my texts? What's going on?! You've been gone for hours and nobody seems to know where in Hell you went, Val's in a fucking mood and everything's–”
He can hardly fit a word in, but attempts that either way, “About Val, maybe try to steer clear of him for now. I'll explain everything when–”
“I can barely hear you! Where are you calling from, 1950s?”
“Close enough.” Vox sighs, fingers tapping on the ancient handset - if it even registers the distortion, he doubts it will be any worse than its base one. “I'll explain everything tomorrow, okay? Can I see you, I don't know… at twelve in the Hellbucks on the corner from the Tower? The further away one–”
“Sorry, Voxy, I have a show at two. Can't you just come back like a normal–”
“Eleven, then?”
He swears he can hear her rolling her eyes. “Fineee.”
“See you at eleven tomorrow at Hellbucks, then.”
“See ya. Kisses.” As he is putting away the receiver, suddenly he hears Vel speak again, “Vox?”
He thought she had hung up, but he pulls the phone back to his ear quickly. “Yes?”
“You're fine, right?” She sounds so unsure. “I mean, ‘s not like I care, but it's just… All this nobody-knows-nothing, whisperin' rumors, and now you're calling from some weird-ass unknown number and–”
“Yes, I'm alright, thank you. Be safe, my dear, okay?”
Only the sound of a dead line answers him. Yes, well, that's more like her.
“Endearing,” Alastor drawls, taking the phone back from Vox via his shadows.
“Fuck off.”
“I wasn't aiming to be condescending.” He grins wider, leaning against the radio console behind him. “Do you think she will understand?”
“She’ll have to, eventually,” Vox starts, but then amends, “I don't know. I'm hoping she will.” What's a little truth between enemies, anyway. Not a risk, for now, as the night has proven. He clears his throat and gets up slowly, pleasantly surprised to discover his balance is no longer an issue. “Anyway, I should be going.” He has the jacket to cover himself up with and his watch is working, so he should be able to pay for the night somewhere–
“Going where?” Alastor asks into his mic, before walking up with it to one of the glass walls. “Your ‘mess’,” he continues, his inflection such that he could have just gone with Val's name instead, “is unlikely to have resolved itself on its own, and ha, certainly not so quickly. Which means my part of the deal remains binding, and in any case, I doubt you would want to go this exact moment–”
The darkened window clears itself up, showing a crowd of sinners spilling out of the Hazbin Hotel. They're standing in groups, talking, with the red spot of Lucifer's daughter bustling between them.
“The hell is that?”
“Charlie's Community Day must have ended just now. They mostly come because it is an open bar, but it would break her to realize that, the bleeding heart.”
Fuck. He could still go the roundabout way, however longer that would make it. “There has to be a way back to the road with the camera that doesn't go straight through there–”
Alastor scoffs. “There is. Whether you can make it is another thing - and as happy as it would make me to see you stuck in the city's camera system, I don’t think you can.”
Vox blinks, a little fucking lost if he's honest. “You’re saying I can stay here.”
“I am saying it might be difficult for you to leave, given the circumstances. Life-threatening, even. After all, only I swore I wouldn't kill you, no one else at the Hotel made that promise–”
So this has been the catch all along. “ You fucking–”
Alastor stops him with the microphone aimed at Vox's still aching chest. “Ah, ah, ah, I didn't say I will let them know. Administratively speaking, this is not a part of the Hotel, meaning no one can access it without me - so I assure you, you can sleep soundly here.”
“Can I?” Vox asks, rather desperately trying to read that from Alastor's face. But if he had ever been able to read the Radio Demon’s intentions, they wouldn't be here in the first place. “Honestly, why wouldn't you let them know the second I'm asleep? Why not get rid of me when you have the chance?”
Alastor laughs, a lot more cooly than before. “When you're this low? That wouldn't be no fun! You are barely worth my time on a good day, old pal.” Making a gesture with his microphone, he steps away as the wall of the studio darkens again, the room filling with furniture. A bed, a nightstand with even a charger for the watch on top of it, a wardrobe which Vox has a terrible feeling will not be empty inside. Alastor twists his head to the side smugly, looking over the display. “Take it or leave it, but if you choose the latter, do keep in mind that my part of the deal might force me to help you whether you like it or not.”
