15553/I Won't Have A Cow

I Won't Have A Cow
Date of Scene:	02 September 2023
Location:	Don't Have A Cow vegan restaurant, Queens
Synopsis:	Ivy and Satana meet. Both feed. A horrible accident claims the life of a human. Ivy and Satana exchange barbs over metaphysics as chaos unfolds around them. They decide to go to a movie together.
Cast of Characters:	Satana, Poison Ivy

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Satana has posed:
The restaurant is a student-oriented vegan buffet called Don't Have A Cow. Its decor is as tweely whimsical as its ridiculous name, and its clientel mostly unnaturally thin, unhealthy looking young men and women from surrounding community colleges and low-grade university off-campus housing facilities. The main selling point of the place is spelled out on the window in big, bold letters: "The Only Affordable Vegan Restaurant in Queens".

It is, predictably, not exactly packed. Not empty either, being, as the name says, literally the only affordable vegan restaurant in Queens, but here's the thing. Queens isn't exactly a hotbed of vegan radicals.

What the place is best known for is as a staging ground for various protests from predatory social groups like PETA or their ilk: people using the sidewalk in front of the place for gathering before doing some act of domestic terrorism (they'd call it "protest").

And it is one such gathering, with people waving placards favouring the consumption of vegetables over livestock, that Satana is sitting in the back of her vintage car, driver keeping the engine idling, watching with intense interest.

"I think you can turn off the engine, Harold," she says through the little slide window that opens into the open-air cockpit of the car. "I believe I'll be joining these people soon. I'm a mite peckish."

Poison Ivy has posed:
So, here'e the thing. Ivy's been trying to spend more time around humans in an attempt to learn to not want to kill them all. Exposure therapy, like. And she figured a vegan restaurant known for activism would be a good place to start, right? They'd have two things in common with her already, two things that are very important to her moral compass, so surely that would work, right? Right?

Yeah, no. The thing Ivy neglected to consider is that vegans are the most cringe creatures on the planet; and Ivy says that *as* a vegan. So she's standing behind the crowd with her arms folded and a bemused expression on her face, trying to sort out whether she's talking to them or herself (god knows she's not really bothering to project her voice here) as she asks, "Really? This is how you fight for your goals? You scold strangers about their eating habits? How many times has that ever worked?"

No one seems inclined to answer, which is actually kind of a relief for Ivy. She's not sure she could survive direct exposure to that much concentrated embarrassment.

Satana has posed:
Satana slithers out of the back of her Bugatti--not the modern-day pathetic penile implant of the wealthy set with more money than taste, but rather the ancient glory of the 1929 Bugatti Type 41, a.k.a. the Royale--a car so out of place in Queens that all eyes within about 50m are on the woman who exits.

Inside the passenger compartment she was dressed in a form-fitting catsuit with cutout patches where they did the most good. As she stepped out her dress changes into ... well, she's dressed like some kind of club-going nymphette, but has the curves, the demeanour, and the raw experienced vibe of someone who should be long past the nymphette age.

In her hand she holds the joint of some animal, almost all eaten, tearing off strips of the final pieces of flesh as she approaches the vegan joint.

"Excuse you!" she says to one woman whose wild gesticulation about the mistreatment of animals causes her to bump into the sultry demoness. The latter brandishes the bone (after taking the last bite of flesh from it), and while chewing it upbraids the woman. "You really should watch where you're going!"

It is Saturday night, after all, and as the old song goes, it's alright for fighting...

Poison Ivy has posed:
Ivy, who is distinctly not dressed like a club-going nymphette (black faux leather jacket concealing a top that seems to be white, green tights, slightly darker green heels that really don't make sense at a protest and kind of imply she subconsciously knew this was all going to be a waste of time, if only she had enough self-awareness to have noticed that while dressing) observes the altercation with dark amusement. There's literally nothing like exposure to vegans to make even an ecoterrorist take the side of a performative carnivore. Still, there's something off about this whole interaction: Ivy almost never sees women eating on the street, and when she does, it's almost always a snack, not a lump of meat still on the bone. So what's actually going on here?

Bait, probably.

