10447/Like A Ridley Scott Protagonist

Like A Ridley Scott Protagonist
Date of Scene:	15 December 2019
Location:	Space
Synopsis:	Galactic distances don't mean much to a dimension-hopping sorceress.
Cast of Characters:	Cypher, Magik

---

Cypher has posed:
Turns out Cybertron is a long way away. And organic, fleshy beings, they benefit greatly when they can get out and refresh their legs. So while Blurr is refueling the ship, Doug explores the dusty backwater where they've stopped.

It's a little bit like a wild west town, except with way more chitin and tentacles, but he seems pretty cool with all of it.

"Hey, I'll give you a thousand credits for that prosthetic arm. Is that technomatter?"

"Sorry, but it's worth at least fifty thousand, nice try though."

Doug peers into a tank full of slithering eels, and then he reaches in with his techno-organic arm and pulls one out. "These are barely emitting any light, and you expect me to eat them?"

"Listen, by the time we get them out here they're half-dead, give me a break! Besides, how would a human know about glow-eels?"

"I'm well-traveled." Doug says, "Never mind, I'll go try Big Fnerglurk's House of Spoo. Maybe that's properly aged."

Magik has posed:
'Simply vanished' is a funny term when it comes to the New Mutants. Or anyone in Xavier's School. Very little stops someone like the headmistress from donning Cerebro and doing pinpoint scans. Has anyone thought to ask? Probably, though it won't be Illyana. Absences of any length might involve direct invasions of privacy that even she, a Soviet collapse byproduct, knows to be somewhat unwelcome.

Let other people worry about hacking into his email or checking any known social media accounts for activity. The blonde comes carrying a pitcher of hot coffee and a mug to any given address Doug has on file. A room at Xavier's. An apartment in the city. Some place hidden on Long Island? Every time will be the same, a knock on the door, a peep through the windows, the smallest handwave to detect any signs of recent human activity. The coffee cools very little between those jumps.

She does end up draining her own tumbler in the meantime. She's onto her second cup when she starts calling back to the team to find out more. Has anyone seen him? By the fourth answer of I don't know, that coffee pot is getting heavy and her patience is running out.

Cypher has posed:
The last text message sent by him, he was going out into Salem Center and would be back in a few hours. Various means available to someone like Illyana reveal the mystery -- he met up with a car that is also somehow alive -- a student was with him, a conversation was had, they drove off, he investigated the alien's spaceship, and it promptly drove off with them both.

Looks like Doug's thirst for adventure got the better of him yet again.

Right now, Doug's thirst for adventure has him quaffing a mug of something purple that's giving off a multicolored fizz. He belches a small fireball. "I'll have another."

Magik has posed:
Life shouldn't be easy. Easy is dull and Illyana is prone to distrusting it anyway. Relying on her phone and a variety of questions leaves the nagging thirst in her throat and parched lips gone flat. The coffee is a good one, in fact. She stops only to pour it, giving a squinting look at one of the shaken down students able to tap into some kind of data feed from a camera (personal, likely) as 'alien spaceship' is brought as a definition.

Technically, she is an alien. The other definition, native with questionable immigration status. Her sweater hangs off her shoulder as she peers down at the spaceship. If there is any image at all, it forms the crux of it. "Tell Robert I will be busy." A pause as she lays out a request to her . "And Sam. I'm going after Doug."

It's not as simple as throwing her arm into the air and heading out. She first has to top off the carafe of coffee, since it makes an excellent improvised weapon. After that, acquiring the essentials of a go-bag means having a proper coat. Heading out into Salem where the spaceship supposedly was -- or he and the other student were -- count for something, since it makes the easiest place to throw down a simple postcognitive spell to at least confirm appearances. All of which takes time. Happily not too much, but still.

"I should have stayed in bed," she mutters. Liar. This is the life!

Cypher has posed:
Yeah well, if ICE put Illyana in a detention center, there'd be screams.

