13173/Tricksters and Deviants

Tricksters and Deviants
Date of Scene:	25 October 2022
Location:	Upper Midwest
Synopsis:	Mercy, Sprite, and Meggan face off against one of the ancient enemies of the Eternals. A darkly, decomposing DEVIANT.
Cast of Characters:	Natasha Romanoff, Sprite, Mercy Thompson, Meggan Puceanu

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Natasha Romanoff has posed:
In the far, far isolated areas of the midwest, something slumbering would be moving. Through the earth. Something unnatural. Abomination. Ancient. Wretched. Ruined. Many, many things. Corrupted. Rotted.
    Fleshy rots of corrupted biomass slithering up and over to the surface. A huge beast consisting of a dark, rotting body, a visible ribcage against an openly beating heart, trio of eyes on a head and standing more than fifty feet high.. The Deviant would smash up and out, debris raining down!

Sprite has posed:
    So far, Sprite is...well, nowhere near the American Midwest! She's off on Australia's Gold Coast, where she's been teaching Mercy to surf. Of course, that's likely to change as soon as she becomes aware of one of her kind's ancient enemies resurfacing.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
    Mercy is clueless to the danger back in America. She is just trying to not fall off the board for the fifteenth time. Wearing little more then a bikini she bought thanks to Sprite as they enjoy the lovely Australian surf. She tugs the leash of the board back to her and says, "You can tell I got no experience in an ocean." Climbing back on the board before noticing Sprite. "Something up?"

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
As it happens, Meggan dines on a big milkshake topped by a slice of pie in Chicago when the Earth makes its intentions known. She gives a formidable sip to force vanilla ice cream and a serious dollop of spices through a narrow striped straw, getting something of a momentary brain freeze. It turns out that headache building up behind her forehead isn't only due to the cold.

While prodding the pie with her straw, she tries to block out the insistent murmurs growing much louder. They don't come from the uni students crowding the cafe or spilling out onto the sidewalk, their protest signs cast down from sugar. No, this won't be ignored at all.

"Mum..." she groans. Can't take the glass, not without some quid to throw down, and she spent it all on the dessert drink. Reluctantly she stuffs a piece of the crust and pie filling with her fork into her mouth. "I'm eatin--" The disappointment to follow by a nudged shudder localized the exact square meter she sits on forces the blonde Tuath de Danaan out into the street. She meanders around pedestrian traffic, post-rush hour traffic - yes, even now - and ventures to the nearest canal. There, she can bend over the railing and ask the water, "And? Wheressit? 'Cause I'm to take the baby for lessons with Rintrah tomorrow." She waits for an answer, and being Gaea's youngest child sometimes means sussing out intention. Like /where/ Mum's protesting that it hurts.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
    The thing rises up from the ground wherever it is. When the Earth was but a concept, it was here. when the galaxy was young, it was here. When the stars formed, it was here. When hate became a thing, it was there. It was forged of it. Hate. Loathing. Rage.
    When the concept of betrayal and murder were generated, it was a cornerstone.
    the thing of blotted biomass, the head turning moreso to a lizardlike skull as material would crumple away from it, the green heart shuddering against disintegrating ribs, a huge mishappen claw dangling over the edge of one bloated end of a body.
    It would let out a roar. The air would tremble with long, long since forgotten displacements. Of those whom had perhpas in a realm been the oens culled.
    That now, in this day and age, sought to be the cullers!

Sprite has posed:
    Sprite smiles. "Well, you're learning. I--" And the air near her starts to ping. She frowns, and in a cascade of golden light, her dagger reappears in her hand. "Shit." She looks over to Mercy. "I'm going to have to pop back to the States, Mercy, at least it looks like. I can bring you with me, but it's likely going to be dangerous. Or, if you'd rather practice surfing, I can pick you up later."

    Dammit, she really needs to be able to have better communication with someone. Her team, her kind...this is not her area. But the dagger begins to glow, pulsing a bit.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
    Soon as Mercy sees the dagger she kicks off the strap on her ankle, "You aren't leaving me on the otherside of the world in just a bikini. Screw danger. Also you better not forget that car I built for you." She will dive into the water and power swim as fast as she can, not bothering to hide her speed, as she gets to where Sprite is. "Where we going in the U.S.?"

