42/That Time When... Hell Visited After Death

That Time When... Hell Visited After Death
Date of Scene:	20 February 2020
Location:	Medical Lab
Synopsis:	Well, that's creepy.
Cast of Characters:	Douglas Ramsey, Illyana Rasputina

---

Douglas Ramsey has posed:
"To think," Doug says to himself, "After all these years, here I am... in a dark room in the basement. I always knew this is where I'd wind up! I just figured they'd lock me in the closet.

He's pale, with shiny plastic dermo-plast bandages sealing the wounds and abrasions on his body, an IV hooked into his left arm. "...Shit."

He's holding up his right arm, and twisting it through rapid permutations of geometric shapes.

"They could've at least put the TV on."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
One has to wonder what being 'locked up' means to the majority of the student body. Those with gifts to produce endless amounts of molten cheese or stare into the crystalline matrix of rocks probably take it very differently from a teleporter. Further, the teleportation gifts that bypass any sort of protection laid out by security systems have another side benefit. They certainly don't function noisily, allowing Hank or whomever is buried in the med area to proceed with their work rather than claim an interruption.

Illyana is terrifyingly good at not signalling her presence. The wavering motes lifted in a circle are the only indication of her presence as she ascends from the ovoid disk manifested on the floor. Not usually the case; she prefers to step sideways or drop through them, but this way is infinitely more regal, after a fashion. For fancy entrances, it works. And thus, Doug is not alone.

"Better a closet than a six foot lead box," falls the cadence of that Russian tone, an Arctic blast off the Lena rather than a warm breeze swirling around the Crimea. Her thumb trails along her wrist, the Soulsword humming loudly at her side until properly banished into hammerspace, a spot in her broken soul, the back room. "Though you look well entertained. Do you want me to break you out?"

Douglas Ramsey has posed:
One also wonders what measures the school has to keep unruly students with powers that make them difficult to contain in one spot. Honestly the more advanced the security system is, the harder it is to keep Doug constrained. So he's behaving, staying right where he's supposed to be, at least for the moment.

"Lead box? What am I, radioactive?" Doug says. "I mean I AM infected with a Class X alien pathogen... uhhh boy." He closes his eyes. "And I just got a front row seat to the death of sixteen million people. Trying real hard not to lose my mind right now. Real hard." He puts his hand over his eyes. "...Damn it."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Illyana's frozen eyes reflect the wasteland hues of the white nights known in high summer Siberia, awash in the palest shades of aquamarine and cyan. Tempestuous hues join together with the faintest glow around the rim of her pupils, giving way to the arcane sight fully in evidence. "Pine is in short supply," she replies to the caustic humour in play, but then, gallows humour is exactly what her people know and mastered in the long, harsh winters stretched through the Rodina and beyond. She folds her arms under her bosom, sliding a few steps closer. The virus in action is something particularly strange and odd; it bears witnessing.

The spell roaring through her soul, shaped with a gesture, gives her an insight to Doug's pattern and the sundered tears, the rips and the cuts left by the internment. "Then tell me what you need. What you want me to do." She hangs over him like an alabastrine sliver of the moon wrapped in black leather, still in her basic battle attire. Black leather pants, black leather top, attitude enough to flatten the sky. Her fingertips dust down, falling in a gentle arc, almost to the slope of his side. "But you are not alone. Grieving is..." The ruinous shadows of her past are cloying in their weight, pressing close. "I can understand."

Douglas Ramsey has posed:
"Well I mean you could get me a pair of underwear, they triaged me and then went to take care of everybody else and I'm just sort of... hanging out here." Doug says, a faint pink tinge rising to his cheeks. "...Except that all my stuff is in storage, I was expecting to be in Genosha for a few more years. They came out of nowhere, took the defense grid completely by surprise. It was a massacre."

He exhales. "I'm sure I'll be a complete useless wreck later. Now I'm... confused? As to why I'm not dead. And angry."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"Why go?" A simple question, really. Illyana's glowing eyes settle upon Doug's face and hold the lines carved there in memory, overlapped by whatever that spell tells her about his general health. Measuring where the worst wounds are, where the lingering infections or poisons might be threaded. She doesn't have Elixir's knowledge of the deeper sense of being, but she knows when something stands out as poisoned, pained, wrong. His aura is as much responsible for informing her of that.

