14220/Into the Thick of It

Into the Thick of It
Date of Scene:	24 March 2022
Location:	The Dense Moors, Scotland
Synopsis:	Lucifer and Sinister bag a couple of werewolves...for..scientific...purposes.
Cast of Characters:	Lucifer, Sinister

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Lucifer has posed:
The integrity of bedsprings were weighed, measured, and tested. They held up rather well to the satisfaction of Lucifer and Nathaniel. Now it's the day after, the full moon threatens, and there is hunting to be doing. Lucifer isn't all that sure what needs to be done in order to catch oneself a were creature. If they're even dealing with a werekin of any kind. Could be something else entirely, there's only one way to find out.

Never the less, he's looking over the map, he has a laptop with various pages about history and local lore up on the screen and about five books and manuscripts concerning everything from historical lore to information regarding fantastical creatures. Apparently trying to be as well prepared as possible.

Sinister has posed:
There is nothing quite like a good night's rest to bring fresh insight and a relaxed state of mind. Nathaniel returns to the hotel room that they rented, bearing some pasties from the local Warren's bakery -- there's a variety of them, freshly made from traditional to meat medley and a couple of good teas, courtesy of Morag. TOday, it seems is a /tea/ day. And probably for good reason, it is not such a fine day out there, judging by the grey clouds and constant mizzling and wind. It will make for an interesting adventure. With sundown in a couple of hours, Sin pulls up a chair and sets down the snack.

"Any luck? I went around the locals asking questions and looking at what they thought of. I think I have something of a lead, as there were a couple of older indiviuals that had a sense of dread and history repeating itself."

Lucifer has posed:
"A few things. I've cross referneced lore and history from the past and what I've been hearing around town..." Lucifer offers as he leans in to press a kiss on Sinister's cheek. "Ah, refreshments." This as he takes one of the teas to sip on while also grabbing a pastry to take a good bite of. "And what you just said tells me that there's some truth behind everything. Especially if there are people here who still know the history..." He says this much and then settles back a bit. "So, how do we approach this?"

Sinister has posed:
Sinister exhales as he sits, rubbing a single hand up and down Lucifer's back the once, settling just beneath the long faded scars. "Well..." he reaches to pull the map closer, tracing over it with a fingertip "...the twin falls we saw ought to be in the foothills of Ben Macdul, or Macduff's mountain." He taps the map there. "It's in the Cairngorm national park, which makes sense. It's also the place haunted by the Grey man and in the same cluster as the Devil's point." He taps another hill. "That was renamed from a more lewd name, by the by, by her Majesty Queen Victoria, when she lived up here in Scotland during part of the year. She conceived children up here and apparently... well, there's myth that something happened to her here, as some of her children had Haemophilia, when it does not run in that family line otherwise."

Lucifer has posed:
"Right! I think I read something about that in...one of these books." Lucifer offers. "About Queen Victoria I mean. But there's always something in these books about the mythicism that resides in the moors, and within the hills. Like... I don't know... there might be something there that no one has been able to sense. Maybe since they aren't keen on it or something." He pauses then, takes a sip of tea and glances to Sinister. "Not even sure you'd believe it without seeing it first hand. Since you're still getting your head wrapped around magicks and all things that such concepts include. Which...I don't say this to put you down or anything. Just... commenting a fact." But Lucifer? He's excited. Likely the most excited he's been about something for a little while. At least about something that HE can actually be a part of in a very keen and personal way. "So... we're headed to the mountain?"

Sinister has posed:
There's a long look, then a head bob of agreement from Sin. The Angel has a point and he won't argue it. "Yes. And, ahh, to answer your question about next steps ..." he licks lips "...without being changed, I doubt I could tell a werewolf from a hole in the wall. We may have to face the fact we'll have to wait until moonrise for me to be able to sense anything, though now? Now I know what one of those minds feels like, so it ought be a little easier."
    A pasty of the traditional variety is taken, beef, leek, carrots and potatos nicely spiced and baked in a cold-water crust, bitten into with all the juices sealed inside. He doesn't speak with his mouthful though. "I doubt you have anything to fear from one of them and I'm fairly certain I don't, but other things out there? I do not know. Nobody knows what the grey man is, after all. There's a definite energy up here and the land is criss-crossed with leylines. I would not exclude a mystic something or other." With a grin. "It's good to see you excited."

