10545/She's Always A Woman

She's Always A Woman
Date of Scene:	26 December 2019
Location:	Limbo, Earth-1813
Synopsis:	Doug and Illyana take a swing at the Night Hag, and miss.
Cast of Characters:	Magik, Cypher

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Magik has posed:
St. Petersburg is known for a great many things. Its annual festivals celebrating the onset of winter often merge into the new year celebrations, two weeks away. The sculptors get their early start along the riverfront, chopping out great blocks with chainsaws and hauling them up by sledge to prepared sites. It looks like a small city in the making beneath the skyscrapers and elegant neo-baroque architecture of the former imperial capitall in all its splendour. This far north, daylight fades early and the night comes together. ICE Fantasy, that sublime event, has a distinctly aquatic theme in the making among its urban creations. Ice sculptures take the shape of vast, writhing octopi with geathered tentacles transparent and almost purple in the lurid light. Seahorses cavort around a brilliant gate five meters high, sculpted with every Atlantean treasure -- as imagined by those on the Baltic Coast or out of Archangelsk or Murmansk instead.

Beneath shattered swirds rise scaled maidens and noble gryphons, none of them entirely real. Furious dragons prowl on stormfront winds that swirl around the translucent buildings emerging from dancing seas. The "Reverie of Yesterday and Tomorrow" is the exact sort of place where Slavic paganism and Greco-Roman mythology collide with further-flung stories, and every creation is beautiful beneath those light-bound tents. Cold as it is, here is a place where Snegurochka -- the snowflake sister to the deadly winter wizard Ded Moroz -- might walk unmolested. Here is where she walks over the crystalline bridge chiseled from the cold, buried among the crowd with Doug at her side, the sword that invariably should be with her no more than a harmonic distortion in her aura.

Make no bones about it, it's /cold/, but in a vibrant way shared by a million souls. Tourists and residents alike crowd among the artificial palaces of ice and snow, moving between pavilions still being completed. Sculptors work with the oddest of tools, saws and chisels and hoses. Shadows leap from projection lights and spotlit-flooded corners where all sorts of mischief may be made.

"It came from in here," she murmurs. "One of the bad dreams. The child must have seen something. Carried it home in their eyes."

Cypher has posed:
Doug blows out clouds of misty breath, as he follows behind Illyana, a half-step behind and to her left. He converses in Russian easily, and then he says to her, "Just a moment," before he breaks off, and then converses with someone at a booth quietly, in Russian... and he comes back with some sweet biscuits wrapped in paper, and a cup of hot, sweet, fragrant sbitten.

"It's cold," He says, in perfect Russian, "Drink this."

He turns, to study an ice sculpture. "We'll find it." But he's looking at Illyana out of the corner of his eye.

She can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes
She can ruin your faith with her casual lies
And she only reveals what she wants you to see
She hides like a child, but she's always a woman to me

Magik has posed:
Just a moment: she waits for him, still and chilly wrapped up in her white-fringed cloak. Illyana looks every inch the Russian maiden, nested in her heavy wool and velvet garments. Wool circles her hood, giving her face a comfortable protective frame. The biscuits earn an appraising look, the gift in his hand matched by those frosty eyes turned to him. Suggestions of pine dance around her, imbibed by a breath and her blood on her tongue, the psychic evidence of a pine needle serving as her compass point.

"Share this with me," she suggests, not too pointedly. The vibrant atmosphere stops just short of her, not able to fully scratch her surface. "It will grow cold quickly. I am used to it. I do not think you are quite so much."

The mermaid with her scales isn't an Ariel of Disney make. She has sharp scales, true, and a twisted, turning tail swept by long fronds like fur down the back. Swooping fins glitter under the shining lights turned on her while her noble countenance examines a polished globe. There is nothing terribly fraught about that except she's a siren of the deep, dangerous to lure men to the depths. "Do you think she would take you under? Submerge you and leave you unable to breathe?" she murmurs, always in Russian. English here might draw out GRU, the FSB, too many interested ears.

Cypher has posed:
"I'm made of some pretty stern stuff." Doug says, as he shares the drink with Illyana. It's a little bit like a non-alcoholic mulled wine, very strong and very sweet, but it's warming and nice, the sweetness of molasses and honey with warming herbs. He likes it. He looks up at the mermaid, and then adjusts his hood, as he studies the sculpture, and and says, "I like to think I'm so adorable she'd want to keep me."

He looks back to Illyana, and says, "I have a question. It's a stupid question, but I mean it. Why me? What's so special about me?"

