15646/Unintentional consequences

Unintentional consequences
Date of Scene:	29 September 2023
Location:	Lucifer's Penthouse, Melville
Synopsis:	Science has always got snags along the way. In order to get the Infinite improbability drive up and running, holy relics had to be smelted and infused with the life-force of the Sorceror Supreme. We'll call this a win, despite random portal generation for incoming managers and short, angry irishmen.
Cast of Characters:	Sinister, Lucifer, Phantasm (Drago), Doctor Strange

---

Sinister has posed:
Those that do not learn from History are doomed to repeat it.

That statement is one that has been said many times over the ages and is a hallmark of Humanity's inability to pick up some of the very basic concepts of the idiom. But -how- to learn from History?

Take copious notes? Keep a very physical record of all the failures? Read lots of books? live it? All of these things are possible, but nobody spends their entire dabble into History (personal or otherwise) fully /awake/ to everything the whole time. Things get missed. Things go unnoticed. Best guesses don't quite land on the mark.

What worked before...

Melville is having quite the lightshow tonight. Local reporting stations say it's a strange ball lightning affair and the power station is doing overdrive trying to figure out why their grid is being boosted up with an excess of energy. The top of Lux tower seems to have Halogen lights up to 11++ which is peculiar to say the least. Maybe someone heard something on the radio, maybe it was just an odd footnote in global news? Maybe superpowers are paying attention...

Inside the light-rich penthouse, a gyroscopic stabilizer is levitating in the middle of the penthouse, radiating light like it's going out of style and every single appliance in the house is powered UP, including the elevator. That went a bit nuts not that long ago, because smart technology sometimes gets overloaded. Sinister is currently wearing a pair of black-out goggles and is sorting through tools telekinetically at a rate of knots. "This is /not/ supposed to be happening. Sometimes, I outdo myself, I swear."

Lucifer has posed:
Lux is going crazy. The elevator has lost it's mind, the DJ can't seem to control the volume of his music, the lit dance floor is practically giving off radiation warnings, and the lights are making the place look more like the Yankee Stadium on game night rather than a nice, relaxing place to come have a drink.

It's caused Lucifer to have to shut things down early. Problems with the electricity. Everyone's drinks are comped, the workers will get a full nights payday but for the safety of everyone the club is closed.

It takes a good half an hour for Lucifer to use the elevator.

He should have just teleported.

Then when he walks into the penthouse, and greeted by that bright, BRIGHT light show, he mutters and then cloaks himself in smoke to at least dim the brightness down to 10. He may be the Light Bringer...but this is something even he cannot deal with.

"Hey! Nikola Tesla! You mind turning this down a little bit?!"

Sinister has posed:
"Trying to, my darling. Apparently, gold and electrum alone are not quite up to the task of full containment, but LOOK at it! It's as close as anything can get, to being a perpetual motion gravitational well, empowered by infinity. The capacitors just aren't up to the task of /containing/ and cycling the energy..." A hand is flung up, twirled in the air in a circular motion and a red barrier materializes around the gyroscope, which turns the light down to 11+ but not much better. Hey, A SINGLE plus got lost, right? RIGHT?

"But in principle, it /works/! Lucifer it WORKS!" Beaming fit to split his face in half, Nathaniel even gives an arm-pump with a teenie tiny sonic screwdriver in hand.

The air gets thin though, not hard to breathe or anything, the composite materials are still there even though to these two they're unnecessary, but the ceiling looks see-through, as does the floor. And there's peculiar mirror-like quality to the invisible gases themselves, like they're reflecting their possible locations, ad infinitum.

Lucifer has posed:
"I'm happy that it works, I truly am. You really did yourself right by this one.." Lucifer offers while staring at the ever-spinning, ever-lighting contraption wrapped in red and still shining brightly. "And this is supposed to be the thing that helps us figure out which path leads to the fewest consequences about our Apophis conundrum?"

The air goes thin, things go transparent, and Lucifer begins to wonder if he can quell the media storm that might be heading his way because there's no ignoring the light show coming from the penthouse. "This is getting really interesting. Are we already seeing into the multiverse? Or are these all the paths that we could take depending on the choice we make?" So much for free will. Lucifer is entranced, even if he's cover in shadow and peering through a veil of darkness.