Which is still almost certainly less dangerous than this 'protest,' which is on the verge of making Ivy cringe all the the way through the mantle of the Earth. So, she takes the bait and walks up to Satana. She doesn't bother saying anything, just looking her in the eyes and letting her green skin be introduction enough. She does her best (okay, that's a lie, but she does try a little bit) to mitigate her resting bitchface and lets her arms uncross so she doesn't look like she's necessarily about to pick a fight.

Yeah, her intros need work.

Satana has posed:
The young woman Satana was brandishing a bone at feels somewhat cowed by the far taller woman with the self-assurance to, well, openly and, as Ivy so succinctly noted, performatively eat meat off the bone at a vegan rally. She, as a result, shows no inclination to take the "and find out" side of the equation, much to Satana's evident disappointment.

Ivy can feel it. There's something predatory about this woman. The woman whose eyes have just locked with hers. The woman who smiles a carnivore's smile as she looks Ivy up and down.

And up and down.

Pausing at key points that Ivy might find just a wee bit off-putting, especially paired with the slight eyebrow lift of obvious appreciation.

"My," she says, throwing the bone over her shoulder heedlessly. (The bone flies through the air and hits a scarecrow-looking man in the back of the head. This will come up again in the future. Be prepared.) Her eyes travel languidly along Ivy's form once more before locking back at the face. "Aren't you the tasty looking one. Green is definitely your colour. It gives you a level of ... intrigue."

The smile warms and reaches Satana's eyes. "I've decided I like you."

Something about the woman's eyes. It must be a reflection, but deep inside the pupils there seems to be little pinpricks of red ... flame.

Reflection. Must be.

"Satana Hellstrom," she says, holding out a hand ... not for a shake, but for a kiss, European style. "I've decided we are going to be friends."

There's a HELL of a lot of certainty in the way this woman deals with life.

Behind her, Brad (because wouldn't he just be named Brad?), after letting out an odd squawk of combined startlement and pain from being boned, turns around and spots what missile struck him.

"HEY LADY!" he says in a voice that sounds like Ben Shapiro, only less healthy. "WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?"

Poison Ivy has posed:
    Ivy shows Brad her favorite of her ten fingers and suggests in a tone of voice that one would imagine a crocodile using on Steve Irwin, "Fuck off, poser, and be grateful you got a story to tell about the time you got a head injury fighting for the planet." Her gesture of defiance may or may not be calculated to get out of the expectation that she take and-slash-or kiss the other woman's hand. She stares the Brad down, for now fighting the urge to make on of the nearby street trees rip him in half: not for Brad's sake, but for the tree's. The city would destroy it if she did.

Without taking her flat, emotionless, 'I'm looking at a dead man' eyes off Brad, Ivy introduces herself to Satana, "Poison Ivy. Don't ask me my real name because I just gave it to you." She almost leaves it there, but relents upon realizing she's doing the antisocial thing again, and asks, "So you've decided we're gonna be friends but aren't yet, huh? Got a schedule in mind?"

Satana has posed:
It seems that Satana was about to do something involving Brad, given the body language that signalled an incipient turn, when Ivy takes over and Satana instead crosses her arms and watches with an approving smile.

"Spirited too," she murmurs when Ivy finishes. Then, in a louder voice, "Oh, yes. Poison Ivy. ..." She pauses. "Is that Ms. Poison or Ms. Ivy? Do you follow ancient Latin naming or modern English?"

She continues without waiting for the answer, steam-rollering her own question with her imperiousness.

"I was thinking," she says, with a thrilling contralto that seems designed to live in the reptile mind, curled up like a cat around it, purring softly to the most primal instincts of human beings.

What this does to plant beings is an open question.

"First, dinner." She gestures to the restaurant they're standing in front of. "How convenient, is it not? And over dinner we talk, get to know each other, before we go out and take in a show. I have a club of my own--The Happy Heterae-- but I don't think that would be your kind of place, so maybe just something off Broadway? Are they still showing Little Shop of Horrors?"

Wait, was that a dig?

Her mouth is open in an amused grin. Her eyes are glinting with malicious mischief. It's a dig.

