10500/Midnight in the Limbo of Good and Evil

Midnight in the Limbo of Good and Evil
Date of Scene:	21 December 2019
Location:	Multiple
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Magik, Cypher

---

Magik has posed:
It takes time for alien alcohol to wear off. In the meantime, after checking that Shannon isn't about to spontaneously combust or adopt half an alien town, Illyana steps into another of the local watering holes. She comes out with two ceramic jugs stopped with wax, pointed lids, and possibly some kind of technologically odd mesh that keeps them stable. Important considering one of the liquors probably might start wildfires if tilted on its side.

She holds one of them out to Doug, giving him the opportunity to free up her hand. "Carry this." Halfway to a question, but not quite, the egalitarian approach of leveling out a burden equally is what it is. The blonde's fair hair blows around her in a breeze while she slowly breathes in the heavy air, sensing the change of tension in the atmosphere owed as much to her own mercurial mood as anything else. "Do you need anything else here?"

A certain finality in the statement precludes the fact that when one door closes, another opens. With her, that's literally the truth of it anywhere. She looks off towards the middleground, pupils shrinking in the frost-mired cerulean wash of her irises, pressing her nail to her thumb as she does so. "I can leave Xraxre here to watch for Shannon. He isn't busy."

Cypher has posed:
"Well I do need to come back." Doug says, "But since the rules of time and space only kinda-sorta apply to you I'm not worried about that." He seems at ease with the whole thing, this is well-worn and familiar territory to him. "I kind of want to see where Blurr is going with the whole thing, and to be honest, I'm having one heck of an adventure."

"...Maybe not tell the others you found me just yet though? They could use a nudge to try and get some of the band back together. Our secret."

Then he raises his eyebrows, and says, "So where're we going, beautiful? Some beautiful tropical beach with a purple sky and red sand? Far-off horizons?"

Magik has posed:
"I might not lie if they ask. I doubt they will realize it." The fluid timestream of Limbo probably would suck as it comes to university studies; all Illyana needs to do is step sideways, wait a year, and return for the quiz fully a master of the topic. Or let the river bend backwards and suspend the little pesky problems of aging overnight, seemingly. Though her age is fixed more than a little having grown to her current state. She taps the drink and then gives Doug a purposeful look. "Sand gets in uncomfortable places. Is that where you really want to go?"

She isn't generally one for small talk, but her eyes lift slightly to explore the non-existent stars in a sky shrouded in sufficient haze by daytime to mark the hours. "Somewhere with a hydrocarbon sea and five mile ice cliffs to race down? I have not seen the options in this sector. Have a map?"

Cypher has posed:
Doug pauses, and then says, "...Well I have a cute bathing suit I bought--" He puts his finger over his mouth, and then says, "Hold on." He takes out his phone, and then swipes his finger along it. "Sailing on the methane sea..." He thinks about that, and then says, "The boiling prismatic geysers of Theta-9 are beautiful, I hear."

Magik has posed:
"Avoid planets with no atmosphere. The dust fragments will scour us clean," suggests Illyana with a rather disturbing familiarity with such things for a mutant sorceress. Maybe she's a fan of the Soviet space program and the findings of Apollo. Maybe she prances around the Moon on occasion. The jar in her arms grows somewhat heavy and she strafes a circle mid-air, one of the stepping disks taking shape in a halo of luminous light. Small, mind, just large enough for her to break a hole in reality to Limbo and stuff it inside on a table. On the other side is the vision of a rather sedate space, of all things: a tree with wide roots surrounded by flowers and shrubs tended to a remarkable array of frost white and twilit hues. A dusky array of roses tumbles away from the partial curve of a wall or a building visible up close, something probably finer and less wicked than the demonic realm is likely to advertise in its tourist pamphlets.

"Geysers." A slanted look to Doug leaves her contemplating. "These all have in common somewhere warm and wet." The statement goes slightly flat with her Russian accent overlaid, laconic as the girl is. "Will you show me?"

The stepping disk remains open, a tantalizing gateway, but widening moment by moment as a decision hinges on the other side -through- Limbo. The moment in the garden might last no more than that.