Her tongue traces her lips. "Someone wanted you alive." A flat statement there. "The purpose comes later. Stand on guard for someone coming to collect." The shimmering motion of a portal starts open as the spell hangs, hooked by concentration. When the window opens, she snaps in a brutally effective, harsh language to instruct the startled duenna demon on the other side. It /looks/ like the terrifying equivalent of Mary Poppins or a governess. Except dull purple, with curling tendrils instead of hair. Tremendously icky, to be sure. "<<Bring me suitable clothing for him. Acquire it from anywhere outside Canada or Russia.>> A rather /oddly/ specific matter. Another portal in Limbo snaps open under the demon, which is itself terribly concerning no doubt. <<You will harm no one. Signal when you are done.>>

And that, excitingly, is that. The underwear crusade begins.

Douglas Ramsey has posed:
Doug gives Illyana a flat stare. "Did you just send a demon to pick me up a package of Hanes? You know that it's going to bring me back..." He waves a hand, "A Fundoshi. And why are Canada and Russia off the list? I have to know. I'm DYING of curiosity."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"She knows better." A smirk curves darkly up on those elegantly shaped lips, alabaster carved into the auspices of that cool expression. Her pale golden hair falls around her shoulder. "The complete outfit. Jeans, shirt, coat, socks, underwear, belt, wallet, possibly identification as necessary. I do not expect she knows that well enough." A roll of her shoulder indicates that commiseration. "We do not upset the Russian overlords. Canada, you will learn when you get out of bed."

She turns and sashays through the room, eyeing up the IV and then the further array of medications being pumped in. "Do you want the smaller injuries closed? I can manage it."

Douglas Ramsey has posed:
"I think I'm all right." Doug says. "I'm not in any pain. I'm just... it's weird. This..." He flexes his black and gold fingers, "Is like signal noise in my brain, a new kind of... code input. It's a different sort of nervous system signal. I can--" His arm suddenly morphs into an abstract sculpture, "It's like tensing a muscle, and the arm just does it. I can do complex parts, too. But it's... like a slice got shaved off my humanity."

He drops back down and squeezes his eyes shut. "...Maybe you'd better tell me the bad news about Canada now, before I plan that summer trip to Thunder Bay."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
The sorceress just watches with that incisive look as the black and gold metal becomes anything but metal, contorted in the oddest fashion. A quiver trails up and down her back. "There is nothing worthwhile in Thunder Bay except a railhead or a river where native children are dumped to die," she states in that laconic fashion. Waves of golden grain on the coastal lines of Lake Superior should be home, familiar with the dense granite block crashing down into the steely cobalt waters. Not at all this case.

Illyana's expression is so often remote, but the crackling intensity of her eyes remains bright. "A slice did fall away. Humanity is not a fixed quantity in your case. It can propagate and reconnect you. It is part of you, you are not overtaken by it. The balance of you is human. When it is not, I would see."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
And there's always the Soulsword test. Cut with the blade and scream in bloody agony, human. Cut with the blade and scream in agony with blood and other fluids present, not human.

Douglas Ramsey has posed:
"Yeah, you've stuck me with it before, I remember." Doug says, before he squeezes his eyes shut and then he sits up, his belly flexing as he rests his elbows on his knees and meets Illyana's gaze. "But my own sarcasm aside, and given that I'm not going anywhere until I'm wearing something other than my boyish smile and this blanket, you didn't answer my question."

He runs his hand through his hair and says, "I need a shower. I'm back in Westchester?"

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"You did not actually ask a question. You asked me to tell you about Canada. There is nothing wrong with Canada. I will not unleash her there." The demon queen side missing, Illyana answers with the brusque, perfunctory nature that defines a Russian to the tips of their toes and the top of their head. She leans forward slightly, holding out a hand if necessary to steady Doug. The risk of eating his soul isn't her problem. Neither is she a displaced temporal Phoenix vessel. (Well. In the future, that's another matter.) A bit of a smile would be out of place. "She is moving. Give her time. I can sense her but she isn't ready yet." This much said off-handed, like it's normal to know where demons hang out, is a factor in everything and nothing.

"This is Westchester, yes. The school. I offered you a ride out for a reason," she adds. "We stick together, da?"

Douglas Ramsey has posed:
Doug murmurs, "I don't really have anything against BEING here..." He drops back down, and then winces. Maybe a little bit of pain, but nothing he can't handle. "I'm guessing they sweated whatever that mystery stuff Sinister injected me with was. Gross." He puts his hand over his eyes. "I'm a little sensitive to light, feeling a really nasty craving for head cheese..." He opens one eye. "But as zombies go, I think I'm doing all right."