The Spaceship was at an abandoned parking lot outside of town, presumably disguised, though this is strictly technology, nothing magical about it. Fortunately Illyana knows Doug well, so his particular Lifeglow, threaded with death and resurrection and strange techno-organic alien harmonies -- seriously for such an ordinary-seeming guy he is really not normal at all... maybe he never really was, destinies being what they are -- for someone with the eye, he stands out. Especially when they know him down to his cologne of choice - Old Spice, because his Nana liked it - and what the pomade he likes smells like -- fresh-cut grass and a little bit of juniper.

And he is far, far away, a distant star in the warp and weft of the cosmos, that cold uncaring void with its endless cosmic radiance, just waiting for the Old Ones to crack it like an egg and oooh what a pretty comet, so pretty! Space is cool.

In fact, right now, he's a little bit drunk, though not on Alcohol. "Hmmmm, you're right, I really can taste the rainbow," Doug says to the bartender as he drinks another mug of the fizzy stuff. "I'm really digging the way the green tastes."

Then he adds, "I should stop though, if I'm gone too long the guy I'm with is going to get suspicious and come looking for me oh hey the red just kicked in." He falls off his stool. "Wow, what a punch."

Magik has posed:
If ICE put Illyana in detention, they might wonder where every inmate went. Trying to lock up a teleporter rarely ends well.

It helps Doug that she enjoys a great deal about juniper, a fact she isn't like to ever admit. The clean wisps of a faraway step with the occasional coating of boreal forest sings to some part of her fragmented soul. She doesn't need to set up an arcane lure from that whereabouts, but she opts to spend another ten minutes tracking down a copy of the Times from a convenience store, smokeshop or box if the former two fail her. Add to that crushed pine needles, a few drops of coffee, and scraps of paper to be burnt, the whole ritual is performed just outside the lot. She tosses 'Gemini' and 'Scorpio' from the astrology section with a wrinkle of her nose in.

The words that come from her mouth are incomprehensible to English. Unlike science, it's straight up magic, bending reality to her whims. Magic that courses through her veins bends dark and she forces it straight, away from the temptation to go to shadow. A rune glitters in the air to the trace of her fingertip. Any mystic reading into its density might decipher 'Doug-Illyana-Doug-Illyana' around and around and around until so closely knit, it's an impossible mobius strip to disentangle.

Only then does she step under its shedding sparks and lifts her hand. The Soulsword falls forth from hammerspace, the lithe blade incandescent in the dark. Gripping the hilt is familiar, welcome. The easiest way, anyhow, to rip a thin circular hole in reality is by having a very sharp instrument to achieve that. Drawing an oval pushes her through, snapping into that slipstream of being that makes Doug unlike anyone else.

Limbo scorches her footsteps as she steps again, linking her to the otherness where he rests. Hopefully.

Cypher has posed:
Cosmic distances crossed in a moment, and all you have to do is take a short jaunt through hell. Hell-adjace.

"Queen Umar of the Dark Dimension called, she says she has to cancel lunch." A demonic majordomo says, on the way by.

Then out the other side, into the alley behind a bar, where they tossed Doug. He's getting up, and brushing trash off his space-suit. "Fine!" He says, "I get it, the sound of gaelic drinking songs are painful to your sensitive ears! Buncha babies."
He puts his hand on the wall. "Still feeling the Indigo. Wooo! Dizzy. Okay." He inhales. "You're totally fine. You're confident and in control, and only a little weird alien drunk."

Magik has posed:
Hell has excellent real estate. Limbo means giving a wave to the adjudicators and putting the fear of worse-than-hell into those demons milling around without their queen present. Her immediate appearance is enough to invoke fear.

"Next week on the half moon," says the blonde flatly. "I will bring the coconut nougat this time." Bribe entities of ancient power with junk food. It works for polar bears, after all.

The sword still glows in her hand, a sleek length of radiance contained to a narrow length suited to a longsword being wielded by someone historically a bit shorter than the norm for a warrior. Not that it makes a difference. In the sidestep she loses her sweater, instead replaced by that slick black on black get-up offering near total coverage. Suitable to at least wear gloves when in extraterrestrial environments to use protective measures, no? She dusts her hand over her side, wincing at that shout echoing out into a foreign sky, peppered in familiar words and strange air. A sweep of the alley gives an immediate assessment if anyone else might boil out or possibly dislike the fact she's armed with a shard of her soul and the general disposition of that drunk guy's friend who will clean up and take names.

