Illyana & Various | Treats and Tricks
Oct. 30th, 2022 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logs(backdated) Illyana arrives topside chasing leads just in time for the District X Halloween event at the community center. Treats of the sweet kind and Tricks of the worst kind ensue.
TW: Mental Health issues/breakdown (log 3 - Tricks)
The few leads S’ym had been able to give Illyana had led her back topside. Shortly before Halloween she found herself in District X, the area in turns nicer and just as grubby as she remembered. Faint hints of magic pulled her towards the community center, brightly lit and full of children in costumes. She ducked into a side store along the way, picking up an inexpensive mask and cloak before making her way inside.
She vaguely recognized the music playing as she wandered through both brighter and more dimly lit rooms, lip curling reflexively at depictions in some of the “spookier” rooms. Kid-friendly, definitely, but how were these children supposed to learn which demons to really avoid if the only ones pictured were the minor nuisance types alongside succubi and incubi?
A refreshment table caught her eye, as did small cakes with gummy worms and what looked like dirt coming out of them. She reached into the folds of her skirt, a small wad of cash appearing in her hands, and smiled awkwardly at the blond man behind the table. “I need one of the gummy worm cakes,” followed by a stilted “please,” as she remembered to use her manners.
The smile she got was anything but awkward in return — like all of the most jovial imagined jack o’ lanterns got together and decided “you know, this just isn’t cheerful enough.” Only less orange.
“Need? I can completely get that. They’re,” and he managed to clearly annunciate both italics and capitalization, "Delicious.” He pushed forward a cake happily, leaning toward her with just a hint of mischief. “But let’s get real. As a treat, for me. Forget what you need and consider: what do you want?"
Her bloodstones came to mind immediately. At least possession of them, even if she didn't yet know how to piece them back together with her soul. But mentioning them would be dangerous, and she'd survived too long for that kind of stupid. Still, she could feel some magic in the air. "Information," Illyana finally responded, taking a large bite of the cake. The tang of a sour gummy worm contrasted oddly with the sweeter chocolate and cookie, and she made a face, lips puckered in confused thought as she processed the flavors. "And more cake. That's why I'm in the area."
The man's grin flashed, "I know plenty of things, and one of them is where to find the best cake tonight. You're in luck."
There was a clang and a clatter behind Ilyanna to punctuate this statement, and the brief flash of something not quite human shaped running across the welcome courtyard. Whatever it was, it caught his attention enough to lead toward a distracted glance away from the Center's guest. "Huh. Costumes get more creative every year."
Illyana recognized the brief glimpse of purple and red. She hadn't brought any of the lesser demons topside with her, but this was a good night for that particular one. "Trickster imps. Mostly a nuisance, they're obnoxious about holidays like this. They'll probably make a mess, get hopped up on consuming the chaos energy." All of this was said matter-of-factly, as if demons running around was a perfectly normal sight.
"I suppose all children are sometimes imps. Little demons." The man seemed stuck on the rest of that statement, however, as if he was unsure exactly how to proceed on whether she knew that child or how casually she considered them "obnoxious." This only lasted a second, though, before he chucked that inconvenient and worrisome thought into a bin and tapped near his left eye conspiratorially. "Don't worry, you have me! I'm anti-chaos, certified — well, in one dimension. I'm Arthur."
"Yes..." Illyana responded somewhat hesitantly. Probably best to let Arthur keep his idea of children instead of literal demons tonight. She'd make sure they were rounded up tomorrow if they'd decided to linger. "I am Lyana." Well, a partial truth. She'd pronounced it with a bit of a rush, the sound coming out more 'Lana' than 'Yana', but it was sufficiently close to not repeat herself. "Only one dimension? How many have you been in?"
"One more than I imagined, let me tell you, Lana." He somehow managed to pronounce her name exactly as she had said it, rushed and all. Yet his genuine energy invited absolutely no doubt that this "Arthur" would dream of lying. "But I'm the worst host. What did you need to know?"
