2478/Polemically Sent

Polemically Sent
Date of Scene:	12 September 2017
Location:	The Friendly Skies
Synopsis:	The King of the Crossroads pays Melinda May a little visit.
Cast of Characters:	Melinda May, Crowley
Tinyplot:	Blood on My Name

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Melinda May has posed:
It's been several hours now since Dean disappeared from the front seat of the Impala. May pulled rank to get them a quinjet to get to their destination faster, and even briefly horrified the local SHIELD agents by having Fred's car driven up into the jet. with the car in there, there was ZERO room for any of the passenger seats to be used, so Fred, Sam, and Jo are stuck passenging in the car while May flies them to South Dakota.

In the cockpit of the 'jet, May has just set the auatopilot for the hour or so of cruising they have to do before it's time to land at the Sioux Falls airport, and she's taken the clunky headset off of her head though her eyes are still obscured by her aviator glasses. She's taking the time to mentally review what she saw and what it means, and to make sure her Mandarin exorcism wording is correct.

Crowley has posed:
And someone appears in the co-pilot seat. He's leaning back, with his feet on the dash of all things, though he manages not to hit a single button.

"I know what you're thinking," he says, in perfect Mandarin.

"Or rather," the portly businessman muses. "I know what you've been thinking. 'I'll just summon up old Crowley now that I've gone and found his name' and I'll get him to break that deal with Dean Winchester through the power of my absolutely terrifying Dragon Lady Tropes and ability to break people by...pretty much by staring at them, as best as I can tell."

The slight smugness in his smirk doesn't detract much from its friendly appearance as he laces his fingers over his belly. "Course if you do that right now you'll crash the plane, so it's an absolutely wonderful time to be civil."

Melinda May has posed:
The instant Crowley appears in the copilot's seat May is pulling a weapon, so that by the time he's halfway through his first few words in Mandarin, she has a small but wicked blade pulled and aimed at his throat. "I'm willing to take the risk. Give me one VERY good reason to not banish you back to where you came from." She's speaking Mandarin also, and the moments she'd JUST spent reminding herself of the banishing words might prove immediately useful after all.

She's tempted to do it just to see how this crossroads demon handles dealing with the bureaucracy of Diyu and the ten Kings of Hell.

Crowley has posed:
He takes two fingers and slowly pushes that knife away from his throat.

"First, because that would be boring. Second, because I'd just come back. Banishment is more of an inconvenience at my career level than an actual problem."

He smirks and switches to English, showcasing an urbane British accent. "Besides, I'm here to make you an offer. I can keep Dean Winchester alive indefinitely if you'd like to trade your soul for it. You're already getting old, Agent May, ten years is generous by any standards. Given your lifestyle, your job, the growing network of crow's feet under your hardened eyes..."

Melinda May has posed:
If Crowley thinks trying to play on vanity would actually work on May, he is even more deluded than she could ever have guessed. And, as much as she would love to throw the quinjet into a barrel roll and make the man kiss the ceiling, it would be decidedly unpleasant for the car and is passengers, so she can't.

"Get your feet off the controls." He's worse than Barton, and she NEVER thought that that would be possible. She lowers the blade but keeps it in her hand, clearly ready to brandish it again as fast as a viper strike. "If you want to waste your time trying to offer me a deal I will only refuse, go right ahead. I have .. fifty seven minutes free. But maybe you'd be better off spending that time figuring out which white-eyed demon is playing with YOUR pet Winchester."

Crowley has posed:
Crowley's eyebrows lift faintly.

"Really, Melinda, it would be a clearance sale for you," he says smoothly. "Bahrain. Your soul's already damned. You might also have better luck signing on to a portion of Hell with a sympathetic benefactor. It can have a real impact on your...accomodations."

But he swings his feet off the dash as if making a grand concession, and settles into the cockpit with comfortable ease. "But. We can table this discussion into how you can take care of your new surrogate sons in the long-term while you tell me what you're rambling on about here in the short-term. Upper management is toying with the Squirrel, you say?"

She's a trained spy. And in a vessel, demons have facial expressions. Despite his smooth delivery and generally unruffled state, there's a flicker in his face of...concern. Not annoyance, not anger, not possessiveness, but concern. It's not necessarily the concern for someone he cares about...this isn't any great affection for Dean. But there is /something/ happening here that goes a bit beyond the obvious, a bit beyond standard wheeling and dealing for the (admittedly) valuable commodoty of souls.

Melinda May has posed:
May catches that flicker of concern that crosses the meatsuit's face, but is sufficiently well trained (by one Romanoff, no less) that her own brief feeling of smugness does not show in return. "Yes. What, did no one bother to tell you they were going to do that? So you're not as low-man on the totem pole as I'd been led to believe. Should have known." She debates opening a voice line to the back of the 'jet and asking the three there what all they know about the white-eyed demon that's taken Dean. But, she can't trust Crowley to not be a pratt.

Crowley has posed:
This is wise.

When given the choice to be a pratt or not be a pratt, Crowley is always gonna choose pratt. It's just his nature.

Meanwhile, he snorts. An appeal to his vanity isn't going to cause him to give up more information than he wishes to, sadly, he's had over 300 years to learn all of those tricks and he is a manipulative bastard by nature. He might give away just a little bit, but he's a bit, well...

Coulsonlike, in how he just sort of placidly smiles in response.

Patiently, he says, "You were telling me all about how another demon is horning in on my property. Was there anything else you wanted to add, Melinda?" He sort of gestures a little with his hand, tilts his head to one side, lifts a single eyebrow, inviting her to go on. "Go on, Agent. Give me a briefing. You have my undivided attention. And that doesn't happen often, darling."

Melinda May has posed:
May turns her head just enough to give Crowley the flattest, most unimpressed stare in the history of unimpressed stares. "That's all I know. You want more intel, talk to a demon hunter. Last I checked, there are three of them sitting ten feet behind us." And with that, she returns her eyes to her controls, if not her attention.

She kind of very much inwardly hopes that Crowley doens't reveal himself to the three Hunters in the back of the quinjet. She doesn't want to even contemplate the amount of chaos that would ensue.

Crowley has posed:
"Meh. I'll just go have a look-see for myself, if you don't mind. Ta, Melinda."

He makes the universal call-me symbol, wriggling his fingers back and forth, smiling like a fiend. Which. Of course. He is, by some definitions.

And then the cockpit is blessedly silent as one Crowley goes to see if he can't reclaim his issue-filled, martyr of a Winchester.

Melinda May has posed:
May waits a solid thirty seconds after Crowley disappears before taking a deep breath. Holy Hannah that man is creepy in more ways than she can even begin to contemplate. Though maybe ... she can ask Natasha to have a chat with him. If anyone could glean information from him, she'd be the one. She could pull intel out of a chunk fo granite.

Now she can only hope the rest of this flight goes uneventfully.