7381/Badass meets Evil (take 2)

Badass meets Evil (take 2)
Date of Scene:	15 August 2021
Location:	The Dugout - The Narrows
Synopsis:	Jason storms off. Satana strikes out.
Cast of Characters:	Satana Hellstrom, Jason Todd

---

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
A more wretched hive of scum and villainy... yadda yadda yadda.

That's The Dugout. Gathering point for low scum among scum. Recruiting point for criminal gang wannabes. And where Jason's research of the cemetery incident has led him to.

Well, in reality it led him to The Narrows, but staking it out got him nothing. It was time to get information the Red Hood way.

The place is about half-full tonight, though with all the hidden corners and shadowed spaces that's a difficult thing to count. (By design.) This is about the right level to do questioning without getting swarmed and damaged, however, so good fortune shines.

Jason Todd has posed:
Something about using terror and information to get exactly what you need.

That was Jason's M.O. Sure, he scouted the place out to make sure it was exactly the kind of people he was looking for - would hate for innocent lives to get caught in the crossfire because they were being fucking idiots. So, when he finds that it's to his liking, his comfortability? He downs the helmet, puts on the red bat-painted jacket and kevlar, and gets to work.

The right level to get some questioning done...

and so he does. His hand swiftly reaches out from shadows around one of those corners, reaching for the neck as if to aggressively press them against the wall. "You're going to tell me everything I want to know. For each wrong answer, I break a bone. Why don't you tell me where this 'Satana' is? Don't mince words, it's bad for your health."

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
There's a strangled (duh!) gasp of surprise from the 'lucky' winner of Jason's attentions.

"Santana? There's like a whole section of oldies in the jukebox. Try there!" the man chokes out past the slightly constricted throat. "Since when you costumed creeps interested in old-timey music?"

It appears we have a failure to communicate.

The guy at the table with him, however, understood fully.

"He said 'Satana' Jake!" the elderly con says, looking very down and out. Like someone who found out the hard way what a life of crime really means for most people in it. "We ain't never heard of no Satana!" he then says, looking at Jason with rheumy eyes. Then, a spark of hunger in the eyes. "He hiring?"

Behind Jason, a few people are standing up, watching, as if in preparation for a mobbing.

Jason Todd has posed:
Red Hood keeps the strangled man firmly pressed against the wall, though his brow raises behind that helmet of his -- this was so strange. But then again, it was interesting scenery. Can't expecting hearing to work as well as he might like. "Satana." He pulls him away then slams him back into the wall! "Now -- talk!"

Of course, he notices the mob seemingly starting to form around him. "If you don't answer, then I hurt them until they do. Tick tock, I don't have all day." His other hand clenches, like he's ready to punch this man until he's pulp.

So he turns away from him.

"-anybody- know where Satana is? Talk now and nobody's gotta get hurt."

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
Between Jason's shouting and the noise of furniture moving, it's hard to make it out. An indistinct sound. Like a man screaming in the distance. A death scream.

Probably the television, come to think of it.

"Look, man," some weasely-looking guy, like a mix between Lon Cheney and Peter Lorre if you want old-timey film references, says. "Nobody here knows any kind of a Satana." He waves his hand behind him downward to his friends now holding beatdown weapons in their hands as he carefully steps toward Jason, one hand extended, raised up like a stop sign.

"Now look here, kid. I get it. You're all hot and bothered under the collar and you want to figure something out. But this ain't no way to do it. There's no Satana here. Nobody knows what you're talking about."

There's a general nod of agreement, and a rising murmur.

Except for that one guy. The guy that looks like one of those beggars who fakes personal injury. He's looking pale, sweaty, and straight for the exit, like he's about to make a run for it.

Jason Todd has posed:
That sound.

Unmistakeable. It's been heard by Jason all the world over. The sound of the end, the cry of death and anguish in the fate that man or woman may have experienced in their final moments. Still holding the man by the throat, his eyes search among the crowd, and eventually, he drops the man he held up, letting him hit against the ground as hard or as soft as necessary.

"I'll be the judge of that." He looks for the man bugging for the exit, and so Jason throws a smokebomb on the ground to avoid the mob coming after him.

If successful, he'll but good training to use to circumvent the mob...hopefully get to the bugger before he manages to get out of the place. He knows the look of him well...he's seen it before in others.

Maybe he'll get lucky.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
The usual pandemonium erupts when the smoke bomb goes off. As the smoke billows, Jason can see the 'beggar' heading for the door, panic written all over his face. He can hear the door open and close as he approaches it, but ... less than a second. Plenty of time to catch him. And question him out of sight, even.

Behind him a brawl breaks out as someone calls out, "I GOT HIM!" and fits, bottles, cudgels, and other implements of blunt destruction rain down on some hapless guy protesting on the ground. Until that crunch that stops the voice. But not the beat-down.

Jason Todd has posed:
Same shit, different day.

He expected them all to jump forward, even as he escaped in the chaos with many people coming to charge at him, to grab at him and tug forth nothing but empty space. To lunge at him with weapons to strike nothing but air. Yet even as Jason hears the door open and close as he approaches it.

