9233/God'll cut you down.

God'll cut you down.
Date of Scene:	22 December 2021
Location:	'Abandoned' Warehouse
Synopsis:	Nico Minoru and Johnny Blaze tackle a cult hideout.
Cast of Characters:	Johnny Blaze, Nico Minoru

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Johnny Blaze has posed:
The End is Nigh!

Thats what all these cultists are writing on the sides of buildings, shouting from their street corners, and haggling people with their fire and brimstone preaching that God is coming for their souls. If only they were right. So, of the people coming to handle this situation, A newly-christened member of the Justice League Dark by the name of Johnny Blaze is riding on his motorcycle to a suspected cult headquarters here in New York City.

"When we find them, let me do the talking. They only understand one thing - fanatical belief that the end of the world and the end of their pain is coming. They will not be in their right minds."

Johnny revs his motorcycle, the gorgeous Yamaha VMAX roaring to life as it charges forth.

Nico Minoru has posed:
Nico's getting real tired of all this 'The End is Nigh' and 'Repent Ye Sinners' garbage cultist jazz.

For one thing, all her job apps are flooded by what seem like easy money, and then it's just a goddamn cult sales pitch. For another thing, when your parents were part of a world ending cult, you're always a little worried the next cult's going to be _that_ cult.

You know, because they hold a grudge over you ruining their plans. And killing your parents. And your friends' parents. But hey, Nico will tell you, high school's a rough time for everyone.

And so as Nico closes in on the cult HQ herself, Staff of One at the ready, or at least propped across the back of her neck, arms slung over it, buckled boots thumping, she sighs out, "Well, I mean, they understand a solid boot to the mean bean machine, but... sure, we can try talking. I didn't work a retail shift today so I'm not _that_ miserable."

She fights back a grumble... sure, most of these people are hapless dupes being tricked into the cult by the higher ups. But Nico's got those issues with cults weighing on her, and might be a little... overzealous in her application of a solid smack to the head to anyone who falls in with one.

She pauses about half a block away from the cult HQ, rummaging in her backpack, until she pulls out a battered pack of clove cigarettes, placing one between her lips and flicking it to life with a little burst of purple flame from her left hand, planting the base of her staff on the sidewalk and leaning her weight into it.

She's got a feeling these cultists are actually about to find out their pain's just beginning. But hey, no one said their cult was _right_ about the end of their suffering.

Johnny Blaze has posed:
That's pretty reasonable, actually. Sometimes, its just overwhelming. Too much. Every day is like someone else preaching about an apocalypse that might never happen, or if it will happen, is far too away for it to truly occur. Though Johnny knew little of Nico, he understands that she must have had similar experiences in dealing with these types of people. Though the Rider within him seems to draw attention to the Staff of One on her back - for it has been used as a tool for much - Johnny keeps it from Nico's sight.

"Just remember that these guys are morons. But happy to know that you're not held down by your retail job. Whatever pays the bills, right?" Johnny knows how it goes. He wasn't always a nomad, but he's never been one for 'normal' either.

Normal is overrated...yet at the same time, the most desired thing in the world.

As Nico pauses, Johnny drifts his motorcycle into a stop, turning it off and 'parking' the bike someplace where its probably not going to get stolen. Helps that the bike looks like its owner might skin someone alive for daring to look at it. Johnny feels his skin starting to burn...the Rider wants out, and Johnny's going to give it its wish. Just going to make sure he doesn't terrify the common population.

So he starts to move towards that HQ base. "Whatever you see, try not to freak out." Johnny tells her, even as he starts to grit his teeth a little bit. The Rider wants out. It wants out -bad-. These cultists? They've done a lot more than just prayed for the end.

Nico Minoru has posed:
Nico's head shakes sharply, "No dice. If there's another 8 foot tall snowman that wants to murder me I'm freaking out." She hums out, swinging her staff up onto her shoulders once more and falling into step alongside, quirking an eyebrow as she eyes Johnny, "Seriously though, I got tangled up in this whole... team of do-gooders thing when some necromancer or something attacked a Wal-Mart, cult stuff? Cult stuff's easy to get. She doesn't pick up on that interest in the Staff, or at least she's used to it... after all, no one else she's hung out with in this whole costumed crusader deal has had a staff.

"You got it though, no freakouts, no blowing up the block or anything... unless necessary." She nods solemnly. Because hey, sometimes you need to lower the boom if the cult's more than just a bunch of poor misguided lost souls. Sometimes they're all demon summony and such.