"Are you?" It's not the kindest question to ask the alien drunk, but as one must. Her tone comes out a touch flat. Russian's like that.

Cypher has posed:
There's a certain confidence that comes from knowing that there's a monster in the dark alleys and deep forests that people had best be wary of, and you're it, isn't there?

Doug puts his hand on the wall next to him and then says, "Ok no, I'm a lot weird alien drunk, and the orange is coming back up, excuse me." Doug turns and doubles over, though instead of liquid, it's sparkly vapor that swirls around his head and vanishes into the seedy alien night.

He straightens back up, and then inhales. "Okay. I'm better now... Illyana?" He raises his eyebrows. "Did you guys get my message? Is anybody else here?" He looks around. "Berto didn't get conned into a marriage contract with some alien warlord, did he?"

Magik has posed:
A certain blessing comes from being in familiar territory. When you aren't, everything brings comes edged and uncertain for a woman who lives in a state of habitual paranoia. Fingers crawl through her bangs as she pushes them off her face, a few wheat-flax strands threatening to coil around the black barbed headpiece that might also receive transmissions from the dark side.

Illyana cocks her head when Doug turns away and vomits that peculiar aura. Her pale eyes narrow. Still, this hardly sends her scurrying off into the night. "Are you done?" Patience comes with an equally curt inquiry. She shakes her head to his question, illustrative of the least amount of movement necessary to convey an answer. "Not exactly. You left on a..." What's the right term? "Craft. What happened?"

Cypher has posed:
"Something I should've known better about." Doug says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Puking mist is weird. Anyway, this shapechanging robot who's kinda an acerbic idiot asked me to look at something on his spaceship, then he kidnapped me. He's taking us to his homeworld for reasons he's not disclosing, but I think they're important?"

Then Doug sighs, and says, "The girl, Shannon, she tagged along, and wouldn't take no for an answer. I've been keeping her out of trouble, aside from her adopting the robotic alien cockroach. Is this the crap we used to pull? Because I really, really, feel like it is, but it seemed way more okay and sensible when we did it."

He turns, and then turns again. "And *yet*."

Magik has posed:
"A bad idea to drink unknown compounds," Illyana says with the bedside manner of an Easter Island statue, though slightly more expressive than the average mo'ai. Presumably being made of other than volcanic rock suits her disposition and expressivity in general. Cool eyes remote as the Arctic icefields turned to methane hellpits consider him, making it difficult to be entirely certain of her impression. The sword at least sheds light to see by, and announces to most creatures to back off. "Shapechanging robots are rarely trustworthy about such things. Given a lack of, say, a digestion system." It's a lot of words for her, when her loquacity usually stops and ends at 'Die.' Maybe the stepping disk trip took longer than normal.

She tightens her mouth with mention of Shannon out and about, but she taps her finger on the hilt of the sword. "Bringing back alien life isn't wise. It might take over. We did not always think about these things but perhaps that is because we liked to run headlong into trouble and I use demons to wipe out the infections of alien life when they come to close."

A pause, and she eyes Doug with that pointed gaze. "And yet."

Cypher has posed:
"Yes! But they might also develop a ridiculous addiction to cartoons." Doug says, before he puts his hand on the back of his neck.

"Unfortunately her being brought along was a fait accompli. I'll take the heat for it, but she's having so much fun I have the feeling that trying to drag her back home might be asking for a fight." Doug turns. "And yet, Illyana... I can't help but feel like out here, drinking weird drinks in gross alien bars, a part of me that's felt like it was missing has been put back, just a little bit."

"This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected." He sighs, and holds his hands out. "I want... adventure. Maybe it was supposed to be a childish desire I was supposed to put away as I got older, Illyana, but I was never meant to go on Mission and then to Law School like dad wanted. That's not me. I want to go to weird worlds and see amazing things and maybe go out on the occasional date with a terrifying yet beautiful girl, even if we decide to just be friends, I'm TOTALLY cool with that, and eat weird food and drink weird drinks in gross alien bars, and maybe save a few lives and a couple of worlds along the way." He's still weird alien drunk... but he does mean it.