She can lead you to love, she can take you or leave you
She can ask for the truth but she'll never believe you
And she'll take what you give her as long as it's free
Yeah she steals like a thief but she's always a woman to me

Magik has posed:
A shepherd does not run away when the wolves come close. What happens when the shepherd -is- the wolf? Illyana looks among the masses with a practiced eye. She might garner some attention from her attire from the well-dressed and bundled Russians around her, but the melodies of her backwater accent refined to some plausible elegance might make them think of her as a striking country girl come to their refined, beautiful city facing outward to Europe instead of Asia. Sipping the drink after Doug has his fill, she rolls the honey drops around her lips and tongue, tasting it and melting not one inch into it.

It beguiles and suggests bending, but a drink is not enough to bring down the Queen of Limbo. Onward, past the seahorses, she gives them a searching look but finds nothing there. The path splits, heading into an open air pavilion where a ship with billowing sails braves a storm above a half-submerged town with onion spires and tall columns. Turn to the left, as the sorceress does, and the sight is a spectacle: a fitting reflection of the Winter Palace of the Romanovs, resurrected down to the teacups and tables in icy furniture. Drawing rooms and bedrooms open up, this recreation utterly chilly and wreathed in mist.

"In what context? The gods, the team, coming back?" she asks.

Cypher has posed:
"And it all melts away in the spring." Doug says, "Completely gone. It's the ultimate ephemeral art. Nature itself does the teardown." He's utterly and absolutely enchanted by it, watching it.

"I don't know." Doug says, "I think I was referring to you. You and me. Us. But I guess that could be interpreted as a more general question to the universe."

He inhales, and then looks around, as he starts to pick up on... something, subtle eddies in the way the crowd moves. He puts his hand on his chin, as he begins to... watch.

Oh, she takes care of herself, she can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh, she never gives out and she never gives in
She just changes her mind...!

Magik has posed:
"The ego talks. It wants answers. Why you?" Illyana shakes her head. "I would say there is coincidence, no gods. But my blood, my body, are used as currency for them." Soft-spoken, then, but someone might overhear and only think a particularly devout girl speaks of sin and demons, even if the misuse of plural deities irritates their sensibilities. She shuffles along the slow-moving line, separated by plastic chain or velvet-red ropes from the creations. The doorways yawn open, the spectacle of imperial excess before them in all its contrived brilliance. Authentic, if Doug ever sees the photos of the inner recesses of the Hermitage, the Winter Palace, those places that once housed Catherine the Great and her descendants, tsarinas and tsars alike. "Luck of genetics. Friendships changed how we lived, and brought you on when you gave up everything for a friend."

Pared down by that answer, Doug's questions are answered another way. She flexes her wounded finger, massaging blood to the points. The sluggish wound goes afreshly red, stinging, and gives a renewed direction. Tugged forth, the call radiates out. "Why you? That is simple. You drive me rather crazy with those irreverent jokes and quips. Always thinking and rushing, moving like a speedster. Why do you want a flawed, dangerous person like me instead of a nice girl who laughs and wants to go to movies and hikes?" She shakes her head, as good as a smirk. "You're good with your tongue, I will give you that. Some instruction to round out the rough edges, but that comes with time and practice." Russian is, after all, a deviously hard language.

Once I thought my innocence was gone,
Now I know that happiness goes on,
That's where you found me
When you put your arms around me,
I haven't been there for the longest time...

Cypher has posed:
Doug blows out clouds of icy breath. He's studying, he can practically SEE the trail of that creature, the instinctive way people react to it being there without knowing it's there. He assembles it in his mind like a puzzle, as he turns, and begins to move through those sculptures, quietly picking up the trail like a bloodhound.

"...It's amazing how you can be so good with words, but when you need them, they fail you. The answers... they just aren't simple that way. I like you because--because--"

He stops for a moment and lets his hands drop to his sides. "Because you excite me. Because you're familiar--my friend--but also dangerous. Sexy. Exciting. I like excitement. Because every time I look at you you're saying to the universe 'I don't deserve to be loved' and my heart breaks over and over again."

And she'll promise you more than the garden of Eden
Then she'll carelessly cut you and laugh while you're bleeding
But she brings out the best and the worst you can be
Blame it all on yourself, 'cause she's always a woman to me

Magik has posed:
The trail in and out lies at the core of the space, crowded by too many people. But who better to trace a demon than one of their own? A stream of disjointed impressions lies thick on the air like coffee in the early morning, a poisonous hue and a note out of tune while the orchestral swells fit together. The two of them make formidable investigators, driven by entirely different methods. Whilst pretty blondes and brunettes take selfies in front of a room overstuffed with chairs and tables, Illyana brushes her cloak back against the rail defending them. "Me?" A question for him falls from her lips. "Or you as in everyone?"