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Meg sighs and follows the canal out to the Chicago River, a fact that doesn't take terribly long despite dog legs and buildings constraining the natural flow of the water and its shores. Slimy, cold stairs lead down to an abandoned concrete wharf used by duck boats and the occasional pedestrian ferry. She pinches her nose and collides with the water, but anyone passing over on a pedestrian bridge is unlikely to notice more than a ripple since she shifts into an aqueous form that confines her atomic structure to a narrow needle.

The faster to negotiate her path back to the Mississippi, following an intuitive understanding of somewhere wrong. She has to negotiate the occasional weir or dam, swirling around, springing up and plunging headlong in a tiny rogue wave downstream until she can be sure where the horrific burr on Earth's skin might be. What she sacrifices in accuracy requires her to negotiate river systems at blinding speed, leaving bridges ringing in her wake save the rare occasion she takes to the air to hurl herself at speed to finding the thing.

Still, she'll be the last there.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Presuming the group arrives (or does not arrive), the huge leviathan of a rotting membrane of existence takes a step forwards. A foot lodges in the ground, misshappen. Unevenin. Various rocks from the surface would be absorbed over into it. Thickening. Resizing. The large claw trodding on the ground almost dragging would shrink, other arm lengthening to compensate. Plates would grow over shoulders as for the first time in countless eons the ancient, wretched, corrupted thing would see the sun. Feel it beating dwon.
    Shriek at it with the hate of one that would tear it from the stars and murder it along with every single star in the sky if it could.
    It lets out a howl of rage over as around it things would start to rot.. Dissolve.. Rocks starting to melt like they had been exposed to acid. Earth rotting and blowing away in the wind. The air itself seeming to be thick with a sense of almost rust.

Sprite has posed:
    Sprite looks over to Mercy. "I'm not forgetting her, and I'm NOT yanking her somewhere where you're going to have to rebuild her either!" She makes a slashing motion at the air itself, as the Boom Tube opens with its characteristic BOOM, her dagger-shaped Mother Box pinging at her, as her wetsuit changes, becoming her teal superheroine costume; something she hasn't actually bothered to put on in...well, let's just say it's been a while. A LONG while." She looks to Mercy. "Midwest. I've got the coordinates."

    She lunges into the Boom Tube, stepping out on the other side, near it. "Dammit, Ikaris, this is for you. Or Gilgamesh. Or Makkari. It's not for fucking me." She gets out the far side, instantly splitting into a score of Sprites. "Hey, ugly!!" she calls, to get its attention.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
    Mercy at least is a bit ready for the boom, but she still yelps a bit. "Damn that is loud." So behind suphehero Sprite comes, bikini clad Mercy! She looks around, getting a small sense of vertigo as she tries to figure what she can do and how.
    Okay so she's got a giant monster thing, Sprite going full superhero, and all Mercy can do is look around for cover. "Sprite can you get me a spear or something?!"

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
It takes Meggan longer than teleporting there, though not entirely long. Her entrance really doesn't warrant a good deal to attract attention. Mostly because she lacks any cohesion in a stable form to make her presence known, no hints of limbs or rounded mouth in horror since the wind or earth need no face. Things are bound to get a little out of hand before she has her bearings for what the big ugly thing is!

Smaller humanoids distinguished from the trees or random bushes and the like help Meggan orient herself. Mostly on herself, no longer being one to the green network wreathing the planet or running through the stony arteries and bedrock veins of its thin continental crust. She inhales her first breath when cast forth from the rich soil, a spray of dusty particles hitting the air until the goddess comes into vaguely visible form.

At which point, squinting in vague disbelief at the deviant is thoroughly required. "Bollocks. /That's/ what interrupted my dessert?"

