13996/Let this not create a Rift between us...

Let this not create a Rift between us...
Date of Scene:	30 November 2021
Location:	Off the coast of Japan, Pacific trench - Pacific ocean
Synopsis:	The pacific rift population of the elemental plane of Earth got mostly safely relocated back to where they came from, but then the villain of the piece arrived. It's like looking in a mirror, only not. But one should never mess with the Hellblazer or the Lord of Hell himself. It never ends well. There's bad odours and hellfire all over the place.
Cast of Characters:	Sinister, Constantine, Lucifer

---

Sinister has posed:
So, the ocean was held back by a solidification of biological material spawned out of Sinister and fueled by an energy donation by a Celestial. All to the good. That is still exhausting and an hour or so had to be spent just recovering from that. So, that was enough time to have a smoke a thing and logically, for the person that can easily teleport to go and collect a wizard. When trying to do weird things, one definitely needs a wizard. And then there's roles to play in this scenario.

Evacuate the Luki. Safely remove the rift generator device that was oscillating frequencies and doing other odd foo, without it doing anything bad, like alerting the villain that put it there in the first place. That might happen anyway, because someone very clever had to have made that and very clever people tend to think of very clever failsafes and tamper warning triggers. It's a thing.

And there's the hardest thing of all: Close the rift safely, get the hell out of dodge and somehow secure the tunnels that were already made by the elemental worms.

Constantine has posed:
"Repeat it slowly for me..." John says, his voice veiled by the smoke coming out of his mouth as he speaks. He takes another short drag but this time exhales it before talking. "You want the Luki worms safely evacuated?" He is fully frowning at this idea. Like, you-just-made-my-day-ten-times-worse level of frowning. "I can probably exorcise the big mother but the babies, they were born here. They belong now. Can't return them as they are or they go *poof*. Or BOOM." He looks up, lets out a sigh. "Two ways of saving them, then: either we neuter them and find time a safe place to live the rest of their lives or they must be processed by the same device that opened the rift as we push them back in."

To buy some time as he thinks, he goes through his coat pockets one item at a time. Nothing brilliant appears, just crumpled empty packs of cigarettes, a dirty handkerchief, pocket change for thirteen cents total, much lint... "Our problem is they keep digging, right? What if... I put them in a deep sleep while we find the device? Then we can process them back where they belong."

Lucifer has posed:
"But the babies were born of the mothers that are here, plus, they're a hive mind. I don't think it's going to be as disasterous as you think it will be." Lucifer offers, arms folded across his chest. "Also, please spare me the grief and woe is me bullshit of having to actually do your god damned job. We're all risking our asses here, some of us more than others, so if the only thing you're going to do is stand there lamenting some woe is me, now I have to DO stuff bullshit, you can stick it up your ass and leave. I'll just figure something else out."

Lucifer...is tired. He is pale. Even with an hour to try and recoup himself, there's barely anything left energy wise. He's trying, but this also means he's quicker to irritate. That fiery spirit and Devil-Demon just barely contained by the surface of the veil he wears. "Also, we know where the device is. We just need the luki moved."

Sinister has posed:
Sinister finishes off his cigarette and stubs it on the floor, rising after a second go and a look of consternation that results in a float-up via telekinesis. He floats the cigarette stub over for incineration. "You two are interesting when you're at loggerheads..." he says in a mutter, walking closer to them both, to point a finger at John. "We can do it. We just have to think outside the box. Remember that Lucifer has a thing for endangered and rare critters that are few and far between, he's lived a life of being a singular entity. Knows how that is..." and to Lucifer "...and John is used to going by the seat of his pants and not having any back up." He points at Constantine again, "...which you need to unwind your brain and re-evaluate, because you have back-up and some credible clout in your ballcourt, so you're not a solo one-man-army against everything. No need to kill, because there's extra oomph."

He exhales, stares at nowhere and shakes his head. "Good god, I apparently have taken lessons in diplomacy somewhere. Shoot me now. I'm clearly an imposter..." he leans in to kiss Lucifer on the way past, heading for the tunnels. "They're not aggressive unless threatened or we happen to be in their way when they're eating. Come on. We're going to examine what we're dealing with with our own eyes." He hefts a small pack of supplies and gadgets over his shoulder and walks on. A little less gracefully than usual, we'll note, because: Knackered. But he does recover quicker than some, on the base level.