"Tell me to grow up and go home."

Magik has posed:
Missing and put back is something of the key, a sort of quiet gravity pulling in deeper around the black hole represented by the Russian sorceress. "You get a taste, you cannot let it go." She sheathes the sword against her back, the slippery variations of leather winding into a protective case for a weapon that laughs at the presence of organic or inorganic compounds as something that might stop it. "People who tell you to let it go are dead inside. Keep your dreams."

Odd advice, but she gives it without faltering in that Siberian snowstorm accent, lilting with a certain pretty edge. The blonde bangs hiding her face and softening the forbidding, remote countenance are a gift in and of themselves. "But if anyone tries to spike your drink, I will kick them in the jaw. You understand?"

Cypher has posed:
Doug's expression softens, slightly. "I could take on the universe knowing you've got my back, Endora."

He flexes his techno-organic fingers, and looks at them, before he glances back up, and says, "And, uh. Thank you for coming all the way out here to get me. I'm going to keep going till I get to Cybertron, but maybe we can talk Shannon into going home." He pauses, and then says, "...Illyana -- if you had the choice of going back and being... ordinary. Just... getting rid of all of it -- would you? So many terrible things have happened to you, been done to you, you have to have thought about it."

Magik has posed:
If feelings were a pinecone, prickly and unfamiliar, Illy could probably hurl it into the next star system. If feelings were a cake, she might just stab it a few times for safe measure. Otherwise she has to deal with them and the unfamiliar impressions, her eyes narrowed at the wall just in case anything thinks about phasing through it. "Where is Shannon?" A simple question comes from that safer road. "In there?"

She nudges her head towards the bar in question, clearly surveying the size and calculating perhaps how many might be in there. Doug's question takes a while for her to answer, but when she finally shifts slightly on her feet, it's enough to signal the tally of death flickers to something else.

"Go back to what?" Blowing her hair out of her face is a hopeless task. She does it anyway. "That child is long gone. She died. Would die, again. So no."

Cypher has posed:
"No, she's back on the ship." Doug says. "She's safe, I hacked into the ship's computer systems using my phone and I'm using it to track the circuitry in her space suit." He holds up his phone, currently displaying weird alien languages. "I've got the situation under control!"

"I sometimes look at some of them and it feels like they're looking for the Doug who died, the guy who I am but I'm also... not him. But you never look at me that way... you just see me for who I am. And--I try to do the same for you."

"And I like the person I see. Sure you have spikes and sharp edges, but who cares?

Magik has posed:
Those languages might as well be the innards of a great beast, for all that Illyana regards them with one of those dark, measured assessments. For all that world is an information flow for Doug, she sees it perhaps off-kilter another way. Or possibly she's just trying to translate the flow of information on the screen, picking out the harsh curves and jagged lines to reassemble them into something that confirms or debunks his statements in kind. "At least she has a suit."

The sword hums with an indescribably low note, the chord playing just at the threshold of human hearing and perhaps a little lower. Her teeth sink into the flesh of her lower lip, bleaching out the rose, perhaps to forestall whatever answer might come back. Tiptoeing along threshold of the familiar and the ruinous comes so easily to Limbo's queen, but not so much the small talk. She has a long way to go on that.

But hey, he's the world's translator. Free pass? "You are not him anymore than the sky ther eis the same as a year ago. Similar, not identical. People adapt and they grow." She narrows her eyes a little. "It does not make you lesser than what you were. That is a foolish way to think, and people often do it."

Cypher has posed:
"I'm often a foolish guy." Doug says, before he reaches up to push his hair out of his eyes. "And right now I'm drunk on some weird alien chemical cocktail that I think might be acting like a truth serum."

"Tell me the truth, 'Yana -- how DO you see me? Because I can read between the lines, and yet interpretation is everything. Am I just... the Fool on the tarot card, tripping my way through life? Do I have a destiny, or did I blow it all when I jumped in front of that gun, and now I'm just pinwheeling through space?"