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer taps his chin while taking another slow bite of his pastry, washing it down with a bit of tea. He tilts his head one way and then the other before giving a nod of his head. "Even I don't know if I could tell... unless they have a particular scent or mannerism or something that could be detected... but I doubt it. If it's not mystical related anyway. I think it all comes down to HOW they're changing or WHY... or a bit of both." This and then he sort of flushes when Sinister comments on how he's glad to see Lucifer excited. "I feel like I am both right in and just out of my element here. I cannot wait to go exploring and see what all we can find and learn... it'll be an experience for both of us, and we're experiencing it together... so... yes. I am admittedly all sorts of excited."

Sinister has posed:
"I sometimes wonder you know, at all the things you've had to discover all on your own. Nothing new under the sun and such, just evolutions of the same things -- but it's different when there's two. Perceptions are singularly subjective after all," Sinister smiles, inhaling deep of the scent of tea and pasty. "We'll finish this up and head to the Cairngorms then. As the crow flies, it's not hard to surveil the land, though I imagine teleportation is probably quicker than flying all the way there. I'll find a decent image for a reference point."

Touch the phone, steal someone's holiday picture, voila.

"I'm intrigued to find out what manner of shapeshifter this actually is, too. Nature, curse, disease, fae, meta, mystical... we won't know until we're close by when the moon starts to rise."

Lucifer has posed:
For speed's sake, they finish their treats and drink, and though flying would be an interesting thing, they could save that for later. Right now, the point is to get where they're going and set up to watch for what will happen beneath the moon. "For some, the moon has to be out, if rumor and lore is correct. So this will definitely be interesting if the clouds remain..." He comments while he memorizes the spot from the picture and then gathers all they need or want to bring with them. A touch to Nathaniel's shoulder, they are covered in smoke and when it dissipates they arrive almost precisely where the picture was taken.

Sinister has posed:
It's one of those handy dandy 'look-out' points that governments and conservation groups put out to tell holiday makers that this is a 'great view' spot. It's in a parking lot that is by its nature and by the time of day, rather deserted. Here, in the waning of the day, there's virtually no light pollution at all. No streetlights, no villages close by, merely cat's eyes in the roads and rolling moorland and craggy, majestic but eerie looking mountains. Ben MacDuf looms in the distance, its peak still snowcovered and the wind catches Sinister's hair, whipping it out and about enough that it makes him tie it back in a ponytail. A long look is sent to Lucifer, ending with an anticipatory grin, then black wings spread wide with a shrug and he leaps skyward.

Not a soul to be seen at first, just the winding road, but after a few rounds over the rolling land below, the course of the tributary can be seen, including where it splits and gives birth to two daughters. <<This looks like the place we saw. Its hunting grounds... keep your senses keen, my love.>>

Lucifer has posed:
Sinister may be taking to the skies, but Lucifer is going to stay on the ground - at least for now. He can rely on Sinister to tell him if there is something in the distance, or coming towards him, or both. In this moment, he's trying to scent the air and perhaps see if he can make any conclusions about what sort of powers are around this area. A step towards where he can begin following the trail to where the land splits and gives birth - and thus opens him to the hunting grounds of these monstrous folk. He doesn't care, for now, except that his clothing might get a bit ruffled in the process. <<I shall. You as well, my heart. Eyes and ears open for anything, yes?>>

Sinister has posed:
<<Indeed,>> -- but then there's radio silence, in that there's but the background feeling of connected minds so that one does not interfere with the other.