Constantine has posed:
John nods, nods to Nathaniel. Not that he was to argue with Lucifer when sitting on a dimensional powderkeg either. "Sorry, you're both right." He also crushes his cigarette, using the heel of his shoe in a twisting motion. No alcohol chaser. "What I meant to say, the way back to their dimension is through the nexus... but they were born at our vibration level. If we push them in it won't end well. Last time we were lucky, I must have compensated somehow when we travelled through the crossroads. The crossroads are all the vibrations at once and none of them so anyone be there without bad. A paradox, yes. The babies... we need to attune them along as they cross over, that is what I meant to say. But we do have the device, right?"

Of course, John notices how everyone is tired. "Let me give you guys a boost." He engages into what could be tai-chi or yoga dance, laying over guttural words chanted in throat singing. When he suddenly stops, two candle flames burst to life, floating at eye level. He collects one in each hand and blows the first toward Lucifer, like a kiss. It gently reaches Lucifer's forehead and vanishes. The second goes to Nathaniel. "A day of sustenance. Was used by nomads to cross long lifeless stretches without need to drink or eat. Let's go."

Lucifer has posed:
"Fine. So we need to attune them while we pass them through. Honestly, I don't really care HOW it's done just THAT it gets done. The mothers need to go first. Hell, some of the luki may not survive long after being disconnected from the mothers...but they need to go. And honestly, sooner rather than later is better because we don't have all the time in the world here." He says this and then lets out a sigh.

Watching John do that chai-ti-wa stuff and then getting 'kissed' in the forehead by a power filled flame does...something. He's not sure what. Sustenance for him and Sinister are two very different things - and Lucifer hasn't had a sin fountain to drink from in a little while. Which is fine - in small bursts - if he doesn't use up his energy. "We have the device. I just have to get it..." He waves a hand. "Away from here. Likely to...somewhere...the fuck was in that fire kiss, Johnny?"

Sinister has posed:
Sinister pauses only briefly as the flame kisses his forehead. That does a little something to him, restores a bit of the grace in his step, but recouping from creating a gigantic plug to hold back 4000 pounds per square inch of ocean water pressure is still a thing. He beckons and stoops as he heads through the tunnel that he scouted as a fox the day prior, to the large burrow of the first set of Luki mothers. She's enormous but mostly dormant, occasionally undulating a bit, with a pile of deionized elements in a pile underneath her like a bed. She doesn't seem disturbed as they move on past, up a gradient into another burrow which is empty, but with two more tunnels off of it. And a little further along, there is the giant spikey ballbearing stuck in the crevace, with its probes throbbing into the surface of the rock. It is from this, that the rhythmical pulse comes.

Sinister approaches it cautiously and crouches, not touching but examining the surface visually. "This is multifunctional from what I can feel -- it's an attractor, but there's also something inside it, best I can describe it is a labe, a perpetual motion machine from what I'm sensing, which is resonating. On quite a lot of different oscillations." He takes out his sensor kit and starts to work, working on calculations. He also heads back down the tunnel a ways, to point it at the momma Luki, observing the data. "At least one of those oscillations matches her resonance."

Constantine has posed:
"Some spells were woven and pinned by Gods of old, before the Flood. This one is a blessing of cornucopia and it gives what one truely needs. I couldn't replicate the effects on my own, I'd need a whole covenant and a week. Maybe an alchemist could brew something... but that's not my cup o' tea." This is how John explains the 'fire kiss' as he follows through the luki tunnels to the device. "It lasts for a day but so far I know, there's no energy limit. Give it a moment for the trickle to adjust." He kneels close by and gives the spiky thing a dirty stare.

"You little bastard," John addresses the machine. "The Greeks had one or two endless mechanisms. They loved their cogs, the Greeks. They were lost, so far I know and good riddance." He approches a hand to the machine, no touching. "Daha Fazla Goz." An eye grows inside of John's palm, a copy of one of his own. It blinks, looks left, looks right. John moves his hand around the machine, looking for something. He closes his hand. "No control pannel. Figures. Hmm. Arata Inauntru."

