October 10, 2015:
Doctor Strange is helping with the medical relief efforts on Hell's Gate and Satana shows up to take what is hers.
Hell's Gate
A post-apocalyptic reminiscent zone.
Characters
NPCs: None.
Mentions:
Plot:
Mood Music: [*\# None.]
Fade In…
Hellgate really looks like something out of Hell. Ruined, burned and metaphysically toxic, although the latest is not noticeable for most humans. Half metropolis is a disaster zone, as the flood has caused hundred millions damage, killed hundreds and buried hundreds more. The firefighters will be dragging corpses from the subway for weeks. Emergency teams have been dispatched from as far as Chicago and Washington.
SHIELD is on the field, too. As are the new DEA agents. Often eyeing each other warily, but mostly working together to find all the dead parademons, arrest all the live Intergang lunatics and confiscate all that dangerous alien tech.
Doctor Strange is working with the paramedics, and since he exhausted himself setting the spells around the obelisks, he is using his mundane medical skills saving what little magic he still can summon for extreme emergencies. He looks tired.
At first it is a mere tingle, a small sensation and sweep, but the magic Satana carries with her is unmistakable after first felt. It's the /heat/ of it. Not the simple luxury of warmth after being soaked and the chill of the night sets it to the bone like Strange is, it the /sensation/. Silent but a call, a caress of a warm palm smearing downward and then heated fingertips exploring and parting wats, a siren's call from the shadows upon beckoning curl of fingertips.
Not for Strange, no, but an Intergang Spec Ops soldier stirs among the rubble, another, and another. One is half buried beneath a concrete slab with metal beams protruding from the side and likely if it is moved, what is holding him together is as well - life gone. Despite who and /what/ Satana is what she offers these evil dying men is a double edged sword of mercy.
Ember eyes flicker from the shadows, acknowledging the movement of the expiring bodies and when she moved from the dark her body seems to /slide/ across the broken surfaces to land upon all fours before the man, fingertips trailing over his lips to hook and tig the lower pillow of flesh down before she is hovering over him, her tongue lavishing but untouching before that moth climbs from the chrysalis of his inner being and hovers before her….
This goes on for several bodies, perhaps unseen but when Strange can truly feel her she us standing behind him, booted feet planted, one buckled and laced to mid thigh placed like a conqueror upon a tilted fall of crete, the other upon a beam as she toyed with one of the several moths flitting around her.
"What exhausts you feeds me. I find that /fascinating/. Don't you, doctor?" Satana inquires as her head tilts and that auburn hair slides from her shoulder in a shining curtain to cascade down the bare expanse of her back, dangling ends just over the curve of ass beneath liquid shadows attire.
Strange's sharp mystical senses allow him to feel Satana's hellish magics, and he knows her enough to recognize her particular signature. He should do something, maybe. But she can't hurt innocents now. At least he hopes she can.
"Oh, Miss Hellstrom," not very surprised, he nods politely. "Indeed? I'd love to see you casting ninth-leveled unanchored dimensional disrupting spells around alien technomagical devices and somehow draw nourishment out of it. Now, that would be a wonder to behold. What brought you here? Are you hunting the worshipers of Apokolips?"
A moth is plucked from the air, pinched between barb tipped nails where one wing bats freely and in chaos while the other is pinned. Almost like a /living/ thing. "Do you think the beat of this souls wing casts a wind and ripple enough to effect the future?" Her inquiry has her head slowly rolling into a tilt as brimstone gaze focuses on her small feast, not leaving it until she plucks the beating wing free of the body and presses it to her lips for a departed kiss goodbye - vanishing beyond for consumption.
"I do so hate being left to carrion, but you have made it quite easy for me… This night." A small smile and now she finishes off that tormented soul to send it into further darkness most unwelcoming. "And yet I draw nourishment from the fodder for those devices, ah if only I had been here to lavish in the -hunt-."
A dismissive wave of her hand and two other moths part around slender appendage only to settle back in. "There is apocalypse in everyone's eyes. Our own or someone elses." Satana states coolly as she leans down to look upon what Strange was doing. "A girl's gotta enjoy hell on earth and salvage what could bring this kind of chaos. *I* am curious and gaining knowledge." A blink and she rocks back to lower into a crouch.