"And then, after that, we stay together in a nearby hotel and explore our newfound friendship. How does that sound?"

Satana steps up to close the distance with alacrity that could be a little alarming to some.

"I can be so many things for you, Poison Ivy. Anything you desire." That in a low voice that barely carries to Ivy's ears.

Then there's distance between them again, with that same slippery alacrity that could be viewed as disturbing.

"Maybe you can even convince me to stop eating meat. I mean it's not like I need meat to live."

Poison Ivy has posed:
The alacrity may be alarming to some, but Poison Ivy has met the Joker and slept with his girlfriend. Her back remains straight and her shoulders square, her eyes fearless on Satana's, special effects fire in them or no. "If you want to use an honorific, it's Doctor. And sure, we can try dinner, but you're buying." She spreads her arms in a gesture slightly too wide to be a shrug. "Don't have my purse on me."

That's it. She doesn't take the bait about desire, or about happy courtesans (a word she's been called; she's been called pretty much every synonym for 'prostitute' under the sun), or any of it. She just shoulderchecks some Bohemian hippy chick blocking her way to the door, someone whose real name you just know is Becky or something even though she tells you it's Alchemy, and pushes open the mostly glass door to hold it for Satana. Such chivalry, right?

So maybe she's not TOTALLY ignoring the bait.

Satana has posed:
"Doctor it is then, but is it Doctor Poison or Doctor Ivy?" Santana pauses, in conversation, not in bodily movement, the latter already proceeding through the door Ivy is so chivalrously holding open. "I guess..." she muses as she pauses to look around the place with pursed lips. Whatever she was about to express then gets put on hold. "Usually in a buffet there would be gluttony, but here I'm mostly smelling smug pride. It's almost as if even they know the food isn't suited to gluttony."

Then it's back to her on-hold thought, continued as if there had been no pause. "...I could insist on being called Your Royal Highness, but that seems ... tacky. In this part of the world at least."

She shakes her head and regards Ivy. "Just call me Satana. Since we are going to be friends."

The teeth show up in a smile that is warm, yet predatory. The eyes and eyebrows suggest that her notion of friendship might be considered a bit intrusive.

She looks around and finds a conveniently placed table that has inconvenient people sitting at it. People she just looks at, head tilted just so, and who then together, as one, start picking up their plates and personal effects and vacate the table.

"Here looks good. I'd ask what you're having, but this is a buffet."

Poison Ivy has posed:
Mind control, or body language? Probably mind control. Ivy's pretty familiar with the limits of mundane manipulation. Is she being mind-controlled? Ivy discards the thought as soon as it occurs, because it's useless. The only way to prove herself free would be to kill Satana, and that would be silly: then Satana couldn't pay for dinner.

"You can call me Ivy if you want. I don't really care. Four syllables is kind of a lot of name for a conversation." Ivy shrugs and helps herself to a seat, ignoring the buffet for the moment. Her face is impassive; decades of practice at being unimpressed, like she never got all the way out of junior high. "And yeah, I was gonna call you Satana. Come on, you don't tell people that's your name unless you want people to call you that." A hint of wry amusement drifts almost unnoticed under the much heavier, ever-present tone of cynicism.

Satana has posed:
"Or, of course, unless it's your name. Which it happens to be. I could show you on my driver's license only I haven't got one."

Satana waits for Ivy to take a seat and then sits down just BARELY outside of the social contact distance. One she seems to be able to exquisitely calculate on an individual basis before taking things right up to the edge but no further.

Or she got lucky.

"Ivy it is then. It's a nice name. My house in Boston has a lot of ivy on the sides. It makes it oh so beautiful and classy." She feigns a sad sigh. "Nobody called a beautiful plant Satana, however. Maybe I should take on a flower name instead. How does 'Duckweed' sound?"

She has a knack, she does, of making her conversational partner the centre of her world. Which would be laudable but for that omnipresent sensation that she's doing it in the same way that a cat makes a bird the centre of her world ... just before the racing pounce.

"Tell me about yourself, Ivy. You said 'Doctor'. What are you a doctor of?"