Magik has posed:
"Better than Jean sifting through your thoughts," Illyana points out, rebutting that fact with the ease of a Chinese badminton player nailing a birdie to the ground with one impressively precise overhand swing. It just lacks the zinging cry of nylon strings pull too tight. "Drunkenness does not unhinge someone's tongue. Russia would be the most honest country otherwise."

Surely Doug knows it isn't. A nation poising itself as the knife at America's throat is certainly anything but. She eases into a steady stance in front of him, not up to leaning against the wall. While height may not be with her, she still commands a physical presence far bigger than meets the eye. "I am not a good judge of people the way others are." Grudging statements grit from her paper-dry throat breathing foreign air, less moved by urgency than balancing on a knife point. "Law school, family, Xavier's for learning. They are not my world. Not like that." She takes a step towards him, her stiletto shadow nothing at all sinuous, encroaching on his territory as the star burning in the sky throws a slanted array of witchfire. "Tarot cards are terrible for divination. Why can you not be all of them at once? A purpose you craft with your own hands. A purpose made for you, a reason to be. Quantum theory is ... unnecessarily complex. But there is one truth, every action or no-action will change the course of your life. I can show you a future, but it is one of myriad futures. Very little is so set in stone it cannot be changed." She glares at the ground, as if the foundation stone of the planet is responsible for a grave sin. "You do not pinwheel. You would stink of the grave if that were true. You are feeling for direction, I think, your needle of the compass points a different way than it did before. And are you interested or curious enough to follow it?"

Cypher has posed:
Doug looks up, and his blue eyes, normally friendly if full of guile, get keenly focused. "And how about you? You remind people that you're not the girl we knew before, but you believe in what she believed in, you love who she loved--"

He reaches up, and does what few would dare to do. He puts his techno-organic finger on the tip of her nose. "Because as fatalistic as you like to portray yourself, you have zero quit and even less submit." He puffs out his cheeks and crosses his eyes, before he huffs out a breath. "...I'd follow it anywhere it pointed, with the right company."

Cypher has posed:
Doug looks up, and his blue eyes, normally friendly if full of guile, get keenly focused. "And how about you? You remind people that you're not the girl we knew before, but you believe in what she believed in, you love who she loved--"

He reaches up, and does what few would dare to do. He puts his techno-organic finger on the tip of her nose. "Because as fatalistic as you like to portray yourself, you have zero quit and even less submit." He puffs out his cheeks and crosses his eyes, before he huffs out a breath. "...I'd follow it anywhere it pointed, with the right company."

Magik has posed:
Risky to approach that unseen circle of space that swaddles Illyana and possibly defines how far she can extend her arm and cut down anything drawing too close. At least Doug does it head on rather than trying to circle around her, another terrible idea on the whole. Just watch anyone in the Danger Room or on the street who attempts it, all in all. Her back stiffens and the tightening solidifies her into Galatea to his Pygmalion, albeit one with hidden claws and very sharp teeth proverbially under the marble. Reaching out to poke her nose --

Well. He has a finger still. She doesn't bite it off or go charmingly cross-eyed to track the movement. The line goes across and down to reach that arch point, and puckered lips form a crumpled moue. For just a moment. Tilting her head up, /that/ becomes the dangerous part, because the only obvious track is descending the indentation under said nose, skipping across her lips, down her chin in a war stripe.

"Would you."

Not fully a question. Neither is it rhetorical and self-assured. Question and not, Schroedinger's proposition.

Cypher has posed:
"Maybe even with the wrong company." Doug says. He lifts his hand away, but keeps it hovering in the air, black and gold, shiny. It's actually quite pretty.

"All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow. Anna Karenina."

Magik has posed:
"Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women. War and Peace." She can bat that right back over the line with something approaching deadly accuracy. Into her native Russian, the alacritous descent in exchanging literary quotes is perhaps an unexpected thing -- save that her education probably amounted to little else but that, back in the day. <<Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.>>

The dance, the deadly dance of Russian literature is enough to send some tiptoeing for the deep end. Doug receives the blunt regard of those frost-fair eyes. "Or maybe Dostoevsky is more to your taste. Pain and suffering are always inevitable for great intelligence and a deep heart. The greatest men must, I think, have great sadness."