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
It might read as alien to Meggan in some ways. Something ancient, twisted, and from an era long since past on to oblivion. What was something that was made when Big Thigns created Small Things that would become bigger things however many millions of years down the line? It would very, very likely stand out in a warped, degraded way.
    The huge, feral beast-creature of rotting biomass would shift. If it could crawl up to the sky it would rend the sun from it like FEnris would at the end of days.
    Then it senses the Eternal arriving. And it's rage increases tenfold.
    "DESTROY YOU!" Such a simple statement loaded up with bile, hate, and rage at a primordial level built up over countless eons. The bile and want to make the plucky Eternal suffer seemed to almost set the air ablaze with wretchness as the rot would grow, the very air itself becoming fouled with rust as it would try to smash over at Sprite no matter her outfit or her daggers, intent on trying to simply OBLITERATE her!

Sprite has posed:
    That would be why Sprite made a horde of illusory duplicates. But despite that, she doesn't want to be near it, that's for sure. She hears Mercy's request, and takes to the air, as the Sprites begin buzzing about to draw the Deviant's attention from multiple directions. One of her loops around, touching the ground, and a rock-spear shapes itself up, before she snaps it off at the base and tosses it to Mercy. Unfortunately, that means she stayed still a moment, and the taint-wave slams into her, knocking her into a tumble, her duplicates flickering out. "Shit." She hisses. She detaches her cape and tosses it aside, as the thing is /dissolving/. She goes airborne again, trying to keep the thing turned /away/ from Meggan and Mercy.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
    Mercy's senses are just /screaming/ at her. There is a lot going on! But the big thing that is grabbing at her mind, like she's holding a powerline between her teeth, is the English sounding woman that just appeared. Then we got big angry..... thingy trying to hurt her friend.
    She charges as the spear is given at her request and she grips it. Trusting her training she's had thanks to some friends, and not stressing the whole bikini thing so much she gets into a ready stance. Her muscle tense and turning to try and give Sprite cover only to see her scatter and moving.
    Her eyes flicking her and there and everywhere. Okay. She can't hurt this thing. So she should just try to annoy it, somehow. That's when she notices a bit of old wire among all that debris. She snatches up the old wire to start tying it to the spear. "So is this a put the mad dog down situation like Old Yeller?"

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Something so wrought with hate runs the very real risk of causing the manifesting blonde to double over in the same sickness. She grits her teeth and bars her arm across her midsection, standing up on her toes in a futile effort to resist the pure condensed emotions battering her all around. Plants huddle close to the woman's sandaled feet. Meggan doesn't wear proper footwear in any season, certainly not in the fall. Her pale silver-gold hair carries plenty of scarlet at the roots, but those lines actually bleed lower over several seconds as she swallows the loathing and feral disgust from the monstrous beast.

The Englishwoman is something like a collection of walking leylines in a pleasant blonde figure. When she unfolds herself, her first watery noise is one of brittle effort. The pale green of her eyes are rimmed in black where the sclera normally would be. "That," she points at the towering deviant, "is an abomination. Have you any good reasons for me not to toss it off the continent?"

Her hands are clenched at her sides, but Mercy is given a general look with the spear and the jabbing.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Everything seems to be failing. The air, thick with ozone and rust. Turning to dust, heavier metals raining down. Like the sky was falling, cascading through it as darkness would devour. The Deviant screams.
    "YOU.. WILL.. D'COMPOSE!" It snaps through the air, the oppressive rot diving out of the way as it misses Sprite by several meters as the agile Eternal would be impossible to hit. For Meggan, life around is dying. In the soil. In the air. The pollen, the buzz of particles. Of insects. It's all falling away. Ashes to ashes, rust to rust. Barrenness. If it goes on, it would be a literal salt the earth scenario if this thing wasn't -stopped- and removed. The rot starting to devour the very essence of the ground being able to -grow- and -bring- things and renew it.
    The heart in it's chest shudders, leaking out acid. Flesh rotting. Ribs reknitting as merely the act of breathing would cause an internal hemmorhage.