“I hate you.”
“An odd mispronunciation of ‘thank you', but I will allow it. Might it be that your speech is still damaged?”
“My speech is fine, asshole.” Ready to accept he's lost this round, Vox sits down on the bed, gaze following Alastor as the demon heads for the exit, leaving all the radio equipment right in Vox's reach. “Don’t forget to hide and lock your everything from me!”
“Oh, don't worry about that. It's too dated and complicated for you to understand. But if you insist–” He changes the radio console into one long bureau with an old-type radio built into the top of it, playing jazz. “Good night!”
Only as he disappears, opting for the mist and not a door after all, does Vox realize the radio doesn't have an off switch.
***
As far as sleeping with incessant jazz in the background and a morgue-like smell goes, Vox is suspiciously rested.
When he wakes, the feeling from yesterday's night - of being observed - returns, and he is hardly surprised to see the Shadow scuttle from under his feet as he stands up. He is, however, surprised to be swept off them the moment he has put a blue suit from the wardrobe on, and even more when that lands him in the terribly tacky interior of what has to be the Hazbin Hotel's dining room.
Open to walking-in dining room.
“Morning!” Alastor calls to him from a chair nearby, cutting through a suspiciously not-rare piece of meat.
“You were not supposed to–” tell on me to these people, he starts to say, wrenching Alastor's hand away from the plate.
Alastor frowns at him over a smile, trying to free his wrist. “Do you mind?”
“Obviously I fucking do! Y–”
“Keep it down, people. Some of us ‘ve got hangover,” Husk cuts in, walking in with a distinctly ‘I know who you are but I don't give a fuck’ look on his face.
“Seconded!” adds a voice Vox knows too well, and a moment later a sleepy Angel Dust is blinking at him in shock from the entrance. “Oh! Hi! Wait, how'd ya–” His gaze jumps from Vox to Alastor and then back. “Ohhhhhh!”
Vox lets go of Alastor's wrist like it scorched him. “Don't. Get. Ideas.”
“–Right. No ideas. Just - yesterday Studio's groupchat says ya missin', and now you're magically found in the Radio Demon’s b–” He shuts up suddenly, Husk's paw closed over his arm.
Still, Vox would rather explain it than have the 'Studio groupchat’ propagate wild ideas about him. “I had a… squabble with Val.”
“Oh. Are ya okay?” Angel's tone changes and he stares at the crack on Vox's screen with none of the surreptitiousness of his cat-demon friend. “’M sure Charlie would be delighted to help ya–” As he speaks, their murderous creature of a janitor runs past him, and Angel catches her by the scruff of her neck before she gets close.
“Stab?” she asks, her eye darting unsettlingly from Angel and Husk to where he and Alastor are.
“No!” Angel says firmly, taking the knife out of her hands. “He's… a friend now, I guess?”
“Not an enemy at the moment.” He glares at Alastor, who is still eating - and being suspiciously silent. He has only interrupted himself enough to conjure three plates of diner-like food, including one that seems to be intended for Vox. As if he is going to stay here long enough to eat it.
The other two don't snub it, taking the plates with them as they sit down, closer to where Vox is standing than he'd like them to. Yet that finally makes him give in and take a seat as well. “Minus whatever awful joke this prick is pulling right now, yes, I'm fine, and I don't need anything from the Princess.”
“If ya sure ‘bout that.” Angel shrugs, looking unconvinced.
The janitor girl jumps up, trying to get the knife from the table where Angel had put it away. Thankfully, the spider is faster.
“No stabbing?” she wonders sadly.
“No, Niff, sit the fuck down,” Husk orders, pulling her into a chair.
She slides off it the second he lets go of her, skipping away with, “No! I have cleaning to do!” on her lips.
“Wait!” Angel tries, but she is long gone, already pulling out a tiny broom to start sweeping the room’s corners. “Charlie wanted us to–”
“Oh fuck Charlie, let her do what she wants. At least she’s not tryin’ to kill this one while she’s at it.”
Kill? Vox isn’t sure if he should be more offended by the phrasing or Husk’s implied conviction that Niffty would be able to do so. He has not quite made the decision yet when Alastor chimes in with, “Coffee?”
