15547/Non Magis Chrysallidem

Non Magis Chrysallidem
Date of Scene:	04 August 2023
Location:	La Ligue d'Heroisme, Brussels, JNX-001
Synopsis:	It's a rocking meeting of minds with La Ligue and SHIELD and a lot of people lose their lives when an evil sword broke free of its curse. The pieces are in place now to save Jinx's mistake from oblivion, and to save our own world too.
Cast of Characters:	Jinx, Donna Troy, Nadia Pym-van Dyne

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Jinx has posed:
Kel Fountaine aka Superstar (Not a name she'd chosen for herself) was one of the luckiest witches alive. Already beloved in the European magic community, her life changed one day when two desperate soon to be parents kidnapped her. Bound on a table as a ritual had begun, flamberge knives hanging over herself and the mother to be with the father to be changing classical greek magic - she was surely soon to be an ex-witch.

Until the improbable intervention of a distraught looking woman with pink hair who used magic to knock the man back and away, disarming him and saving Kel's life. That was the turning point in her life. No longer would she be the friendly neighbourhood witch. She was going to use magic to save peoples lives.

27 years later she stands side by side with the woman who saved her life. Jinx. Yet she hadn't aged a day and she really wasn't how she'd imagined her. Visions of a heroic sorceress swooping in to save the day had been replaced with someone who was guilt stricken and mortified by all she was seeing around her. Then again, she turned up with a super scientist and an Amazon so may be Jinx really was all that.

Except, she knew in her heart that that night 27 years ago had forever entangled their worlds together. The magic she possessed, it turned out, was fated to be Jinx's. And since Jinx was in another reality she had no Earthly way of getting it to her. Until now.

"Jinx - I want to thank you. I've lived a full life. A good life. One where I have done incredible things and helped a great many people. Without you, that day, none of that would have happened." Turning the corner Kel lead Jinx in to her personal quarters. Appointed with a lovely rug and plenty of candles. It looked like a witches room who had forsaken the eating of children.

Kel bee-lined for an ornate box. "There is so much I need to tell you but we don't have the time. The fate of both our worlds rests on correcting one cosmic fact." Drawing from the box she shows Jinx two flamberge daggers with strange symbols written in to them. The very same two used in the original ritual.

Jinx's eyes widen in surprise. "Wait what? How did you.. well of course you have them. No one was murdered in your timeline. Why are you showing them to me ... now ... oh no. Kel. Kel whatever it is you're thinking of doing - don't."

Kel gave a sad little smile to Jinx as Jinx approached, "There is no other way." Jinx grabbed at the daggers and the two wrestled with them until Kel's body erupted with magic. Lifting Jinx in to the air as she too rose up. Those classic greek magical words upon her lips, she flung one dagger in to Jinx's heart - and the other in to her own.

Jinx grabbed at the dagger in her heart feeling her body losing its will to live as suddenly, lightning danced from hilt to hilt and she felt her body pulsing with magical energy. Crashing to the ground she pulled the dagger from herself. Kel feel in to her and they tumbled in to the hallway. Jinx pulled the dagger from her heart too.

Blood everywhere she looked up to see horrified people staring at her with wide eyes. "It's.. it's not what it looks like!"

Toni Ho, standing in the doorway, immediately activated her gauntlet and fired a pulse at Jinx as Valentina, head of SHIELD, hit the alarm button.

Donna Troy has posed:
    As fast as she is, Donna cannot outrun an energy pulse, and Toni is standing in the doorway between her and Jinx. There will be no bracer interception of that shot. She can try to make sure there's no easy follow up though. Half flying and half diving, Donna goes through the doorway over Toni's head and lands in the corridor, forearms upraised, and lasso out and glowing gold.

    "HOLD!" she calls out. "Everybody stop reacting and start thinking first because otherwise your world is lost. Kel needs immediate medical attention and everyone needs to calm down."

    "Gaia's sake! Let's find out what's going on before anyone jumps to conclusions. We came here to help fix things and you very clearly need our help. Please don't force us to fight you."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    That, that is a problem. Even for a mind capable of performing a staggering amount of calculations within a split second this is a lot to take in. But really the answer is a foregone conclusion, because Nadia is always going to choose to believe in her friends and teammates when the chips are down, just like others too a chance on her in the past.

    In the blink of an eye the young scientist with her lab coat cape disappears. Well, not really, but to onlookers it sure appears that way. In fact a very tiny Nadia is performing some truly impressive mid-air acrobatics to change into the very tiny Waspette suit that she keeps in one of her necklaces. When she blinks back to normal size, it is not just a single gauntlet on her arm but her entire body covered in the full Waspette armor including the helmet.