Yet...he hears the crunch behind him.

and he swiftly turns and fires a single bullet into the air, as if to stop this madness.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
The pandemonium stops at the gunshot. "Holy shit! Someone shot somebody!" This causes brief pandemonium as people check for who's been shot, hastily stifled by people telling them to shut up, ironically extending the pandemonium briefly.

Then, behind him, Jason hears,

"Lady, he's in there. He's asking after you. I had to run. Please forgive me!"

Then the sound of feet running down the street in a blind panic.

Then silence. But for an almost-ghostly ... giggle?

Jason Todd has posed:
The pandemonium stops....then it seems to resume and extend itself.

Jason shakes his head a moment. "Morons." He mutters under his breath, yet he hears the ghostly-sounding giggle from behind the other side of that door. Feminine. Devilish...the kind that dwells in the dark places hoping to never be found.

Until someone like the Red Hood comes along.

He steps through the door and closes it behind him, gun still in his hand. He looks across the way, perhaps where the sound of feet had puttered off to in their panic, his gun raised for his target to be found. Of course, he might not find his target at all.

But he'd rather have one than none.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
The redhead leaning on a lamppost, paralyzed in its ring of light, just looks at Jason as he comes out with his gun up. She stares at him without fear, more curiosity, tilting her head as she regards the mask vs. the rest of the attire.

"An interesting look," she says, raising her hands, irony etched over her face, as she speaks. "Does it get you a lot of girls?"

Her eyes glance at the gun. "Put the piece away, sweetie. I'm harmless." A smile slowly works its way over the hills and dales of her face. It doesn't reach her eyes. Very much the smile of a professional. "Or is the gun part of the act? That will cost extra." Her voice drops half an octave, turning husky like someone who's smoked a million cigars. "Kinksters, I find, are motivated buyers."

Now she steps forward. "I hear you have been looking for me."

Jason Todd has posed:
Well...that wasn't quite what Jason thought he was going to see.

Instead of some evil creature, he saw a seductive, beautiful, ravishing woman who looked as if she were more like a street prostitute that was looking for her next gig. But he keeps his gun trained on her. He doesn't quite lower his gun.

"I don't know about that." About her being harmless, anyway. "All I know for sure is that you are the immediate consequence of a lot of bad shit happening around town these days." He pauses a moment. "The look -does- get me the chicks, it's true...though something tells me this one is gonna try and kill me in my sleep."

He takes a deep breath then. "Satana." He growls behind that mask. He hears her voice drop that octave and he feels a rush of excitement through his body. But he's thinking with his head, not his loins. "Not looking to buy your services."

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
"Will you feel safer if you bind me?" Satana asks, out of apparent curiosity. "I'm down for some bondage if that's your thing. Cuffs? Zip ties? Ropes? Belts and buckles?" She shivers in apparently genuine delight. "It's all wonderful."

She continues approaching Jason, heedless of the gun, making no threatening moves. Not even reaching forward, just stopping with the tip of the barrel hovering over a tip of her own.

"And I would never try to kill anybody in their sleep," Satana adds. "That's not sporting. Now what's this about consequence? What bad things do I stand accused of?"

Jason Todd has posed:
"Considering how pleasured you seem by the idea, probably not. I don't ever feel safe." Jason replies to her then, the mechanized butchering of his voice via the helmet is in full effect. Yet as she goes down the list, he can feel himself growing with excitement. Redheads were always a weakness. Probably a bad idea to give into this one though.

When she stops at the barrel and hovers a bit if her own. "No sport...I imagine you'd what? Try and fuck me to death? Pass." What a helluva way to go. "Multiple accounts of murder, bodies were like husks. Considering the pale, gaunt fellow I saw earlier, I assume you were making a bit of a meal out of him. Not the first time I've seen black magic, won't be the last."

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
"Fuck you to death?" Satana seems (key word!) taken aback at the accusation. "That's ridiculous. I can't even do that ... well ... I guess unless you have a heart condition or something. If you're planning suicide by the best bang since the big one, I'm not the girl for you, sugar."

A languid pair of eyes moves down Jason's body. Then back up. The residue of that feels dirty.

"And the fellow you saw earlier was pale because he was afraid of you, honey. And gaunt because he has poor dietary habits. That needle of his is a terrible thing."

She presses against that gun barrel, letting it dimple her gown in ways that make a wardrobe malfunction seem eminent.

"He came here to warn me that you were asking after me. Very kind of him. I will be sure to reward him appropriately." Half-lidded eyes. "But I've done nothing wrong, sweet stuff." The eyes turn down to focus on the gun. Then lower. The lips curl into a hungry smile. "Bodies like husks, you said. What kind of people were they?"

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason doesn't seem to quite believe her, but she does make him smirk a little bit behind that helmet. Of course, even as she presses into the barrel of his gun..which seems to, uh, press firmly into her sternum in ways that will reveal a great many things very shortly, if not already. She had a wonderful figure, and so did he.

Almost a match made in hell.

"Hm." He hums softly. As opposed to the kind of people they were? "Wrong place, wrong time. Most of them were dirtbags. I would've killed 'em too. One of them was a family man." 'Family man.'