Her Russian tone clatters into the spaces and she waits for him to move closer with those pastries, stepping into his space. Those narrowed eyes confront the world full in the face, him included. "Never pity me. Never. I confront the world on my own terms, freed of what I was used to be and become. I got on with life. You must have, when trouble took you. We live and die by daring. By trying." The slow consideration is there, even as she deduces his purpose or the unerring inquiry within one.

Only because the sleight of hand is needed to kiss him, staking that unfair claim over and over again. "Because you are incorrigible. Defiantly bright and honest. Dissatisfied, growing. These are things I should not say so soon, so quickly. You might lose the mystique of me."

Magik has posed:
Maybe this won't last very long
But you feel so right,
And I could be wrong,
Maybe I've been hoping too hard,
But I've gone this far
And it's more than I hoped for...

Cypher has posed:
Doug closes his eyes, and then his arm is around her, before he says, "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." He gives a faint, dreamy smile. "It's from one of my favorite books."

Then he tilts his head, and says, "Oh, no. You could never be familiar, beautiful, never be comfortable. You're a puzzle with no solve to you. I just--we know each other. KNEW each other. And here we are, two people picking up the pieces of the lives of the people we were... but aren't, not completely, and I just..."

He looks momentarily frustrated. "I don't KNOW! I just know you're a puzzle I can't put down."

Oh, she takes care of herself, she can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh, she never gives out and she never gives in
She just changes her mind...

Magik has posed:
Illyana slips her tongue against her lips, blotting them in kind. Cold bites into the once warm impression, her face turned up to him. "Which book is this?" A slight line fanning out against her brows, just above her archly elegant nose, fades away anew. "Would you read it to me?" Give him a voice, give Doug a platform.

The next aisle up ahead splits. She starts to walk again, flat path winding past a spotlit hall full of false books and another that probably serves as a ballroom in its immensity. Here the dancers are lost. Here the crowd peers in, like the public permitted to witness the priceless, eminent beauty they cannot touch or experience beyond that choice, brief moment.

For a moment among the casement, she pulls him nearer. Curious, far from distressing, that binding moment of frustration is set in place. She braves the changes in weather, nodding to him. "I have no solution, you say. Is that going to satisfy you? Will you let the frustration go or will it corrode your affection?"

Oh, to have to ask. But in Russia, revolution and corroded affection of the public slay all things. They are natural enough. Add atop that Belasco, and...

Cypher has posed:
"The Last Unicorn?" Doug says, puzzled. "Sure." He silently wonders what might happen if he does read it to her. It might not move her at all. It always moves him. Maybe it's not such a good idea -- but it's just a book. Maybe she'll hate it, maybe she'll like it.

He puts his hand on Illyana's hand and steers her off in one direction.

"...Would you ask Kitty that question?" He retorts. "Would you question her? If you wouldn't question her... then don't question me. I died for Rahne... but I would've done the same thing for any of you."

"People frustrate each other, from time to time. It's part of being human. Or... human-adjacent. Wait'll we have our first real fight."

She is frequently kind and she's suddenly cruel
She can do as she pleases, she's nobody's fool!But she can't be convicted, she's earned her degree...

"I was in love with her, you know. In the way fifteen year old boys fall in love. But I knew - *knew* - she didn't feel that way about me. I could see it before she did. But when you love someone like her, just experiencing her is enough."

"How about you?"

Magik has posed:
The Last Unicorn isn't a book high on the reading list of demonic sorceresses being trained by storm witches and Limbo's lord. Unfortunately. It is just a book, but one rife with meaning, and a horrifically sad ending that she might decide to reverse, but...

"I would," she answers him with total finality in every iron-clad and vibranium-shaped syllable from her lips. Doug and she have no privacy here, except that which they make between them. Her face turned up to his is resolute, her eyes cold and burning still beneath dark golden lashes. "I did. Because there is no -trust- where I come from. You know it, you have seen it and been there. You see how they fall at my feet but given some chance to overthrow me, my blood would be on the floor in the twinkling of an eye. That my own kin cannot comprehend what those stones mean."

Words pause as she gestures slightly. "You saw Megan's reaction. That much as she would learn from me, she is still ready to knife me and expects I would do the same to her. Maybe she's not wrong. Trust is expensive."

Sweet and suddenly cruel, unkind and merciful like the dynamite to take down walls. Her teeth grit, jaw flexing a little. Barely more than that, but present, even as she reaches for his hand and pulls it to her mouth. "Trust is hard. Trust is the greatest weakness there is after love. You open that door and let someone in, holding the knife to your heart and clasping their hands round the hilt. How long have you had the blade in me?"