Sprite has posed:
    "Kill it, put it down, throw it away, do whatever you can!" Sprite says. She fires blast after blast at the thing, firing at the core of it. "Come on, you Deviant son of a bitch, drop!!" The redhead is hurt, and while all Eternals have a measure of the same powers, neither flight nor energy projection are her specialties. She's out of her element here.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
    "I think the ugly plague guy is hurting the beautiful blonde elf lady," Mercy provides so helpfully as she watches what is happening all around her. She's not sure how long her spear and rusted barb wire will last if at all, but she'll make her best effort. This thing has a glowing heart, and the Amazons teach you to strike at the core of an enemy. "You sure know how to take people to somewhere wild Sprite."
    Mercy looses the spear as she twists her whole body and pulling on her preternatural strength and speed to go hard as she can for the things chest. Soon as the throw is loose she feels the wire bite into her hand as it spools through it and runs for the blonde nearer the ground. "Hi there! I'm Mercy. How do I help?"

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Who is in their element? The elementalist of course. It's a terrible pun and one of the reasons John handles the balance of the kidding around. Like ninety percent. The blonde ceases to even bother striding across the ground, elevated as easily as the leaves fallen from trees already prepared for the brutal Midwestern winter ahead. Their cries and one-note bleats from deadened grass and dusted pollen mingle into a cacophony that hurts Meggan to hear.

"Mercy," the name rolls around interestingly for a girl who speaks the Celtic tongues melodiously mixed with the English. "I'm Meggan and in a bad mood." Her head tilts at the monster, and a white knotwork tattoo on her left hand runs up to her elbow where it didn't before. Excellent work for what little can be seen. "What else do we do in the harvest season? We reap."

The sparkles and blasts of the Eternal dance in her vision. The invitation's been made and so she takes the most direct of approaches. She pulls on unseen energy, a veritable cocoon of force around her from the furious thrashing of nature. She hasn't got Makkari's speed because who does but the Flash? But it's speedy enough with the force of several angry locomotives when she hurls herself into the monster's legs, a sonic boom rattling in her wake.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Deviants need to be killed. Then dismembered. Then disintegrated to make sure that the dismembered bits don't grow back together. And if one is truly paranoid disitnegrated again a couple more times just to be sure. The Deviants would say the same of the Eternals, but likely with far, far more pain involved.
    The blasts from Sprite go into the core of the Deviant. The heart trembles. Shudders. Sprays out acid around the area, causing the air itself to spasm as if it was having a seizure. It liquefies as the heart would twitch. Acid going down the ribs even as they would heal an dthe rotting skeleton of a carcass of it would lash out again.
    THe spear thrown by Mercy is launched through the air. Luck, fickle though she often may be, favors her this day as it would be launched forward onto the beast. readied for war, guided by instinct or skill. Perhpas more than that.
    Meggan goes to take all tha tenergy, going to charge up and then moving to BLAST through the rotting, shambling corpse eternally regrowing and re-rotting. In one end, out the other like a slasher movie victim. The Deviant would slowly, ever so slowly collapse in on itself, heart being launched from it's torso through the air, landing several dozen meters away, deflating like a beach ball that had taken a pin to it. Body slowly turning inwards, collapsing.

Sprite has posed:
    Sprite sees the spear, with the wire, going into the thing, even as the heart gets launched. Meggan's torn out its base, and Mercy, dear Mercy, has run a line...a conductive line...into the thing. She soars down to land near Mercy, grinning a bit. "You have good instincts." And she grabs for the wire, holding it in her hand that's holding the dagger, wire against hilt, tugging it from Mercy. "Mother Box..." She says, as her dagger begins to ping. "Discharge capacitors."

    The Mother Boxes are ancient, old, and very powerful...but at their core, they are storehouses for Cosmic Energy. The Box discharges, sending enough Cosmic Energy to open a wormhole through the wire, into the body of the Deviant. It arcs and snaps around. Thankfully, Meggan is fae, and Sprite has several fae connections herself...the energy is a similar flavor. Not only does it incinerate the Deviant, but it throws a rather large boost to Meggan...exactly the sort of thing Gaea's daughter might be able to use to patch up mom.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
    "Hi Meggan. I bake so we can get you new desserts." Sadly Mercy doesn't see the tattoo changes, her eyes are mostly on the bad guy. Though the magic that is radiating off Megan is a bit unsettling to say the least.
    Luck often has a way of going odd around Mercy. Betting on the long odds is how life goes with her. She was sure the acid will melt the spear or it do no real damage. Then again, even a thorn is irritating to a lion. Mercy can't help but comment as the heart gets ripped out and flies into the sky. "Sort of like a horrible reverse shooting star."
    She looks over at Sprite blinking a bit owlishly. "Thanks, happy to help." She quickly goes to cover her ears as Sprite goes to do something with that weird dagger. She has goose bumps all over her bare skin and sneezes a few times as all this goes on. The charge of energy so powerful it makes Mercy's vision blur a bit and she has to hang onto her form and not end up on four legs.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Sprite has a source of energy and Mercy has an incredibly good spear-arm. What more does a girl need than that? They already come close to ruling the world. Meggan doesn't see where the spear goes, given that the foul debris falls over her in disgusting waves. Infalling material gets a disgusted sibilant hiss through her teeth. Pale fire rolls off her hands in spontaneous reaction to avoid being coated in Deviant sludge or mossy goop. Truly don't look up, the view is bound to be awful.