Interestingly there's no curiosity whatsoever in the choroplasts in Ivy's skin...

Poison Ivy has posed:
"Names are just sounds, not intrinsic. You can tell people to call you whatever you want to be called. Your name can be whatever you want it to be." Ivy would know, though the rules are probably different for demons if pop occult knowledge is any guide. Good thing Ivy doesn't believe in the occult. That would be irrational!

"Botany. Toxicology. You could find it on Villainpedia if you went looking. Most of the stuff on there was accurate the last time I did a vanity check." Ivy shrugs and dismisses it. She does detect the sense of menace, obviously, but she's not worried: she knows how to handle herself, and has been through worse than some pushy babe. Her eyebrows lift slightly in curiosity as she asks, "What about you? You look like you're trying to do the Kim Kardashian thing minus Kanye. Good choice there."

Satana has posed:
"Oh, I'm just your average little Hellion," Satana says with an amused smile. "You know, the usual. Daughter of Satan. Seductive temptress. Eater of souls. Queen of a realm of Hell. Bored socialite. The usual tawdry little background that just screams ennui." She shrugs. "If I could be bothered to plant the information you could probably find me on this Villainpedia. But you know how it is. There has to be surviving witnesses to show up there if you don't seed it yourself."

That being said, she *does* pull out a very unfamiliar-looking phone with a very unusual user interface that seems to be modelled after all that Hell/demon stuff she was spouting, with a very realistically rendered flaming pit in which a nigh-infinite number of bodies is shown writhing and screaming in agony as far as the screen's resolution will allow over which flaming portals with app icons inside hover. She fires up what appears to be a jumped up web browser and surfs to Villainpedia, pulling up Ivy's own entry.

"Ooh, you had a number of looks over the years." She looks up at Ivy, then back down at the gallery page. "Keep this look. It suits you. The heels especially. They do delicious things to your thighs and posterior."

She punches a few more things on the screen and makes a face.

"See? What did I tell you. Nothing on me. They mention my father. They mention my brother, but NOTHING on me! It's ... insulting! There's just no justice!"

The phone gets put away and Satana's attention is back on Ivy. "I'm serious about the heels. You're already very eye-catching, but those heels?..."

Satana winks lasciviously.

Over at the other end of the restaurant, a loud, complaining voice is raised; the sound of a dread Karen: a young, short-haired woman with horn-rimmed glasses as if she's trying to live up to every conceivable stereotype all at once is very loudly making a fuss over finding a 'hair' in her 'lotus root'. Satana's voice trails off as her eyes focus on the loud woman and the smile turns predatory again.

"Ivy, let's go hit the buffet. We'll meet back here and compare our meals, OK?"

Poison Ivy has posed:
"Yeah, I know I'm hot," Ivy says a little irritably. "Go get your food." What's on her nerves? Hard to ask now, since she's already up and building herself a tofu stirfry, if you can call it that when the tofu was stirfried half an hour ago and put in a buffet bin to lose its texture and flavor. It doesn't take long, but when she's back, her eyebrow is cocked with sardonic expectation, waiting for the inevitable reveal.

She may be a psycho but she's not too dumb to pick up on obvious context clues, after all.

Satana has posed:
Satana heads over to the trays and sidles up next to the loud woman, staring at the back of her head. The woman's histrionics grow more loud and obnoxious, sending patrons and staff alike scurrying off to be anywhere else right now. Satana then says something to the woman that sounds ... consoling? Caring? The blonde, nearly in tears in angry frustration, nods when Satana holds up a handkerchief and mimes touching up makeup. The pair then head to the restroom.

Less than a minute later Satana leaves the restroom, flicking off her hands of water from the taps before heading to the tables and picking up the ... least bad ... vegan food she can find. She finally returns, slipping into the seat next to Ivy, expertly flirting with that line of creepy-intrusive and just being very present.

"You know what would have made this easier for getting a decent meal?" she asks with a mirthful twinkle in her eye.

And wait. Is she flushed? And slightly aglow with perspiration? There's ... no, there's no way she's had enough time to...