Cypher has posed:
Doug pauses, his hand up -- and then he says, "Illyana, have I ever told you you have the most interesting definition of 'Hell'? He seems breathtaken. "Well maybe we could linger at midnight in the garden of good and evil for awhile." He says, rubbing the back of his neck, "Before we go see the geysers. They actually spray a primordial soup, some theorize life could begin evolving on the planet any day now."

He glances back to Illyana and gives a bright grin and a double thumbs-up. "You're a woman of hidden depths. I mean your ensemble screams 'death metal' but I also know how much you love Stevie Nicks."

Magik has posed:
Hydrocarbon prismatic sprays it is, or possibly a rainbow profusion of black smokers standing on a vent carved into a planetary surface with the torment of ages under a wasteland sky. How romantic.

"Hell can be the impermanent in eternity," she says. Distance clouds her words, softens them but doesn't whittle away the underlying seared edges and sudden dropoffs Russian chips away into English. Part of those wild melodies of northern boreal forests and the infinite expanse of black earth far as the eye can see distinguishes her as other, apart, from the civilized west. Old World and New crash in their pairing, Doug looking forward and Illyana looking back. "The geysers must smell foul. More suitably infernal. Sulfurous?"

That idea being what it is, she gestures to the open portal emanating its own light in the middle of a street. The bystanders seeing this are surely very concerned to some degree, be they screech-rat or humanoid. She seems wholly untroubled by it. "'The Chain' is a masterpiece. You, however, made a promise that fits 'Rhiannon' better. Remember, I collect on debts owed and vows made."

The flowers in there are picturesque, almost tropical with sharply defined petals ending in points. Not the roses, obviously, but their thorns and stems shimmer like translucent glass under an unearthly glow that should come from a moon, save one isn't suspended in the sky. "We can stay for a time. Or we can move on. It's your choice. Maybe decide after you get there."

Cypher has posed:
Among Doug's many talents given to him by his mutant power are perfect pitch. Though he lacks a rock star's verve and an operetto's belt, he can hti all the notes. "Actually the song I was thinking of was neither." He says, before he squares his shoulders and steps through the gate. Hell is a familiar territory for him, after all. He whistles a few bars, re-acquainting himself with the tune, before he turns around on the other side and holds his hand out for Illyana.

"Has anyone ever written anything for you?
In all your darkest hours
Have you ever heard me sing
Listen to me now
You know I'd rather be alone
Than be without you
Don't you know?"

Magik has posed:
Away goes the star system, away fails the sunlight. Limbo is living by an hour of evening, though how late is immediately difficult to surmise. Only Illyana's hand initially links Doug between places. For an instant, he stands alone in her sovereign realm with all that entails. And Limbo Knows. Somehow.

The door shuts behind Illyana as she steps through, the golden light leached back into her through countless scintilla. The flowing radial points pierce through her harmlessly, an effect almost never seen on the outside of the realm she claims.

But Limbo knows her, as much as it reckons on its guest as an outsider, an unknown. The air stirs to a certain cooler breeze perhaps in immediate reaction to the warmth permeating clothing from where they just stood, or it intends to be closer to a spring eve or summer's denouement into autuumn. Not uncomfortable, but beneath balmy climes lies the concealed hint of a cooler nip. The flowers tumble and move in that restless zephyr, imparting a perfume gone dark and sultry to the senses in myriad notes. Rose, true, but the spirit holds just a tactile suggestion of temptation, corrupt beneath its pure vein.

"You flirt or warn me. Am I to choose which?" A simple query holds no immediacy there, and she smirks again. "Do it for the world."

Cypher has posed:
Doug murmurs, "Well, my novel chronicling my experiences as a teenage mutant is currently in development hell. I got writers block right around the time we fought Proteus, because I'm honestly not sure how to explain that dude." He turns, and then shrugs. "It could be both. I mean, I assume you flirting back is both, Illy?"

Then he's studying one of the flowers. He reaches out to touch it with his techno-organic fingers, and tilts his head as it pulls away from him. "Warlock never did agree with your demons." He admits, before he lets out a sigh. "A hint of magnolia, with just a whiff of Acheronian Red Lotus."