Phantasm (Drago) has posed:
With the amount of things malfunctioning and the types of things to malfunction, even more weirdness is around the corner. Case in point another that opens up above Sinister. The view through showed a vast amount of light escaping from him. Could it be the heavens have opened up? Oh what a-

FLOOMPH!

As the blond, dripping wet man wearing nothing but a towel lands on Sinister, it becomes a bit clearer.

It is not heaven. It is the reflected light coming off the white marble of a rather over the top hotel bathroom. And if one should tilt their head in such a way, they might see the close proximity to the shower.

Fortunately, despite the floor disappearing from underneath him. Wade DOES keep ahold of the towel.

Blue eyes look wide-eyed at the inside of the penthouse and then to the nearby Lucifer. "The fuck?"

Sinister has posed:
"I think so. But it's uncontrolled. This is the hardest part of the equation, the creation of a stable containment field for the infinite energy and a capacitor to redirect and store the..." SPLAT...

Anything he might have said is cut off by having a man wearing nothing but a towel, land on him. He might be strong and very tough to injure, but unexpected universal drop-ins without time to brace for them? He should've looked up, but he was busy /explaining/.

"What in the name of Churchill's armpit just happened??"

Lucifer has posed:
"So then how do we control..." Only Lucifer doesn't finish that question because suddenly there's a man in a towel who has just fallen on top of Nathaniel. He tilts his head one way and then the other before he shifts a step closer, letting the smoke fade entirely and offers Wade a hand up to his feet.

"Tonight's show has been further interupted by a manager..." Offering this much before he then flits fingers through the air and a towel, a pair of jeans and a tee shirt (all amazingly Wade's size) float out into the living room. "Sorry Wade. We're having...technical difficulties. In so much as Nathaniel here is trying to beat Tesla at his own game and...both suceeding amazingly and failing dramatically. Do forgive us..."

Phantasm (Drago) has posed:
Wade blinks, grip still tight upon the towel as he rolls off the doctor shaped landing pad. Well, once he realizes he's on him. Now safely on the floor, Wade tilts his head up to look to the hole from which he came. "H-" When the clothing and much drier towel floats over to him, the manager takes one hand off the towel, causing for it to shift slightly but not move too much.

The now freed hand moves back and forth, snagging the offered items and then glances around for what LOOKS to be a bathroom entrance.

Once he's sure he's found it, he gets off of his knees and scoots off that way.

There will probably be questions after he reduces the potential for exposure.

And then another opening appears. Also giving off a bright light with the visual of plentiful plants, some of which bearing fruit. SURELY this is heaven, right?

...

RIGHT?

Well, no one falls through it at least. Instead, another figure jumps through, fully clothed and landing gracefully.

Unlike the manager who came in earlier, this one is of a much shorter stature.

The short blond man straightens up. Still coming up much shorter compared to the other three men. The blond man looks over to the pair, dressed in considerably different attire from before. Jeans, a tee, sunglasses, and a bit of scruff. But there at least is no tweed cap. The ever present sense of 'none shall pass' with his thoughts however, did not get left at home.

"What the hell are you doing making portals in my greenhouse?!" Leo asks.

Sinister has posed:
"Of course. Management gets in the way of everything..." muffled from below, it clears up when the man isn't on top of him any more. Sin floats himself back to his feet, which is considerably more graceful, but now thoughts are interrupted and he has to stare off to the side, waggling the tiny screwdriver to try and recollect what he was GOING to say before a newly showered manager landed on him. "... Oh, yes. It shouldn't be releasing energy. I've not made the capacitors strong enough. Is there any chance you have a gold or silver relic of religiosity, that you don't mind smelting down on the fly?"

This directed at Lucifer, he gestures at the gyroscope at the PRECISE time when a very anathemic Irishman nails the landing as the poor human in the room hunts the bathroom down.

Damn, the bathroom's nice. Huge. Has a rainforest style thunder and lightning shower and a very large jacuzzi. And full wall mirrors.

"Oh, for CRYING out loud... just sod off, causality!" angry now, because of all the people to get accidentally portalled in.

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer coughs a little as he watches Wade rush off to the bathroom there at the end of the hall. Towels never truly cover up -everything- and that was a nice ass heading off.

Back to the situation at hand. Gold? Not just any gold. Holy Gold. He thinks for a moment and then he nods. "I believe I do have something that we could melt down. I'll just need to go..."