"At least some seafood. I mean shrimp are sea bugs. They don't have specialized pain receptors. They're ... moving plants."

Poison Ivy has posed:
No bragging? Interesting. Satana has enough self-possession not to confess to crimes in a crowded restaurant, which adds a nice layer of veracity to her claims. Ivy adjusts her opinion of the other woman ('if woman she is,' Ivy thinks with the mental equivalent of an ironic smirk) and shrugs at the observation about seafood.

"I don't care about eating animals on the micro scale. For me it's about the industry surrounding it. The emissions from the boats that would gather enough seafood to stay in business selling them to restaurants is what I'm trying to avoid, not the fishflesh itself." She shrugs again and dabs a little terikyaki sauce from the corner of her mouth. "Not that I have any idea if this restaurant shares that priority. Probably ships its vegetables in from Nebraska or some place."

Satana has posed:
"Oh, I can guarantee you that the sweet scent of hypocrisy fills this place." Satana's gaze wanders over the staff and clientel. "That guy over there, looking like a football player? He is one. He's here because he's on a scavenger hunt and bedding a 'vegan chick' is on his list. He stopped eating meat this morning. After breakfast. Once he seduces that mousy thing he's with, he's got a 'meat lover's pizza' waiting for him back at his dorm, ready to be fed to him by his frat brothers when he supplies proof of his conquest."

Those odd amber eyes of her shift slightly. "But before you feel too sorry for the mousy little thing, know that she first is looking forward to finally being seen as "attractive" ... pathetic! ..." There's a strong element of barely-contained rage and contempt in that one word. "... oh, and while she won't harm a hair on a defenseless animal's head, the foster home she volunteers at as a nanny for social work credits gives her a chance to beat children. Little miss mousy releases her frustrations on the defenseless who are in her care."

Satana's eyes turn back to Ivy, one of her oddly-arched, overlong eyebrows quirking, mouth compressed in a barely-suppressed grin. "Or I'm confabulating. There's no way for you to know, is there? You have to take my word for it or disbel..."

That's about when the screaming starts from the women's bathroom. Staff runs around like headless chickens. One of the braver ones goes in to see what's happening and runs out again, wide-eyed, before emptying her stomach in a nearby pail, staining the mop stewing in the bottle of it.

"I wonder what that's about." Satana's voice is dry like toast. She's not even looking in the direction of the commotion. "There must have been an accident."

Poison Ivy has posed:
Ivy scoffs. "One less human. I don't care." And she doesn't. She really is trying to improve herself, but the plain fact of her disinterest is implacable, and Ivy's never been one for deception. "At least, not until someone recognizes me and blames me for it." She sighs. "Guess I better eat fast, then." She does her best, but noodles aren't really easy to eat fast even when they're good enough to enjoy, which these ones aren't. Passable at best.

Satana has posed:
Satana reaches across and puts her finger on Ivy's lips, blocking the noodles. "You need to learn how to eat them the way the places that make them eat. May I?"

She doesn't wait for an affirmative. She takes Ivy's bowl of noodles and positions it in front of her mouth, rim just barely touching her lower lip, mouth half-opened, eyes half-closed. Like she's miming something, but ... it's hard to place a finger on what. With her chopsticks she slides the head of a mass of noodles into her mouth, then, using deft flicks of the chopsticks and, well, suction, she slides the rest of the mass into her mouth in a single, motion that takes only a few seconds.

Chewing, what she's got, she returns the bowl back in front of Ivy, turning it so the place where her lips touched it faces Ivy. Flicking her a barely-seen wink in the process.

"There you go. The thing that makes noodles hard to eat is ... well ... the insistence that you eat it by lifting them to your mouth out of the bowl. Once you realize you've got an enormous spoon, in effect, that you can use that way, it becomes much easier.

The running around is only increasing and now patrons are beginning to call for cheques, or for those nearer the bathroom who apparently got a glimpse of what was going on inside, just dropping a wad of bills on the table and running off. One staffer is on the phone in hysterics, talking to what sounds, from her side of the loud conversation, to be 911.

And yet oddly, nobody's paying Satana and Ivy even a lick of attention.