"So it's hard to find
Someone with that kind of intensity
You touched my hand I played it cool
And you reached out your hand for me-"

Magik has posed:
Words nested within words, statements and lines blur. A subtle suggestion of a smirk shades her lips, which might well be worse than horns and a prehensive tail in some respects. But other than the slightest hint of shadows trailing after her, Illyana looks like she always does, half-goth, half-Scandinavian metal aficionado. "How would I know how?" A simple enough question laid at Doug's feet while he sings and she finds what amounts to a perch by sitting cross-legged in front of that massive oak with white branches lifted to an anomalous sky. Her back rests against the bark, a smoothed spot suggesting this has been done many, many times.

The roses are peculiar: up close, petals like velvet hold the incandescence of a galaxy viewed in microcosm, painted by bands of ethereal bioluminescence. The stems are translucent, thorns sharp and deadly, showing striations where the inevitable corruptive influence of Limbo cannot be quite forestalled. Clip one, and the ichor slipping out through the open wounds is like milk, oddly enough. "His technopathic state is grounded in fixed etheric forces. Here is not like that. The demons might not have recognized a soul in his people, either. He has one, of course." She brushes her fingers over her lips, eyes shutting for a time.

Easier to speak than sing; singing isn't something she's known for on the dark side of a contralto tone, now and then. But she can answer, quiet:

"Will you walk gently
Through my shadow?
The ones who sing at night,
The ones you dream of,
The ones who walk away?"

Cypher has posed:
"And you see she turns the eyes
And you see the eyes of a night bird
The ones you dream of
Finally the night bird~"

Doug responds. "We could make a go of it if you wanted. But I'm--" He says, "...Still learning. How all of this works, how I work. So if you can humor a big dork who's still learning how life and love work?"

"Well... I like you the way you are." He says. "Spikes and all. There's no 'fix' to it, nothing that you're not doing yourself." He gives a little smile, and then starts to climb the tree, before he moves to hang upside down by his knees from a low hanging branch, his arms dangling down.

"...In the crystalline knowledge of you-"

Magik has posed:
Blurring shadows give way to a hazy smolder, ebbing and flowing beyond the great span of boughs lifted to capture remnants of day. Glistening leaves curl to shadowed edges, murmuring soliloquies and prayers stolen from a thousand voices, a thousand lifetimes. Whomever invokes the names of demons and Limbo may surely find their stolen confessions enshrined there, testaments plucked on the myriad breezes conveying their words. Listen a while, fragments might tumble away at the edges of hearing. So many tongues, so many strange bits of lore to be gleaned.

"This," a murmur from under the tree where Doug perches is the loudest she chooses to get. "Hardly worthy of books. They probably have dinners and worrying too much about what to wear." Derision at the edges traipses around her opinion of that, clearly. "You know what I am. Who I am." As if Limbo itself weren't a psychotropic environment stirred to her moods, the immediate lift of the glistening stone walls enclosing a sheltered space in a sea of darker tidings, the endless gravitational pulls of her fractured soul-shards announced even here. "You have your own questions, unanswered discoveries. Adventure, I understand. Freedom. The other things that are unfamiliar we can discuss when we come to them. Yes?"

Cypher has posed:
"Well I mean you always did cut a silhouette in a little black dress--" Doug says, as he swings back and forth upside down.

"Sure I know who you are. You're Illyana. Demons and all. You don't apologize and you don't change who you are to accomodate other people... and I gotta say, it's awfully *compelling*. I'm not sure I measure up."

But then he grins, and braces his hand on the tree trunk. "But I do rock a speedo like *nobody* else." He's a little nervous, he's being flip, trying to be cute.

Magik has posed:
Illyana looks up at him. "For a man afraid of being the fool, are you now the Hanged Man in the tarot? The world is no clearer upside down." Her eyes close again and the vibrant black hairpiece bracketing her ears is the only thing that's missing to leave an impression of the queen going about her meditations and ablutions. Perhaps. "You think too highly of me sometimes. I have plenty of flaws."

