15279/Log 15279

Log 15279
Date of Scene:	01 July 2023
Location:	Bushwick (Mutant Town), Brooklyn
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Silk, Magik

---

Silk has posed:
He took his time. He followed every step, just as he had been instructed. Even the most ridiculous steps; even the ones that cost him the every last dollar he had to his name.

It took time; so much time. Every step he was afraid someone would discover him, but no one cared. The city, too large; its troubles, too numerous. He was just one passing weirdo in millions in New York City. But eventually... -eventually-... just like they promised him...

A man kneels inside one of the many vacants in Mutant Town, but this isn't just any vacant: it's one that has been painstakingly selected through complex mathematical formulae to be in the geometric dead center of an occult safe zone. Amid the accumulate dust and dirt and grime of disuse-enabled entropy, the man places his hand on a simple, strange object: a small circle carved from emerald, that looks as if it is made of countless, intertwining vines. Like a portable fairy circle. He takes in a deep breath.

"APERIRE DE CAVERNIS EXEUNT PORTAL!"

The circle starts to glow. Starts to bubble with frothing, green and black energy. And the man exults as many tentacled limbs fling out of the bubbling depths.

"Yes! Attack the evil! Devour it at the source! Kill the mutanffhah wha wai--"

But sadly his joys are short-lived as those tentacles whip around him, squeeze tight --

And drag him into the portal screaming as something horrifying emerges from the depths.

        ---

So anyway that's why a giant demon is exploding out of vacants at the corner of Mutant Town right now.

The (late) mystery man made a point to summon a specific one, but the point is - currently - lost considering the man himself is just one kicking leg disappearing into the mouth of the beast as bricks and mortar rain down on it. The thing looks, not to put it lightly, like someone just kind of crudely stuffed an angler fish's dangling eye onto a writhing mass of tentacles that sort of conglomerated together into the vague shape of a face to accommodate the weird maw of countless teeth and twining tongues that hangs beneath the mass. Since it -is- all tentacles, and those tentacles are constantly moving, its shape seems to be constantly changing too -- in both size and silhouette the thing is never quite the same from one second to the next, squirming through various, abstract ideas of a face as it rolls out of that destroyed vacant without direction. Denizens of Mutant Town scream and run -- but it doesn't seem to notice them.

At least -- not yet.

Magik has posed:
The only thing worse than a rogue demon summoning is a racist rogue demon summoning. The shattered wards which alerted Magik to the demon's presence couldn't give her that crucial detail all on their own, but as soon as void-black boots emerge from a scintillating white disc and alight upon a crumbling on the perimeter of the disturbance, the writhing shape in the distance tells her what she needs to know. The book the summoner learned this foolish errand from passed through the fallen king Belasco's possession at some point in time, which means a copy of it exists in the sprawling libraries of Limbo-- which in turn means that Illyana Rasputin was once made to study its contents on pain of torture.

Which in turn tells her that this?

In the middle of Mutant Town?

Is a problem.
Illyana takes a long, deep breath, eyes nearly shutting-- and then she's gone, fallen through another white hole in reality.

It feeds on evil. It's here because some deluded prick thought that Mutant Town would be like a buffet-- and in a sense, there may be some merit to this thought process: less because mutants are foul spawns of evil, more because everyone has at least a little darkness inside them; and here, of all places, that darkness is just a hair more likely to have been encouraged and stoked into something colder, crueler by the intense pressures of trying to survive a hateful world. Cosmic predators typically aren't equipped to care about nuance: a thief is a thief; a murderer is a murderer; evil is evil, even when it's the only thing standing between a good person and an unjust end.

It feeds on evil. It's drawn to darkness.

So the stepping disc screaming open dozens of feet above the monster happily disgorges a concentrated hit of both. A usurper is a usurper; a monster is a monster, even when becoming one's the only thing standing between a tormented child and an untimely end.

"\<span style="color:xterm232"\>MIHR MIRIAE\</span\>," resonates in the air, ducking any and all other sound in the surrounding area beneath its black syllables for a split-second. A bouquet of green and black fire erupts from pale outstretched fingers, gnawing and swelling through the intervening space between the falling Queen of Limbo and the monster slurping down the last of its summoner like a writhing noodle.

Silk has posed:
Necessary evils.

They're still evils, just not as satisfying. Like the empty calories of the infernal diet.

Tentacles unspool while others unwind from the main mass of the demon as the chaotic entity rolls its strange, squirming path out of the ruins now burying the helpful gateway that brought it here. Illyana knows her eldritch monstrosities: the demon - a fhtagn - feasts on evil. And it is still gobbling up its first appetizer as the burning, churning eye of the horrifying thing swings back and forth on its eyestalk like a stone on a rope, the crackling maelstrom that is its pupil scanning the fleeing citizenry as if to look for the best direction for its next meal.