Maybe they do. Maybe, but the inch forward of a step is enough and his ability to foretell certain aspects of motion may or may not explain her going on tiptoe to pursue his hand. Little girls in pretty stories land butterflies on their noses. They don't nip shining metal with their teeth, if they can reach it. But neither are they forcibly aged in a hellish realm beyond human norms.

It was, after all, The Brothers Karamazov that declared Hell is the suffering of being unable to love, to be cared for, to know relief from an arduous ordeal that stripped away humanity unto nothing.

Cypher has posed:
Doug's fingers aren't flesh and bone per say anymore -- they're smooth and biting them comes with the mildest electric tickle on the tip of the tongue. It's the same texture as holding Warlock's hand. Doug's eyes widen, and a faint flush crosses his cheeks.

"Love is not weakness. It is strong. Boris Pasternak."

Magik has posed:
<<I want to understand you.>> Russian, again. She can exchange between them effortlessly. Talking with a nip to the fingers -- yes, metal that strikes a note harmonized against her senses -- isn't easy, but she can speak it cleary enough. <<By studying your obscure language.>> With the poetry in action, it's almost backhanded how Illyana brings down the addendum, "Pushkin."

A pointed look over the skimming diagonal of his arm, perhaps still there. <<What heaven hastens you to me? Why draw me to that promised land again that I gave up so long ago?>> Her eyes narrow again, measuring something immeasurable in its immensity. Risk, everything is risk. Doug is fallen under that shadow as she tilts her head, measured in every incremental degree. "It killed me." A beat. "The virus." Piecemeal, shattered explanations litter that road. "I remember." Another beat, another slow burn of her breath pooling on that skin that isn't skin, metal warm enough to be cool and burning bright like the fizz of a sundae with ice cream dropped into pop, or champagne bubbles. It warrants a long assessment, plain as day for intent. "May I?"

It truly is a terrible time for the alien equivalent of a rat, green and about the size of a kiwi, with spiked fur bristling thickly, to wander in. It makes a shrill noise at being discovered, running back whence it came.

Cypher has posed:
"I remember dying. It was cold. I didn't get a bright light, or paradise." Doug says. "And it was lonely. I was so, so sorry. And then..." He shrugs, once.

"We die, we live again." He watches the rat, and then back to Illyana, and for a moment he's a boy again, completely out of his depth. But the boy always had one thing that defined him, bags and bags of it -- courage. "Sure. You may." He says, his eyebrows go up. "I'm running out of Russian literature quotes, but try this one: 'I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me.'"

Magik has posed:
Poor rat-thing. It probably has a ridiculous local name like aqukiai'yii or something for its squashy loud noise. It announces its presence to all and sundry outside on the main path that leads into that dive bar and whatever other buildings rest side by side. Slow motion parades of skittering feet mark the advent of an unwelcome guest until someone squishes it and presumably puts it out of its misery. Or it breaks into a run and buys some presents from a local shop.

<<If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin. Turgenev.>> Another post batted straight back by Illyana, which is the feint. The fact is pressing her lips to his palm -- and if there's a graze of a canine, that is purely intentional. Must be. Doug is subjected to that tyrannical skate right for the tips of his fingers. So be it, marked as it is, her standing on her tiptoes to see it done.
For darkness restores
    What the light
        cannot repair.

Cypher has posed:
Doug looks down, and then back up. "I'm drunk." He affirms. "I'm drunk, and I'm on a sketchy alien planet. And I'm flirting with a very, very dangerous friend of mine."

He gives a little smile, utterly bemused by the whole thing, "And I can't help but think that this is the life I'm supposed to be living." He reaches up with his left hand, his ordinary hand, to tuck back a strand of blond hair off of her temple.

"Maybe it's the danger I need. Douglas Ramsey, action junkie? Or do I just need... someone who understands all the ways that I'm broken?"

Magik has posed:
Like wheat, his. Hers is the lancing daylight of high latitudes, that gold gone to white. Richer lands and poorer ones, held in contrast, the entanglement around Doug's fingers something he can easily disengage from. All it takes is a step, walking away, withdrawing in a slow tidal wave.