"I shouldn't worry about blame," Satana says calmly. "Just enjoy your meal." A wicked grin splits her face. "Unless you're in a rush for other reasons, in which case ... I'm listening." The last two words pair with a drop in tone with added husky timbre for emphasis.

Poison Ivy has posed:
"Call me paranoid," Ivy answers laconically, choosing not to get into all the reasons she thinks someone might pin a body on her. It takes a bit of an effort not to: wallowing in a sense of mutual enmity with humanity is pretty much her soul-deep default state of being. She accepts her plate back and gestures vaguely toward the mass of panicking cattle (secretly surprised so few of them seem to be rubbernecking and waiting for police and/or news organizations to tell their distorted stories to, but perhaps that fits) and asks, "You doing something to make them ignore us?"

Satana has posed:
Satana does the 'Pretentious? Moi?' mime, mouthing instead 'Who? Me?' with eyes twinkling with dark mischief.

"I'm somewhat of a student of psychology," she says. "Like not actual classes and degrees and that stuff, but in my line of work I have to understand people to get them to do things the way I like. And in this mess right now there's just so much stuff overstimulating them that it's a trivial little matter to make them overlook us. Enjoy yourself. Take your time. I suspect you'll like the outcome. And I guarantee you that neither the customers nor the police will disturb you."

She pauses.

"Not if they know what's good for them."

This being a place for middle class white liberals, the ambulance arrives very quickly, even before the cops. Attendants rush in, one being nabbed by the manager who is gesticulating wildly at the lady's washroom. She in turn signals the other two, issuing a few curt instructions and the team rapidly gets a gurney and rolls it to the washroom door.

"Jesus Christ!"

That's the voice of the apparent team leader and it's the first thing said that makes Satana cringe.

"Did he really have to shout that filthy name out loud like that?!" she mutters a little too loudly. A few heads start to turn toward the table with the pair before turning away and looking at other things.

A wall of people forming in a semi-circle outside the front of the restaurant makes the arrival of the cops a bit more complicated than it should be; as a result the gurney is rolled out of the bathroom.

Two things can be noted at this point. First, the shroud they've covered the body makes it look like they pulled out a skeleton. Second, after a quick gesture from Satana, a corner of said shroud catches on something and pulls it off, revealing what's underneath: a mummified corpse in the Karen's clothing, what's recognizable of the face twisted in fear and pain.

Satana looks upon the scene with interest. Not the body. The reactions, seeming to enjoy the horror.

Poison Ivy has posed:
That cringe is instantly interesting. Ivy ignores much of what follows because, as a scientist, she just has to know: "So even the Anglicized version of the name bugs you? It doesn't have to be the birth name, Yeshua bin Yosef or whatever it actually was?" She punctuates the question with a careless flip of her wrist, indicating that she doesn't actually care about getting the specific name correct as much as the principle the example illustrates--or at least would illustrate if the example provided was accurate. The expression of intellectual curiosity on her face mixed with eternally sardonicism does not exactly give the impression she has a crucifix under her shirt she plans to bust out to a refrain of 'get thee behind me'.

Satana has posed:
"I dislike the careless use of that name in any language," Satana says. "It's grossly disrespectful." It's hard to place a finger on it, but she seems to be dissembling ... somewhat? ... while she says that. "There was a time when that name wasn't on everyone's lips for no good reason; it should be a name used in prayer."

A roundabout way to answer to be certain. Almost like there's ... misdirection involved.

"It's doubly offensive when the person using it isn't even a believer," she adds. "Still, times change, don't they? What was once an invocation for the Whoreson's intercession is now a verbal tic used primarily for punctuation."

Poison Ivy has posed:
Ivy smirks a little over her plate. "Sorry to offend, then," she says. Part of her wants to pontificate, but preaching her views on atheism to a demon is beneath her, so she doesn't bother and changes the subject. Changes it back, anyway.

"So you like scaring people?" No judgment, just curiosity.

Satana has posed:
Satana waves dismissively. "It's not specifically scaring alone. I like to ... wake people up. Make them understand they're in a world that's far larger and far more intriguing than they'd been led to believe all their lives. Fear is one way. Lust is another. Had I not been hungry, I might have chosen instead to rut with a random passerby while splayed out over the food."