And then a Leonard shows up, dressed down for the evening and demanding to know why a portal was placed in his greenhouse. "Excuse me. No one placed anything anywhere. Someone may have disrupted the placement of actual portals...aside from the fact that I don't leave portals anywhere..." He says this much before straigtening his clothing. "Besides and furthermore...let me go retrieve what Nathaniel wishes and then we'll see about returning you home. Promptly."

Phantasm (Drago) has posed:
While the presence of full wall mirrors could help Wade with confirming Lucifer's assessment of the retreat, the manager is a bit more focused on tugging on the clothing. The door slams shut while he makes use of the loaned out privacy to correct just that.

Leo looks to the snappy scientist. Eyes narrowing.

As Lucifer provides an explanation of sorts. "...An accident then." He surmises. He nods, gruffly.

There's a general sense of energy increasing from the Irish man as his features mirror themselves, shaking his head at the offer of a ride home. "No need. I can head home from here. Just... fix this mess."

With the other portal gone, Leo hops to the side, vanishing from view.

Sinister has posed:
"Right, so now that the short-arse irishman's buggered off, I'm going to make sure the clueless manager stays put in the bloody bathroom," Sinister mutters, turning his focus back to the glowing gyroscope hovering in the middle of the penthouse. The walls are entirely transparent now and seem to be showing additional walls; all the walls and ways that this tower COULD have been built, but never got past the planning, or the Lucifer, to be put into construction. One iteration looks entirely too girlish for its own good.

The surge of energy though, might just be expanding and New York isn't that far from Melville. They admire the view at night, after all. To those with a mind to be able to sense extreme power, it smells like infinite possibilities, or chaos theory made manifest.

"We might want to move quite quickly on this, though. I think the capacitors are likely to go into a positive feedback cascade and if that happens, we'll probably have a -bugger- of a time even attempting to get control back, love." Sin sounds so calm when he says that, which is just ... typical? Yes, we'll go with that.

Lucifer has posed:
"Right, right... I'm going..." Lucifer says this and then moves to go into the bedroom. Then he goes into the closet which leads to another closet. And another. Then down some stairs. He's gone for a good couple minutes. Maybe five. But when he comes back he's got two or three golden pieces in his hand.

"Ah, this is the grail of a Pope. Uhm, the something of... anyway. They're all holy relics..." Lucifer explains and then floats them in the air before surrounding them with a bubble full of fire so they'll smelt. "You think this'll be enough?"

Doctor Strange has posed:
A landscape of endless possibilities and it's the one time this year that Stephen Strange isn't in New York. Probability is often mistaken for some grand scheme of fate, but there's something to be said for dumb luck... Certainly nobody is asking him what his thoughts on the matter would be, if he were here, which he most certainly is not.

No... Stephen Strange is off in another realm dealing with contract negotiations that have gone very sour.

But then...

With so many, endless even, possibilities.. not to mention pure, simple, dumb luck?

The hollow, graying eyes snap open from behind sallow putrid eyelids.

How long has it been since he's even MOVED? It feels like months, but it's likely longer. Doctor Strange, A Doctor Strange, peers into a swirling pool of black ichor in a basin set before where he had been sitting on a moldy chair. The upholstry has long since begun to frey and become thread bare. Like his features.. rotten and seperated from the bone in places as he leans leans forward to gaze down at a pair of individuals he knows..

A boney, skeletal hand extends out and calls the Cloak of levitation from a broken closet and wraps around his shoulders with a flick of his wrist as the pool of black ink becomes a portal through which the decaying corpse of the Sorcerer Supreme steps. Out of his own dominion, where nothing lives, into a world that has not yet succumb to his dark mistakes.

His jaw snaps to one side and begins to knit together through the dark magics that keep him animated, while pale, glassy eyes peer at the golden pieces Lucifer has returned with. Then up at Sinister, "I know there's a plan, but I can assure you that last time we did this, it ended very poorly for everyone."

Sinister has posed:
"I will take your word for it that they actually -are- holy, because I absolutely can't tell," Essex murmurs that, looking at the collection and back to the gyroscope. He's go it in a bubble of red energy but it's still as bright as a lighthouse, a fabulous guiding light for the Death Lord of his own realm, to follow back to THIS world. It isn't a far step. Only a matter of a couple of twists and turns on the road of choices, after all.

It might be the smell of rot in the air that undid some of his concentration, as he looked at the melting gold, then away to try and find the source of the scent. It's the mind that tells him the Truth though.

