ic Demon In A Bottle (IC)

[Gizmo]

Jack laughed out loud, a raucous sound that came perilously close to wasting a perfectly good mouthful a beer. "Yeah, I'm secretly a billionaire slumming it. Don't tell anybody, though." Before he could make the case for 'consistent' being what he called 'boring', however, the bottles behind the bar abruptly started to make an emphatic exclamation of their own. "New tip," he noted to the other two men, lowering his voice and rising from his seat. "Get used to getting sidetracked from social engagements. Yugh, tastes like prickling brimstone..." For the umpteenth time, the metamagi wished that his synesthesia-like extra senses would bring him good news for a change.

[KnightDisciple]

"Well, like I said, you have to tailor the approach to fit her, Steve. Without knowing her directly, we can only speak in general terms. Besides, it's better if you add your own touch anyways. She's dating you, not me or Jack. As for explosions, I can understand what you-"

Then the bottles started bursting, and Carson slid to his feet with a frown. But before he could concentrate on anything, Jack mentioned brimstone. Gabriel's face became expressionless, but his two companions could feel the sudden tension. Carson shifted his stance slightly and closed his eyes for a moment. As he did, Jack and Steve heard his voice whisper in their ears.

"Only you two can hear me. I'm trying to see if there's anything I can hear in this building that might be connected to this. We probably need to encourage the stragglers to head out without causing a panic. Besides, I don't think we could all three run to the men's room and change fast enough. "

[Avenger Assembled]

Steve had already planned on not directly bringing this conversation up with Gina, but news that their conclave was about to be interrupted by some supernatural monster (he wasn't entirely sure what 'brimstone' was, but most of the references he could recall had been about the inhabitants of various magical sub-dimensions) convinced him that he would definitely be keeping it to himself. "A poor argument for the outside," he muttered almost inaudibly before turning to the others. He was about to make a suggestion about a diversion when the room did it for him.

And then, with a sound like tinkling glass rubbing together through a stream, the broken glass and booze behind the bar reared up in a terrible humanoid shape that was all broken glass and swirling liquid, the clear spirits stained black and foul by dirt and some unnameable thing, like perhaps the fell sorcery that seemed to be seeping up from the very basement in waves that made the hair tingle even on the non-sensitives in the room. When it spoke from cracked and jagged lips and peered at them from behind colored-glass black button eyes, it spoke in the voice of a waterfall from Hell.

"Yessss! The Lord of Broken Dreammmmms has been freed after a thousand years! Now, to conquer the world of the Lord!" It made a gesture and summoned from within its own warped, translucent body a spear of jagged glass, which it used to gesture at the others. "I am a symmmmmbol of pain and sssssufferring from beyond the starssss! Your world will be mmmmmmine!" And now the remaining patrons were retreating, eyes wide with terror at the monstrosity before him.

"No, you're not!" replied Harrier firmly, his voice a security guard's bark that made sure anyone who wasn't running was looking at him rather than the other two heroes in the room. I am! he wanted to add, but even faced with this monster he would never boast. Not about that, anyway. Instead, he reached for his belt and snapped open his pike, armor erupting past his skin and clothes to transform his entire right arm into a spiky, armored monstrosity as the pike crackled to life with bubbling, hissing Terminus fire. "And mine's bigger." he added.

[Avenger Assembled]

With the tinkling of broken glass and a hissing roar, the demon lord went for Harrier, running not along the floor but the ceiling, broken-glass-edged fingers digging into the wood like claws as it went for him. "None may ssstand againsst the powersss of pain and darknessss!" hissed the Lord of Broken Dreams as it brought its glassy spear down across Harrier's chest, cutting deep into skin but revealing beneath not flesh and blood, but cold Terminus steel. The glassy-eyed monster's jaggedly fanged mouth hung open in surprise for a moment as it stared at the man before it.

No. Not a man. "You know nothing of pain," replied the former Omegadrone as metal erupted from his flesh and bone, skin and cloth giving way as his body transformed itself into nothing less than a monument to cold, spiked steel and death, a cybernetic killing machine from beyond the stars. "I show you." He thrust upwards and missed, the shocked demon-glass creature throwing itself out of the way of Harrier's shrieking power pike an instant before he could take off its head. Luckily, the bar was clearing itself out now!

[KnightDisciple]

Carson gave one glance to the straggling (now fleeing) residents of the bar. He sighed and hoped no one was paying close attention. He took a single step forward, and with a flash of light, by the time he finished moving he was clad in his shining armored form, great spear in hand as he faced down the demon. He spoke, and his voice was almost bored.

"Yes yes, pain and darkness, bloodshed, evil more powerful than good, your sniveling coward of a boss is totally more powerful than the One I work for, we'll all be crushed, yadda yadda yadda. At this rate I'm going to have to keep track of some of these lines you demons spew out."

His left hand, the one not gripping a weapon for the moment, snaps up to point his index and middle fingers at the strange demon, and a pulse of sound flies into its body with incredible accuracy. The vibrations sent through its being might well leave its mind so addled it can barely move.