"This lacks flare." She says waving her hand again like a royal dismissing a boring jester.
"You think I caused this?" Strange shakes his head and goes looking for a cup of coffee. A volunteer is offering hot coffee in paper cups. "This was an attack from other dimension. But the attackers have agents, cultists maybe, already on Earth. Intergang, at least part of Intergang. Perhaps other cults. They were clever disguising their agents as common criminals." He tries to keep an eye on odd cults, but never thought watching mafia-like groups would be important.
Huh? (Type "help" for help.)
Satana laughs, a sound that rings and can either strike desire or terror with that rich echo off dulcet tones that even tenses the slender column of exposed throat, but what else flashes is that quartet of canines before the mirth dies to just her eyes that settle to a more cool hue when they emerge more into open public eye, though her attire does nothing for the wary looks. That is not this kind of 'get dirty' gear down to the 6 inch stiletto boots.
Despite it she moves like a panther through the jungle in the rubble. "/YOU/. Oh nono. /You/ wouldn't…" Note she did not say -couldn't-. "I was simply stating this is not of my fathers doing nor mine, it isn't pretty enough." A look to her nails after dragging them along an upended slab of rough stone.
"Ah but yes, shame on me for culling that herd, right?" A lift of both manicured brows with a smirk of condescension before she looks away, around them and then walks back out of the scrutinizing views with an exhale, speaking as she does so. "But we all cause this in someone's life, just not on such a scale. Even /you/."
"Shame on you, indeed," replies Strange evenly. "Because you do not understand why life is valuable, or why souls are precious, even those stained by darkness. But as you said, you are still gaining knowledge, hmm?" No response about causing 'this' in other's lives. Strange has made his mistakes in the past and others have paid for it. But he tries to do it better as he gets wiser.
"Oh I do understand. But in my own way. Just like them. But you do not see me destroying the lives of hundreds or perhaps thousands because it is my way." Satana's hands come together and steeple at the fingers, as she speaks on they turn downward in that pressed symbol of a diamond to rest just over healed torso where that Veve had once lain, but now is flawless plain of flesh resides. "I just would love them as my faithful subjects. I'm sure that is preferable."
A whistful sigh though and on that exhale her hands rise and fingers dance through the air, the two souls in moth formation remaining danging around agile fingertips. Satana did not like doing magic, she preferred things simple and to the point, in fact she waved her hand like erasing, stopped the whisper of incantation and closed the gap between them in a couple long strides that had her before Strange.
"Shame on /you/ for not understanding /me/. But who am I to ask a man to bother? So just shut up for a moment. This wont hurt you…much." Leaning in, if he did not resist, her lips touched down upon Strange's own, but instead of a kiss it was more like an exchange of breath, and when his breathing matched hers to take in when she exhaled and inhale when she /pressed/ he could feel the heat that built but nothing like her touch, or presence, invigorating beyond what that grasped cup of coffee could ever dream to contain.
Pulling back her tongue flicked across her lips and that brimstone in her eyes was back, the masquerade losing the battle to a gift of power to another.
Reaching out with a snap she took those moths and popped them past lips like a couple of flamin' hot Frito's. "Don't say I never did anything for you. This is not their day to die if you come upon them, and the only way you can guarantee that, is to not be working on your last."
"Wait, don't," Strange grimaces. He should have warded it, but the life energy will actually allow him to save a few lives tonight. Ah… the easy justification. But it was a surprising gift from a demon. What Satana does by being a succubus is also possible for a sorcerer relying on necromancy. Which is the darkest magic.
He feels a little dirty, but at least he is not so tired. "I rather spend my energy saving the victims," he states, "but if you insist in hunting down the injured and hiding members of Intergang, I am sure I could find someone else very suitable to race with you."
Slowly, ever so endearing as if she would miss a /piece/, her tongue traces along the pillow of her lower lip, leaving them parted while from beneath the fall of noir lashes she watches him and his reaction. The smile predatory and alluring all at once. A thing the woman wore and moved about in, in ease. It was who she was, /what/ she was. A beloved predator of sensuality as her bait and hook.
