2223/Upon a Midnight Clear

Upon a Midnight Clear
Date of Scene:	25 June 2020
Location:	Doomstdt, Latveria
Synopsis:	Proposals made and accepted, and plans hatched to deal with the Brainiac threat to Doom's eventual rulership of the Earth.
Cast of Characters:	Victor Von Doom, Clea

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Victor Von Doom has posed:
It has been a good trip to Latveria. Hearts and minds were won, and the populace and media was charmed by Victor's consort and paramour. Rumors of weddings were flowing freely throughout the palace, which suited Doom's plans... but also disturbed the man who cherished some modicum of privacy about these things.

Still, this satisfied mood would not last, as he stood in his private chambers, mask and armor off as he was wearing a simple outfit, relaxing... or intending to. And then Brainiac appeared in Washington, then New York, answering the question Doom had been asking for quite some time. Who was responsible for Genosha.

The wine glass that he had been holding suddenly shattered in his grasp. Doom then cursed softly in Latverian, shaking his hand as there are a few pinpricks of blood from where the glass cut his hand. Looking more annoyed than anything else, and enraged that yet again, aliens from another world have come to HIS PLANET and threatened HIS PEOPLE.

Clea has posed:
Change brings disturbances like ripples cast into a pool. Even the quietest, least assuming presence overshadowed by Doom and his entourage would fling a rock into the social milieu, but that's not how the tale goes. Clea long ago vowed never to become a wallflower before her equals and subordinates. Every free hour she spends engaged in some manner of learning about Latveria, the balance of history and technology, possibly sending neighbours in the Balkans into frantic speculation because clearly she's no Sue Storm.

How dull would a foreign trip be if disposed only to shop and smell the flowers, hidden from people, hidden from /Victor/? The transdimensional queen may just turns, prepared to speak of something when it happens. Standing on the balcony with her face turned to the sky, she goes still. Tasting the surge, her senses ring as though struck by a bell due to the ricocheting backlash across the dragon lines stitched into the terrestrial tapestry. Breaking glass barely registers at first.

Only reasonable the sky seems to dim. The light falters even to her. Security systems in their elaborate designs catch her transporting herself through their matrixes as the splash of an unshowy form of teleportation snaps her back to his side.

"Victor?" Let it not be said she isn't sensitive to his moods even without cheating. Victor von Doom is a prickly human, but still a familiar race. "What's happened?"

Victor Von Doom has posed:
Victor sighs, "Apparently our time in Latveria is going to be cut short, beloved." He frowns, gesturing to the monitor, "Computer, play back the message." The image of Brainiac shimmers, and replays the threat given to the Earth for Clea's benefit, as Doom glares daggers at the screen.

His mood is that of rage right now, tempered only by the fact that Clea is there with him. Otherwise, he would probably have unleashed a rant as if this was some ploy of Richards to undermine him in a strange way.

"This... alien, insults me. Insults my world. Insults my people." A pause, and he clenches his fist, uncaring of the fact that he does, in fact, bleed, "This will NOT STAND." His eyes narrow, and then he smiles, calculating, "But now I know what needs to be done. What to do to keep my people, my world safe from interlopers such as this." He glances over at Clea, his expression calming, though the emotions are still turmoil behind his eyes.

Clea has posed:
"I would be cross had I not felt the perturbations of something," Clea replies. An ironic smile comes and goes quickly. "It couldn't last, could it? Our time away will come again." Spoken with the profound acceptance of a queen and one longer-lived than many. Her hand lifts, a few motes of the embodied mana on her fingertips. A tiny gesture seeking Doom's tacit approval, the evidene of their link.

The swiftly formed image of a cyborg making his proclamations earns the same complaint that another would-be tyrant did. Her expression changes slowly, eyes flashing ultraviolet in a way that's not human in the least. A burning gaze means something when the soul behind it is pure Faltine fire. "Here at the crossroads, another conquerer masses his armies and dreams to strike at Roma," she uses the old name for it, the real one. "What do you need to guard the gates of the city of seven hills?"

Still, to Doom's wrath, she is hardly cold and unfeeling. Too much feeling has its harm. From reaction to action, the tide comes in and flows out. He is given the space to speak, not only as a diatribe, but to a confidante as she has been for others, for him, on occasion before. Only that offering of a shared, private bond to offer reassurance against the vehemently unsettled world.