Illyana shook her head. "Nothing that can't wait for my contact tomorrow," she replied honestly. A slight jostle from behind alerted her to the small line starting to form, and she gave Arthur a small, genuine smile, drawn in by the bright energy he radiated. She handed over another crumpled bill. "Another worm cake, please? It was nice to meet you."
"Consider it my pleasure, Yana. I've always been more for treats vs. tricks." He handed her two gummy cakes, just for good measure, with a wink. "Happy Halloween.”
Illyana took her cakes with a nod and stepped back into the crowd, neatly side-stepping children both with and without their caretakers. She ate her cakes slowly, checking out the various rooms as the chocolate in her hand dwindled to a last few gummy worms. Her next stop was just outside the face painting area as a song she remembered more vividly came on. She swayed lightly to the music, dangling the final gummy worm in front of her mouth before biting into it with a satisfying snap.
A person in a mask and cape moved through the crowd, offering to spin people to the music, and Illyana accepted, letting the whimsy take her as she let out a delighted laugh. She caught sight of a tall, built man holding a delicate paintbrush in his hands as she was released from her spin, the laughter catching in her throat as she caught sight of Pyotr in the flesh for the first time in decades.
Pyotr was fighting an urge to ram his paintbrush through this kid's mother's eye socket. Not because the kid was bad - he was delighted to be painted and was game for just about anything - but the kid had a mother hovering nearby who was determined to exterminate any trace of joy from her child's life. He fought to get a grip on himself and smiled at the child, laughing at a suggestion he made.
He turned to paint the child's cheek and he caught a glimpse of someone out of the corner of his eye. Older, harder, more gaunt, but for a second it was like the spitting image of what his baby sister would look like aged up appropriately.
Shrugging, he returned to his art. Maybe the mother would unclench enough to let him _finish_ and let the boy enjoy things for a night.
Illyana was overjoyed that Pyotr had only given her a quick onceover, because she wasn’t ready to face that. Not in public. Not yet at all. She turned, cloak and long fall of blonde hair floating around her as she made haste in the opposite direction.
She recognized a few of the mansion residents from her earlier time there, and a few of the long-term underground helpers, and after accepting a bag of candy she slipped to the edges of the crowds, careful to not stand out overly much. She’d missed chocolate, and was slowly munching on a piece when a light thump sounded and more candy starting coming down. She held her bag out, scowling lightly as a piece bounced off her head and into the bag.
A faint dark aura caught her attention, and her eyes slowly moved up, catching on a man sitting half-hidden in the shadows. He didn’t feel like one of hers, but he felt like something, and she didn’t care for it. Her steps took her in his direction, more of a stalk than a glide as she stopped just out of reach.
Forge had been fighting a headache all day. Didn't feel like his power was eating his bandwidth - those he was intimately familiar with - just a dull grinding wrongness in his head that ibuprofen and near-LD50 amounts of caffeine didn't seem to be able to touch. Still, whipping up the candy mortar hadn't taken him long at all and once demonstrated its safety, he loaded it with decent individually wrapped candies and launched them into the air, almost literally making it rain sugar.
So he was using his artificial thumb on his phone, tapping out a text to his near-sister Maya to give her shit for not being around for the merriment. If this stupid headache would finally just go away he might possibly be accused of enjoying himself.
“Who are you working for, death touched?” Illyana’s voice was quiet but brusque, eyes hard as she stared the man down. He seemed benign enough, but she’d drag him down to Limbo with her if necessary.
He glanced up at the woman who was talking to him - Anglo, which wasn't great, but nicely rounded in all the right places. "I'm sorry?" he asked, his Texan creeping out in his voice. And then he blinked as the blonde before him wasn't actually wearing gleaming silver mail and carrying a fucking broadsword, of all things. A couple of hard blinks and she just stood there in her cheap cloak and mask.
“Who. Are. You. Working. For.” It wasn’t nearly as effective topside, in her dress and cloak rather than the armor and pieces she wore in Limbo, but her voice took on the same edge it held down there when she was dealing with problems S’ym brought to her attention. “I can sense the death summon.”