This time, an image forms above the spiky ball of dimensional doom, woven of many small lines of light that criss cross until... "This is what's inside. The whole mechanism. Holy Cheese of Venice... look at that..." The Hellblazer is mesmerized.

Lucifer has posed:
"For the love of all that's unholy..." Lucifer mutters as John gets distracted by a machine that really, couldn't they just pick it up somehow and carry it with them somewhere? His focus was supposed to be on the luki, but the Devil decides to take things into his own hands.

He closes his eyes as a shimmer takes him over and the veil of mortality sloughs away revealing the Adonis-like perfection that is Samael Lucifer Morningstar. The Lightbringer. The Archangel. The First. One gets the picture. He then begins to chant in a holy tongue, one of the Archangels, words that only the Metatron and God Himself can truly understand. His hair begins to flow around him as if wind blows it even though all is still, and suddenly there shines a bright light that pales everything around him, a light from him that even Sinister has not witnessed before. With this light, and the ancient chanting, soon all the luki begin to shimmer, to fade in and out of existence until little portals seem to swallow the mommas and larger luki whole - even some of the babies go along with them. A handful of the babies petrify before disappearing into the rifts.

Once it's all done, and Lucifer can no longer feel the presence of the luki, everything fades, his hair settles around him again and the light dims. He lands on his feet, but then immediately collapses to the ground, entirely spent.

Sinister has posed:
"What are you...?" Sinister begins, until the second of the spells by Constantine illustrates the interior of the ballbearing and he simply stares at it. It's a different look from SInister though, one of growing anger -- at the very center of the device in its perpetual motion is a brain. It looks like a human brain and it's wired into a kind of plasma stabilizer that keeps it hovering in place. So distracted is he, that he misses the intent that's about to get telegraphed, until he can -feel- the sudden need for ecstatic behaviour overtake him briefly and he looks over his shoulder... or at least begins to, before he's blinded by the light.

"Oh good, GODs above and below and all the annoying servitors of them in between..." he growls, looking back at the device and concentrating. He touches it, palm going flush and a look of furious focus takes his features, until with one more throb, the probes all retract from the fissure and the ball clonks to the ground and rolls, self-righting on the inside.

And that's when from the end of the corridor, a very familiar voice says "OH, bravo. Bravo. Well done. Well, this makes my job that much more interesting, doesn't it?"

Nathaniel Essex' voice. Only then... who is the one that deactivated the device? The crouching Sinister's lips grimace and he truly does look monumentally angry.

Constantine has posed:
That power, that Voice... John only glimpses in Lucifer's direction before having to shut his eyes. His own 'holographic' spell collapses, the tapestry of light unravelling rapidly tread by tread in half a second. "He's doing it... This is insane. He's doing it." Whatever Lucifer is doing, it had Constantine's hair rise on his neck and his skin goosebump. Somehow he can feel what is happening.

"Lucifer... damnit." John rises to come to the Devil's help, knowing how taxing this true miracle must have been. John is ready to catch him, if that kind of help is needed. Then he gets hit by double vision deja vu voodoo. One Essex. Two Essexes. John eyes grow wide and his mouth puckers at its smallest in totally unxepcted consternation.

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer iiiiiis pretty much out cold. Maybe. There's a twitch, maybe another, while he's in John's arms. Giving a groan, and he can *FEEL* the anger within Nathaniel. "...Help him..." He utters finally before passing out completely. Limp. Stone cold. Have fun!

Sinister has posed:
Sinister turns around suddenly and swiftly and it's an all out assault. He /screams/ at the other individual here, a flare of light coming from the diamond in his forehead and the other Sinister flinches faintly, then fires a whole bombardment of concussive blasts out of an outstretched hand. This is met by a flung-up shield from 'their' Sin and an advance toward his doppleganger. "There's nowhere you can go that I won't find you..." he snarls.

"Oh, pssh. I'm you you idiot. You've gotten soft, old man." The other Sin smiles, waggles eyebrows facetiously. "Trucking with godlings and wizards, doing -good- things from time to time? Pff. You don't even wear the shoulder ornamentation."

