Owner	Pose
Vampirella	Most people who go to church only go for the ritual, the habit of the thing; the obligation. Almost none of them do it because they actually believe. Devil worshipers are no different: they're just better funded, able to rent out big expo halls and fill it with a pool of ritual blood in the center of which stands an ice sculpture of their two-horned, flute-blowing deity. None of the worshipers pay any attention to that holy (or unholy, depending on your theological standpoint) effigy. They're just there to have an orgy which is about as titillating as you would expect any group of repressed, white, old-money types who pay a thousand bucks a head to come have their awkward, compulsively hetero sex to be. And every now and then, some beast of the pit (a thing shaped more or less like a werewolf, named Armadyl) rises from the pool of blood to seize and eat one of the worshipers. If you expected the fear to make the scene there any spicier, you'd be disappointed. The kindest thing Vampirella can say about it is that it makes the men faster. Yeah, you could say she's in a mood. Still, she tries her best to shake it off and save the dinguses from their own stupidity. The skylight resists shattering--laminated glass is like that--but a human-sized body can still punch a pretty respectable hole in it if it falls from a large enough height, which she does, boots first, fists over her head, falling like an amateur cliff diver through the ceiling and toward the water below. She's got in fifty places, but most of them are shallow, and all of them will heel. The splash she makes in the blood pool could almost be called tidal. The satanists are already screaming and fleeing.
Domino	Neena Thurman goes to church for her own reasons. Her own, unique, very infrequent reasons. Typically those reasons are something along the lines of 'The sightline from that bell tower to that balcony? Yeah, I can work with that.'. But sometimes the churches are different, a little less baroque European architecture and bell towers, and a little more 'Sure, this counts as a church because we're a cult doing our cult thing, that makes this bingo hall a church'. And despite rocking a very monochromatic aesthetic, between black hair, skin paler than ivory or alabaster, telltale black spot around her left eye, and a gleaming, slick bodysuit /also/ in black, the only marring of that color scheme between black handle of a knife hanging from combat webbing on her shoulder, and black guns holstered on her thighs is a series of olive drab hand grenades on her belt. Sure, you /can/ spraypaint them black, but Domino took this job on short notice. And apparently not short enough! She's doing the whole quiet stick-to-the-shadows infiltration thing, there's a handful of low rank cultists who are going to wake up with some traumatic brain injuries sure, but she's keeping things calm and cool right up until she's lining up on the doors to the ritual chamber and... hears glass shattering. IT'S STONE COLD! STONE COLD IS- ...wait, that was a skylight and... Shit. Those double doors are kicked in far easier than the skylight was smashed, tempered glass is a bitch, cheap hollow core doors are easy. The good news is, none of the cultists really need to worry about anyone hearing their cowardly shrieks over the immediate and rapidly paced POPs of gunfire. Creepy old cultists are fair game, and also not the young woman that Neena's supposed to be rescuing. Caitlyn Epcott must be the cowering girl at the far end of the room who just screams 'sacrificial offering' and... Over the sound of her own gunfire, Neena's voice rings out, "HOLY SHIT IS THAT A WEREWOLF?!" Why's she sound so excited? Because she's never killed a werewolf. She's sparred with Wendigo, and Henry McCoy, but those guys sure aren't actual no fooling werewolves.
Vampirella	Vampirella surfaces from the blood like a character in a seventies sex comedy movie. She can't help it; it's just the way she is: chin up, hair flowing behind her like liquid sable, lips slightly parted. Rivulets of red--the blood has been thinned with water to keep it from coagulating in any expensive pumping machinery and to stop any unsightly scabs from appearing on the surface--trickle down her skin. It's all very sensual, assuming you don't mind being bathed in human-juice. But it doesn't last long, either. All but inaudible under the sounds of screams and gunfire and naked feet slapping the tile floor like netful of particularly dry fish, there's a meaty ripping, popping sound as her finger bones extend and thicken. Her fingernails, kept slyly short, grow long and heavy and very, very pointed. Her hair whirls in a black fan, spraying droplets of scarlet in all directions as she looks around for the white-furred beast she's here to kill, the one in the center of the pool near the ice statue of himself, the one whose jaws are currently occupied with a severed human thigh but whose teeth are no less impressive for that. He dashes through the blood toward her as if his feet have some kind of purchase under him. Vampirella's, unfortunately, do not: she's going to have to fight and swim at the same time, it looks like. She can live with that. She shrieks her battlecry at him and flings her clawed hands wide, ready to receive all three hundred pounds of her enemy.