"Why do people choose to do their drugs on Halloween out in public?" he said to himself, remote-locking the candy mortar and going Somewhere Else to get away from the Wish.Com Sorceress. Maybe he'd go hit up one of the vendors, get some caffeine to wash down some more ibuprofen with. Lurching to his feet, he walked away from the strange blonde woman and, just as he turned a corner, almost ran into a dead man.
"Alvarez?" he said, truly rattled by the appearance. Who looked at him strangely, as it wasn't Alvarez at all, but some middle-aged harridan with her sugar-skull-painted offspring. Mumbling an apology, he thought that maybe he'd go splash some water on his face.
Man, ibuprofen must hit a lot harder when one was pushing the limits of one's body to process it without liver damage.
‘Drugs?’ she mouthed to herself, offended as he stumbled away gracelessly. Amadeus was gone, what would she need drugs for? And Gabriel didn’t sell them. Illyana followed the man carefully down the hall, the vague sense that something was wrong growing as she continued to watch.
Forge stumbled into the men's room, staring at his haggard expression in the mirror before splashing some water on his face. As soon as he wiped the water clear of his eyes, it wasn't him he was looking at anymore.
It was Drake being disemboweled by a thing from the wrong side of humanity. It was _eating his intestines_ with a blood-soaked grin on his face and then the demon looked up right at Forge, despite that horrific memory being years in the past and near on the other side of the planet.
Forge barely bit back a scream as he staggered backwards, his balance truly gone. "HEY!" said the guy in the stall, the door of which he just ricocheted off of. "Sorry." Forge said as his headache intensified. And the lights were starting to halo, which was a really bad sign. Time to get gone even if he had to beg a ride from someone back to the Mansion.
He glanced up at the mirrors again and the demon eating Drake was still there, but behind him was a nebulous figure. A figure that transcended structure as being too ordered for its chaotic nature. A figure he'd almost called into this world.
The Adversary.
He finally let that scream out and rushed out of the bathroom as if he'd seen multiple demons. His artificial hand swore that ambient conditions were within normal parameters yet the bloody thing hurt so bad he thought he was going to throw up. He could feel teeth scraping against _bone_, hear the crunch of devoured tarsals.
Illyana could see the magic clinging to the man as he rushed out of the bathroom, dark wisps clinging and twining around his body. Shit. Maybe she needed to talk to the idiot magic users sooner rather than later. Wanda was still around, from her limited scrying. Or maybe that Emma lady, for after. She hurried after him, keeping a careful distance as she dug through her candy bag, finally freeing something that called itself a “circus peanut” and letting the wrapper’s crinkle draw his attention as she lobbed it at the back of his head.
Forge let the peanut bounce off his shoulder as he drunkenly lurched through the crowds. The lights were definitely haloing, he couldn't keep himself steady for love or money, and the bike ride back to the Mansion was going to be just this side of suicidal, but rational Forge had left the building.
Daniel Lone Eagle, one-time apprentice to Cheyenne shaman Naze, betrayer and corruptor of his magic, blood mage, staggered into the garage. It took him four times to tap out the command for his bike to unfold and it took even _longer_ to program the autopilot to take him back to the Mansion.
All he had to do was hang on.
“That is not a smart idea,” Illyana remarked as she finally caught up. Not that topside magic users were particularly smart in her opinion or experience, with rare exceptions. She hadn’t seen this one in her scrying, but she could feel the sickly magic clinging to him. If people at the mansion weren’t familiar with him yet, they probably would be soon enough.
Forge stared at the blonde from earlier. "Stalker much?" he said, and then stared in horror as her features started to blister and peel away from her bones, revealing a red-scaled horned forked-tongued cloven-hoofed _demon_ staring at him. "You're a demon. You're a fucking _demon_!" he near-screamed as he hopped onto the bike and gunned it out of the lot, trusting the autopilot to get him where he needed to go. His ability to cope was just gone and his only plan now was to lock himself in a room, maybe build a massive fucking gun, and kill anything that tried to come through his door in any way.