"You're not broken," the sorceress' words are a harmonic trill and a dark hum, breaking away with slow grace so that only an inch separates them. Less. She looks up, almost smirking. Almost but for the pliable fullness of her mouth, the imprint of touch still there slightly. Somewhat. "Different. No one cracked your soul. Do you need to see it to know?"

Cypher has posed:
Or like something spun and fine, versus something thick and wavy and earthbound. The sublime and the mundane, he might say.

Doug tilts his head, and then says, "And you're not evil. Dark... but sometimes the darkness is a good thing. It can be a refuge. A place of safety, of rest."

"...I'll show you yours if you show me mine?" He says, with Illyana's hair still curled around his finger.

Magik has posed:
Slowly, ever so slowly, her eyes narrow a fraction. There are thousand yard stares, and then thousand light year. This falls something to the far end of the spectrum, snatching a memory of being. Her hand opens in front of them, an outstretched offering that exposes a simple golden amulet that fills in ever so slowly with an elegant pentagram anchored by vacant depressions suited for inset, fine-cut gems that would be worth an imperial ransom if they had any quality. Which, of course, the stones would.

Considering they're the weight of a soul, the darker images filling in with painstaking detail to counterbalance the lesser points -- north and west -- still too radiant to bear on their own, resembling the same scintillating presence as the sword on her back. The Bloodstone Amulet is merely an illusion of sorts, an extracted image, but as comprehensive as just about anything else produced at her hand.

"I am more evil than you might like," she responds quietly.

Cypher has posed:
Doug reaches down, and takes Illyana's hand in both of his, and then he looks down at those stones, as red as rubies.

"Hold on." He says, before he turns it, and flips the lid up, covering the stones with his techno-organic hand, to show Illyana her reflection in the inner side of the lid.

"You're you. Some good. Some bad. That doesn't mean you don't deserve love, loyalty, or friendship. You want to see your soul? Look into your reflection there, or look into my eyes, and see your reflection there. Those stones don't represent who you are, they represent what some truly monstrous beings have tried to take away from you."

"Where are those monsters now?"

Magik has posed:
"Half a gateway to the elder gods invading. Half a gateway to ending everything." Words that could be minced aren't. She might be angry, but it is a subtle, low note thrumming through her in every minor key of a deadly serious aria, a movement singed by a promise of murder between the sounds. Glittering images are unwavering, settled as they are. "Recovering the stones would give choice. But they are not cleansed. I know what I am. It does not stop me from trying."

Trying. A weak verb, an imperfect purpose.

She takes a slow, quiet breath that doesn't cleanse out her lungs well as she might like. Illyana flicks her tongue against her canine tooth, making a point of holding Doug's eyes but cold, cold as a storm that steals life from huddled bodies, the fire burns unyielding and unforgiving. "Whatever happens to you, you have not fallen. My soul was torn out of me in pieces. Unreachable to me yet, but yours is intact. If I can survive, you will thrive."

The absolutely certain look on her face is well beyond her calculated years, a storm brewing and held in check for a moment. She doesn't quite seem to know where to turn, so it's a step into the abyss, breaching the distance to press her brow to his cheek.

Cypher has posed:
Doug looks down at the amulet, and then he considers that. "I have faith in you. You deserve it." He says, simply enough.

He moves to slip his techno-organic arm around Illyana's shoulders, warm and reassuring. He's sturdy, he always was. He smells... well, like weird alien booze, with a hint of cinnamon to it. The Spice must Flow.

"I'd give you a piece of mine to make up the difference." He murmurs. "But I can't flip open an amulet and look at mine. ...You could take a piece of it if you wanted to. I'm probably not using all of it. You know."

Magik has posed:
"Don't. Never give that up." The undertone warns Doug from daring that particular direction. Illyana doesn't go into overdrive, but the chill is back in her throat, lingering on the vocal chords and harmonizing the risk in dark, pointed syllables. "You do not know what it is to be without one. What it would do. Bargaining it away is unfathomable." Her teeth would grit together but she can manage not to do that.