"I can take the hit!" she blindly calls, the Mother Box mostly known to her only as another sentient-ish presence. Electricity is presumed, and not for the first time, she's guessing wrong. That charge isn't electricity but more than anything, some things -- gods, Eternals, Amazons -- are made to take a licking and keep on ticking. The burst of energy absolutely feels like a quadruple espresso downed in a gulp, a catastrophic shock to a morphic system. She arches under the conduit, soundless in the rebound that rolls up to the sky and comes thrumming right back down through her.

Into the ground and outward, resonating around where the Deviant's disgusting rotting bits were landing. Pushed out, a riot of life and the hunger of the hunt seeps back into the ground. Next year's tilling season will be interesting!

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
    Someone might call it decidedly ironic that something so old and ancient was destroyed by something equally as old and ancient, perhaps,a nd yet different. The Mother Box unleashes the capacitors surged directly over into the twisted, still beating heart of the Deviant. It's disintegrated, all of the cosmic energy obliterating it at a molecular level, vaporizing it, scouring the atoms apart, and then sundering them again and again to the void of nothingness. Devoured as if by a quantum singularity, not even free floating ions left of it. Once more to the nothingness from whence it was made.
    Just one final wheeze before being lost to obliteration, still fueled by hate, rage, and loathing..
    'Hate.. YOU..' in one final release of fury as it would fade and meet oblivion.

Sprite has posed:
    That done, Sprite looks relieved, and a faint smile quirks her lips. "There. Now I'll have something to brag about to the rest." And then she leans over against and on Mercy. "May need you to help get home." she says, voice a little tight. "That son of a bitch did a number on my molecular structure, and my Mother Box is dry." A wry chuckle. "I think I'm gonna need you to rent us a car to get back to New York."

Mercy Thompson has posed:
    Mercy watches all this, and somehow manages to not blink during it all. Standing by two women who have the power flatten mountains. Fighting... whatever ass pustule nightmare that was. And she's just standing there. In a bikini. A tiny bit of the rusted wire still in her left hand where it tore her skin. She can't help but be very grateful to see this in action. And also wondering what in all that is holy she is even DOING here. She instinctively puts a hand around Sprite to keep her from falling. "Depending on where we are. I may know someone I can call." She looks over to Meggan for a moment. "You umm... got a cell phone?"

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Ew! The revulsion that ricochets through Meggan won't be leaving any time soon. The Deviant turns into imaginary confetti behind her blurry eyes, retinas reconfigured after the initial wave of blindness. She can't see anything left behind, energy leaking out from every part of her aura. Words are aflame on her tongue, and any attempts to shape them is kind of messy. "It's gone!"

Also it's night and autumn, but the mistress of the obvious is rather pleased about the outcome. She claps her hands together, applauding Sprite's efforts right before she sinks down to the ground. Then topples over, laying against it. Better. "Will the box be better or you've got to take it to A&E for boxes?" The headache is back, but she pets a patch of grass until it vaguely resembles greenery again. "Oh. I've one but likely it didn't survive the blasty bits. Faster just to fly you to town, really."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Ther'es just silence now. The rot and blot is gone. Things are normal.. Well, normal is a relative thing, in this world of gods, aliens, magic, and so many other things the likes of which the galaxy can only dream of. But on this day.. On this day this small patch of earth has been saved.

That is enough for now.