"The last time? Oh, just a moment, are all Stranges also Strange? Is it like a Me situation?" He asks that with a shake of his head and a "...nevermind. You're late. Although I suspect you arrived precisely on queue, for this particular moment. You also seem to be coming apart at the seams, old boy."

An understatement.

"So, are you here to help, or hinder?"

Lucifer has posed:
Another random visitor? What is going on here? Portals in wrong places, people popping out of showers and greenhouses and now the scent of rot...

For a moment, Lucifer worries - in a very serious fashion - that a gate to Hell has been opened. But no. It's just Stephen Strange. Whom they haven't seen since the zombie-fied moment. Right? He thinks that's the last time they visited.

"Where do you need this smelted gold? And do you need me to keep it liquid or should I solidify it somehow first?" Asking this while looking to Nathaniel and basking int he chaos that is their home right now.

Doctor Strange has posed:
"I was late last time too." Stephen, or what's left of him, says to the observation of his lack of punctuality to this particular party. Walking proves incredibly problematic for him, so after a few uncoordinated steps, he lifts himself up and hovers the distance across the long mirrored bathroom to where Sinister is holding the gyroscope in his red bubble. "Which is probably why I didn't succumb, like so many others..."

His glossy eyes peer at the objects Lucifer has presented and the one Essex is keeping contained. Not yet answering the most important question, instead waxing metaphorical on the strangness of Stranges, "We're all.. complicated." What passes for a grin on a half decayed face is nothing at all pleasant. Which is besides the point.

"But to your question... it depends on who you ask... This isn't my world.." He doesn't need to glance around to know that, of course, but he does anyways. "No one is eating each other... I assure you, you'll be glad to have missed that.." he remains levitating, hands out at his sides with boney fingers working in little waves to try and get articulation into them.

"... If you ask the people from my world, I am absolutely about to be a hindrance. I'm here to offer myself. Sacrifice the Sorcerer Supreme, along with your melted Holy Relics. The combination of the divine and mystical should be enough to prevent catatrophy." His lips peel back from dingy teeth, "For your world anyways. I'm all that keeps the ravenous horde at bay. Without my spells.. everyone like me will devour everyone who's not. A realm for a realm."

Sinister has posed:
"Keep it liquid, I will have to do something quite unpleasant, I think." Sinister mutters, adding a second sphere of crimson around the first one, to attempt to shield the orb more.

If one looks carefully, there's a transparent image now of a penthouse where rotten beings shuffle around, just waiting for someone to say 'Klatu verata nectu' except that this probably already happened and one person screwed up the pronunciation. That's what happens when you get your Necronomicon data from watching too many B-movies and not enough actual mystical tomes.

That, because there's a dead sorceror in the here, pulling his possibilities and probabilities closer to HERE. Maybe that's a kinder fate for that parallel?

"Well, aren't you quite the martyr to a lost cause in one place and a hopeful one, here. But you're quite literally falling apart, Strange. If we incorporate you, are we not also going to be incorporating the necromantic death charm you've let fester, to stay invisible to the walking dead?" He asks this, because it is RELEVANT. "I don't particularly want to taint the capacitors with negative energy, it might end ... badly." Pause. "Luci, do you have any idea if that would interact like the big bang, or Chernobyl take two?"

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer glances between Stange and Nathaniel. Not their Strange. Another Strange. From another dimension and likely called out to because they're playing with forces they ought not to be playing with.

"Is this the part where I ask what can possibly go wrong with a device powered by an angel's feather, a song written for a saint imbued into said feather, gold that represents us angels, and more gold for the holy power it musters to try and subdue the dimensional warp tool you're holding in a sphere? Cause there's only one way to figure out the answer to that question. /I/ am not Uriel. I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen. Regardless if we let this Strange sacrifice himself. But if he's suggesting it." There's a pause here. "I trust it."

Doctor Strange has posed:
This Strange's realm is not a pleasant place at all, but at least there's some moderate amount of restraint in the darkness. With it so close between two worlds, it's not impossible to see that he is the catalyst of that restraint. Already the dead are starting to grow antsy with the Liche Supreme away from his throne of bones (metaphorically speaking).

His lips peel back, "It's no trinket or charm that keeps me invisible from death. It's simple enough magic that keeps the mindless at bay, but it was always my magic that kept me from becoming 'one of them'. As with all things, to beat anything, all you need to know is everything... and I often do." He's still Stephen Strange, after all.