This close to her, the Soulsword sings in that nearly inaudible key, thrilling to the spark and crackle of techno-organic metal in a very different way. She doesn't seem to be bothered by the twinned melodies ricocheting through her nervous system. Doug for his part gets leather, armour, the infusions of dark spice and some curiously hard to place element. Heliotrope isn't much used outside rare perfumes, extracts to tease at the senses. Metal and leather finally creak as she draws out a low sigh. "You see, I am bossy." Just that much said. Her mouth brushes the corner of his, consolation for an apology not given.

Cypher has posed:
"Bargaining it away? No." Doug says, his eyebrows going up. His cheeks flush pink, again, and he takes on that seeming of wide-eyed innocence. "But giving it away? That's a whole different animal. All the stories say so."

"So you said you could show me my soul." He says, "And I confess to a certain sense of morbid curiosity." Cinnamon and a lingering trace of old spice. From where he dabbed it behind his ears, before he got yoinked into space.

Magik has posed:
She steps back, and takes another step to re-enter that warmed current of air wandering between buildings. Twisting paths upon twisting paths, even as she turns to face that distant horizon measured against an alien, odd sky. "I can see it, magically," she explains simply. "Meditation is easiest, though not necessary to open the mind's eye. Sharing the view is simple enough. Your soul marks your aura around you. Everyone burns through a different spectrum."

Pushing her hair back from her face again, she draws a simple circle in the air. "The halo. Soul's light." Her own is, again, an illusion. Seeing its spectrum is probably perfectly natural, but the steady pulse of life fills in with a dazzling array of sparkles that harmonize with the synchronized glow of the hilted sword. It has fracture lines rather like a cut gem, opalescent inclusions that shouldn't be there. "Mine."

It takes only a measure of her fingers curling to pull back the veil, if Doug doesn't resist her.

Cypher has posed:
Doug is used to staring at himself in the mirror in the morning. He reasons that it can't be that much different.

Then he's left staring at Illyana's... well, her soul. The cracks in it, held together by... will? All he can say is, "Honestly Illy... it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. That's... not hyperbole. It's breathtaking."

In that dazed moment, it's easy enough for her to open the Third Eye to Doug's own soul.

Magik has posed:
Colours swirl; they always do. A mirrorglaze running off the self, pieced into a creation more pristine than anything else. Crystalline matrixes are just as likely as the nebulous whirlwinds echoing the atmospheres of the gas giants or star coronae, actively brewed at the strength of thought. Illyana's pupils constrict in the glimmer glow of birthing the imagery from naught, but the spell solidifies to make it possible for Doug to see on his own rather than be forced to admire the light show around her and no one else.

She stifles the light of her soul, incandescence pinched out and the luminosity restructuring itself to match her own persistent Sight. It never fades, calling her in its brilliance. She lifts her shoulders slightly, compensating for that slow flow of energy out of her. "I was taught to see life, first. Someone who cherished it attuned me to it. They are always present."

Cypher has posed:
Doug's soul is... odd. His lifeglow is bright, luminous, tinged by colors from various things.

A dark blue, from the depression that always dogs his heels like his own shadow. An edging of fierce red, the passion that burns deep within his heart, out of proporition to his mild-mannered appearance. A thick band of emerald green, for his curiosity. A stripe of purple, for that sometimes impish wickedness that takes hold of him.

But it's all threaded through by spreading, wiring strands of light that thread through it like circuitry, pulsing and glowing. Exposure to the incredible has left him not one hundred percent human, like so many of the others they know.

Magik has posed:
He carries the inhuman. Her own self is the twisting grey of Limbo in there, a threaded coronet of flame for those who know how to look for it. The same threatening phantasms that would signal her demonic nature split in twain might in turn be caught in the fire-glow of remaining purity. She holds out her hand to him, using the ink-bright reflections on her sleeve as a mirror of sorts when there isn't a real one. "That is you. Someone soulbound or sold of such things wouldn't have it," Illyana explains if a bit unnecessarily.

Her thumb runs down her wrist and she ends up simply standing still, suspended in a moment.