She looks at Ivy. Up and down. Perhaps not so random.

"And their reactions are so entertaining!" she continues

She gestures at the people backing away from the corpse as the attendants hastily cover it up again and try to wheel it out ... only to get confronted by the cops who are NOT entertained at having evidence removed from a scene of a crime. This gets Satana openly laughing.

"Do you not see the glory of chaos? This is where you see the real people! Who they really are. It's magnificent!"

Satana has posed:
Satana waves dismissively. "It's not specifically scaring alone. I like to ... wake people up. Make them understand they're in a world that's far larger and far more intriguing than they'd been led to believe all their lives. Fear is one way. Lust is another. Had I not been hungry, I might have chosen instead to rut with a random passerby while splayed out over the food."

She looks at Ivy. Up and down. Perhaps not so random.

"And their reactions are so entertaining!" she continues

She gestures at the people backing away from the corpse as the attendants hastily cover it up again and try to wheel it out ... only to get confronted by the cops who are NOT entertained at having evidence removed from a scene of a crime. This gets Satana openly laughing.

"Do you not see the glory of chaos? This is where you see the real people! Who they really are. It's magnificent!"

Poison Ivy has posed:
Ivy does her best to be diplomatic. "You know how the the first time you get sick at a restaurant, you can't ever go there again? I feel kind of the same way about chaos. Makes me think of this guy I know who's always going on about how glorious chaos is, and he's nothing but a tryhard edgelord desperate to convince himself he doesn't have a conscience to bother him about the dumb shit he pulls. He became the guy I want to never, ever be." She doesn't bother naming him.

Satana has posed:
"What does conscience have to do with it?" Satana wonders aloud, genuinely curious. "That's what I adore about living here. So many new and interesting outlooks."

She looks around at the people and the activity.

"Is this not of interest? Or did you want the Karen for yourself?"

She look at the gurney as it sits there with its again-covered withered husk of a body.

"If so, I'm sorry. I was very hungry and her soul was oh so tasty. Since I invited you here, however, I'd have given her to you if that's what you wanted."

She pauses a moment and thinks.

"Or do you feel bad for her? Don't. She was a vicious animal and her soul was doomed anyway; she was going to be coming to my domain sooner or later; I just made it sooner, and against an eternity a few minutes or years or whatever are nothing."

This is probably the first tacit admission that she's what Ivy has thought she was the entire time.

Poison Ivy has posed:
Ivy shrugs. "Humans are herd animals. They're biologically programmed to care about the well-being of the herd. The guy I'm talking about cares, but he pretends he doesn't, and he knows he's pretending, so he's constantly proselytizing about chaos and the true nature of humanity and whatever. Once you stop being shocked by what he does and really think about it, you figure out it's all because he wants to convince someone else so their belief in him can shore up his lack of belief in himself."

Ivy, unlike Satana, is not a student of psychology. But she's had enough bullshit pitched at her to learn the smell.

She works on the last few bites of her noodles.

Satana has posed:
"This sounds like a fascinating person. I should seek him out. I do tend to agree that most who preach the gospel of chaos don't genuinely live it. Hypocrisy is so rampant in human souls that it's become a bit repetitive. A baseline flavour, if you will, that is rendered ... more interesting when other sins are mixed in. Like ... vanilla. In many ways it's still the best ..."

Mischief lights Satana's face.

"... way to reach orgasm, but it's so commonplace that you occasionally want a little something from outside the all-white palate to spice it up."

Her eyes stray back to the people. "But I meant what I said. I'm not doing this to expose "human nature". I do this to expose individuals. Look at that one over there." She gestures to a skin-and-bones straw vegetarian-seeming person. "He is staring at the gurney, but not in shock. In prurient interest. There's something wrong with that one." Her eyes flick over to another, a diesel dyke built like a linebacker. "She, on the other hand, is upset that she couldn't have been in the washroom when that poor girl was somehow dessicated, obviously from some kind of lethal chemical."