"I don't have to," Sinister grits. But then a trickle of a thought, highly shielded, zaps into both nearby brains. <<I have a bad habit of monologuing when I'm feeling smug. Lucifer... Wake up.>> A little mental zap, in the amigdala region and a boop to the medulla oblongata. Have WAKE and a good dose of sudden adrenaline.

Constantine has posed:
Constantine recovers form his surprise with a lit cigarette in his mouth. No one noticed it happening, not even himself. Old habits do die oooh so very, very hard. He looks down to the Celestial in his arms. "I'm not carrying your sanctified ass, my friend. No part of the job today." Some of that cigarette's ash falls off and rolls down Lucifers neck and inside the shirt's collar. That, John noticed and it gives him a split second of pause. He lowers Lucifer to the floor. He could have dropped him without damage but no, he takes the time.

"Sabaibhanda thulo prakasa!" John speaks, lifting both his spread hands each sides of his head. At the end of the spell, his mouth doesn't close up, no. His mouth... bursts into a lance of white fire. The fire jumps to connect to Lucifer's own mouth, becoming a conduit which pulses with each of John's breaths. The sound of conflagration is akin of a furnace burning jet fuel fast forwarded times twenty. John's face is illunated from the inside and his eyes and ears are like beacons. Do not cross the beams, they said...

Lucifer has posed:
If the WRATH he was getting from Sinister - their Sinister - wasn't enough, the fire from John is plenty. The Devil opens his eyes and closes his mouth to stop whatever Hellfire CPR is being performed and then he gets to his feet. Now, sharing thoughts is a funny thing. Especially when one can share emotions, and when you push enough of them through...well...

Ya get a very....very...pissed off Devil. One who moves to stand halfway between the two, looking from one to the other. Likely easy to tell them apart as well. "Let me guess. This is the part where you think you're soooo close to actually winning, you spill all the beans about your plan. Oh but no. You'll then deem yourself smarter than that. Know what you're doing..." He steps forward, and finds those crimson eyes of the 'other' Nathaniel, catching that gaze, giving just a small tilt of his head. A smirk, a held gaze. "But it's me... and I'm a stickler for some good times...so tell me, *M I S T E R S I N I S T E R*...what's your deepest...darkest desire?"

Sinister has posed:
Wait, what? Wrath-ball at brain-o-clock, hellfire CPR, then a sudden and vigorous upsurge of the Devil in his finest attire. Namely, wielding who he is like a clawhammer disguised as a scalpel. Sin blinks, but then there's a small, wicked smile and he murmurs to Constantine. "Once we pick up our jaws, any chance you can jinx some bad luck toward my other face?" before he advances, stalking foward until he's behind Lucifer and to the left. He stares at his counterpart, little more, but his chin drops slowly toward the floor, gazing out beneath his eyebrows - the red of that gaze ignites around the edges, hinting at white-hot light. Doesn't SEEM to be doing much, does he?

Constantine may notice that the oscillating rift generator spun about gently, rolled on the spot and appears to be softly humming. Weird.

Mister Sinister blinks once, arching one eyebrow up "...But I didn't win, did I, I was thwarted by the Scooby..." and hit by the power of the eyeballs and Lucifer's God-born, self-actuated power to know what people really want. His cheek twitches, psychic resistance fighting the urge to reply, but well, some things are inexorable. "...To catalyze the elevation of mankind and know that it's me at the top of that pile. I want to be proved -right-...I ... really want to be the only Essex. Not relegated to a lesser construct!" he's building up steam as his tongue gets loosened. "I want to destroy him, take him, become him! Make all that work MINE!"

"Sadly, I am often immitated but never replicated." Sinister replies with a laugh under his breath, then shoots straight up and plasters himself flat to the roof of the tunnel, as the oscillating device in the center of the rift generator vibrates at a very terrible frequency for him. It hits the other Nathaniel Essex as if he'd just been smacked by the Juggernaut at full tilt. But that pinned-to-the-ceiling Sin is also ever so slightly melting, his teeth gritted. Hissed: "LOvely thing about resonant frequencies, when I made the device in the first place, I know how to tune them precisely..."

Yep, the False Sinister is having some very interesting times of trying to keep molecular cohesion.