They needn't be named or they will -will- be here for a month, at least, perhaps more. Depends on if Doug wants the full chorus line of demons dancing and singing, arranged to demonstrate some of her darker deeds in technicolour spellwork. She scrapes her fingers over the black-clad flex of her knee, the joint still. The tree supports her back and him as much, impervious to all the flickering acrobatics or swaying unless he crawls to the very tips of those branches at their lowest. It is, after all, an oak. An oak in a demonic realm, like a tiny Yggdrasil, disregarding it isn't an ash.

"You brought up swimming twice. Is that a suggestion to take up?" Her palm lifts, not quite a summons or threat of a hot tub arising out of the very earth. Though here, as sorceress queen at that, it could be done easily enough. "Or is this your indirect way of getting me into a bikini? You can ask directly. Sometimes it has results."

Sometimes. And as if to prove the point, she doesn't uncross her legs or bound over the glade in a playful, coy wink. Points are made simpler than that. "Like, 'I want you to kiss me' or 'please stab that man, he's really a Kree enforcer'."

Cypher has posed:
Doug thinks about that, and then he adds, "...I have flaws, too."

He stops swinging. "But I'm no good for you,
And you're no good for me,
We'll be as bad as we can be,
You and me!"

That one's Joan Jett, not Stevie Nicks, but the point is made. He muses over that, and then says, "Well, if you took charge, and did what you wanted to do right now, with the caveat that I need to get back mostly in one piece... what would it be?"

Magik has posed:
Seventies music supplied by Doug is the best they'll get here. Limbo is hardly known for having radios or even record players to say nothing of digital technology.

"I am no good for anybody. You must be somewhat mad or foolish to want me," Illyana points out quite simply. Her feather-light hair falls in silken swirls around her shoulders, eased into a jagged curtain by her shoulders the restless, endless motion. The sussurus of the oak tree hums over them, branches shifting and creaking. It's enough to listen to Doug sing and the serenade mustn't fall on deaf ears.

"What I would do right now, you might not want to see. Reminding misbehaving kin I am their master and queen." Her legs slide forward, breaking that modified lotus position, and she stretches out. "Here, with you. Open an ocean of mystery for you. Walk it. This is the simplest of trials: what do you want? Try it."

Cypher has posed:
Doug muses over that, and then he sticks his chin up - er, down. His own hair is so thick that when he hangs upside down it mostly stays where it is. Can't do a thing with it. His fingertips dangle.

"Maybe what I want is just to sit and talk, really." He says, "I mean, I'm a red-blooded guy, I have my fantasies -- but I also know enough to know that sometimes... there are things that matter more. You're not an object, you're a person. That's what I want."

Magik has posed:
Up. Down. The sideways slew of space between them beckons a change, perhaps, the slightest hint of buoyancy and force answering the unspoken call from Illyana. She doesn't hover in place so much as arrange the space under the tree to prevent her guest from smashing headfirst into the ground if he lets go. Something Doug might only realize if he falls into the force bubble, but nice to have. "I made gestures," she explains without preamble. "You have not acted on them. So you have your fantasies, I have my ideas and the respect not to try to look in your head and see. Rather rude, tapping in." She smirks at that. "The demons might try to eavesdrop. Here, they won't."

Oblique statements surrender to her tapping her finger against her knee. "Everything matters if you think it does. You are a person. You have needs, wants, dreams. Wishes."

Cypher has posed:
Doug flattens his mouth into a line, and then he looks left, and looks right, before he lets go, and goes "Whoof!" as he's caught in midair. Then he rolls and lands in a crouch on the ground, before he pushes himself up, into a sit. "I was trying to be a gentleman." He admits.

"As for what I'd like?" He says, before he looks up to Illyana, and then he bites the corner of his bottom lip, and he murmurs, "It's a long list. Start by kissing me? And then I'll start enthusiastically ticking off boxes."

He reaches up with one hand, to brush a sheaf of blond hair out of his eyes.