Johnny Blaze has posed:
"Well, I doubt there'll be an 8 foot tall snowman that wants to murder you. That sounds like some intense shit though, stuff of nightmares. Gives you a new perception of Frosty the Snowman, doesn't it?" Johnny questions Nico with a playful grin touching his face. "Yeah, you and me both. Was asking about a Balor demon. Found the Balor demon and hunted it, but they seemed to have potentially information - which they didn't, but after a series of events...well, I joined the team."

Johnny shrugs as they start to approach, even as he starts rubbing his hands.

"Well, thank you for not blowing up the block." Could Johnny survive it? If he was Ghost Rider, yes. Though as they approach, they can hear the songs they are singing.

The place was practically filled with some kind of unholy choir.

They sing of the end. They are praising nearly every god there is, not just the one of the Host. The end has finally come, and the earth will meet its end, and they will go to whatever afterlife awaits them. If only they knew how manipulated they have already been.

Nico Minoru has posed:
Nico shrugs and sighs out, "Well, i mean, it wasn't a real snowman, it was one of those big inflatable ones... real Frosty? Pfff, I can melt him easy!" She takes a slow draw of her cigarette and lets the smoke out in a long, slow stream. "Yeah, seems to be how things work, you're out doing your thing, and suddenly you get dragged into the shenanigans. But the bar foods not as bad as John claims."

As they close in on the singing choir, Nico practically recoils, not in an 'Augh, the chorus of the damned rends my soul' way, but more the way most cynical goths recoil from hymns and carols.

"Well... at least it's not a youth pastor with an electric guitar, right?" She gestures grandly to the door and grins sardonically, "Would you care to do the honors? I'm sure they're going to listen to our pitch that the world's not ending, and that they should go home and just... you know, chill out?"

Johnny Blaze has posed:
"Made it sound like it was a real snowman, makes me think it was a real snowman." He smirks at Nico with a bit of a smile. "I dunno about easy. Some mythical figures have more power. Maybe Frosty is like...the personification of snow? Who knows. Or just an evil spirit meant to haunt the minds of children he's supposed to be entertaining." Johnny shrugs then, though he smirks a little bit at her.

"Don't like the hyms?"

It was pretty obvious she didn't, considering how she recoiled. "Sure." He agrees with her as he approaches the door and as he does so, his skin starts to sizzle. "Don't...freak out. Talking won't be an option. I can sense it. They'll want to kill us." He puts a hand on the door, and with a rage howl, kicks the door, the thing sailing across the room as his skin starts to burst into flame, as if Johnny was burning alive and become a sudden inferno.

What remains is not something that has skin. Its not a -person- at all. Its bone, pale white and covered in some kind of ethereal flame. Most likely Hellfire, even as the presence of the Ghost Rider most likely starts pinging off mystical senses through the roof. Spikes appear all over Johnny's jacket, the kind that could pin a man to a wall as a chain is whipped from nearby, wrapping it across the Rider's own torso as if to ready the weapon.

"Guilty." The creature speaks, its whisper sounding as if it comes from the most vile pit of Hell itself. The fanatics inside immediately begin to scream, as if struck with a madness. Encouraged by the Rider and Nico's presence, but not caused by it, they immediately take up arms and move onto the attack! They fire guns at the Rider, but the bullets quite literally fall to the floor or melt before they can touch him.

Blood is about to be shed.

Nico Minoru has posed:
Nico's shoulders rise and fall, "Not really? I mean, they're no Best of the 80s album, but still... pretty bad, right?" She sighs and shakes her head, pinching the bridge of her nose with her flesh and blood hand, "Of coooourse they're not going to want to talk... god, between this and those demons a couple weeks ago I'm starting to think I've got bad luck or something."

Because losing her arm back in the day wasn't bad luck, right?

And then Johnny's going all howling rage and burning skeleton head and general WTF-ery, and Nico takes it like a champ. Which is to say, she rolls her eyes like this is something you see every day, while that distant little voice in the back of her head that still reacts like a normal person and not eighteen foot thick armor of Gothy disinterest goes 'WHAT THE SHIT?!'. But that's okay, tiny normal voice can freak out while Badass Witch Voice takes the stick. Luckily, the burning spirit of vengeance is a real _reaL_ good target for gunfire, and Nico can sprint off to the side, admittedly, not so good for the poor cultist who was... well, she's not sure what he was doing. Stocking up the pamphlets? Waiting to take people's coats? Whatever he was doing gets wiped away when she decks him in the sternum with that metallic left hand... she pulls her punch a little bit, so there's only a sickening crunch of cartilege and bone cracking, not shattering, as he's lifted a few feet in the air and dropped. She's trying to be merciful! Well, so far at least.