Domino	Bust up enough cults, drug cartels, anti-mutant hate groups, and interdimensional cable TV programs (Sorry, Mojo) and you learn to keep situational awareness sharpened to a keen edge. Even if, say, you're grabbing a sprinting cultist who's trying to get past you, only to sweep his legs out and then put a bullet in his head before he's even hit the ground, spinning down onto one knee for a more stable shooting posture for the next cultist to be zeroed out. There /is/ a chance that Neena's aim is slightly off, there might be up to a half inch of error in her shots as Vampirella rises up out of the pool like sex and death and... well, that's it really. Sex and death and VERY distracting. And that big werewolf demon thing thought it was hot shit! Still, while it's important to enjoy the job, Neena realizes she probably shouldn't just be executing cultists when her package is cowering in the back of the room and might still be in danger. She springs up from her kneeling posture only to sprint forward, and in a flash that combat knife at her shoulder is suddenly missing from its sheath. And every cultist she sprints and dodges past is left screaming and shrieking and clutching at severed hamstrings or achilles tendons. Knife is sheathed once more right before she's reaching out to grab up the winsome slip of a sacrificial young woman, only to flop her over her shoulder like a pretty sack of potatoes. And thats when she takes a moment to give Vampirella another once over and goes a touch wide-eyed at that transformation from statuesque vision of terrible beauty to... statuesque killing machine about to face off against three hundred pounds of demonic badness. "Uhhh... shit! Get 'im, girl!" It's important to provide moral support to your fellow women.
Vampirella	Vampirella's senses are as sharp as they can ever be. Her nose is picking up things that, well, are perhaps best left undescribed; you're unlikely to thank her for going into detail about them. The pertinent detail is that Domino is human, more or less. And it's not that Vampirella isn't clever enough to notice the guns, which are always a dead giveaway; it's just that when she gets like this, most of her conscious mind gets drowned in the immediacy of her senses, her body. Thinking during a fight is a great way to end up with a very embarrassing epitaph. So when Armadyl pounces on her, she seizes his wrists in her hands and locks her elbows to keep his claws from reaching her while her own cut deep into his skin, hoping to find tendons. Assuming he has tendons, anyway. A lot of demons don't. As a defensive move, it isn't terrible, and would have been great if she'd been on solid land, but the monster atop her has an advantage there: apparently able to selectively treat the blood as solid flooring. That's annoying. For one thing, it means his weight can just bear her straight down into the blood pool, dunking her head before she can take in a good breath. She could have avoided the dunking by letting her own arms give, but that would have brought his muzzle and its many bones much, much closer to her than she'd have liked. Crap.
Domino	Neena's torn between hauling her 'prize' out of the danger zone, and watching the unfolding supernatural spectacle. And, perhaps, in finding some way to help her sister in vigilante justice out. She's tensing to go with the good old mercenary standby of 'every woman for herself' and bolting when Armadyl leaps at Vampirella and shoves her under the pool of blood. Daaaaaaamnit. She can't just leave a sister drowning. Still, with the mortal cultists thinning out via retreat, or from having already been so very unfortunately maimed and murdered... she can do /something/ surely. Just need to be creative. For one thing, she should get her rescuee up and running away on her own. A few firm slaps to her face until she's startled back into consciousness and probably into some risk of shock will work. "Hey! You! Run! Outside!" She gives the girl a shove towards the fire exit and runs towards the pool of blood... don't dive into the pool of blood, Domino. That's a terrible terrible plan. Knife drawn once more, the black clad sleek figure leaps into the air to drive that blade squarely between Armadyl's impressive shoulder blades to the hilt. Is it going to injure him? Probably not. Is it going to hurt? Maybe a bit. Is it going to be a semi-solid handhold for Neena to grab onto with one hand while her other arm loops around his neck to try and haul him back from diving facefirst into the pool to chomp on her mystery woman? Yeah. Yeah it's gonna be that one!