He conjures some for the two nodding, and, disgruntled as he is about it, Vox pours himself a cup from the same pot. “Yes, well, this is all nice and all, but will you deign to tell me why you brought me inside here?”
Having swallowed a bite, Alastor tilts his head thoughtfully. “Well, that's of course so that you can meet the Hotel's most tight-knit little group. It will help you acclimatize.”
Vox nearly chokes on the coffee. “Excuse me, what?”
“Your part of the deal? Anything I want?” Alastor reminds in an infuriatingly relaxed tone. “I want you to give me,” he starts without so much as stopping his meal, and the room darkens suddenly, filling with flashing greens and the sigils he’d used previously, “two months of your time to spend them at the Hotel as a guest.”
There is nothing Vox can do. He had walked right into this one. The news electrifies him in all the worst ways but he cannot break a deal, and Alastor knows it, hence the brightness of his smile even when the stitches on it disappear. As the lightshow subsides, Vox regains his stolen composure just enough to tell him, “I am going to fucking kill you.”
“Nah-a-ah, that would be against the Hotel's rules! By which you are bound from now on.” Alastor claps him on his back, drawing his hand away before Vox can catch it. “Be happy it does have any time constraint at all.”
“So ya CAN force people to stay!” Angel notes, little surprise in his tone. “And Overlords in that! Why's this not been our M.O. from the start?”
“Because–” Husk starts, way too amused under his coffee cup.
“What the fuck, Alastor? We've talked about this!” the girl entering yells, so visibly furious with Alastor, Vox can only relate. “He's not gonna redeem himself if he's forced to do it. It won't count! Why'd you even let him in here in the first place?!”
“Who said anything about redemption?” wiping his face with a handkerchief, Alastor pushes his by now empty plate away and reaches for a cup. “Kindly, Vox has about as much capacity for it as I do - which is to say not much,” he explains, and to Vox it sounds like a compliment. “If he is seen around the Hotel however, and especially in the days surrounding something rather controversial about to happen in his life, he will give a press statement about it, if only to avoid the assumptions and gossip. More than one, if he has to navigate balancing his life outside of the Hotel with having one in it–”
The Obsolete Fucker knows him, and Vox hates it.
“–That would create a perfect occasion for our Charlie to chime in with the one and only successful case and her preachings. Then who knows, maybe his young little protege will grace our establishment and you'll have something other than your poor, well-intended writings in ‘the Social Media'–”
Angel giggles like a person who explained ‘the Social Media’ to both of these people. “He’s not wrong, Vags–”
“Oh yeah,” she waves him down, “because they'll be saying great things about it, both! A smear campaign is what we fuckin' need–”
She’s wielding an angelic spear by now, so Vox moves his chair away from her and Alwhile admitting dejectedly, “Press is press. He’s correct, with the timing too. I have, ugh, something planned that might seem very much… like a life-changing upheaval from the outside. People will have questions.”
Actually, he could use this to his advantage if he plays his cards right. The audience loves a redemption arc, but Hell’s audience loves a failed one even more. And that part - any and all efforts to make him repent for anything being in vain - he can vouch for. Meanwhile, little Princess Charlie is getting important these days and maybe he could use that to his advantage. Everything is a business opportunity if you look at it the right way.
While he runs these calculations in his mind, Alastor disappears right from under Vaggie's watchful gaze and Angel shifts even closer to Vox by the table. “He’ll be back, don’t worry. And, Voxy, do ya mind if I have a word with ya later?”
The look Vox gets from him is curious, almost worried. It’s such an odd thing for him to be surrounded by this kind of disrespect - but even odder not to feel insulted by it. “Not at all,” he concedes. “I might have to get used to this for the foreseeable future.”
Angel’s lower arm nudges him lightly. He could’ve lost it for doing that in the Tower. “‘S not as bad as it seems.”
“How’s everyone doing on this fine day in Hell?” chirps a happy voice from the doorway. “I've been helping the new girls unpack their–Oh my! Is that–” Charlie Magne freezes half through a step, allowing Vox the time to get up to greet her properly.
“Vox, of VoxTek Enterprises,” he says, extending his hand. “At your service, Princess, if rather not by my own design.”