Unequivocal in her query, she steps in, until their closed hands alone separate them, wedged into a narrow space. "We pass over one another like water transparencies. Separate pieces come together and something shifts into focus that apart would be intangible and scattered. It sets into place and with it comes all the knowledge, a sharp and painful sense of wisdom. You are hot on my fingers and bittersweet on my tongue, a bruising force on my lips and air stopped in my throat. I know all about pain. You are not like any other kind. I cannot even tell if it is pleasure, but you go and it puts me on edge. When you talk about hurting, the ache is here." A thump of her knuckles hits his chest. "A leaden weight. When you speak of not being enough or changed but diminished, I want to shake the thoughts out of your head. No one else compels me enough to even care. I know knives and death, leadership and power and powerlessness. This is all of them and life, hot and bright as sizzling flame, all at once."

A beat. "Satisfied?"

Cypher has posed:
"And the most she can do, is throw shadows at you..." Doug says, half to himself and half to the universe at large, "...But she's always a woman to me." He takes Illyana's fingers and kisses them. "It cannot be an ill fortune to have loved a unicorn."

Then he murmurs, "I'd forgotten what it feels like. It used to happen to me all the time, and I'd forgotten. Amazing."

He looks up, and says, "She's going to make her move, soon. I can just tell."

Magik has posed:
"Forgotten what? The feeling of..." Her hand circles in front of her, dispelling any interest in what is at least a lover's quarrel, a couple's decision on this way or that. "Whatever it is?"

To be so wise, to be so empowered, is to also at times be clouded by ignorance brushing past.

Moves and turns within turns, and Illyana brings her wounded finger to her lips. The gloves protect her from skin to skin contact, as if it much mattered. Pressure lies there, just for a moment. "Seeding trouble. It is ugly to strike here. We won't make it far if we try. We follow, we send her to ground after."

Cypher has posed:
Doug looks up. His cheeks must be flushed from the cold, from that frosty breath billowing out of his mouth and nose."

"Then we have to make her decide it's not worth it, and stay on her heels. Catch her someplace else. I think if we keep dogging her, she'll bounce, and we can try again someplace better."

Then he laughs. "What I meant was... I used to fall in love all the time, but after I died... I couldn't remember how I did it. Now it's happening to me again. And I don't know what to do about it except live inside of it."

Magik has posed:
"Having her trail is easy to follow. Getting ahead, harder." The shift into a mode of a hunter comes as no small thing, shaking off the considerations of how to be a dour Russian doll. Fur and wool don't dismiss the leather-wrapped soul, the blade at hand, the thrill of violence dancing between them. Doug's plan earns a nod, crisp and short. "We have no strength against her in dreams. I can hold my astral form. But the body... not at the same time."

Easier to focus on that, starting to move at speed. Beyond the ballroom, the flight of stairs that sinks down the slope of the river into a series of terraces that normally are used for strolling. Now, by night, they belong to fantasies, beds and cannons together with mincing sylvan figures and a rusalka in her fountain holding up her hands to implore those to draw nearer. Water spirits so easily drown and kill as they give life. "I do not feel this freely." A slow, sharp turn of her head leaves her face in profile. "Not Kitty, not Piotr, not..." A shiver runs through her, shaken off like water. Movement to stay a step ahead isn't freeing but it means she can breathe, though the implications of it smash down to pin her to the ground with impossibly great gravity. Atmospheres of pressure seethe and stir, not only the magic taking hold that point unerringly to a corner of that great suite but the blond. She swallows, baring her teeth. "I want--"

It would be easier if the night hag stirred. If someone in the crowd had the wrong face, if a piercing scream called to trouble. It doesn't. Just the murmurs of passersby, the push of foot traffic guiding them forward gently if they slow. It's easier to whisper. To stay silent. To be flayed by the obvious lash.

Cypher has posed:
Cypher says, "The problem is, we have to catch her when she's vulnerable, then, it logically follows, right? So explain this to me. When is she corporeal and when is she Astral? You know who we need to bring in on this, Betsy, she can attack astral bodies from the physical world with her Psi-Blades."

He frowns. They're tracking an enemy that's both clever and he's certain that she knows they're onto her. That makes the chase more interesting, but also more dangerous. He's not too worried about psychic attack himself, and he knows Illyana isn't. But they're also distracting each other.

"Listen... we're both still figuring this out. I do know that I am having so much fun right now." He reaches down to take Illyana's hand in his. "And no matter what happens between us, I'm grateful for it. You're the tops."