Magic is a diffuse creature, often enough. A flavour of a place can be bold as brass, but more often than not, unless distinct efforts have been made to shape and concentrate it, it is a nebulous feeling at the end of fingertips. Upon the moors, Lucifer strides confidently over the rocks, the heather and the sod. The hills have eyes and earth magic lingers, but not the kind, gentle magic of herbs and living Wicca, but the raw, powerful kind that once walked in confidence -- Here be Giants. Such places litter the earth, embodiments of the raw majesty of the earth herself, the strength to shake the ground with every tread, to crush rocks and get the juices from thier core. Gates and remains of Jotunheim.

There's also a flavour of death magic in the scottish hills. Unlike in Ireland, where the Beansidth screams her lament, here such omens and knowledge is brought by the Washer woman at the ford. Foresight of what is to come and memory of blood shed in countless battles.

There's also an even more subtle kind of magic that is nigh impossible to pin down; elusive and cunning and terribly clever. The Cait sidth; who guard so many places with their cleverness and fierce eyes, to keep the secrets to themselves. But also in the depths of the highlands is the legend of Dambrugh, where Pictish kings once ruled, but fell to madness, to the serpent people who knew ways to bend dimensions.

All of these things and yet...where's a werewolf when you need one? The moon pokes her head through the clouds at the apogee.

Lucifer has posed:
Magic of all sorts. It's hard for the Devil to separate it all, and no matter how he tries, none of it really points to the werewolves they're trying to hunt. In the interim, he's feeling the wild magic and the death magic. The cait sidth, which is subtle but there. He's trying, and he comes to the fork in the road, stopping there.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..." He says aloud and then tilts his head one way and then the other. <<What can you see up there? Anything?>>

Sinister has posed:
<<I can see a camp grounds that appears to have an open fire, about three miles down into the Glen, by the woods. That, I feel, is probably going to be like a giant neon sign. I can't see...>>

THat's cut off for a moment, concentration coming, as he does not feel the fairy cats, or the mysticism of foresight and the primordial power of the Earth herself. His is solely the mind.

<<About a mile and a half to the north. I can see a ranger waypoint station, with a small carpark and gravel path. There's a light on and the door's open and...>>

His mind latches, feeding what he can sense, the burgeoning feeling like a massive, full body pressure cooker of sensation beginning, building toward bursting point. <<Over there? Yes. There!>>

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer stops in his tracks and scents the air for a moment. He can smell the campfire. It's subtle from this far off but it still premates the air lightly with that scent of smoke. It's the last thing that Sinister says to him that has him pausing though. Especially since he mentioned a ranger station just before, with an open door...

<<Are you saying we need to head for the ranger station? Is that where they might be?>> Asking this in the mind while trying to get his bearings so he knows where north is. Mile and a half. He has to think quick if it's faster for him to run or to fly there.

Either way...they might be too late if the ranger is already in trouble.

Sinister has posed:
<<I can feel the familiarity of the mind we saw in the mindscape. I don't know if it's nearby or if it's in the station. I'm heading that way.>>

The thoughts on high are followed by the fwoosh of fast flying. Truth is, under his own power, Nathaniel isn't entirely sure how fast he can fly. It might be entirely possible with his wings out, he could make that faster, but that's an experiment for another time.

Humans can run a three minute mile, which was broken as a record a few times. How fast can an archangel run? He can likely fly faster than that though, as confines of terrain and line of sight get removed.

Over the moors there's a scream that becomes more like a howl as it continues.

Lucifer has posed:
Wings come out in a split second decision and Lucifer jumps into the skies to follow just behind Nathaniel. He might even catch up to the man since his wings are a bit bigger and he doesn't quite need updrafts to stay in the air. The moors are filled with that scream and he looks over at Nathaniel a moment before looking down upon the ground again. "This is going to get bad before it might get better, isn't it? Were we only dealing with one... or could it be a handful?" He asks this as they continue. "My gut also tells me to go check the ranger station anyway, just in case..."

Then he thinks about it...