"There we have it." skeletal, half decayed flesh covered hands clap together in a way that sounds distinctly unpleasant. "I've never sacrificed myself before, as far as I know. This will be another, considerable, feather in my considerably impressive cap."

Still levitating, he moves over to where Lucifer is melting down the Holy relics, holding out his hands. "Pour the gold on my arms up to my shoulders. I'll incorperate the Divine energy and, when I'm sacrificed, it shall be too."

Sinister has posed:
"You know, I shouldn't like you Strange. We should rub each other up like a an oily duck in watery thistles. But frankly, I can appreciate a goodly sense of superiority when I smell it. And when it's backed up with quite a lot of proof..." Sin nods to Lucifer, considering the situation for a moment, then sighing softly. "ALright. But I shall do the deed my way, this is my invention after all. I know how my technology likes to function, if I syphon everything at once, I'll not pay the close attention it needs."

He raises his chin a measure, squinting at the inside of the gyroscope and with a double-handed 'pull apart' gesture, separates the cage of spinning metal around the central sphere.

It's possible when he does that, to see the shape of the flaming feather that sits in the core. Uriel's wings are the colour of flame and they shimmer with the fire of Heaven. Amplified, it explains the EXTREME lightshow that even discomforted the Lightbringer himself. But the feather? He ignores, his focus puts more layers of obscuring red around the flaming core, so that the inside of the gyroscope can be seen.

"Alright, please go ahead with auriplating the sorceror supreme, Luci. And Strange, please try not to lose your arms before you're ready."

Lucifer has posed:
"Alright. I'm going to bathe a liche in gold.." Lucifer offers. "Always a first for everything..." He comments after that and then slowly lets the fire-bubble break open - but only enough to spill the gold over the arms of Strange as he was instructed to. He does this carefully to avoid spilling even a drop away from those arms.

"You can do whatever you want with your invention, surely. No one is stopping you from that my dearest. I'm just saying that whatever happens from here on out is happening with no one knowing what the actual outcome will be..." He shakes his head then. "All this for a meteor threatening to destroy Earth. In another year or so it'll be some other catastrophe."

At some point, someone is going to just yell 'STOP' and let the world be pulled asunder if that is what Fate wants. But for Lucifer, that will be a cold day in Hell before he's the one who does it. Humanity is HIS damnit, and he'll preserve it to the end if he has to. Somehow.

"Oh. Hey. How does molten gold feel on the bones? I bet Logan felt the same when he had his covered in adamantium..."

Doctor Strange has posed:
"I've heard that before." Strange says to Sinister with... well it's not a knowing smirk, but mostly because what his face is doing isn't a smirk. There's not enough skin attached to enough bone for it to be a proper facial expression, but whatever it is, it's certainly confident. "I have a tendency to shine on people eventually. Even if I have to die to do so. Just, promise me one thing?"

Glossy eyes pass back and forth between the pair of them.

"Rub it in 'your' Strange's face that I did what he couldn't?" At the end of the day, Stephen Strange is petty. Brilliant. All powerful... but very petty.

His arms extend out for Lucifer to pour the gold across them. The divine power inherent in these melted artifacts has an obvious and profound effect upon the unholy abomination that is an Undead Sorcerer Supreme... Besides the obvious agony of having molten gold poured upon his arms, there's also the fact that no amount of mysticism protects the undead in him from the Holy energy.

His jaw clinches and boney, gold plated fingers clench into fists that speak a great deal to how painful this part of his sacrifice has to be. Or the howling of undead from beyond the veil to his world as the one controlling them has the very limits of his willpower tested. If he weren't levitating by way of his cloak it is entirely possible he would tople to the floor on his knees.

Lucifer's question is met with a pointed stare and what amounts for the weakest attempt at a smirk he can manage between the obvious agony and the lack of most of his face. "Divine... I welcome you to try it some time." As for Logan, between clinched teeth, "Until I was able to take control of them, the Avengers used him as a renewable food source.. I don't know how adamantium felt, but .. there's always something worse."

Sinister has posed:
"You know, the adamantium coating technique was a real bastard to master," Sinister notes with a cheerful little smile. "I was quite proud of figuring out how to make molten metal flow to actually coat. The technology was proprietory though, I believe the facility is so much crumbled mess beneath a total collapse these days. My people removed anything worthwhile."