Another ghostly grin slips over her lips before disappearing once more.

"That one is a good person. One who subsumes herself to help others. Her soul would be boring. Bleah!"

Poison Ivy has posed:
"It would taste bad, but nothing's stopping you from killing her? No cosmological imperative from God stops you from hurting her because of her holy purity?" Ivy manages to make those last two words sound as sarcastic as any demon could.

Satana has posed:
"She's not holy. See, that's the funny part about all this. Mortals think that the Whoreson wants people to be good. He couldn't possibly care less about this. He wants people to suck up to him and prove their loyalty by crawling before him. David was favoured by the Whoreson and he was a philanderer, a murderer and an all-round terrible person. In the mean time Job was put through every trial imaginable, his family killed *just so the Whoreson could make a point*. They were all good, obedient slaves but because Job dared, after every 'misfortune' (read: edgelord affliction) conceivable was dumped down on his head, to complain mildly about it, the Whoreson made a personal visit and gaslit the fucker."

Satana shrugs.

"So even good people are open game. And a lot of my colleagues get particular joy out of corrupting them. I don't."

She leans in to Ivy, letting her overwhelming presence push against her. "Thing is, I like mortals," she says in a low voice like spreading a secret. "They're endlessly fascinating. I can see why the Whoreson preferred them to the angels he booted out."

She straightens out again and leans back in her chair in a subtle display of her form. "So I try to restrict myself to eating only the ones that are doomed to my domain anyway. The fact those taste better is just a bonus, not the grounds."

Poison Ivy has posed:
Ivy listens to this dissertation attentively while finishing her 'stir fry,' wondering how much of the explanation she should believe, and wondering how much she cares either way. The answer to the latter question is easier than the answer to the former, so she acts on her conclusion and: changes the subject. "Starting to sound like you're warning me you plan to kill me," she observes, eyebrow raised, sounding unconcerned and mostly mild but a tad sharp; the tone of voice she's used when other criminals have tried to threaten her, if Satana but knew it.

Satana has posed:
"Oh, no!" Satana is either very good at feigning dismay or is genuinely dismayed. Given the increasing suspicion that Ivy has of her provenance, it's hard to tell which. "You misunderstand. I want you for your body." She lets that sit a moment. "And your mind. You're fun to talk to. Your soul is of no interest to me."

She gestures at the dessicated husk that the cops and the ambulance attendants are still arguing over.

"She's boring. The world is better off without her and her kind. So when my hunger---my curse---fires up, I'd rather eat her kind than yours. Besides, I'm sure it's not easy being green." A Kermit joke had to be made, right? "I'm well fed now, so you're in absolutely no danger for anywhere between ten days and two weeks."

She spreads her arms magnanimously. "Indeed none of these people, no matter how tasty they may seem to me, is in danger from me for that period of time."

She glances down at Ivy's plate. "Will you be fetching more food?" she asks, as if that's an option given the happening. "Or would you like to take in a movie. What's your game? Romantic comedy? Action? Comedy? Horror?" She grins predatorily, with hungry eyes. "Pornography?"

Poison Ivy has posed:
Ivy thinks about it, and shrugs. "Something unpopular that not a lot of people will be watching," she decides. "I've had enough of crowds for today."

Satana has posed:
"Oh, you hopeless romantic!" Satana says, clearly misunderstanding Ivy's motivation. Or, given the glint in her eyes, 'misunderstanding'. "Let's go to my car, and then find the movie that has the lowest box office this weekend. We can watch it and if it gets boring find other ways to entertain ourselves."

The succubus stands then, which causes a couple of the nearby cops to suddenly spin in the direction of the pair, hands on their guns, but not drawn yet. "Whoah! Where did you two come from?!" one of them demands.

"Right ... here? We've been eating. Now we're leaving."

"Oh, no you aren't! Witnesses are req..."

And suddenly the cops lose interest, turning back to literally anybody else.

"Oopsie!" Satana says to Ivy. "Forgot to keep that going while we left."

And with that she leads Ivy to her extremely rare (and idiosyncratic) limousine to find a movie suited for the, likely, third-strangest first date Ivy has ever had.