"I have to think... and it's just... all one big, wide-open, blank whiteboard. Oof."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"You are not a zombie. You are perfectly alive. I am looking at you and I can see that." Illyana narrows her eyes a little. The smirk resting there hasn't changed. "I would know you. You're enervated but not dead. Resurrection your way is messier, more visceral. But you live. Blood in your veins swirling around, your heart pumping, your lungs moving. Gross is part of being human." She steps back from the bed and looks over her shoulder, then shrugs with a neat roll of one shoulder. "The hardest part of coming back is learning how to live. To see the confusion in their eyes and not take it personally. It hurts. Come to me with any questions, it's not the first time I fell dead nor will it likely be the last."

She plants her feet in an A-line stance, holding up her arms. The portal snaps open in front of her, a vertical disk that probably sets off some kind of vague alarm. It doesn't cut through a power line. <<Ashtabel, show me what you have.>> The place, a department store, clearly feels pretty swanky and pretty German. It might be Berlin. The demon has a bundle of clothes, rather elegant. Lots of that as she hands it through to Illyana just in time for the portal back to Limbo under /her/ to close. "Here," she gives him the combination of things, down to a chic winter coat. Demon has style!

Douglas Ramsey has posed:
"Not bad." Doug says, looking down at them. He glances back up at Illyana and says, "I'd kill for a cheeseburger." Then he sighs, and without so much as a wince he pulls the IV from his arm and turns off the medical equipment next to his bed -- then he gets to his feet and somewhat gingerly begins to dress.

He rolls his eyes upward toward the ceiling, and then says, "And they're even in my size, when did your demon have time to stop at a tailor?" He asks, as he pulls the slacks on and goes for the shirt, pulling it on. "But is violet really my color?"

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
The demon's work is straightforward enough. A shirt is a shirt, size 50, European medium. Pants? 50, the European medium. Socks? Standard 42 to 44, European size. Other things? European medium. There's a straight across the board medium, darker in hue as is the wont of a winter entering to spring design, but so it goes. The socks themselves are black, not white athletic socks, because no one in their right mind wears those. Sorry, Americans.

She turns to give him a variety of privacy or ability to collapse on himself if he wants. No shows of vulnerability and weakness in front of a predator of her calibre. "First, dressed. Then, out. Next, burger. Da? Or would you like me to take you to the market and you can buy your own ground round?" The sharpened edges of her tone are about as close as the demon queen gets to playful, and they still cut. The open wounds bleed a different way, her pained expression turned to a wall. Vestiges of humanity shredded to pieces, stuffed into a box. "You can hardly wear orange. Come on."

Douglas Ramsey has posed:
"Uuuugh, even at my best health I don't think I could digest a hockey puck." Doug says, "Which is what I'd get if I tried to cook anything." He glances at Illyana and then says, "...Thank you, 'Yana. I'm a little bit. I don't know. Horrified. By all of this. But what can I do except keep going?" Lest it catch up to him.

He tucks his shirt into his pants and buttons up, before he pulls on his belt, and then his coat. He finds a shiny surface to check his hair, and then he glances back at the blonde and says, "...Probably ought to take my arm, I feel like I'm made out of rubber bands and jell-o. They have me on some AMAZING painkillers."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
The strength buried in Illyana isn't necessarily equivalent to any of their top-tier members, but she can use a lot. On the other hand, the demon aspect of her can tear through doors with ease and throw cars at people, so it's all relative. Her smirk returns as he mentions the hockey puck. "It would serve you right," she adds, shrugging her shoulders again. The shadows of her expression evaporate away, and she swings in closer when he implies the drugs have him weak. A turn, and she briskly moves up to Doug's side. Her arm circles his waist, pulling him in, probably fully able to lift him up to barely walk if it comes down to it. "Wrap yours around me," she murmurs, the inherent stiffness under the supine hairpin curves and black resinous clothing apparent all the same. Emotions, the skill in dealing with them went to the big brother. Not her. "Lean in when you need it. Try walking first. Do you want somewhere in Salem? Will we chase the dawn, maybe? I know a good place in Singapore, another worth trying in Nairobi. Jo'burg, maybe?"

Douglas Ramsey has posed:
Doug, on the other hand, largely has the strength of a merely ordinary athletic man -- though he does try. You have to Get Good to live the mutant life, after all. He leans into Illyana for support, and then says, "...I don't care, as long as it has bacon on it." He sighs, and closes his eyes, and then tightens his arm around Illyana. "You know, every creepy thing I've ever seen in Limbo doesn't have a patch on waking up butt-naked on a slab with Mister Sinister prepping his instruments? That one's gonna stick with me."