Victor Von Doom has posed:
Victor opens his cut hand, offering it to Clea, "As always, beloved, you are a balm to the fires of my wrath. But I will gather my own forces. And not just Doombots, but those of misunderstood bent. They will be my Legion, and we shall take the fight to this invader. And he shall be defeated, and what was taken from this planet restored."

He clenches his fist shut tight, "So swears DOOM!" He pauses, a bit melodramatically, then passes a wry look over at Clea, "We will head back to New York in the morning, this fool has given us the one thing he should not have. Time. And we shall make the most of it."

Clea has posed:
Blood on the skin, a strange vision to endure. Small specks and not a dramatic flow, but something in that sight arrests Clea. It doesn't brings a strange calm or clarity. A small frown at its hurts done, and then she murmurs, "Do you think I am any less enraged or offended? He threatens all of us. How long before this conquerer comes for other metahumans, other humans to tinker with? There is a profound, utter evil in playing with genetics for such purposes, stripping a race entirely of its free will to serve as little more than mutilated tools."

Vague shades darken her tone, not her eyes. It could be the backlash of his anger deflected into her. "Come here, Victor, please." It is never a command with him, not without good justification. Better than good. In the Dark Dimension to deflect an immediate danger, certainly, but not in a city with his name written on it. She holds out her hands for his. "We make our own course. Would you let me counsel you, that it should not only be the misunderstood but the independent-minded, those who haven't ever had invitations to face something of this magnitude?"

Victor Von Doom has posed:
Victor pauses, then slides his uninjured hand over Clea's cheek, "Yes, indeed. You have the wisdom and patience that I sometimes lack, my love." He smiles at Clea, his caress gentle with her, as it always is, his eyes focusing on her. "This interloper will learn his mistake in time, as do all that... how do they say, 'bite off more than they can chew.' He thinks he has eaten well, but he shall discover that this is a poison that will devour him from within." What /that/ means, is up for debate, as Doom then smiles a bit towards Clea.

"We do, however, have some time to plan. And I do have ideas..." He grins at that, meeting Clea's eyes as he seems to be in full agreement with her idea.

Clea has posed:
"We will make the necessary decisions, and capitalise on every chance we get, yes." That touch sings with the sparks of mana that dance around Clea's fingers and fly up to accumulate on Doom's hand. Spiralling around his fingers as the trace the contours of her cheekbone. Different slightly from the balance achieved by most humans, finer in a sense, just as the texture of his flesh carries ridges and granularities unknown to hers. Tilting her head into the touch, the fall of her pearly hair shifts in a slow-motion wave opposite to any air piped through the chamber.

Flames simply enfold her head in a rounded arc, as the saints depicted in ancient Byzantine iconography. Her downcast gaze and hands folding around his are purely prayerful to maintain the motif, but not the words shared in a space between them. An alien queen. A most human master of science and arts besides.

A lengthy pause waits out the instants where the world collectively holds its breath, the Flames of Regency silently dispelling shadows from their presence. "I had planned on this in Paris but events take another course," she murmurs with a slightly wry edge. "Something to learn with mankind: be adaptable." While Victor is grinning in a rare display, she holds his gaze and whispers something in that shared Tibetan tongue from a mountainside and a lifetime ago.

Victor Von Doom has posed:
Victor looks at Clea, awestruck by her beauty, by her power, the combination of the two intoxicating as this is a woman, a being that he respects, more than any other. He smiles gently, enraptured by the vision of the Flames of the Faltine themselves.

When she says those whispered words to him, he pauses, looking at her with a brief hint of uncertainty. Then, he smiles warmly towards her, "If you would have me, I would be yours, and you mine, until the stars burned out from jealousy over our passion, my love." With that, he leans in, placing his lips to hers as he embraces this flaming path to a fate uncertain, unpredictable as the dancing fires.

Clea has posed:
Levity would be called for here. Acts of levity to brush a kiss against Victor's neck, fleeting as the pass of her cheek skims his shoulder. Their hands are not to be extricated after a fashion, though the response to Clea's question eases the hesitation scouring all other reactions. Until he answers, she is a captive of time, trapped in the in-between of moments. Flames waver in ghostly abandon until loosed from a frozen epoch.

"I do." A direct statement holds conviction and absolute certainty. Something he's been a very good teacher at, in all aspects. A habit borrowed in part from learning human customs. She brushes her thumb against his knuckles and returns that kiss in kind. Whatever the future holds might be totally unknown even to a book of destiny, but this is a chapter with the ink still wet.