None are particularly satisfying, but Magik is right; there -is- still darkness here, and the nuance of why doesn't particularly matter to a thing that exists outside the boundaries of mortal conception. That maw opens again as its first meal is finished. Those conjoining tongues spill free, dripping something thick and viscous and red like congealing blood. Tentacles spill out of an endless source of them, reach forth--

\<span style="color:xterm0"\>MIHR MIRIAE\</span\>

But something makes it pause, right before it strikes. That eyestalk swings upward.

It senses her before she even shouts out, likely all according to plan. The sudden swell of darkness is like an unignorable beacon to it. And if that didn't help --

The bubbling bloom of eldritch flame that crashes down upon the monstrosity -certainly- makes Illyana Rasputina the focus of its attention.

Fire ruptures across what can only be generously described as the 'body' of the fhtagn, burning through one long, outstretching tentacle. The demonic entity SCREAMS in agony -- and that scream is one that reverberates and causes great, disorienting pain in all that is good in the human soul. Illyana might have a good buffer to mitigate the debilitating effects of the fhtagn's vocalizations--

But the tentacles that come flying for her at the same time as she falls are less easy to buffer against.

It's two, at first, one swinging to the right to try to crack into her, while the one from the left tries to ensnare her. But if there's anything this thing has, it's plentiful tentacles: two more rush outward to help--

    *thwip thwip thwip!*

Only to suddenly be YANKED away when they are seized upon by sudden, strong tethers of -- webbing?

The source comes from the black, white and red form of one friendly neighborhood Silk, currently spinning webs from her fingertips as fast as she's able to create thick and strong enough ropes to -slam- those tentacles down and -web- them to cement and asphalt. She keeps webbing, even as she looks up at the horrifying thing; dark eyes widen just a little bit.

"Um. I take back what I said about Spider-Man's rogues," Cindy Moon mumbles, "I miss Big WhEEP"

And this is the sound of Silk going flying as one tentacle YANKS her through the air, sending her SOARING past Illyana, even as more tendrils of the eldritch beast race for its promising blonde mutant buffet.

"BACK IN A SEEEEEEC--"

Magik has posed:
The first round of tentacles meets the opposite of resistance: they slice through the air unimpeded, crash through stepping discs, and continue swinging at the impossible angles the portals' mistress has set for them. One sweeps vertically, pointing straight up from a point near the fhtagn's body; the other lashes towards the monstrosity, erupting from a portal just a few yards from one of its many flanks. Two more come--

    *thwip thwip thwip!*

Only for Illyana's attention to be drawn away, eyes narrowed as she seeks her unexpected ally.

"Wh--"

whEEP!

"... ah. Shit--"

White light momentarily flares from Illyana's core, flipping the mutant witch 180 degrees in the blink of an eye so she can see the arc of Cindy's trajectory without fighting inertia any more than she already has. A second portal yawns open six feet ahead of the flying Spider, ready to catch and deposit her on the ground with a few bumps.

There's no time for a third before one of the monster's tentacles slithers around Illyana's waist, snaring her; there is time to snap the gates around those first two tentacles violently shut, however-- and for the sake of focusing on Cindy's exit point, Magik does just that, sealing stepping discs shut around infernal flesh and letting the ultrafine edge of unreality do the rest. Metal plates that seem to capture the light and jealously hold it in creep from her left shoulder down her arm and side alike, giving her something of a buffer against the demon's clench-- and a measure of protection against further protrusions seeking to capture and/or thrash her.

Silk has posed:
Demonic flesh is obscenely tough -- especially when it's something made of elements and concepts not found in any sane space. That being said--

    \<span style="color:xterm196"\>SHUNK!\</span\>     \<span style="color:xterm196"\>SHUNK!\</span\>

It's very hard to trump 'shuttering space-time' in a concept of cutting power.

Battered by its own tentacle, the fhtagn lets out strange, gurgling sounds that suddenly erupt into a fountain of that same, disorienting screaming as Illyana cuts those two portalled tentacles off with the collapse of her disks. The slimy protrusions collapse before rapidly beginning to dissolve into frothing dots of black and green as if unable to remain stable in this environment when severed from the unearthly beast that provided them stability.

The fhtagn rages; Illyana's canny shift of metal armor keeps her from getting crushed by the angry constriction of that limb she's wrapped up in, but there are so many more, -yanking- free of concrete, and simply unspooling from that main, non-euclidean mass of tendrils. So many more, converging on her, as if completely tunnel visioned on a mouth-watering feast.

MEANWHILE,

"C'mon c'mon c'mon--"

Cindy Moon is flying! Yay!

She doesn't want to be! Boo!

She has a plan for being hurled through the air like a ragdoll; she usually does, because it happens way too often. Feeling wind-resistance battering at her, she desperately searches for enough anchor points - buildings - for her inevitable descent; if she can slow her momentum, and then create a bed, then maybe she -won't- splatter and only break like, seventy five percent of the bones in her body! That'd be an absolute win.