Magik has posed:
"Demon queen." A simple statement. "Black sorceress. Blood mage. Soul-drinker. Russian doll. Little monster. And snowflake." One by one Illyana ticks them off for Doug's benefit. "Only one of those names is particularly nice, da? I appreciate you being a gentleman. The conversation is..." She has to pause there, thinking on how to proceed, a soft moment less of hesitation than of crystalline thoughts arranged into a neat, precise order. "Better than what I normally have. Demons bend over backwards in slavering affection. Piotr is a good man but he has other concerns and sometimes he forgets who I am. Not just his little sister. Everyone else walks on cracked ice or make no sense to me. What do I care about social media or a celebrity, what does it matter someone copied notes or doesn't like their job, when they can get another?" It might be a perplexed state rather than criticism, a glimpse of an outsider onto incomprehensible social and cultural functions. No doubt Europeans felt the same way showing up in the midst of New Guinea on first or second contact.

She rolls her shoulders then to alleviate the potential build-up of stress that could be drawn by her statement. Not a confessional, even as she raises her chin to meet his eyes again. She holds out her hand, brushing his jaw with those slim, deceptively delicate fingers. But callused and marked by the use of that sword, they cannot hide her craft any better than psychics can conceal their halos of thought from one another. The digits entangle with his hair, mussing it just a little, before she rocks forward to her knees to close the distance. Some might strike quick.

Not her. Her approach favours slow closure, giving him time to run if the hindbrain screams how terrible an idea it might be to remain. If not, then her lips brush over his, tentative, testing the margins of selves before committing to immolation in full. "See?" Murmured, a transmission of a vibration more than sound. "We can learn." And then it's in for the proverbial kill, with a sound locked up low in the throat almost resonant with a trilled shiver of nerves.

Cypher has posed:
Perhaps it's frightening, but it's also thrilling, and in the right doses fear can be an addictive medicine. Doug's heart hammers in his chest, but he's not shying away or flinching -- just soft lips and then deceptively strong hands -- he was always a scholar athlete, a sturdy boy -- on Illyana's back, pulling her in close. He's still taller than she is, though he's only average height.

But what there is, is a deep-rooted desire to please, an instinctive response to what stokes that demonic fire hottest, and then instantly tilting to that desire, offering it, responding. The last trace of that spicy drink he was swilling is still on his tongue, as his shoulders rise and fall and he lets out a low, boyish sigh. He does enjoy kissing.

Magik has posed:
Some doors can never be shut, once opened. Knowledge is like that; having it cannot erase the reality of its existence, the discoveries that follow. Ignorance might be a kind of swaddled bliss. But this is just a kiss, a savouring of shared moments. No brimstone taste, no sudden loss of consciousness as energy is transferred out through one channel and buried into demonic soil. Illyana is on her knees, hand pressed to the ground to keep her balance largely. The other trails up and down Doug's neck, tracing his nape to his shoulder and back again, her knuckles running along the underside of his jawline with a fluid grace and complete uncertainty. How different the touch of his skin than her own, the heat dancing through his flesh and the thrilling dance of his pulse.

It sings to some dark part denied, to a voice not heeded at all. Suppressed, as ever, checked as she buries it full beneath the weight of discovery. Exploration in reply, the riposte of her mouth on his that softens, then speaks of demand in exhilarated tones that rush away to softness again.

Cypher has posed:
"Not uh. Not out here." Doug says, somewhat breathless. "As beautiful as this is?" He glances around, and then back again, "I'm just old-fashioned enough to prefer to be..." He glances side to side, "Behind closed doors. You know?" He reaches up and brushes his palm against Illyana's cheek.

"I think you're a beautiful person. Scary, but beautiful. You're not a broken doll or a heavy metal pin-up." Then he puts his finger over her mouth, and leans in, to gently touch foreheads with her. "But uh... yeah. You've got a whole castle. Let's use it. Whisk me away to your most romantic dungeon."

Magik has posed:
Laughter scours the air, a rare enough sound here. The crackling of ice gives way to a sluggish flow, then the rush of young waters tumbling down steep slopes. Not lasting for long, but Illyana can laugh. It's just not very common for her to react so, but there they are. "I have a whole realm. I do hope you have the time and patience to match what you just suggested." Sitting back, she swivels into a crouch and stands in a single rivulet of momentum that never quite ends. Rocking on the balls of her feet, she surveys the space around them and the flowers tremble softly in the breeze.

Somewhere, out there, a demon is running for its life, most certainly not feeling torching on its back. Not at all. Her expression turns to shadow or two, considering just about everything. "It isn't far. Walk or take the quicker route?"