Johnny Blaze has posed:
Frantic. Blood Drunk.

So many adjectives describe the madness that is happening right now. Its surprising, even as they start plugging bullets into the Ghost Rider, he sees to be taking up all of their attention, as if Nico wasn't there at all. Which is good for her, actually, since she is easily able to start moving around and decks a poor soul in the sternum, crunching cartilage and some of the bone present there in the sternum as the air gets knocked out of his lungs and he collapses to the ground in a wheezing heap, too hurt to even scream in pain and alert his comrades.

Meanwhile, Ghost Rider is approaching one of the cultists, who tries to fill the flaming skull filled with lead. Almost comedically, Ghost Rider opens its mouth and seems to take all the bullets until the man's gun clicks empty. It roars in the man's face, sending molten shrapnel of the consumed bullets directly into his face, watching as the metal buried itself in flesh and watching the cultist drop.

The chain is whipped out, igniting in hellish flame as he slice clean through another Cultist with one swing of that devilishly long chain.

What will Nico do next while one is mercifcul and the other brings suffering?

Nico Minoru has posed:
Nico's trying to mostly be gentle, although the cultists she's dealing with are at least of the ravening, wild-eyed, 'Rip you apart with our bare hands' sort, and so she can mostly deal with them via judicious use of witcharm thumpings and rib-cracking blows of the Staff of One.

It's bad aim and religious fervor that has the one who _does_ think to aim at her with a firearm missing and blowing a sizable chunk out of a display of literature that has Nico recoil back, and spin to face him, face twisting in a momentary grimace of rage, staff thrust forward.

Her voice seems to echo, the familiar burning rush of magical power unleashed, "Oh, You can GO STRAIGHT TO HELL!" that triggers the release of the staff's magic. The unassuming cultist, whatever his crimes, whether he was an integral member of the building of the cult, or just some poor fool duped into following along and gone too far, is consumed in a whirling blaze of purple flame and dark smoke, washing up from the floor to reach the ceiling in a writhing pillar that disappates just as suddenly, leaving nothing but his belongings.

That dude just got _reverse raptured_!

The Staff of One does its dramatic glowing exit of the scene then, absorbed back into Nico, who's just sort of all deer in headlights struck dumb. "Uhh... uhh.... oh shiiiiiit.... shitshitshitfu-... dam... oh... fu-... I DIDN'T MEAN TO DO THAT! MY BAD! OH GODDAMNIT!!"

John's going to find out about this. He probably already knows somehow. He's going to do his stupid dumb sad puppydog look and his lecture and his 'luv' and his... stupid cigarettes and... maybe she cna grba Zatanna. Maybe Zatanna can unhell that guy.

Maybe they won't notice! Maybe everyone's going to focus on... that guy that just got chainsaw'd in half? Yeah! That's way way more important! That rug's going to need throwing out.

Johnny Blaze has posed:
The man's voice yelps in terror. "HELP M-" he can't even finish the words beofre flames start to encircle and consume him in purple fire from the Staff of One's magic power, guided by Nico's poor choice of words. The man is gone, leaving only smouldering ashes where he once stood. It is impossible perhaps to know now what role he played in this cult, but perhaps all that was necessary was that he was involved at all for Hell's doors to swing wide.

As Nico tries to understand what just happened and comes to a conclusion that this is all going immediately to shit, a cultist runs up to her. "What the hell did you do to my brother?!" He pulls out a small knife, as if he's going to try and shiv Nico.

Meantime, the Ghost Rider was causing quite the stir. He was tearing the cultists apart. The majority of them were fixed on him, and every whip of that chain was slicing through a Cultist like butter. Even as he grabbed one by the throat with his other hand. "Guilty." And a small pressure later and 'CRACK' the neck (and head) go immediately limp. The Ghost Rider lets out a deafening roar, the kind that makes the soul start to cringe.

Nico Minoru has posed:
Nico just rolls her eyes and backhands the cultist that runs up and pulls that knife. Sure, she could pull her own switchblade, do the whole 'You call that a knife?' schtick, and maybe she would, if she wasn't wanting to move away from the bisected guy who's _leaking_ all over now, and wasn't already thinking about knife guy's brother... hey, he's... not dead? He might be getting off lucky!

Plus, his jaw was intact when he went to hell, while Nico's backhand was with the glowing fist of her metallic arm, and lands with the sickening crack of breaking bone and shattering teeth.

She's going to feel more guilty about _that_ later, but hey, no one ever said super heroing was happy fun times.