Illyana watched him leave with a shake of her head, wondering for what felt like the millionth time why so many of these topside magic users were idiots. She'd have to scry for the odd man later if only to avoid the chaos sure to follow someone so magically ill.
TW: Mental Health issues/breakdown (log 3 - Tricks)
The few leads S’ym had been able to give Illyana had led her back topside. Shortly before Halloween she found herself in District X, the area in turns nicer and just as grubby as she remembered. Faint hints of magic pulled her towards the community center, brightly lit and full of children in costumes. She ducked into a side store along the way, picking up an inexpensive mask and cloak before making her way inside.
She vaguely recognized the music playing as she wandered through both brighter and more dimly lit rooms, lip curling reflexively at depictions in some of the “spookier” rooms. Kid-friendly, definitely, but how were these children supposed to learn which demons to really avoid if the only ones pictured were the minor nuisance types alongside succubi and incubi?
A refreshment table caught her eye, as did small cakes with gummy worms and what looked like dirt coming out of them. She reached into the folds of her skirt, a small wad of cash appearing in her hands, and smiled awkwardly at the blond man behind the table. “I need one of the gummy worm cakes,” followed by a stilted “please,” as she remembered to use her manners.
The smile she got was anything but awkward in return — like all of the most jovial imagined jack o’ lanterns got together and decided “you know, this just isn’t cheerful enough.” Only less orange.
“Need? I can completely get that. They’re,” and he managed to clearly annunciate both italics and capitalization, "Delicious.” He pushed forward a cake happily, leaning toward her with just a hint of mischief. “But let’s get real. As a treat, for me. Forget what you need and consider: what do you want?"
Her bloodstones came to mind immediately. At least possession of them, even if she didn't yet know how to piece them back together with her soul. But mentioning them would be dangerous, and she'd survived too long for that kind of stupid. Still, she could feel some magic in the air. "Information," Illyana finally responded, taking a large bite of the cake. The tang of a sour gummy worm contrasted oddly with the sweeter chocolate and cookie, and she made a face, lips puckered in confused thought as she processed the flavors. "And more cake. That's why I'm in the area."
The man's grin flashed, "I know plenty of things, and one of them is where to find the best cake tonight. You're in luck."
There was a clang and a clatter behind Ilyanna to punctuate this statement, and the brief flash of something not quite human shaped running across the welcome courtyard. Whatever it was, it caught his attention enough to lead toward a distracted glance away from the Center's guest. "Huh. Costumes get more creative every year."
Illyana recognized the brief glimpse of purple and red. She hadn't brought any of the lesser demons topside with her, but this was a good night for that particular one. "Trickster imps. Mostly a nuisance, they're obnoxious about holidays like this. They'll probably make a mess, get hopped up on consuming the chaos energy." All of this was said matter-of-factly, as if demons running around was a perfectly normal sight.
"I suppose all children are sometimes imps. Little demons." The man seemed stuck on the rest of that statement, however, as if he was unsure exactly how to proceed on whether she knew that child or how casually she considered them "obnoxious." This only lasted a second, though, before he chucked that inconvenient and worrisome thought into a bin and tapped near his left eye conspiratorially. "Don't worry, you have me! I'm anti-chaos, certified — well, in one dimension. I'm Arthur."
"Yes..." Illyana responded somewhat hesitantly. Probably best to let Arthur keep his idea of children instead of literal demons tonight. She'd make sure they were rounded up tomorrow if they'd decided to linger. "I am Lyana." Well, a partial truth. She'd pronounced it with a bit of a rush, the sound coming out more 'Lana' than 'Yana', but it was sufficiently close to not repeat herself. "Only one dimension? How many have you been in?"
"One more than I imagined, let me tell you, Lana." He somehow managed to pronounce her name exactly as she had said it, rushed and all. Yet his genuine energy invited absolutely no doubt that this "Arthur" would dream of lying. "But I'm the worst host. What did you need to know?"
Illyana shook her head. "Nothing that can't wait for my contact tomorrow," she replied honestly. A slight jostle from behind alerted her to the small line starting to form, and she gave Arthur a small, genuine smile, drawn in by the bright energy he radiated. She handed over another crumpled bill. "Another worm cake, please? It was nice to meet you."
