9395/The Details of the Devil

The Details of the Devil
Date of Scene:	01 January 2022
Location:	Brighton Beach
Synopsis:	Spider-Man stops a carjacker and encounters a very spooky lady.
Cast of Characters:	Peter Parker, Satana Hellstrom

---

Peter Parker has posed:
The last day of the year.
Was he spending it at home? Nope.
Was he spending it in Metropolis, bundled up in a warm blanket filled with two armsfuls of Kara Danvers? Guess again.

Chasing a carjacker? Dingdingding, we have a WINNER.
Well, a runner, anyway. The guy was driving hellbent for the bridge and hopeful freedom. And now, Spider-Man has to extract this leadfooted thief without trashing the car too much.

A bit of a trick when you are hanging from the rear bumper and planning your next move...

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
Hellbent. An appropriate word choice given that the carjacker was headed not just straight for a bridge, but also straight at what looks like a ... what's the polite term for 'streetwalker' again? Lady of the night. That's it.

A lady of the night. Aw, let's just call it what she probably is, a hooker. One who is at this moment walking across the street, popping out from between two cars in the middle of the block, and not noticing the car racing toward her at breakneck speed until the last second when her head swivels to face the approaching headlights. Not even time to have recognized the threat and make an alarmed face yet. Just a face suspended in the headlamps, a trick of the reflected light making the pupils glow an unexpectedly bright red back when Spidey sees her.

Her hands start to come up in a futile defensive motion.

Peter Parker has posed:
The Spider-Sense squalls in his head like a siren, and he looks up to see the woman in the bright headlights.

*** NO!! ***
The road is too thin. A swerve will just put the rear of the car into her - so, choose between the goriest Pit Maneuver he'd ever witnessed, or have the back end of the car act like the Jolly Green Giant's Louisville Slugger and send the woman into a road-rash ground or a pop fly that'll land her in YONKERS. Some choice.

And then, with sudden clarity, he sees Option C.
He drops down to the street, then HEAVES the back end of the car up, grabbing the frame and lifting with all his strength for the moment of leverage he can get. The muscle car gets muscled up on its right side, landing with a shriek of metal and sliding past the woman instead of into her, at the cost of the flattened right side, which is going to need some serious bodywork.
Spidey rolled a few times as momentum pulls him along, but rolls to his feet, watching the car grind to a stop.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
As all this plays out, with the car getting twisted to the right, with Spidey bouncing along the road like a superball until he finally gets to leap upright, a few things seem marginally out of place. Nothing you can quite put a finger on, but still...

Since when does reflected light from the eyes last past the point where the source is pointed at them? Because while Spidey was bouncing past, for just a flash he caught those eyes ... and they were still glowing red.

But now they're not. Probably just an impression left on a panicked mind. That must be it.

Oh, and then there was that defensive gesture she was starting. It looked an awful lot--again just for an instant--like she was adopting a stance to catch the incoming car, not the futile arms-up-over-the-face gesture that one might have expected.

But again, as he bounds to his feet and looks over the scene she's cowered, squatted on the ground, arms over her head, shivering and looking around her in shocked surprise. Obviously he only got the move part-way through completion.

"What ... happened?"

The voice coming from the woman is a thrilling contralto with a distinct quaver of fear in it.

"There was a ..."

Her eyes fall on the car that's slid past her. Mutely she just points...

...at where a ruptured gas tank has spilled its sickly-scented contents over the pavement. And where a hand with a burning cigarette still in it releases it reflexively, dropping it, glowing-end first, into the pooled gasoline.

Which promptly douses it because that's what happens to cigarettes tossed into pooled gasoline. This isn't Hollywood.

Peter Parker has posed:
Spider-Man fires a blot of webbing to cover the cigarette and the fuel it is in, because it's the fumes that set off fires, not just the fuel.

He jumps up to grab the carjacker by the collar, and then checks the interior to make sure there aren't...

"...oh. no..." he whispers in horrified amazement.
A set of soft blue eyes looked back up at Spider-Man.
The baby in the car seat gurgles happily and reaches up to Spider-Man, as if seeking a hug.

Spider-Man looked at the carjacker, who just shrugged. That shrug was the point where Spider-Man's anger threatened to replace his common sense.

...and then the woman hears a voice, an inhuman, slithery voice.
<KILL HIM. He doesn't care about killing a baby to get away. KNOCK HIS BLOCK OFF.>
Something...lizardlike seems to rise from under the spine of the costume, with a head like a king cobra. It slithered up to whisper more urgings of murder, telling him a piece of crap like this shouldn't get so much as a MINUTE older...