He did supply most of the technology for the Weapon X program, after all. And the how-to and advisory on certain criteria. Logan's never asked, he's never told.

"I will consider it, Strange."

And that's the only thing he says regarding that, because now, he slaps his left hand on the broiling hot gold encasing the sorceror's arms, hissing between his teeth as he maintains concentration -- feel no pain if you don't want to, Essex -- The flesh of his arm seems to melt, adhering to the gilded limb and incorporates itself INTO the process. This all so that the liquid gold, empowered as it is by the Sorceror Supreme's life, of what remains of it... flows by his own control of his molecular structure. He's using his own cellular structure as a vector.

The heat is intense, as the liquid gold snakes free, winnowing through telekinetic control and his own body, to very finely coat the interior surfaces of the gyroscopic stabilizer, ferried into every nook and cranny whilst maintaining the moving parts.

From the perspective of the sacrificial victim, it's probably absolute agony, as the Scientist's own regenerative abilities keep those dead cells from gasping their last UNTIL the job is absolutely done.

The activity of the infinite improbabilities escalates, when there's not any measurable control over it all. A million worlds, all overlapping, is a kaleidoscope of the impossible and all juuuuuuuuuust a hair's breadth away from being HERE in THIS world.

In amongst all of those is the ONE that went completely right. It's so close. The potential is there... within reach... if only...

<<Stephen Strange.... Be done. Your time is over.>> It's a massive, sudden psychic assault, when the sorceror's will is all about the staying alive, not screaming, maintaining control. And it was deliberately a violent mental disassemble that is literally designed to end him instantaneously.

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer is just standing back. Watching this all happen. Waiting for this alt-Strange's curtain call. And perhaps for the perverbial shit to hit the fan.

Doctor Strange has posed:
It was a measure of great strength of will that kept Stephen Strange from dying all this time. Certainly that keeps the preverbial undead wolves at bay... and god only knows what other things for which the Sorcerer Supreme is responsible at any given moment on his own world. Thankfully, only some of those things need be a direct concern to this world. Having Strange, albeit somewhere else, here prevents most of the catastrophy from being little more than a 'what if' scenario.

When mentally projected upon to do so, the great effort put into sustaining himself ends. The life drains from dead eyes in the blink of an unbeating heart. The rapidity with which decomposition takes hold of what remains of the Doctor is immediate. His body crumbles beneath the weight of itself. Dust curling back away from joints until there's little more that remains besides the robes he was wearing and the tattered cloak of levitation he used to keep himself aloft. Which, without his protection here on this earth, quickly evaporates as well.

His sacrifice, however small, is noted in Anubis records. His journey to the field of reeds is secure...

A final, agonized, breath escapes as he becomes ash and flitters away on the wind.. a gasp that passes across the barriers between this world and his. A gasp that ends the spells that have kept the ravenous hordes at bay. Hundreds of heroes who have been turned by whatever dark magic went wrong are suddenly free of the dominion of the Necromancer Supreme. Hundreds of thousands of humans who were mindless husks of undeath suddenly have their shackles snapped when Stephen Strange, of their world, dies.

The carnage plays out quickly. Because there are beings so powerful amongst the undead as there are beings as powerful here. Ones whose minds are now free, so long as they satisfy their basest desires for flesh. Beings who can, and might, construct portals into a world they'd seen through an opaque mirror in the Sanctum Santorum. led by the figure of the new Necromatic Lord: Undead Wong.

Sinister has posed:
Silence in the aftermath of that, seems to be most appropriate. Although, there's the hrum of the feather that seems to pulsate. And the deconstruction of the gyroscopic stabilizer ends, snapping the concentric rotating circles back into place.

Breath should probably be held here, but as they start to spin again, the brilliant, unbridled light becomes more tolerable to the eye and instead of being near blinding, the ever spinning circles and their core... glow a soft golden.

One by one, the mirrors of transparent almost-real probabilities fade, the last thing to re-establish itself being the walls of the Penthouse itself.

But occasionally, and both Sinister and Lucifer can perceive this, a crackle of negative light flits in the midst of the gold. Martyrdom and sacrifice mean alot, as does all that mystical energy. But the Death lord of that world /doomed/ that world in the first place. And they've infused that into thier Improbability drive.

That probably isn't going to be good in the long run, but needs must as the Devil drives as they say.

Time is not a friend to anyone but Stephen Strange. They might want to have words with him about that. Eventually.