"Oh come -on- internal narrative I'm not THAT sad--" Cindy grimaces as she begins to fall.

"... Am I--"

The question goes unanswered as a light blooms several feet ahead of her, and Cindy's world becomes a disorienting mesh of churning space time for exactly none of a second before she finds herself on solid ground again. She pauses. Blinks.

"Uh?"

And then she looks up, seeing the big, tentacly form of the fhtagn, literally reconfiguring its entire body as it prepares to eat the woman who just saved her.

".... uh. Crap--"

WHICH BRINGS US TO NOW,

where the tentacles of the fhtagn converge and rope and spool and unspool together in a nauseating series of snake-like motions and too-moist, slicking sounds as the mouth that had been hanging limply beneath the beast is now, somehow, hanging limply above it, just beneath Illyana Rasputina. That burning, angler's dangling eye floats over to stare at her as it lowers her towards that tongue-waggling maw, the churn of its pupil pulsating in nauseating patterns--

    THWIP

Until it finds itself suddenly blinded with an eyeful of webbing.

In comes Silk again, eyes narrowed with determination and long black hair whipping behind her as she uses her wallcrawling ability to its sickening potential to rapidly scale up tentacle to tentacle until --

    fwik

Webbing spools around fingers, turning gloved digits into deadly-sharp claws as Silk lunges past the tentacle holding Illyana to TEAR through the base of it, putting every ounce of her superstrength to use to SHRED through as much of it as possible -- enough, at least, that even if she doesn't -sever- it, it will be enough to free Illyana. The fhtagn shrieks; Silk winces.

And what follows is a performance that would put a gymnast to shame as tentacles fly for the vigilante, and she, well -- does her best to frantically-yet-gracefully flip and bend and maneuver between them all like a good distraction.

"Hey--"
Dive!
        "--thanks for the save!--"
        Swing!
    "--any--"
    Backflip!
        "--ideas?--"
        Impressive tumble!
            "--this isn't--"
            Downward dog position!
        "--really my bag--"
        Spring!
    "--the last thing I fought--"
    Mild flailing!
"--was just some dude in a superpowered bear fursuit!"
Dejected cartwheel!

"oh god the last thing i fought was -some dude in a superpowered bear fursuit-"

Magik has posed:
Illyana falls as eldritch fire courses along her left arm, coalescing into an enormous sword etched with criss-crossing channels for the steady flow of exotic energies pulsing through it. That's twice that she's been saved by--

-- by some kind of Spider Woman--

-- on what should be her turf, twice over.

The Queen of Limbo frowns, thinly; she is pragmatic enough to be grateful for help in a pinch and proud enough to frown as a timeless durance of hardening is dragged down to the same level as--

*Dive!*

The frown deepens.

Silently, gradually, begrudgingly, Illyana admits:

Whoever this woman is, she is most assuredly neither useless or incompetent.

Which is something of a salve.

--any-- ideas?--

White light flares around Illyana.

ELSEWHERE

A stepping disc opens above the Peeled Garden, where a fresh round of raiders captured along the bordermarches howl and scream in unholy agony while a crew of Limbo natives carefully peel flesh and will from their writhing bodies with long talons that gleam in firelight.

"Boss," the purple-skinned giant pacing among them and puffing on a cigar rolled from the leader's skin grunts with a nod towards the blonde Hell Queen diving out of one disc and into another.

MUTANT TOWN

--this isn't-- accompanies an impressive display of tactical Yoga as Illyana once again steps out high above the demon's pulsating form. The strange light pouring from her center strobes wildly, obscuring the witch in its blinding glare for moments at a time.

Now and then, the distant howls and cries of things spawned in the foulest of pits waft through the air around her.

ELSEWHERE

A stepping disc opens above the Peeled Garden--

"-- Boss," S'ym grunts, arching a brow towards the blonde Hell Queen diving--

MUITANT TOWN

--really

ELSEWHERE

A stepping disc opens--

"-- uh," S'ym grunts, squinting towards the blonde Hell Queen--

MUTANT TOWN

my bag--

ELSEWHERE

A stepping disc--

"-- what the fuck--" S'ym grunts, scratching his head--

MUTANT TOWN

--the

ELSEWHERE

"-- are you DO"

MUTANT TOWN

last

The light thrumming madly around Illyana snaps inwards, revealing a blur of black and pale white motion rocketing Soulsword first towards the center of the demon. The weapon alone is anathema to supernatural beings; rapidly multiplying her momentum with repeated jumps through the time-adjacent realm of Limbo is how she intends to make thrusting the magic-cleaving blade through the fhtagn's body stick.

A split-second before impact,

"There will be others,"

time seems to slow down just enough for a piece of solemn encouragement in passing.