Constantine has posed:
When the connection is shut, the line of Hellfire is cut loose to whip past Lucifer's head and lick at the tunnel's wall once, leaving an inch deep gash in the rock dripping with lava. Then Constantine closes his mouth and slowly slinks to the floor to kneel, his shoulders heaving with laborious breathing. Smoking and Hellfiring, tsk tsk. Need more cardio, John. Or... John reaches in his coat and drinks from his flask, refueling as well as cooling his throat with pure spirits. There's no indication he's heard that whisper from the Nathaniel he knows. Probably not, he's lighting up another Silk Cuts with agile, yet trembling fingers and using an old green Bic lighter.

"Es esmu dumi nakti, es esmu sapnu zeme, es esmu mu?igi lidz ritausmai..." John sings gently, letting the first smoke of this new cigarette leave with the lullaby. Lazily, the tendril of exhaled tobacco meanders across, passing Lucifer, passing Nathaniel Essex, ignoring the Humming Ball of Bad and going for Mister Sinister's nose. "Just shut up and get the fuck to sleep... We're just too tired for you." And then it's lights out for John Constantine who sprawls face first on the stone floor.

Lucifer has posed:
"Except you failed to consider one thing..." Lucifer speaks after he's answered, those blue eyes flashing black and centered with hellfire. He takes a step and his clothing begins to melt off his form, another and there goes the mortal shell sloughing off him again. Only this time, it is not Adonis that stands before the False Sinister that is slowly losing it's grip on reality, but the Devil himself. In the flesh that is stark red and muscular, his black hair longer and more shaggy, two horns protrude from his forehead. "I am a part of him, and he is a part of me, and you... you false construct of what he still is but has become better than... You will NEVER have ME. You will never BE him. You will not survive to torture the lands of this world, to attempt to pull it apart by it's threads. This world has protectors the like of which you failed to consider. To factor in."

Then the Devil grins and he grins BIG. See, there's this thing that happens when he goes from dead ass to full of surging power. It ignites things in him that he can just do. And, well, he is the King of Hell. He reaching out an arm, and behind the false Sinister, a dimensional rift opens. "To the depths of the pits of Hell, you false spawn!" Then he snaps, and ZOOP!, molecular deconstructing Sinister is slurped into a void of Hell where he will forever be molecularly deconstructing.

Sinister has posed:
Yep, that's a bad day to be a doppleganger. TO be Sinister, but not Sin. You see, when you've tried all the other avenues and keep getting thwarted, try something novel. Different. And be surprised when you find you're accomplishing things. Yes, Nathaniel Essex is still a vainglorious ass, he's jealous, he's envious at times, proud to a fault, wrathful, lusty, gluttonous, avaricious (he's worth trillions of dollars) but never slothful. You get six out of seven, Samael; but indolence and blinkered focus leads down a bad road, particularly when there are Cosmic forces that actually rather rock when they're being badass.

The oscillator makes a little 'niddit' noise and vibrates to a stop and because grace is not always a thing that you can afford... behind Lucifer, there's a splotch. Constantine luckily doesn't get splattered by Sin goo, but the geneticist is groaning as he attempts to reconstitute himself. Meltyface pushes up onto hands and knees and kind of flops to the side, propping himself against the wall as he gets his face to stop sliding. He glances over at Constantine, grunts and observes "...we broke the wizard..." then murmurs "...never get between the Devil and his dues. It never ends well. By the by darling? You're wicked when you're miffed. It's quite glorious."

Constantine has posed:
Drool escapes Constantine's mouth. He looks so peaceful this way. The cigarette that rolled from his hand ended against the cooling lava that dripped on the floor and now is burning like a festive birthday candle. Not so far from his other hand, the empty flask is left ajar, gaping, hungry. John mutters something that ends in a short snore.

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer chuckles something dark and scandalous, wrapping one arm around Sinister to claim the man's lips in a sizzling kiss. "I am glad you think so." He offers this and then gestures around. "Do you think you can take John away from here? Once you are both gone, I'll finish our work here to safely fill in the caverns and re-pressurize things so nothing goes catastrophic and meet you back at the hotel?" Surely Sinister will agree, and once he does, that is likely what will take place. Everything in the trench fixed, and the three back at the hotel to rest and relax for a while.