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
Satana, as Spidey panics over the child, gets up from the road, dusts herself off, and starts striding over to the car, lower and upper body sliding sinuously in counterpoint, eldritch and skull beads clacking subtly as they're forced against each other by her body's sway.

The child was a non-entity. The driver ... endangering a child? Theft. Child abuse. Likely a dozen other sins in a heady arom...

"What. The. FUCK!?"

She stops dead in her tracks, staring at the entity coaxing Spidey into murder. Then she gets angry.

"WHAT SNIVELING FIEND DARES TO INTERFERE WITH ME IN MY SEARCH FOR PREY ANIMALS!" she shouts at the demon, the former thrilling contralto now supplemented by a second voice exactly an octave deeper following in lockstep. "REMOVE YOURSELF FROM THIS MORTAL IF YOU WISH TO REMAIN A FIEND AND NOT WIND UP A WISP IN MY DOMAIN!"

And the anger lets slip a few changes, the first and most visible of these over time being how the skin reddens and starts showing hints of scales.

Oh, and the eyes. Now black scleraed, red irised, and glowing pupiled.

Incongruity piles on incongruity as her demeanour suddenly changes, to one that is overly polite, with a catchy little purr at the back of her throat. "Excuse me ... Spider-Man was it? Are you aware of the demon yet or ...?"

Peter Parker has posed:
The thing currently riding Spider-Man like the world's worst kid hisses at Satana. "Go back to Hell, you low-rent succubus! MEPHISTO wants him and I'm going to make sure he HAS..."
Then the demon sensed something and turned to watch Spider-Man give the car thief a slap hard enough to knock him out...but ONLY that.

Then he turns to look at the woman to see if she was all right, and...
...no. No, she is most assuredly NOT all right. She isn't a candy-apple sunburn red, this is a deep, dark crimson, and the eyes are full-on Nowhere-Near-Human.

He goes to a crouch, eyeing the red person and saying uncertainly, "Uhhhh...apart from the one I think I'm looking at right NOW...?"

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
Satana makes a face and pinches the bridge of her nose, shaking her head, eyes closed a moment, before opening them up again. Her skin and face turn to normal, though the cowlicks in her hair form a very prominent pair of "horns" that still cast her in a demonic light now that some of the truth has been revealed.

"No," she says patiently, as if talking to a precocious child. "Not me. I know you see me. I'm talking the one that was just trying to get you to murder that driver."

Her eyes slip past spider-man as she continues talking, though apparently ... not ... addressing Spidey? Nor the driver nor the baby?

"Mephisto can't have him." Her voice is flat. Devoid of actual interest. As if just commenting on the weather. "You now have two choices: return to Mephisto's domain, stepping carefully over the bodies of the imps of his I destroyed with the backlash from his little ploy on the imp Ree, to tell him that he's failed or ..."

The eyes glow again.

"... come join me in my domain to be tormented for eternity."

The eyes stop glowing as a cheerleader-esque smile fills Satana's face like water fills a particularly fetching cup.

"It's your call."

And with a sudden, violent wrenching motion of her arm, Peter's spider-sense goes off the charts as, momentarily, Satana, using raw effort of will, face twisting in the sudden exertion, lifts the Veil that had concealed his house guest from him. For just a few seconds until her personal energy is expended Peter gets the sense of immense danger ... from behind him and up close. Well inside his personal space close.

And then it disappears again as her brief, impromptu spell runs dry and the sophisticated Veil Mephisto established reasserts itself.

"You're going to need help with that," she says, panting slightly from the effort. "I can give you that, but ... I do nothing for free."

Peter Parker has posed:
The next five seconds of his life are the most surreal this entire week.
The woman goes full Gandalf-Black-Speech on him, and he shrinks back from the woman, his Spider-Sense going haywire. It's directed at something behind him, but he looks over his shoulder and sees something...he's not really sure WHAT it is.

And then the world and reality seems to re-assert itself, and the unreal feeling passes. He is suddenly aware that the baby is crying...crying loudly.
Distracted, he looks to Satana, misunderstanding her completely, and says, "Uhm...let me take a shot at this."
Spidey slips down into the compartment, lifting the child out of the car seat (wow, his parents spared NO expense) and lifted the baby out of the car, hopping down to the street and walking quickly away from the car and the pooling fuel. He is about to call for the police when two cop cruisers drift around the corner and head right for him.

He gives Satana a wide berth, but he can't help the fact that he feels...better somehow. Like the world isn't as bad as he thinks it is. He even smiles as he walks towards the approaching police, baby cradled gently in his arms.