Magik has posed:
"Nocnitsa are deadly to psychics. They feed on the unseen, the unbound." Dark words, dark deeds. Reference to Betsy doesn't bother Illyana but little here truly seems to, her mouth a flat line, her eyes ice-bright in the world contrived of winter's heart. And this is hardly the leading edge of a true Russian winter, one already in place since late October despite the advent of global warming and an accelerating rate of destabilization in the polar regions. "They consume mental energies, worse than a parasite. Unleashing a psychic on a demon like that brings grave consequences of its own." The say-so has its familiarity, wisdom conveyed through simple, plan words.

Wherever it -- she -- is, the night hag doesn't make it easy to find. The scents of loam and burnt wood dance on the air, a plague that the blonde sorceress follows with a turn, a twist. Their hands linked together bring the two mutants along, pressing into a spot that earns a cry of dismay from a guard. "You can't go in there!" is only so relevant when sliding into an icy boudoir rimmed in cannons, honest to God cannons with shot piled up, great icy balls polished off to glow in floodlit spectra: always blue, cerulean to azure, sapphire and something on the auroral glow-edge of green. The guard means to pursue, meant to hold back the camera-toting tourists.

<<Run>>, she whispers in High Demonic, a language almost never heard here, rarely outside of Limbo or the true Hell Lords' domains. Is there a joy to be had in fleeing through a Russian palace, in spinning paths around delicate statues and icy spires being chipped out from blocks of ice carted from Lake Ladoga? Damn straight. Pursuit becomes one, two, then her hand is thrust out to cut open a portal through one side of the world to the other.

"Come on," she warns, the brief gleam of luminous gold exposing a hint of a Tahitian-blue lagoon beyond the hellish psychedelic realm that answers to her. From there another hop, fir-scented and brimstone cast, the second portal torn open to leap them back onto the frosty terraces where generators run and electrical cords leap in great sinuous serpents between other places. Here shadows collect and staff move about, barely seen servants silhouetted. Hellfire barely smokes from the leap through space, sending them up to a wall. She flattens and points, one long finger extended to a room on the other side. Of course, it's almost opaque and hard to see.

But the stench is terrible there, the coalescing infernal imprint visible to the sorceress, and probably forked code in the path of time. A fabulous bedroom lies on the other side. Or rather a grand duchess' bedroom as contrived from around the early 19th century when opulent splendours included art and a dollhouse literally the size of an average Muscovite apartment. Jewels pile from a case, grand dresses sculpted in ice and some in costumer's fabric. In short, every girl's dream. A grandiose bed harder than stone gathers under swells of draped icy fabric, a waterfall plunging down into a bath wide, deep, and gloriously cold forever in the impermeable winter.

Not that they fully get it in. For one brief moment, she turns, and pulls Doug to her for a sharp, hard kiss that steams away the chill of her lips. Illyana's eyes are narrowed, and that unfinished sentence gets its due.

Cypher has posed:
Doug lets out a sudden gasp, and then he gets a... coy look in his eye. "But kotik... right *here*? In the Tsarina's bedroom? What if we're discovered? Imagine the scandal!" Then he starts to laugh. He may have also just given her a nickname, unless she nips that one in the bud.

Then he lets out warm breath, turning to frost amongst the ice, and he glances about, and says, "...She's close." His eyes flick to and fro. "Very close. We've got to flush her out and make her break." Then they can pick up the chase again, like a pair of winter wolves. Keep the prey moving... exhaust it. Can you exhaust this kind of creature?

Magik has posed:
Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?
I've been in a palace like a naughty fiend.
Pussycat, pussycat, what did you there?
I dueled a linguist with a fabulous dare.

The room is too childish for a queenly imperatrix of all Russia, lacking some of the finer points presumably she would have. More likely intended for one of the heiresses of the Tsar, a biddable marriage prospect for the houses of Europe or the rare Russian ducal house worthy of the blessing. Romanoff lines were entangled nearly as badly as Saxe-Coburg-Gotha's. "Imagine, a Rasputin in the Tsarina's bedroom. It has been done many times before in this same city," she hisses back in low tones, voice given little to travel in hushed Russian. Here, in here native tongue, secrets are bent and ideas forced to fold and tear. She leans back against the wall, slowly shifting on her heel. The cloak around her sloughs off her shoulders to the ground with a compelling shrug, the clasps inside completely failing.

Snowflakes hit the ground, revealing black leather, the top at least not cut away at the midriff or else people really /would/ know she's worse than can be believed. Mutant leaping portals alerts have already no doubt reached the security staff. Here, she just rocks that monstrous goth look in a city tolerant somewhat of it. "Or she found her victim here. Planted the seeds. Find the victim tonight, find her."