    "I don't know what's happening." Nadia informs Dr. Selvig. "But I'm going to choose to believe in my friend, just like Black Widow believed in me and her friends believed in her." Hoping an invocation of Natasha's name carries at least some of the weight in this world that it would in her own. "We are here to help, I promise you that. We need to figure out what is going on instead of jumping to conclusions. If they try to hurt my friends, I will stop them." There is a sad confidence to the way she says that, she clearly really doesn't want to but is also confident that she can.

Jinx has posed:
~~ "The Chains are Released, The Oath has been Broken" ~~ Echo the words of Fleur de Mal. A deep rumbling voice that permeates through the entire building. Coinciding with the death of Kel, some kind of bondage had been broken, a prison lifted. The cries and screams of 'Oh Gods no!' from the room beyond can be heard.

SHIELD agents rushing to stations and security teams headed to La Ligue's ready room are intercepted by Guillotine. Her eyes blood red, she is a woman possessed. Possessed of a sword that is ~~ "HUNGRY" ~~ More screams and cries. There's a thump on the door to the ready room. The doors don't open.

Jeannine, aka, Guillotine, has lost control of herself, of her own body. As the blood is drawn from her and in to the sword she becomes a husk - a mere implement to wield the weapon of death. There's another thump on the door to the ready room.

Jinx was knocked down the hallway with a nasty burn on her side. The threads of her clothing singed. With Rescue's armor assembling around her and her palms up to fire again the only thing that stops her is Donna landing between the two.

Captain Britain is mortified by what obviously looks like murder. "Everyone deserves a fair trial." And Selvin pipes up with his hands raising to calm the situation, "Whoa whoa. Hang on. There must be a logical explanation for this."

Toni scowls past Donna, "You never liked Kel, Selvig, so don't pretend you're not thrilled she's dead now."

Jinx can feel a pulsing inside of her. That extra sensory perception she'd had all her life and lost when the paradox happened - it's back. And it's feel mighty lopsided. Something on the other side of that door, the sword, is dangerously skewing fate.

With her hands up, Jinx rises, "This wasn't my doing. It was Kel - she - did a ritual. Without my consent." Consent is big on Jinx's mind since she joined up with the Titans. It was one of those lessons she glomped on to with abandon. Before the Titan's, no one had ever given her that option. "Let me check on her -" She approaches and Valentina draws her weapon. Captain Britain steps in front of her. "Val. Dammit. I know it looks bad. Real bad. But I wouldn't put it past Kel to do some crazy foobar like this."

Jinx pauses at the drawn weapon, then proceeds when more people body block for her. She kneels down next to Kel. "Dammit Kel. We could have talked this through" Fingers to her neck to find a pulse. There is none.

Jinx can feel the magic in her though and so she places her hands to Kel's body and tries that healing trick she used on Nettie's job. But nothing happens. The magic works - but Kel does not return to them. "Fuck..."

Val frowns, "Explain yourself now Jinx."

Nigel points to the door as there is another thump on it. "Or may be we deal with whatever the hell that bloody mess is out there first." Nigel presses the open button. The doors snap open revealing a room with a dozen dead SHIELD agents and a zombie husk like Jeannine holding a now larger deadlier looking bloodied sword. Jeannine opens her mouth and moans, "Huuuuungry"

Donna Troy has posed:
    Zombies. Remove the head or destroy the brain, right? However in this case the brains of the operation appear to be elsewhere. Jeanette thinks with her sword. She'd mentioned the sword being thirsty earlier. It seems to have upgraded to hungry now. Clearly a bit of disarmament is in order.

    Donna spins, whipping her lasso around in an arc of gold that zips past Toni's face and streaks through the doorway, entangling Guillotine's sword around the guard, and with a sharp jerk, she rips it from Guillotine's hand, to skitter across the floor and free the French woman of it's possessing influence.

    If only it were that simple! The sword lies on the ground only a moment before it shudders and rises up in the air, darting arrow-like straight towards Donna! She meets its charge with an outswing of her left arm to strike the blade just behind the tip with her bracer, the screeching of metal against metal unnaturally loud, as if the blade were screaming in frustration. Donna ducks as she strikes, letting the suddenly swinging handle pass over her head as the sword spins out of control down the hallway.