And he has a possible lightbulb moment.

"...Could it BE the ranger?"

Sinister has posed:
"I wouldn't be surprised if it was," Sinister replies, but currently he is unimpaired by wingbeats; telekinesis for the win. Quieter when you're trying to sneak up on something that has a wolf's hearing, was his logic there. "But the ranger station should be checked. It's the direction of that howl and we don't know if they're solo in there, or whether someone just..."

Wolfed out. Or is about to. In the process of? There's a look of concentration on Nathaniel's face, bee-lining alongside a white-winged angel is worthy of the cover of a graphic novel. "There could be more than one, but I can't say for certain - their minds feel strange, almost like they're a step from being a hive mind."

The car park of the ranger station is bathed in the yellow glow of the open door. The scent of fear is strong in the air, so strong that even keen sensed individuals without superhuman senses might smell it. The howling scream comes again, this time a little more animalistic. A figure staggers out of the door, tearing at his shirt, staggering as he falls to his knees, back pulsating, arching, cracking as it lengthens. It looks as if it's a painful experience, for certain, hiking boots splitting as his foot elongates...

Lucifer has posed:
"Alright. I'm going back down. I'll land a bit away but...it might still sense me." Lucifer warns but before he can go to land or anything, that figure is stumbling out of the ranger station. Going to his knees, tearing at his shirt....Lucifer actually winces at the sight. "It looks...painful..."

But, they came here with a purpose and so the angel goes to land just as he said, a bit still in the woods with the station a few several hundred feet ahead of him. He lets his wings disappear and then shifts to walk towards the station - lucky to have landed on a trail without much in the way to crack underfoot and give him away just yet.

<<...Though admittedly I really don't know how the hell we're going to do this...>>

Sinister has posed:
<<One very carefully controlled punch?>> Sinister replies, flying overhead in the dark to land in the shadow at the side of the door to advance silently from behind, by walking half an inch over the gravel. <<And yes, it does. Shapeshifting hurts, when the more alterations across species you're making. Or at least it did in my case. I nixed that though...>> control over the pain you feel has its upsides. Sin's hands at the ready spread at his sides, akimbo, just incase he has to throw a kinetic barrier over the burgeoning wolf-man.

The scent of magic exists here. Malediction magic, at its root, which suggests this is transmissable lycanthropy that they're witnessing, not born shapeshifting. The man undergoing this also has a faint magical trace, like the lingering effects of disease that can be smelled in the sweat and scent of an individual. They probably smell MORE magical when the disease is proliferating in them, if one follows a process of logic. The man looks up, fur beginning to grow in patches across bare skin, his eyes bloodshot but turning yellow beneath the moon, his ears extending backward slowly toward points. Lips are skinned back from teeth that are crowding his jaw and the expression is one of confused fear. Claws have begun to grow.

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer has to also wonder if this is the first time that this person has begun to turn. Or does the body not really retain much memory one full moon to the next? These are things that Lucifer does not know and likely one thing that Sinister will want to find out in all the tests and such he wishes to do.

A cure will likely just be a byproduct for everything else he learns.

He comes out of the woods, and steps closer as the transformation continues. Will it continue if the man is knocked out? Does Lucifer have it in him to knock the man out? Well he does step up while there's still that look of confused fear in the shifter's eyes, without any fear from himself, cocks back a fist and launches it into the side of the shifter's face. He'll also brace himself for retaliation, or perhaps to give chase if this one tries to run off.

Sinister has posed:
In the meantime, Sinister silently closes in from behind, doing whatever it is he does to the minds of people to make them not pay attention or see him for being there.

Whether the shapeshifter is new to this or not, in the midst of changing and clearly in the confused human losing it stage of it all, the werewolf attempts to dodge the blow a bit, turning his metamorphosing face aside, so that the blow cracks on his collar bone. It makes an audible snap sound, but a mere moment or two later, it regenerates and sets as it ought. Fight and flight is strong at this moment, but flight actually wins against type perhaps; the soon-to-be-beast attempts to stagger away from Lucifer after that blow, finds that its feet are arguing with it mid-transformation and instead lashes out with a claw-bedecked hand, not that this does anything but ruin the devil's T-shirt. It might be worth saving as a fashion statement.