"Maybe you should save yourself some pain and just banish yourself now; I've faced down far worse from your kind, so frankly I'm getting hard to impress. You're pretty much all washed up."

There was an undercurrent of frustration, even anger in his voice. It was clear Gabriel was not one to suffer the presence of such beings lightly.

[Gizmo]

If anyone had been paying attention to Jack amidst the transformations both brilliant and terrible, they might have noticed the swordsman's white knuckles as his clenched fingers drove into his palms. "Hnn, cagado--" Grunting with effort, he shook off the effects of the rush of hellfire he could feel blazing below their feet in the bar's basement. Though he's long ago purged himself of the seed of the infernal flame that had at one point spread roots throughout his being, the familiar sensation affected him as much as anything other than perhaps the heat-death of Terminus radiation rolling from Harrier is nauseating waves. It was with conscious and painful effort that he ignored both, focusing his senses on the white, tasteless buzz of the electricity running through the light fixtures overhead. Keep it together, head in the game, he mentally chastised himself.

The only piece of his costume he'd been able to inconspicuously bring with him was his mask, the bandana stuffed into the back pocket of his pants. Donning while still in his street clothes would be pushing it, however, even if the bar had rapidly emptied of civilians. As Harrier and Gabriel took the demon's initial attacks, the swashbuckler dropped down and rolled under the table in a single fluid motion. Mere moments later, he reappeared on the other side, bounding to his feet and rather suddenly shirtless. Above the the athletic, sienna torso marked by a variety of scars from faint lines to noticeable bullet wounds a bandana of royal blue covered both the top half of the fencers face and his otherwise undisguised hair.

"Let's not get distracted from what we were talking about, guys," he called to the other heroes as a scintillating rapier of lightning crackled into being in his right hand, the bolt shooting down from the wires in the ceiling. "I didn't mean that you shouldn't prepare ahead of time, don't get me wrong!" he clarified even as he bounded forward, using a overturned stool as a stepping stone to get some height. "But you gotta be willing to do the unexpected! For instance," Jack continued, apparently ignoring the glass monster apart from a probing slash of his blade to draw its attention, "don't be afraid to get shirtless!"

[Avenger Assembled]

As Jack's blade skidded off the glass-bodied demon, the Lord of Broken Dreams laughed in terrible tinkling triumph, for all that it was still vibrating like a leaf in the wind thanks to Gabriel's thrumming sonic powers. "Humanity hasss not changed ssooo much, then! There are alwaysss foolish heroesss who dare sstand againsst the forcess of darknesss and pain, but there are NONE WHO CAN SSSURVIVE OUR POWER! I am the firssst through the gate and I will rule thisss world as itsss dark king! Your headss will adorn my palace!" He swung his blade at Harrier again, this time the stroke skidding off Harrier's raised pike, Terminus steel proving tougher than hellishly empowered glass.

"Stop. Talking." said Harrier, his eyes flat and voice hard as he returned the demon's stroke with his own, extending his left leg and driving the pike forward hard, the shrieking tip burning with Terminus fire as it shattered the demon's midsection like glass, making the creature howl in tinkling agony as sizzling liquor poured from the massive hole and still-vibrating glass spilled everywhere.

[KnightDisciple]

"Don't go shirtless too early though. Shock value only lasts so long. You have to wrap the present to make it worthwhile."

Gabriel judged the distance, shifted his grip on his shining, otherworldly spear, and slammed the silver head into the demon's side.

"As for you, Mr. Wastes-the-Liquor, you're not boasting anything the other couple dozen demons I've downed haven't said before. You're a three of spades, not a king of darkness. Go tell your "boss" he's not welcome here, you piece of scum."

The weapon struck true, its blessed metal sinking deep into what passed for a torso on a semi-amorphous blob of glass and alcohol. Almost casually, Gabriel turned to regard Harrier.

"You going to want to reschedule the pep talk from tonight? Or just occasionally call us up for more tips? I'm good either way, man."

[Gizmo]

"That's crazy talk," Jack scoffed as Gabriel easily finished off the overconfident demon. The fencer gestured to his bare torso emphasizing his abs. "All'a this? Never wears off." His smirk twisted for a moment into a grimace as he raised his empty hand to the side of his head. "Nnf. Let's not plan bowling night just yet, oh champions of romance. We're standing on top of the demonic version of a spring break beach bonfire." Looking in Harrier's direction, he elaborated, "Hellfire. It's like fire. But from hell. More with the all consuming flame, less with the smore making." Jogging over the bar, he vaulted over it acrobatically and scanned in either direction. "Either of you see what happened the the bartender?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"I know what Hell is." replied Harrier in a not-unfriendly way. "But I was not aware infernal subdimensions crossed into your dimension so regularly." He hesitated a moment, as if thinking it over, and added carefully, almost apologetically. "And I do not think I can go shirtless into battle. You see my difficulties." Pike in hand, he paced the floor, lightly scratching a circle around himself on the wood. "I believe I saw the bartender go below. Let us join him there...but not down the only path of ambush." And with that, he stepped back, and a hole opened in the floor where he'd been standing, falling away into the darkness of the basement below.