"Oh do not act like you do not like it." Beat. "You helped me and hurt me all at once. I could only repay you the boon owed, though I bear more benefits." A smooth of fingertips down along bared flesh, between the push of bosom held captive beneath straps of that sleek dynthetic shadow of fabric and tendrils of deep auburn mingled with vitae huen highlights.
A snap upward of her hand and that fingertip presses against his chest while her eyes move from the placement to his face in a slow roam as if intaking every speck of dirt, every wrinkle. "Race with me, or be the bleeding heart and dock me my just desserts? No. I am good alone, always will be."
Strange shakes his head, "Miss Hellstrom, your undeniable charms are wasted on me. You can't seduce me because I can see past your flesh and what is beyond is not that much appealing. I think you meant well by giving me part of the life energy you stole, and I am grateful, but it is a poisoned gift for a mortal. Health and power tainted by demonic forces you can't purge."
He looks around again, "finally. You are in the middle of a disaster area. Doesn't the pain and misery of so many people wake up some empathy in your soul? Your mother was one of us. We are your kin as much as your father's people, and we can offer much more than them. Look at them. Any of them could be related to you, maybe a long forgotten cousin or aunt."
Huh? (Type "help" for help.)
Huh? (Type "help" for help.)
Satana's hand falls away but that curl of one corner of her lips does not falter despite his words that /should/ have sliced her ego in twixt. "I waste nothing on you. I am no fool to do so, just as I returned the 'gift' you hoped to give me. We are even, Doctor. Although," A couple steps back carry her in a saunter that shifts the exposed hips in the split opening of attire where loops keep it seemingly stretched and placed at the inward press of serpentine contours.
"You want me to feel for beings that see me for what they feel I am and shun me for it?" A gesture to him then, "Or go insane?" A rise of hands to loop fingers around her ears to signify going 'coo-coo'.
"Your rejection, my own mothers, theirs!" A gesture to the field of burning decay and death upon invasion of forces.
Satana pauses and for one moment that smile falters as her eyes go that distance that show thought. "They should count themselves lucky their curse is brief and I choose to take them from it sooner. I have the gift my gather gave me. Eternity and power, to remember my mothers gift of humanity's incapable ability to handle the immortal monster I am." A laugh, one forced and there was no real laughter there as finally that boiling lava of gaze rests upon Strange. "And eternity I get to spend a tool to be used and manipulated while I am /home/. So yes," She spins then away from Strange and makes a flagrant gesture with her hand in her departure.
"Forgive me my empathy. Not like I need /reminded/ or anything." In that moment the shadows lashed out from beneath a bent and broken piece of scaffolding to begin their consumption of her form.
"Thank you, Satana." Pause between pantomimes. "You're welcome Doctor!" Hands drop from puppeting motions.
"I need to get the simple shit down pat so people can stop trying to prod my feels."
"If you want more than fear, try to remove the 'monster' aspect from your behavior," replies Strange. "Although even with it, you will find some mortals are bold and kind enough to offer you friendship and more. Those are no small or simple treasures."
But then he smiles faintly, "very well. Thank you and farewell. But remember you had no debt to pay to anyone but perhaps yourself."
"I like who I am. I already have one friend, and it's more then I have managed before. Let's not overwhelm a girl. I might ruin my image of the evil loner princess monster." A lick of fingers and Satana traces fingers through her hair to shift them much like a composer, a gesture in empty air that draws out the curvature of horns that roll back along the contours of crown like a rams, stroking over the onyx bone and bringing a sheen to it.
"I'll have to remember you do not like whats behind even my lying flesh. I'll wear it more often." Peering back that forked tongue curled upon the air and was the final thing to recoil into the darkness with a hiss of parting ways.
"Perish the thought," murmurs Strange. She has one friend? That is better than none, he guesses. Her transformation into a demon doesn't make him blink. Just means she didn't understand his words. Baby steps. After all Satana is rather new in the mortal world.