"Consider it my pleasure, Yana. I've always been more for treats vs. tricks." He handed her two gummy cakes, just for good measure, with a wink. "Happy Halloween.”
Illyana took her cakes with a nod and stepped back into the crowd, neatly side-stepping children both with and without their caretakers. She ate her cakes slowly, checking out the various rooms as the chocolate in her hand dwindled to a last few gummy worms. Her next stop was just outside the face painting area as a song she remembered more vividly came on. She swayed lightly to the music, dangling the final gummy worm in front of her mouth before biting into it with a satisfying snap.
A person in a mask and cape moved through the crowd, offering to spin people to the music, and Illyana accepted, letting the whimsy take her as she let out a delighted laugh. She caught sight of a tall, built man holding a delicate paintbrush in his hands as she was released from her spin, the laughter catching in her throat as she caught sight of Pyotr in the flesh for the first time in decades.
Pyotr was fighting an urge to ram his paintbrush through this kid's mother's eye socket. Not because the kid was bad - he was delighted to be painted and was game for just about anything - but the kid had a mother hovering nearby who was determined to exterminate any trace of joy from her child's life. He fought to get a grip on himself and smiled at the child, laughing at a suggestion he made.
He turned to paint the child's cheek and he caught a glimpse of someone out of the corner of his eye. Older, harder, more gaunt, but for a second it was like the spitting image of what his baby sister would look like aged up appropriately.
Shrugging, he returned to his art. Maybe the mother would unclench enough to let him _finish_ and let the boy enjoy things for a night.
Illyana was overjoyed that Pyotr had only given her a quick onceover, because she wasn’t ready to face that. Not in public. Not yet at all. She turned, cloak and long fall of blonde hair floating around her as she made haste in the opposite direction.
She recognized a few of the mansion residents from her earlier time there, and a few of the long-term underground helpers, and after accepting a bag of candy she slipped to the edges of the crowds, careful to not stand out overly much. She’d missed chocolate, and was slowly munching on a piece when a light thump sounded and more candy starting coming down. She held her bag out, scowling lightly as a piece bounced off her head and into the bag.
A faint dark aura caught her attention, and her eyes slowly moved up, catching on a man sitting half-hidden in the shadows. He didn’t feel like one of hers, but he felt like something, and she didn’t care for it. Her steps took her in his direction, more of a stalk than a glide as she stopped just out of reach.
Forge had been fighting a headache all day. Didn't feel like his power was eating his bandwidth - those he was intimately familiar with - just a dull grinding wrongness in his head that ibuprofen and near-LD50 amounts of caffeine didn't seem to be able to touch. Still, whipping up the candy mortar hadn't taken him long at all and once demonstrated its safety, he loaded it with decent individually wrapped candies and launched them into the air, almost literally making it rain sugar.
So he was using his artificial thumb on his phone, tapping out a text to his near-sister Maya to give her shit for not being around for the merriment. If this stupid headache would finally just go away he might possibly be accused of enjoying himself.
“Who are you working for, death touched?” Illyana’s voice was quiet but brusque, eyes hard as she stared the man down. He seemed benign enough, but she’d drag him down to Limbo with her if necessary.
He glanced up at the woman who was talking to him - Anglo, which wasn't great, but nicely rounded in all the right places. "I'm sorry?" he asked, his Texan creeping out in his voice. And then he blinked as the blonde before him wasn't actually wearing gleaming silver mail and carrying a fucking broadsword, of all things. A couple of hard blinks and she just stood there in her cheap cloak and mask.
“Who. Are. You. Working. For.” It wasn’t nearly as effective topside, in her dress and cloak rather than the armor and pieces she wore in Limbo, but her voice took on the same edge it held down there when she was dealing with problems S’ym brought to her attention. “I can sense the death summon.”