Cypher has posed:
"Ah, but any noble blood I might've had is long in the past." Doug admits, "Back when we lived in Scotland and England, and the family name was de Ramesie." Still, he's grinning at that, and then he puts his finger on Illyana's chin, and leans in close, their lips almost touching.

His voice takes on a hushed, romantic timbre.

"...Guess what? Chicken butt." He says, in her ear, before he pulls away, and says, "Find the victim, find her? I think I can give that a shot. I just need to do some... people watching." He reaches out for her hand.

Magik has posed:
Rasputin might have ended up badly in the city, but as yet, his descendant has far to go from that. She stands on her toes, making up for those difference of four inches. Larger, more imposing members of the team might balance out the difference better. Few of them have the capacity to spontaneously turn into a high demon, either. She allows her chin to lift, throwing her senses wide for any trace of infernal descent not saturated too deeply into the world. The skewing is deepest on the margins on the far side of the chamber where a shuffling parade of besotted visitors can admire the dresses, the jewel chest, the huge scale of luxury--

--the dollhouse, where some child set her gaze and started to daydream. Maybe she clutched her mother's hand or gasped in delight, as small children under ten are known to do. Probably begged Papa and Mama for such a thing, or cast up a prayer if schooled in the Orthodox traditions once suppressed for nearly a century. Glossy-eyed and hopeful, a little girl carrying off promise, full of ripening dreams like fat fruit on the boughs of a tree in the orchard.

Somewhere, she carries the hopes off to a house. The trail is cold -- it's an ice palace, what else would it be? Wait until they visit Pele on Oahu or the Big Island -- but not stagnant, though not a fresh bleeding wound. Too late for someone to still be out through the masses.

"You were one of the old French conquerors? Norman?"

Cypher has posed:
"Actually no, the de Ramesies were Scots-Saxon." Doug says, "de Ramesie is from the Old English 'Hramsey' ... which means roughly 'Place where the wild Garlic Grows', so we were the people from the place with all the garlic." Then Doug turns and looks at the dollhouse, and back at Illyana. "Hits a chord, huh?"

He murmurs, "I think I get it. Poor little girl, sees that dollhouse..." He looks over at Illyana. "You wanted one when you were little, didn't you? It's the way you looked at it." He didn't get to meet the little girl who was left behind when Illyana was shrived from the Darkchylde, before. He was already dead.

Magik has posed:
Illyana shrugs her shoulders to the question of chords. "My childhood fun was cutting others and kicking demons off cliffs," she says quietly, "while hoping they would not find my shelter and slit my throat if I slept." Her childhood fantasies are not disclosed, nor her dislike for the dark dimension floating just out of reach. Slender fingers coil around her hip, finding the loops on her belt that otherwise hints at its real purpose supporting a sword. "The child they pulled from me, the side who died and died again, she had a mansion to play in for a time. But she wanted small things. I wanted swords, I wanted magic. Even long ago. That was the key to everything."

To being wanted. To being accepted and loved, even by mosnters and those of better graces. A child doesn't require much more than tnat. She steps into the thinner recesses where cords to light the room go, and then gives Doug a slow, contemplative look. "Here. Places to hide, so many of them. It isn't the nest for the nocnitsa, but it stinks in here."

Cypher has posed:
Doug blinks, once. "...I was a boy scout." He says, before he takes out his phone, and with a swipe of his finger, he brings up a phot of a little blond boy in his little tan shorts holding up his sash with all his merit badges on it. He was all big blue eyes and a big mop of blond hair. Good lord.

Then he gives a little quirk of his mouth, and puts a finger to his lips, as he starts to quietly inspect the room, doing those things that only he can do, reading between reality's lines.

Magik has posed:
Merit badges in Limbo include grievously different things, like roasting a demon with its own fire, devouring a removed limb raw, and forcing the local terrain to become a twisted, cavorting hellscape after wiping out legions of smaller denizens. Or bending them to her will. One way or another, there are choices they make to earn their scraps of adolescence, but his path is mildly more troubling than hers in some respects. He dealt with the social issues. She is merely a living anachronism, repousse moue and engaging, narrowed eyes easy to imagine in a childish mask of contempt, of control.

The Darkchylde is a whole other can of worms, one not opened. But there could be tints of it there even as she moves unseen, untroubled, through that icy little room. Of course there are those who stare in from the looking points, but she weaves the shadows to keep them from noticing her. Altogether a wise move, considering how many there are. It doesn't stop Doug from noticing, a purposeful effort.

Cypher has posed:
Doug looks up. "Sorry, just trying to distract you. People tell me that picture's adorable." He cocntinues searching the room, studying the way things are arranged, what's been moved. He doesn't touch anything or move anything himself, and he clamps his jaw to still the faint chatter of his teeth as the cold begins to get to him.