Vampirella	Fun fact about a demon's body, given that they're spirits of evil-- --Nope, never mind, this isn't the time for fun facts. You're atop something that looks like a werewolf, smells like a slaughterhouse, and is standing in a pool of blood whose coppery stink almost overpowers the charnel aroma of its fur; nasty, white-gray stuff that should be in nasty coagulated clumps but instead is slick and runny, hard to keep a hold on. Good thing he has such a big, solid neck. And the knife? Well, it's no exorcism, but the red-black stuff flowing from around the puncture wound, and the roar of rage (it would be nice to convince yourself it was a roar of pain, but it just doesn't seem like it), sure suggest something happened. Fingers tighten around Vampirella's neck, trying to throttle her to death. It's not far from working: her throat is made of fire, and she can feel her lungs beginning to send politely concerned requests to the front desk to have more oxygen sent to their rooms. But Armadyl's weight is also shifting fast, flinging to his left, apparently planning to roll onto his side and get the white-skinned woman under the water as well. Strangling to death in a pool of (very diluted) water is one thing. Allowing him to hurt the woman who took a risk to save her would just be rude. So, Vampirella, who was never as helpless as Armadyl perhaps had hoped, did the thing she'd been planning to do anyway: she locks her ankles together and kicks the inside of his knee very, very hard. The sudden thrust of her legs is so fast and powerful it throws up twin fans of blood spray, like a tiny, invisible speedboat cutting through the gory water. There's a sound somewhat like a thick branch of oak break under the weight of two days of accumulated ice storm, and, well, Armadyl is still going down like planned, but suddenly much less controlled than he'd been about to do...
Domino	Domino is skeptical there is such a thing as a 'fun fact' about demons, no matter what Illyana has tried to tell her over and over again. Most of the fun facts she knows are that demons are notoriously resistant to gunfire, knives, hand grenades... really, all the things Neena likes. It's downright inconsiderate. And they don't even have the good graces to act like they hurt. Oh, sure, he's roaring but she knows her monstrous roars. There's the 'I am in mortal agony' roar, the 'I'm going to do unspeakable things to you when I catch you' roar, and the 'I'm roaring 'cause I'm a big dumb loud dumbass'. And she knows which roar she's sure /that/ one was. Still, this really isn't her first rodeo, even if she's pretty sure an actual bull /would/ smell better and be less difficult to hold onto. Her legs coil, boots driving into his lower back and propelling her up and away into a smooth, graceful backflip. And she's mid-air when she realizes he's going down way less gracefully than he was. Well! That's a good sign. Now she just needs to find a rocket launcher or an old priest and a young priest to deal with this guy. Or maybe the mystery lady she's presuming just did... something to his leg will pop up and finish the job like a totally badass heavy metal album cover come to life. In fact, Neena's really hoping that her luck's going to hold out and give her just what she wants.