    The sword brings itself under control, turning to face Donna again and bobbing in the air, a little more cautiously this time. As though a swordsman were wielding it the tip rises to present a plow guard, and just for a moment Donna's eyes flicker downwards, as if instinctively looking checking the wielder's leading leg. The sword is however still tethered to the end of Donna's lasso, and rather than drawing her own sword, Donna sends a sharp flick down the length of the rope, the sin wave carrying enough energy to flip an elephant on its back. When it reaches the end of the lasso, the sword hilt is snapped up and then down again, clattering the blade into the ground. Without pausing a moment, Donna yanks backwards on her lasso, pulling the sword hilt-first towards her and reeling the rope in to bring it closer. She ducks down again, letting it fly up over her head, then draws the rope in again and brings her arm around in a circle, swinging it low, then up again in a rapid loop. At the top of the loop she jerks her body forwards to accelerate the sword, point first, towards the wall.

    Between the supernatural sharpness of the blade and the amazon strength directing it, the wall has little chance. The sword embeds itself to half its length into the wall. It shakes a few times as if struggling to get free, but appears firmly lodged in the wall. With a dissatisfied frown Donna jerks her lasso free and looks around to check that nothing else is about to explode. Mere seconds have passed, and neither the rest of La Ligue nor Val and the Shield agents have quite finished processing what's going on.

    The sword Fleur de Mal is however no normal cursed magical sword. In the metal of the blade resides a demonic being of significant cunning, and it knows how to play dead. It knows how to put on an act. The sword is less firmly embedded that it pretended, and that shaking had been to determine that rather than trying to get free. Now the lasso is gone and the Amazon is not entirely focused on it, the blade rips free of the wall, spins in the air and darts forwards -- not at Donna this time, but at Val!

    Val takes half a step backwards, but she barely has time to react in the second or so between the sword being embedded in the wall and being embedded in her guts. She staggers another half step backwards and reaches down with indecisive hands hovering near the hilt of the sword. She utters a soft "Oh" of surprise.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    While she can move at the peak of human speed, Super Speed is unfortunately not among the Waspette's powers and even with the assist from her helmet's HUD and some of it's predictive algorithms, there is a limit to the speed at which even her mind can process visual input data. Which, when the dust settles, leaves her standing not far from an impaled Shield Director.

    Beneath the faceplate of the Waspette helmet, Nadia's face contorts with frustration. Out of all the possible threats, magic tends to be the most difficult for her to deal with. Touching that sword is probably bad, leaving it in Valentina is probably bad, her mind sorts through several possible solutions, though she lacks enough data on magic swords to be confident in any of them. In the end she settles on what is likely a temporary solution at best.

    One of the Waspette gauntlets comes up through its confidential combination of PymTech and DoomTech blasts a concentrated beam of Pym Particles at the sword with the aim of turning it into more of a demonically possessed toothpick, while her other hand lobs a Pym Capsule from one of her pockets at it, PokeBall style, in order to isolate the thing inside.

Jinx has posed:
~~ "Yeeessss more Bloood" ~~ comes the siren song of La Fleur du Mal. The pym particle beam successfully dislodges it and it twirls in the air; a stream of blood flowing from Valentina's wound to the tiny tiny sword. When Nadia throws her pokeball at it, it shoots through the air and punches a hole through Captain Britain's armor.

There is a moment of pause, of silent horror, as he coughs up blood, only for the blood to be sucked back down in to his mouth. It's in him. Tiny little tooth pick sized demon sword.

Valentina slumps down on to the ground and Toni cries out, "NO!"

Jinx watches on in abject horror. Some how Kel had made this sword behave for Jeannine. She has no idea how she did that. "We need help.." And she's just brimming with magic right now. Pink energy flows around her and she shuts her eyes, summoning up an idea.

Brian Braddock, aka Captain Britain. Looks at Nigel with wide eyes of terror. Nigel comes to him and holds the captain tenderly as friends even as Brian struggles to stay up right - then drops to one knee. "Don't let.." he coughs up nothing, the blood isn't escaping that little sword of horrors, "..HYDRA win."

Brian crumples against Nigel. The little sword explodes out of the ex-captain, tiny little thing gleaming red in the room light. Toni points her palms at it and starts to blast. She's missing every shot even with similar trajectory assistance like Nadia has.

Jinx claps her hands and the room fills with .... ghosts. Each one dressed in an era past from French republic to French Empire to French Kingdom. The ghosts know what they need to do, for they are the ancestors of Jeannine and each a previous wielder of La Fleur du Mal. As one they gather to the sword and grip its tiny tiny hilt with their ghost hands, then force its tip to the floor.