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
"They were sinners, masked man with a gun." Satana says it gently, almost sadly. "Murderers. Drug dealers. Whoremongers." Quick grin and wink. "Not that I mind whoring, you understand. But these ones abused their whores." The face turned more seriously as that went on until it was back to the hard face she had while listing sins. "Wife abusers. Child abusers. And I don't just mean beating." She snorts. "Your 'family man' will find that his family, once they understand that yes, he will never be coming back, will not mourn him. His wife will stop having to wear her hair to cover the bruises. His daughter and his son may someday be able to ... relate. To others. Without dark memories turning them into little balls."

Satana shifts, focusing her eyes on Jason, sending her feelers into Jason's mind in an attempt to bend him to her will. "You send balls of lead into these slugs. They die, wasting valuable resources, bringing nothing into the world. I feed on them. Their souls are my sustenance. And what's left goes straight to Hell where they belong afterward."

She snickers.

"And their husks are far lighter to take to the morgue."

Again serious.

"So how am I worse than you? The end is the same: they die and go to Hell. I bring them the greatest climax they'll ever have. Then a short period of pain. Then death and Hell. You just bring them the pain, the death, and Hell. Wasting their last contribution."

She reaches a finger out in an attempt to trace down Jason's chest with her long, blood-red fingernail.

"I think we're better as partners than as foes."

Jason Todd has posed:
Sinners.

Well, if we put it that way...then everybody's a sinner. She's a sinner, and so is he. But she makes her point very clear to Jason, who listens to her carefully. He doesn't seem to like that she gives them the height of pleasure...and -then- immediately kills them. He's read about people like her in books...a Succubus. She feeds on their -souls-.

Their souls.

He doesn't care where their going. Jason barely believes that there's such a thing as an afterlife. It clearly didn't take with him.

Though even as she mentions that he's wasting bullets and taking away from the world, Jason says nothing. He enters a steely silence as she talks. "All they deserve is pain. No pleasure, no joy in their final moments. I won't give them that luxury." He tells her then.

Her finger gets about half-way down his chest, did her mental feelers work? Has she made a thrall of Jason?

The hammer goes back on his gun with a click, the barrel moving from her chest to the underside of her chin, his hand grabbing the wrist that she used to extend that finger.

"Tried the mind-control thing. Kinky, but didn't take. If you want to have sex, you can ask nicely like everyone else...but I'm slave to no one."

A pause. "But you have proven that we're alike."

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
A shrug of the shoulders. A 'whatchyagonnado' grin. A heavy devil-may-care (hah!) attitude.

"You're one of the strong-willed ones. It happens." Satana doesn't seem at all concerned about the gun at her chin. "But if you've seen this, you might as well put the pop toy away, sugar. It won't do you any good. Even if you did, against all odds, have a weapon that could end this form--and I don't think you do, because I would have smelled it by now--it's a mild inconvenience. I'd be back after a small march of days."

The frivolous look fades into seriousness. "We're alike, indeed, some minor issues aside. For example I saw you stiffen when I mentioned that they get some pleasure. And truth be told I couldn't give two shits if the person I'm chowing down on is a mildly stained saint or a hardened sinner." She leans forward to let her personal scent be felt.

Cinnamon? What?

"But if I go after saints, a lot of very powerful people get motivated to come after me and that becomes a major inconvenience. If I go after the scum, ..."

Her eyes flick down to her chin.

"...Well, your threatening aside, you're already seeing that I'm cleaning your cesspool. I could do this for a thousand years and still not run out of people worthy of what I give them. Or what you give them."

Jason Todd has posed:
Who the fuck wears cinnamon?

It seems that Satana's multiple attempts to seduce Jason have met one failure after the other, and he repeatedly is resisting her affect on the mind. But that doesn't mean that he -doesn't- want her services at some point. But if she were bluffing, she wouldn't be this confident. Words of wisdom, carry some holy water, acid-etched bullets, and a silver dagger just for kicks.

"Hnnh." Jason growls, clicking the hammer back into place and bolstering his gun. "Keep your targets on actual filth, not people who stumbled. Sinners is a shitty excuse, because there's no such thing as a lack of sin in a person." Jason spits to her. "I can clean my own damn cesspool."

Jason gets to walking away from Satana then, his piece said, unless she tries to stop him.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
"I reserve my feeding for the worst, sweet-cheeks," Satana says, watching Jason walk away. Well, watching about half-way down. "I don't need do-gooder aliens or their ilk coming after me, so I keep my prey unsympathetic."

Her malicious grin can be practically HEARD.

"Besides, the real sinners taste the best. Choir boys are bland. Nothing quite has that pungent mouthfeel of a kiddie diddler, though. When I find them, I lap 'em up real good. I've got a lot of them in my home now, being taught the error of their ways for all eternity."

Beat.

"Wanna visit and help out a bit?..." The voice lowers again, into a deep purr. "...I also have other entertainments you might find ... enticing."

The 's' sound of enticing is drawn out into a piercing sibilant hiss that fills the alleys.

Then merry, bubbling laughter and ... silence.