Then, finally, he reaches out to a unique little item -- a superbly made nesting doll, made out of ice molded into the image of a small child, left near the dollhouse, that was moved from its original resting place on a shelf. He begins to slowly open the doll up, with a gentle twist of steady fingers.

Magik has posed:
"Do not apologize for asking," says the Russian quietly. Cool shadows weave together in a tighter cloak, folding snug to her presence and drowning out her own night-black silhouette painted against the floor. She hitches her hand against her back pocket, a sword riding against her hip as she calls it into being. Nothing like a quick and immediate exit if things go bad, if something strikes from the astral realm. "Hunting is hunting." Presumably Doug will hear her, will capture something from the icy cold of the room or learn something from her stalking pace. She looks at things that aren't there, lifting her hand to touch the black current of abyssal darkness. A pull tugs on the thread and sends a shock through her system, miasma lifting almost unseen.

A frown would form, except she drags the narrow spindle out and hurls it up into the air. Scaled horrors take wing, claws and ghastly, torn wings flap about. Magic alone gives them any presence, but someone squeals in fear and another chatters, pointing at the 'light show.'

Cypher has posed:
In the end... it's all of the above.

When Doug opens the nesting doll, he stares at the little swaddled infant in the palm of his hand, and curls his fingers around it, before he sets it aside -- and then he turns, as Illyana throws the spindle up in the air.

"Got you!" He says, as something black and ephemeral and shaped vaguely like a long-armed, hunch-backed person materializes out of the dark. "Illyana, the *doll*--" Trap it in the nesting doll.

Magik has posed:
Projected lights are not uncommon in the ice palace, the festival full of artificially made phantasms and other wonders. Devious constructions of actual magic -- illusions, yes, but magic -- should blend in, and this nearly does with the rampant darkness at war with bits of light in that bedroom meant to glisten in shimmering opulence. Illyana is hard to see when cloaked, but her spell sends the light scattering away in unpredictable methods as the horrors cavort around her, pointing the way to a victim and source alike.

Those heavy black boots hit the ground at a run, heedless of the ice. Maybe they will hold fast long enough to keep her upright. A soaring kick and she's airborne, wileding the Soulsword in both hands. "Down!" she warns, though if Doug cannot see the inevitable issue of his teammate launched up and arcing down with that double-handed grip on the radiant-bladed weapon, nothing on earth is going to save his ass.

Who may be the faster to reclaim the dreamstone is a matter of danger -- Illyana on the dive, the shrieking night hag launching herself to reclaim the doll with an unholy shriek that explodes the natural illumination and makes a generator hopelessly groan.

Cypher has posed:
All those dancing lessons were good at teaching them how to move in tandem with each other. Doug's usual strategy was to sneak up behind someone while they were busy fighting all the other mutants and wallop them with a bat. Which worked amazingly well.

Illyana is leaping, the night hag is lunging and Doug is dropping like a stone -- before he snags the frozen little infant doll and flings it up into the air. "Whoop!"

Magik has posed:
Walloping a target with a bat is plenty useful here, though the night hag isn't phased fully into the world, existing halfway in and halfway out. Psylocke would be a fine kind of person to show everyone who is boss, but they have other alternatives besides wishing for a Magic Missile spell at will. Besides, the next best alternative is crashing into a heap and letting everyone else fighting over the doll.

Everywhere is darkness and the cries of the festival goers are met with security shuffling around. Shouts in Russian run the gamut: 'Hey, it's dark!' "Help me!" 'Turn on the lights, Olga is going to slip!'

The hag's claws swipe through the air for the wooden doll. She shrieks in outrage and demand both, the trilling noise ripping up the back of the spine and lodging deep in the belly. Her shrouded dress floats over Doug, ice-cold and stinking of rotten fruit, loam, burnt offerings or worse. The firefly crackle of the Soulsword heaves down and strikes the ephemeral arm full on as though it were made of dense oak. Illyana doesn't give a war cry, but her descent is sure enough to pack momentum to kick the monster back, not nearly far as she should. The hag strikes back, three times in quick succession, kicks and slashes at the both of them.

Cypher has posed:
Claws rip through Doug's sleeve--and skid across the techno-organic matter of his arm. He hasn't figured out what it does yet, but it's not flesh and bone, and the hag finds no purchase on it, the worst she can do is ruin his coat. He listens to the hag cry out as Illyana slashes its arm -- the nicest compliment she ever gave him was when she ran him through while he was possessed by the Shadow King, and said the Real Doug wouldn't have flinched like a weakling.

But having tossed it up in the air, he scoots backward, and catches it, himself, holding it open in both hands.