This time, gushes of blood spew out of it as it tries to fight back against the ghost grips. This time it really is trapped. Jinx calls out to Donna and Nadia in a desperate plea. Her pink magic is tethered to each of the ghosts and its waning. They might note Jinx is wearing shoes and is definitely not in contact with the Earth. "Break it! Snap it in half!"

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna quickly returns her lasso to her hip and draws her sword, the brilliant Themysciran steel singing as it clears her scabbard. She takes three steps swiftly forwards, striding in amongst the horde of French ghosts, paying them little heed. She pulls her sword back into a high two-handed grip, crouches, and swings downwards with a powerful blow that cleaves the cursed blade in two and cuts deep into the floor.

    It is a testament to the strength of the sword Fleur de Mal that even in this miniaturized form, it's strong enough to leave a notch in Donna's blade. This is the last cut that ancient blade will ever make though, the two slender halves of the Pym-shrunk sword skittering away across the floor, making a clattering strangely as loud as if it were full sized. And as the sword dies, it /bleeds/.

    The demon-inhabited sword has drunk the blood of its victims for millennia, but only the blood of its most recent victims remains unconsumed by that demonic essence. Enough still to flood out across the floor in a tide of slick crimson. As the pool spreads and touches those old French ghosts, they disappear one by one.

    Yet it's not over. As the pool of blood expands outwards, the center starts to boil and thicken, coagulating into tendrils that coil upwards and wrap around each other, taking on a humanoid form. From its shoulders further tendrils coil outwards and form themselves into wings, and within the globular mass of arterial gore that makes up its head, two pinpoints of yellow light form glowing eyes.

    "Mortal fools," the demon spits. "You thought I was so easily defeated? Now I am free. And still I hunger! I shall drink your blood yet, and claim your souls for my lord Hanbu, the Agony of Mankind."

    "Hanbu?" Donna says, looking remarkably unconcerned. "Oh, you must be a lilu-demon. I have read about your kind. Nasty. Still, I'm not too concerned. There's something you've overlooked."

    The demon is taken aback, and its wings flutter slightly and it stares into Donna's eyes. "You will not talk your way out of your doom with wiles and pitiful excuses, mortal! I have overlooked nothing!"

    Donna gives a nod of her head and gets to her feet. She looks down at the demonic figure, grinning. "You've overlooked Pym particles, Demon. You're two inches tall," she says. Donna turns to Nadia with a wry smile. "No Nadia, you can't keep it in a test tube. However, you can blast him to atoms."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    That animation from Japan some of the Titans showed her made it look so easy. She's going to have to work on this whole monster ball move thing. That the sword comes free from Valentina is a positive, Captain Britain's fate is significantly less so. It's one of those situations that drives her brain crazy, where there's no solution that can possibly save everyone.

    Still it is heartening when Jinx brings new magical powers to bear. The glowing pink ghosts that restrain the sword are pretty cool, after all. And Donna is reliably Donna, both in the way she sunders the sword and denies Nadia a souvenir demon to run tests on for her magic theories in one fell swoop. Still this demon just went on a murder spree right before her eyes and Nadia is quite willing to point one of her wrist-mounted energy blasters at the demon, which at its size might as well be a starship cannon.

    "Doom this!" Nadia tells the demon right before it is engulfed in a beam of searing light and plasma.

Jinx has posed:
Jinx lets go of the magic holding the ghosts and they vanish. Still.. there's blood sloshing all over the place. It's not a great look. La Ligue just lost several members including.. no wait. Jinx blinks. Valentina didn't get all her blood sucked out of her.

She slides to her knees next to the director of SHIELD. What better way to finally win her over than to save her life? Her hands go to her guts and she shuts her eyes. It'd better work this time. That healing magic that's still new to her vocabulary.

The white energy tickles over her hands as it pulses through the directors body. Just then several Agents of SHIELD break through the doors carrying very big rifles. "Director, it's Agent Noelle Walters. Can you hear me?"

Jinx looks up, covered in blood.. so many bodies here now and they're the strangers. It's easy to jump to the conclusion if there weren't witnesses that they just came here and assassinated half the league. With a gasp Valentina draws in a deep breath and then raises a hand to Walters. "Stand down agent.. stand down."

Jinx draws back in to a kneel and watches, flushed, with the vague concept of relief. It's hard to really be relieved when you just saw an evil sword carve up so many people. And you had Kel suicide herself to give you her powers.

"Doctor Selvig," Valentina Fury adds as she slowly stands herself up with the help of Nigel, "Give them everything they need and get them off my goddamned world before anyone else gets hurt."

[ Always - St. Lucia - https://youtu.be/91djdwYFWS4 ]

... to be continued