Down below, the heroes found a scene like a public service announcement about infernalism: the bartender was there, fallen in a tumble at the bottom of the stairs, while from a twisted pentagram in the middle of the floor, cracked open to occasionally emit gusts of hellfire, hideous-looking creatures crawled like demonic scorpion-beetles, each bouncing off the edges of the pentagram and falling back among the others in an ever-growing heap. Chalk writing in Polish covered the floor, written in a circle that ended near the edges of the pentagram.

Out of his field of knowledge, a baffled Harrier turned to the others. "Is that man alive?"

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel frowned at the piles of hell-spawned vermin, but the heap of evil wasn't immediately attacking them. So he chose to go after the immediate issue. As he walked toward the bartender laying on the ground, his silvery weapon suddenly began emitting light like that of the noonday sun. The flickering shadows were chased away by the illumination as the hero in silver and white knelt by the man's side. He gently tried to assess his condition while moving him as little as possible. His voice was laced with concern when he spoke.

"He's alive, but it's a near thing, and he needs help. Fast. I'm afraid to move him, though. We need to get the paramedics here ASAP."

He cast a baleful glower at the thing in the middle of the room.

"We might have to deal with that first..."

[Gizmo]

Jack was moving a little unsteadily as he descended the stairs along with the other two heroes - that is, unsteadily by his own high standards of fluid grace. One palm covered an eye, fingers attempting unsuccessfully to massage away the growing ball of pain sitting just behind his brow. "Nnh. Why's it always gotta be hellfire? Regular old fire not good enough for kids these days?" he cracked half-heartedly, giving his head a shake and trying to focus. While Gabriel saw to the injured civilian, the swordsman stepped next to Harrier and lowered his voice. "Listen, I've hand some, uh, bad experiences with this stuff, get me? If I start acting off the rails, you might have to take me down." After a beat, he clarified, "I mean knock me out. Gently, even."

Straightening his shoulders, Jack walked forward a few more steps before folding his arms. "So, big pile o' demon bugs, huh? That sure is a thing. Labour Day, you wanna splash some holy water or whatever on them? Is that how this works?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Jack had been right to be suspicious; Harrier understood extradimensional corruption and its terrible consequences only too intimately. I'd...oh, no, he means something else. "I will watch you carefully, my friend. You can count on me." he promised Jack seriously. Facing the dimensional rift, he turned to Gabriel once he'd parsed Jack's nomenclature. "Can you simply use your powers to shut it?" he asked curiously. "You seem the most suited of the three of us to deal with this sort of extradimensional incursion..." He knew very little about this sort of thing, but was more than willing to follow along with the others.

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel gave an embarrassed cough. He stood, giving the unconscious man one last glance before he turned to face the portal head-on as he spoke to his comrades.

"Well. Maybe? I don't really have any dimension-related powers. I could blast it with sound energy. Or try tossing out one of our traditional exorcism rights. I can be pretty convincing, or scary. But I don't have a special 'anti-demon portal' power."

He gave a helpless shrug and gestured at his spear.

"Usually I just shove a bunch of sonic energy in their face, or stab them. Or both. I tend to focus on the demons themselves more so than the portals they come through. Been a while since I saw anything that just...stayed open. Don't have any holy water on me, can't make any by myself. So, yeah."

[Avenger Assembled]

Suddenly, the crevice spoke, a voice echoing up from the hellish-insect-swarming depths from an invisible speaker as the bugs hissed and leapt towards the confines of the seal that held them in, only to burn around the edges of the pentagram. "IF YOU WILL NOT DISMISS MY SUMMONING, MY SERVANTS WILL EVENTUALLY OVERRUN THE SEALS AND DEVOUR THE FLESH OF YOUR CREATION." It was a grating, hissing, booming voice all at once, the unwholesome whisper of a demon clearly enough to both Jack and Gabriel. And yet, despite all that, there was something terribly amused by it. "I GROW VERY BORED HERE. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD OPEN THE GATE ALL THE WAY AND LET ME INTO YOUR CREATION, SO THAT YOU MAY HAVE A DEATH FASTER AND MORE GLORIOUS."

[Gizmo]

"Well hey, not that we don't appreciate the offer there, big guy, but I'm getting the sense you're a busy demon, amirite?" Jack chimed in, raising his voice and taking a couple of steps closer the insect covered pile of wrongness. "Time is money, I hear ya, we are on the same page there. This is actually pretty embarrassing, but it looks like this whole summoning sis-boom-bah was a bit of a wrong number. Like on a phone? You guys got phones down there? Landlines, I'll bet; cell reception's gotta be a bear. This guy knows what I'm talking about, haha..." The swashbuckler kept his tone light and conversational, without any threats or posturing. If it came down to a fight, well, they'd do what needed doing, but if there was a chance they could avoid fighting an abomination against all that was good in creation, well that would probably be okay too. "We will be having a stern word with the fella who dialed that in, too, believe you me. So I tell you what, we're not going to waste any more of your time, we'll just send you right back so you can... get on with the devouring and all that. Cool? Cool."