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
The misunderstanding amuses Satana as Spidey slips away. Pressing her lips together to (badly) disguise the ironic, smug smile, she watches as he scoops up the baby and toward the cop cars.

Let the cops distract him and he they as they try to work out what happened. She's got her own work to do.

Slipping between the cars she'd stepped out of in her hunt, she crouches and moves toward the stolen car in the shadows, concealing herself behind it as the cops and Spidey talk.

"PUT DOWN THE CHILD, SPIDER-MAN!" one of the cops starts the conversation. The other one stops the belligerence, but it gives her enough distraction in the ensuing conversation to ...

... tear the roof off the car.

To bend through that hole to kiss the driver.

To leave the driver a dessicated husk behind her as she captures the purple butterfly that is what's left of his soul, popping it in her mouth and swallowing it.

She eyes the route back to her former place and starts the crouched move back, pausing only long enough to set fire to what fuel remains on the outside of the car. For more distraction, and to disguise what was done to the driver.

Peter Parker has posed:
Spider-Man stops, then says, "Okay...I'm putting him down now. Just take him and move quickly, there's leaking fuel in that car."
The cop nods, then approaches to pick up the baby. The other cop nods, then advises, "He's okay, Stan. Take him back to the mother."
As Stan left, the other cop eyed him, then said, "Stay right there, while we..."
Then the vehicle erupted in flame. The other cop looked from the explosion to Spider-Man, but Spidey looked just as shocked as he was.
"What the heck?? There was no fire, the ignition was..."
The cop studied him, then relaxed. "...Yeah, you didn't do that. You saved the kid, though. I'll check with the mom."

Spider-Man simply stared at the burning car, wondering what had gone wrong.
It was the Parker Luck. Had to be...

Wait, where's the woman??

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
The woman leaps out from between the cars she'd apparently chosen to sit between while waiting for the cops, squawking in surprised alarm, staring at the fire, then at Spidey, then at the cops.

"What happened?!" she asks, voice in a perfect imitation of surprised panic. "I thought you covered...?"

She stares at the car's flames, as if mesmerized, the burning flames reflecting symbolically in her eyes to those standing at the right angle.

Which is to say right about where Spidey is if she's calculated the angles right.

"Oh my!" she says, hand stopping half-way up to covering her mouth in shock. "You saved that child just in time, Spider-Man!"

Inwardly the demon smiles. Give him a nice day. Let him get addicted. Then drop the price tag on him.

"You're a real hero!" she adds, slathering it on.

Peter Parker has posed:
The woman was...acting weird. But then again, a lot fo Weird was going on tonight...

Then an alert popped up on his HUD.

11:59:58
11:59:59
12:00:00

Spidey sighed. "Some hero. I saved one out of two. A grade of 50 percent is still an F." he glanced up to the sky. "Well...2022 is going to be a Hell of a year, if this is how it starts..."

Satana Hellstrom has posed:
Satana feigns concern and sways and slithers her way toward Spidey in a movement that catches the eye as much as a hook catches the mouth of a fish.

The one cop with his wide-open, slack-jawed stare is a perfect example of this. ~Philandry. Petty corruption. A snack at best.~ she thinks to herself as she approaches Peter, watching the guy.

"Don't talk like that," she says in a low purr. "You saved two. Out of three."

Gently, non-threateningly, she reaches for Peter's hand, placing it (safely high) on her chest, just below her throat, for emphasis if Peter doesn't tear it away. "I was almost hit too, remember?"

Then a wink, sultry, slow, and concealed from the cops.

"You get a reward for that..." she murmurs. "Come to the Griffin Hotel to collect, any time you like." Then in a voice loud enough to be heard by the cops, "You're a real nice guy, Spider-Man. But you're too hard on yourself. It's like someone else's voice is telling you what to think."

Just as a reminder of what he saw when she tore that short hole in the Veil.

Then the cops get a stare, from behind the hero's torso. "I don't have to talk to them, do I?" she asks, clearly nervous of how cops deal with her apparent kind. "You can tell them what happened, right?"

Peter Parker has posed:
Okay. Crank the weird up to 11, why don't we?

It's the dopamine. It has to be. Finding out someone kept you from becoming street salsa.

For a few moments, he doesn't know what to say. Then he takes a deep breath, re-asserts himself. "Yeah, you can probably get out of here. Shouldn't have to worry, they probably only saw me flip the car to keep it from hitting you. The CCTV should provide plenty of evidence."
To him too, because this was getting too weird. "You should get home, take a long shower, get a good night's sleep."

And maybe think about inviting masked strangers into your home, miss. Who knows WHAT will happen?