Jezabella
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Background
In Her Own Words
As it turns out, I really should have listened to my guidence counsellor. He told me that an Infernal Arts degree wasn't worth the strip of still-twitching human flesh that it was printed on, but did I pay attention? Of course not. I was young, impulsive, and I had something to prove.
I had four glorious years at University of Dis, and don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have traded them for anything in Heaven or Earth. Study all day, drink all night, do whatever I had to do to scrape together enough for tuition on the weekends. Spend all night tossing together rambling treatises on some medieval woodcuts or Dante that were just coherant enough to get me a passing grade. I don't care what these mortals topside seem to think. That was living.
Sadly, it came to an end. They handed me my sheepskin and threw me out into an underworld that didn't have jobs based on understanding obscure Vatican proclaimations from the 11th century. I was about an inch away from going back to flipping souls on the griddle at McDiablo's before old Professor Belial from the parabiology department rang me up with a proposition that I simply couldn't turn down. Seems that the university was low on souls for vivisection these days and was desperate for a glut to help deal with the next semester, and hopelessly unemployed young demonesses like myself were just what they needed topside as succubuses.
Only as a temp, of course. No afterlife insurance. No overtime. No pension. No job security. But hey, a paycheck! I was about this close to eating out of the dumpster behind the Eviseration Emporium just to keep from starving, what more did I need to hear?
I had done temp work before, and I hadn't expected job training, but these goons at Dentata Staffing Services were downright passionate about not giving an imp's butt. They set me up with the wards and seals granting me a connection to the Fires of Muspelheim, a pamplet about how the tastes of mortals differ from those of Lords of Hades, and a contract promising to report in every eight to two hundred weeks. Ten minutes after I'm in the door I'm out the other end, booted through the Hellmouth in Newark into the mortal world.
Yeah, like any other fresh graduate yet blind to the ways of the world, I cared about the job for a little while. I wandered up to Paragon City, seeking virtuous souls to deplete and harvest in Hades' glorious name and all that jazz. Paragon seems to have a deadly combination of virtuous heroes with the manners and sexual mores of 14 year old boys, so this city was a goldmine. Of course, I did manage to deplete a handful of more interesting characters, but those are stories for another time and another audience. Suffice it to say that a bunch of certain people are into a bunch of certain very weird things.
So I was a good little temp for a while and turned up back at the Hellmouth for my first dropoff at precisely eight weeks, fresh and smiling with an armload of glittering soul fragments robbed from heroes and a bellyful of mortal liquors and lagers - which beat the heck out the scummy swill they serve in the underworld. The wage slaves behind the desk sign off on my timesheet in a daze, not enough bothering to ask for the goods I was out there to collect. Offering the souls was barely met with a sighed 'whatever.' Who was I to complain, though? The paycheck cleared. I ditched the souls in some recycling bin and went out once more into the world, my eyes a little bit more open.
So I've been living it up since. I registered with MAGI's extradimensional parole program and started putting my Flames to good use putting the baddies in the burn ward. I've got nothing against them, for the most part, but having heroes around and intact is really in my best interests. I might not be chipping off bits of their souls before sneaking out the window anymore but I still need carnal energy to keep my physical form intact, and hey, most mortals are eager to donate that. Not to mention being a hero puts me in proximity of a whole lot of very interesting people. Shame the pay sucks, though.
Say, speaking of that, I seem to be broke and my next paycheck is about a week away. You don't mind picking up my tab, don't you?