Sin lifts hands in order to craft a shield of kinetic energy around the beast-to-be, only for the sphere of red to collapse of a sudden as he's impacted from behind by a bolt of grey and brown that hits him in the back, leaping out of the appature of the ranger station. Sparks fly as claws attempt a double hind-leg gouge against his armour but cannot penetrate it, but there's a hiss as jaws connect with the soft spot between shoulder and head where the armour is thinnest, in order to allow easy speech and head movement.

"Ow," no exclamation, just a single blandly spoken word as a second wolf-critter is sent flying up into the sky, to scrabble and snarl at thin air, unable to gain traction on nothing.

Lucifer has posed:
"Okay...there's two..." Lucifer says as he looks down at his now slashed tee shirt and tugs at the shredded bits. "They are very lucky I am not wearing anything more expensive than this.." Saying this much more before he takes a step forward and tries to punch his wolfen friend again. "Also, I don't know if you can understand me or not.. as you're not yet transformed. But I promise you, we're actually not here to hurt you. Either of you..."

He looks behind him for a moment after hearing the 'ow' only to see the other werewolf hovering in mid-air. Lucifer looks back to his own target and takes a beath. "This is about to get really interesting. I can tell."

Sinister has posed:
The second punch has a better effect than the first. Even a pulled punch from the devil is enough to fling the burgeoning wolf-man twenty odd feet back. A casual flick of the hand was enough to drive a man clean through a glass wall, after all. The werewolf goes end over end and tries briefly to get up but then... nope. Mystic disease versus archangel punch to the kisser? No contest.

"Yes, two of them. And immensely good job that your T-shirt has been sacrificed to the fates and not one of the Dior's. I like those. THey're swish... nnnnngg." The ariel wolf is spun at very high speed using the power of the mind until the centrifugal force makes the poor thing pass out. Just to make absolutely sure though, Sinister removes some heavy duty ketamine darts from his pocket and with a casual flick, sends them both into wolf-rumps.

"I think I got bitten, but I'm not terribly concerned by this at the moment. Can you sense any others in the area?"

Lucifer has posed:
"Yes, well... I suppose I'll just have to fix the t-shirt when we're back home or something. Speaking of... now that we've got these two subdued...are we just going to transport them back to the safe room in the Penthouse?" Lucifer asks this before he wiggles his nose a bit. That last question covered with concern over the idea that Sinister has been bitten.

"I've got feathers if you decide you need one..." He offers this and then turns his nose to the air. A scent this way and that, a little feel within the airs magicks that permeate the area and then he shakes his head. "I do not sense or feel anything..."

Sinister has posed:
"I should be fine. I have very little worry that I can contract the contagion, my body regenerates too quickly, akin to vampirism." Walking over to the downed ones, he examines the one that leaped at him, looking over the entire thing. "I actually would like to get these two to one of my facilities first, so I can put them through an MRI whilst they're still out. Full battery of tests on the transformed, then relocated to the safe room afterwards. We'll have a couple of confused scots, no doubt and potentially an international incident if we don't take care of that."

The wolf is akin to the 'howling' kind of werewolf, bi-pedal but otherwise isn't a whole lot bigger than a human being. Walking on the balls of the feet on an extended foot adds height. There's about as much muscle growth as there would be if you fused a human and a wolf together, which makes a certain sense. He glances about, then closes his eyes with a deep, slow breath. "I can only feel... the campers a few miles away and regular nightlife now, in the vicinity. I think we're safe from additional surprises." Pausing, he glances to the sky and concentrates, bringing forth his ozone rings for transport to unknown locale. The tentacles are obedient henchmen are they not?

"Lets get out of here, unless you want to tune in to the moors more?"