Magik has posed:
The fast-moving pace of the fight rounds the dollhouse that stands nearly ten feet tall, clashing over the gabled roof. The night hag has advantage in being able to move through the ice more or less, whereas Illyana has to go up over it. She jumps onto the balcony, crushing the finer detail, and the Soulsword never stops moving in slashes to turn back the cuts on her. Overhand becomes a series of vicious arcs, connecting with ice and cleaving chips away. They crunch where she lands, taking a solid slice to the boot far enough to cut through the leather and into flesh. Blood might thrill her, excite her, that black-washed nightmare torn between defense and escape. She has her doll, at least until the swinging upper-cut with a real sword yanked from its holster -- folded Japanese steel -- nicks it free of her fingers and sends it flying again.

Another shout of outragew and pain. Bad enough Doug isn't bleeding out to death on the ground, she swivels to gain it. The hag has ferocious strength more than speed, the next lunge putting her perilously close to ramming through an ice wall, Doug, and several frightened tourists in pursuit of her dreamstone. That is, with the added burden of the Russian mutant leaping on her from behind like a particularly thorny burr.

"Take it! Destroy it!" she hisses, arm wrapped around the wizened neck and her legs clamped around the hag's midsection. Avoiding claws is going to be rather hard, even for her augmented strength.

Cypher has posed:
Doug looks up, and the innermost doll -- the swaddled infant -- falls out into his palm.

He puts it on the ground, puts his boot-heel on it, and twists, grinding it into the ground with a *CRUNCH*--

Then there is a *FWASH* and an explosion outward of something that knocks him arse over teakettle, and he he ends up upside down on his shoulders, against a wall, seeing stars.

Magik has posed:
The screaming of the night hag is loud enough to bring down the ceiling, shards of ice long as a forearm crashing onto the scene of the bedroom. The canopy splits and crashes. Splinters explode from the waterfall curtains, the armoire and the pretty dresses demolished in her jealous blind run. Nocnitsa eat terrors and throw them back. The wave of absolute horror rips through the crowd, sending those already afraid of the dark into a crushing panic. Illyana rides out the stabbing motions at her calves, her eyes glowing in the dark and the hideously long, wide Soulsword converted into a different blade, curved and long. It hacks and jams into flesh and soul-stuff, the ichorous creation of the hag. <<Die, you bog-borne bitch, fucking die already!>>

Fangs? Yes, they're there, but the black coronet of twinned spikes dips and Illyana ends up flung to the ground, skidding away. Her sword is a scintillating burst of eldritch light in the demon's body, burning down into the core of the terrors. A slick of not-blood spatters the air, the astral plane heaving with the harrowing retreat of the thing. Shrieking voices and sobs close some of the gouges, but not all, that peerless shard of life-energy a promise of doom. The wall above Doug heaves, cracking, and crashes over.

Cypher has posed:
CRASH.

Now Doug is seeing stars and in a big pile of ice. Still... after a moment he moves. "Oog."

Mutant Master of Language, indeed. "Illyana, I forgot which way up is~" He starts to try to find his footing. Pieces of ice are shed from the pile, as he gets to his feet, and wobbles.

Magik has posed:
So close to the former capital, power speaks. The cries bring out flashlights, ubiquitous cellular phones lighting up the dark. More here and there. Illyana sits up, a long gash over her forehead, bleeding from the leg. It hardly phases her at all, as she holds out her hand and the sword comes flying straight back. Snatching the handle, she shuffles on her knees across the icy floor. Gouges torn into it cut her up a bit more, but the pressure helps to keep any damage from lasting.

Hand outstretched, she says under gritted teeth, "Stay down and come to me. Hands and knees." The next cracking noise is ominously close and low, summoning warning cries in the chaos from the crowd.

Cypher has posed:
Doug looks up, and then gives his head a shake, a trickle of blood running from his temple down his cheek. He crawls toward Illyana, over broken pieces of ice, and then murmurs, "The things you say..." Just a bit of clowning in a dire circumstance as he makes his way toward her along the floor.

Magik has posed:
Blood is something she hones in on, as much as she does the apparent clatter of footsteps. The slipslide of approaching police, first on the scene acting alongside the guards, hurries her forward. The sword-blade rests under her arched body, and as soon as Doug reaches out to get there, she claps her hand on his wrist. The next moment, golden light spills up around them in a flash earning the shout -- "There, aim!"

But too late. Too late to aim, to shoot.

"The things you do," she replies, hauling him closer with a yank. The shards of the broken doll fall away. Ground splits asunder and ice crackles as they sink vertically, dropping through the icy floor to an elsewhere.