"Why do people choose to do their drugs on Halloween out in public?" he said to himself, remote-locking the candy mortar and going Somewhere Else to get away from the Wish.Com Sorceress. Maybe he'd go hit up one of the vendors, get some caffeine to wash down some more ibuprofen with. Lurching to his feet, he walked away from the strange blonde woman and, just as he turned a corner, almost ran into a dead man.
"Alvarez?" he said, truly rattled by the appearance. Who looked at him strangely, as it wasn't Alvarez at all, but some middle-aged harridan with her sugar-skull-painted offspring. Mumbling an apology, he thought that maybe he'd go splash some water on his face.
Man, ibuprofen must hit a lot harder when one was pushing the limits of one's body to process it without liver damage.
‘Drugs?’ she mouthed to herself, offended as he stumbled away gracelessly. Amadeus was gone, what would she need drugs for? And Gabriel didn’t sell them. Illyana followed the man carefully down the hall, the vague sense that something was wrong growing as she continued to watch.
Forge stumbled into the men's room, staring at his haggard expression in the mirror before splashing some water on his face. As soon as he wiped the water clear of his eyes, it wasn't him he was looking at anymore.
It was Drake being disemboweled by a thing from the wrong side of humanity. It was _eating his intestines_ with a blood-soaked grin on his face and then the demon looked up right at Forge, despite that horrific memory being years in the past and near on the other side of the planet.
Forge barely bit back a scream as he staggered backwards, his balance truly gone. "HEY!" said the guy in the stall, the door of which he just ricocheted off of. "Sorry." Forge said as his headache intensified. And the lights were starting to halo, which was a really bad sign. Time to get gone even if he had to beg a ride from someone back to the Mansion.
He glanced up at the mirrors again and the demon eating Drake was still there, but behind him was a nebulous figure. A figure that transcended structure as being too ordered for its chaotic nature. A figure he'd almost called into this world.
The Adversary.
He finally let that scream out and rushed out of the bathroom as if he'd seen multiple demons. His artificial hand swore that ambient conditions were within normal parameters yet the bloody thing hurt so bad he thought he was going to throw up. He could feel teeth scraping against _bone_, hear the crunch of devoured tarsals.
Illyana could see the magic clinging to the man as he rushed out of the bathroom, dark wisps clinging and twining around his body. Shit. Maybe she needed to talk to the idiot magic users sooner rather than later. Wanda was still around, from her limited scrying. Or maybe that Emma lady, for after. She hurried after him, keeping a careful distance as she dug through her candy bag, finally freeing something that called itself a “circus peanut” and letting the wrapper’s crinkle draw his attention as she lobbed it at the back of his head.
Forge let the peanut bounce off his shoulder as he drunkenly lurched through the crowds. The lights were definitely haloing, he couldn't keep himself steady for love or money, and the bike ride back to the Mansion was going to be just this side of suicidal, but rational Forge had left the building.
Daniel Lone Eagle, one-time apprentice to Cheyenne shaman Naze, betrayer and corruptor of his magic, blood mage, staggered into the garage. It took him four times to tap out the command for his bike to unfold and it took even _longer_ to program the autopilot to take him back to the Mansion.
All he had to do was hang on.
“That is not a smart idea,” Illyana remarked as she finally caught up. Not that topside magic users were particularly smart in her opinion or experience, with rare exceptions. She hadn’t seen this one in her scrying, but she could feel the sickly magic clinging to him. If people at the mansion weren’t familiar with him yet, they probably would be soon enough.
Forge stared at the blonde from earlier. "Stalker much?" he said, and then stared in horror as her features started to blister and peel away from her bones, revealing a red-scaled horned forked-tongued cloven-hoofed _demon_ staring at him. "You're a demon. You're a fucking _demon_!" he near-screamed as he hopped onto the bike and gunned it out of the lot, trusting the autopilot to get him where he needed to go. His ability to cope was just gone and his only plan now was to lock himself in a room, maybe build a massive fucking gun, and kill anything that tried to come through his door in any way.
Illyana watched him leave with a shake of her head, wondering for what felt like the millionth time why so many of these topside magic users were idiots. She'd have to scry for the odd man later if only to avoid the chaos sure to follow someone so magically ill.