Okay, Spider-Man and the Teen Titans kind of imply it with all the bright colours and quips and whatnot. But Nico's not part of them, so it falls to her to deal with the grittier, sadder parts of modern mystic society.

But she met The Thing once, and he punched a demon. It was pretty nifty.

Johnny Blaze has posed:
The cultist attempting to 'en garde' with Nico finds himself backhanded by Nico's hand! He falls flat onto the ground, somehow still conscious but in far too much pain to do anything "Ow! Thash weash mie noshe you bisch!" The cultist holds his nose, which was leaking vitae in what amounts to a 'gusher', his jaw practically hanging from his mouth but his lips helping him finish off the words, rough as they seem. He's groaning, practically screaming actually.

Nico was doing great though!

One comes up from behind her with a shotgun gently poking her in the back, and if she turns around, she sees someone no older than 18 years old, his knees practically making 'clacking' sounds from shaking so hard. "S-S-Stop k-killing and H-hurting us!" He looks like he might piss himself if she so much as grimaces at him.

All while Ghost Rider is dealing with the stragglers. With what sounds like a cackle, hellfire bursts forth from the Rider, engulfing the remianing five cultists in flame, save the poor sod trying to make his case for Nico. The Rider's head turns up that way.

What will Nico do?

Nico Minoru has posed:
Nico raises her hands slowly, calmingly... those big dark eyes of hers staring into the fear-filled eyes of the kid with the gun, "Hey now... c'mon just... drop the gun and run out of here. You don't seem so bad! You're not the usual... demon cult kinda guy! Just... drop the gun and run away!" Her eyes dart, not quite able to maintain that pleading gaze because... well, as much as she tries to act too cool for school (Which she is, because, y'know, dropout), that biker guy is definitely bad news. Like... she doesn't want to say he's a demon, but he's got a flaming skull, and that's... like, okay, he also cut a guy in half with a chain and he's just generally kind of all sorts of extreme?

"Seriously, run kid! Like, I'm pretty sure Captain Spicy over there isn't the forgiving kind, I give you one official Free Pass for falling into a cult, it happens to all of us, consider it a life lesson, go get a job at Taco Bell and try to forget this!"

That metallic hand gives a little nudge to the shotgun to slide it off-aim coaxingly.

She has a feeling if he doesn't take his free pass, he's not going to have to worry about future employment opportunities.

Johnny Blaze has posed:
Sure enough, as Nico is trying to talk the kid down, Ghost Rider is already starting his Terminator walk towards the pair! Its not a far distance, and just from seeing the Ghost Rider, the kid is shaking to his boots. But Nico's calming voice is helping him get through it. "Y-yeah...j-just....ah, screw this!" He throws his gun down on the ground. "I just wanted to be cool like my friends! Please don't kill me!" and he starts sprinting away from Nico with all the speed his poor, shaky legs can carry him.

He gets decently far too.

Ghost Rider continues until he stops next to Nico. He speaks in a soft whisper, like it hangs on the wind with no vocal chords to actually speak through, meaning its probably doing so through mystical means. "Innocent." it says after the kid that just ran off.

Maybe the kids change of heart, either from sheer terror or watching his friends get either beat down or outright murdered. The Ghost Rider's skull seems to douse itself with a 'hiss', even as muscle and nerves and flesh begin growing over it, slowly revealing the face of Johnny Blaze, head of hair and all, as if he had never transformed. He gasps a moment, putting a hand against the wall.

"Sorry about that...Vengeance isn't nice. But thanks for the help." He looks where the kid ran off. "Just saved that kids life from Damnation."

Nico Minoru has posed:
Nico's shoulders lift and fall with a crooked grin, although it's tired, a little sad... that sardonic gothy armor can't be up all the time. "He'll be alright. I mean, he didn't get a magic staff out of the deal, but..." She glances back at the carnage, lingers on the pile of clothing from the guy who presumably got sucked to hell, "...I mean, not much of this cult left to hunt him down for betraying the cause or whatever."

She shudders and shakes her head, "So like... does that hurt? The... burning face thing? I mean, I hear that guy with the claws on the X-Men has a healing factor, but the claws hurt all the time."

Shoulders shrug once more. Gothy armor restored. Nico's all good.She idly scuffs a toe and shoves her hands into the sleeves of today's top, humming out, "Well, uhh... see you around! If you hear about any other cults, gimme a call. We'll..."

She looks around again with a slow shake of her head and a deep sigh, "I dunno, probably not hand out anti-cult literature, right?"

And then the goth's clomping off into the night, perhaps a little more genuinely concerned than she usually lets on.

But she was right. There was no possessed snowman this time. Score one for the good guys.