Vampirella	If you've never had your knee broken at the same instant a woman who's gotta weight at least 55kg counting all her hardware (minus the weight of one big knife, if we're being precise) uses your lower back as a springboard, then congratulations on living your life right. Armadyl would likely advise you to skip the experience, unless he's the kind of demon who lies about everything; or maybe unless he was too busy howling in pain and falling over onto his side, twisting as he goes, back trading places with his top as he tumbles toward the tile-lined edge of the pool, his prey now throwing her hips to help speed up the spin and get on top of him so she can go to work on his limbs: three people's plans all taking place at once, a jumble of chaos that can't possibly come together in any kind of satisfying way. It's just too unlikely anyone should be so lucky. So Vampirella and Armadyl, at least, are extremely surprised when his pivot just so happens to bring his falling weight, its speed enhanced by both Domino's and Vampirella's efforts, to juuuuuust the right point that the pommel of the knife strikes the edge of the pool's rim hard enough to drive the dagger through him, like some swinging a board at a nail's point instead of using a hammer. His eyes bulge with surprise and, if you're any good at reading a demon-wolf's facial expressions, profound embarrassment as his own weight drives the knife so much harder through his back that it rams into his heart and emerges point-first out the other side. Eyes twin red marbles in her face, thin red liquid running in rivulets down her cheeks and over lips parted in a faltering battle snarl, her fingers and nails already shrinking back to more or less human sizes, Vampirella watches the arm that had been squeezing the life from her drop like a doner kebab into the blood pool. She has achieved victory over her enemy. It's time to say something cool to put a nice bow on the encounter. And she's so surprised that all she can think of is, "Um."
Domino	Neena lands a couple of feet back from the pool, hands slapping down on her body like she's frisking herself, searching for... she's not even sure what. Maybe she brought a literal pocket nuke, or... a cross? Holy water? Some kind of Castlevania shit. But no, it's all just guns and grenades and a couple smaller knives and- And then Vampirella's rising up and Armadyl is falling down and things are lining up just so and... Domino's heard a lot of death in her line of work. But 'Knife striking stone and being driven through a demon' is new. New and a little gross. But she's already forgotten that sound before it's even finished echoing off the room's walls, because there's a blood-drenched figure of beautiful nightmares rising up, the albino's mouth falling open, eyes widening. She pauses for a long moment herself. It's /totally/ awkward, but then the figure speaks. And she finds herself. "Yeah. Right. Um." She groans and reaches into one of her many pouches before pulling out a flip phone, dialing 911, "Help! Help! I hear all kinds of crazy shit going on! There's blood EVERYWHERE! I think they kidnapped a girl!" and then she's tossing the phone far off into a corner, voice dropping to an exaggerated whisper, "Listen, I think we should scoot! ...Need a ride? I've got a bike outside!" And she's turning, not quite sprinting towards the doors she so recently came in via. You never know when the cops might actually respond swiftly, best not to dilly dally.
Vampirella	Vampirella looks at Domino. Vampirella looks at Domino again, a little more slowly. A smile plays at her lips, just above the thumb wiping a small trickle of red from her lily-white skin and just before the smile must vanish as she kisses the watery blood off the tip of her digit. Her eyes, very human now but for how flawlessly uniform the green of her irises is, don't leave Domino's as she thinks the offer over; a moment she draws out only for a, well, a moment, because as much fun as it is to stare at Domino, neither of them can really afford to be THAT coy right now. So she saunters slowly over, smiling a little, one hand extended as if to shake. "Vampirella," she greets. "I like a girl to at least know my name before she takes me for a ride."
Domino	Domino lifts a hand to tousle her own hair in an almost bashful, nervous little motion, her dark lips quirking in a wry little smile as she... well, she's both trying to eye Vampirella and /not/ eye her. It's really very confusing and entirely perplexing, and she's pretty sure she's failing at both attempts somehow and... oh, wait, she's /smiling/. Like a genuine, if somewhat teasing smile as she wipes away some of that blood and... okay, that little cleanup kiss has Neena clearing her throat involuntarily. She takes that hand with a little sigh, it might be frustrated, it might just be... no, no, there's like, /five/ kinds of frustrating. "Neena. Domino. I... we're using our codenames I guess?" Hey, she's not /sure/ on that. If you look that good diving into and rising out of a pool of blood, she could buy 'Vampirella' is your legal name. She falls into step next to the mysterious goddess of the night and glances sidelong, pace picking up, because a leisurely stroll to her bike seems like a bad idea. "So! ...How often are cults like... /that/? I mean, I thought it was just going to be a bunch of lonely sadsacks in a conference room, not... an actual demon! That was... I mean, you kicked its ass, I'm impressed and..." She continues on into the night. Gotta get that smalltalk in before the ride when the wind makes it hard to have two way conversations!