1964-03-22 - Bitter Tidings from Hell
Summary: Julian has horrid news to impart, but he crosses the other daughter of Erik Lensherr.
Related: Lorna and Mojo series
Theme Song: None
julian wanda 


The master of magnetism, and associated individuals, doesn't dwell precisely in the poshest part of the city, but in one of those sprawling neighbourhoods stretching from Boston to Norfolk with few breaks in between. Fenced in, naturally not the most fascinating of places, the property constitutes a reasonably sized house shaded by a number of trees, and set back from the street. Such explains a little why Wanda approaches on foot rather than driving, but then, anyone who knows a thing about the woman probably realises she rarely takes mundane transportation anywhere. Her boots don't make much sound on the sidewalk, and only the burgundy hue of her leather jacket, almost a trench, much stands out to the casual eye. She has her eye upon the building, mindful of the fence in a way some might not be, simply because it stands to reason those pickets might jump up and stab her if she's unwelcome.

*

Although Julian does not know an entirely large amount about Lorna's family, he knows her father, and a couple of her brothers, and that she has some older sister that she's terrified of him meeting. Under normal circumstances that means little, but when your girlfriend melts in a dance club causing you to break down and explode half of it, things go a little out the window. He got into his jaguar and hit the gas, leaving some injured people and the wreckage behind. Wanda probably knows Julian is coming from the sound of a souped-up engine on the road and the bright flash of his headlights, screeching to a stop so fast he spins once before mostly settling in front of the estate. Running towards it, there's a green flash as a momentary step appears, then launches him upwards. It's pretty rough, since he overshot the fence by a couple meters, and hits the grass on the other side rather hard. "HELP! HELP!" he calls out. "LORNA!! IT'sSHEIS THIS EVEN THE RIGHT HOUSE?!"

*

Poor boy, he has no idea about those 'brothers' and the fact the golden-skinned woman, barely past legal drinking age, has a very different relationship indeed than the one described. But then, the House of S — or M, depending on view — has a very unusual structure, indeed.

The roaring engine of a prowling British car indeed causes some commotion among the roosting pigeons in the area, and then the woman subjected to its groaning resonance. It ripples through her body and causes her to pause when the rubbery scent meeting asphalt at high friction emanates. Dressed throat to toe in black, but for that coat, no one is going to be fool enough to mistake her for a girl dressed for a party. Rather, the narrowing of her eyes matches something akin to a predator scenting trouble. Bloody bright garnets dance along her temples, suspended along the spider web of her headband. She might be inclined to throw a knife first, and then ask questions later, but the chosen shout warrants a pause. To Polaris, her polar opposite halts at the entry to the walk. No need to summon a key, she conjures arched eyebrows. "What are you doing?"

*

Julian's dressed like someone who just went out on a fancy date, because technically that's what he was just doing. It screams money, both overtly and through subtle touches, all of which are intentional. Outside the careless position of his crimson jaguar, which most people can't afford to whistle at from a distance. "Huh?!" Julian stops, having intended to head towards the main house proper. If people are asleep or busy, they won't be long at this rate. "What do… what do you think I'm doing!!" From his frantic expression, he's not really thinking through his words very carefully. This is full blown panic, and to a large degree shock. Thinking on it again causes green crackles like lightning to go over his body. Yes; assuredly a mutant, or at least someone empowered. Fingers grasp his head. "Lorna!! Do you know Lorna Dane?! I—Oh god!! She's…!!"

*

Sun-gold eyes narrowed under their black lashes, Wanda's attention nails the young man to the proverbial ground, given her countenance carries very little emotiveness; not much beyond that present in statues, at any rate. "You shout loudly and go onto grass that is not yours," she points out in a matter-of-fact fashion, her accent somewhere between Italy and Russia, definitively favouring south over north. Silence greets him as he shouts to the moon with a wolf's desperate howl, and the sparkling green aura does little to divert her attention. "Breathe. Yes. I know Miss Dane." The solidity of those words might be a lifeline or not. "Who are you? What is she?"

*

"I don't care about your stupid grass!!" Julian yells at Wanda, as if her own composure is somehow annoying. "What does that matter?!" This irritation only seems to grow worse when Wanda appears no less nonchalant despite appearing to know her. "I'm her friend… and—and she DIED." This causes green energy to crackle over him once more, slight dent appearing in the grass beneath. "Ohgodohgodohgod… I knew she was acting a little off, but… was she on something?! Jesus…! Th-there's some healer! The healer guy! Oh man, why didn't I think of him… that Brotherhood dude…!!" Josh flashes in his head. It's questionable what he can do with someone who became sludge, but it's a better lead than waving his arms around at a bunch of strangers. He makes for the wall once more with a lot of angry, helpless cursing.

*

Measured responses are ever her bane, those of her kin noted for their excesses on a way. She places her hand to the gate, feeling for the cold metal. Her fingertips skim upwards, and when he breaks into that broken statement of Lorna's fate, her eyebrows creep slightly higher. In terms of the Maximoff scion, this indicates the proper time to run at full tilt anywhere. Preferably using speeds common to her twin, the light-footed moonbeam that he is. "How?" A question that falls into the void, heavy and leaden, English inflected by the weight of reality behind it. Her shoulders thrown back expose the line of her corset, an angular seam of leather and steel boning. Under the right conditions, he might catch brief sight of a chain around her neck, weighed down by a pendant hidden by her black cotton shirt. Though not the slight iridescent playing at the periphery of vision as she curls her fingers, beckoning him. "You say she is dead. It will not help you to run about. How did she die?"

Reality rearranges itself around them, facets barely showing in the gloom, the odd glittering facet appearing and vanishing in the space of a moment.

"It matters. It matters very much, friend of Ms. Dane. Tell the story." Speedy he might be, and she is not, though the amaranth stain bleeding violently over her gaze eclipses the amber of her pupils, and marks her as other. Some kind of other, at that.

*

How? What does that matter right now? Dead is dead, in the end, and he's not sure why he believed anyone here could help, beyond knowing there's forces in the world he is unfamiliar with and hoping one of them could do something about it. And one can, potentially. He can tell Wanda all about this when it might not be impossible to do something about it. "It'll help if I can find what's-his-name!!" he growls, gesturing at the ground and creating a new 'stair' of green energy to step on and launch himself upwards. "I… gotta see if I can do SOMETHING!!" Which would involve thumping into the street painfully hard on the other side, if all goes according to plan.

*

Wanda's burning gaze follows him as he shapes energy as easily as she breathes, and Julian reduces the idea of normalcy to wreckage. She forms a gesture and walks after him, painting a circle in mid-air. He can land on the opposite side of the street, certainly, but that segment of street forms a wedge that spins around, in a most patterned arc. Slivers of grass and tarmac go with him, cycling him to face her as she steps into the road. Her path is straight, his may well not be. "You do something now. I am not happy to hear you say Lorna Dane is dead." The exercise in willpower hurts her more than it might someone else, the practice fresh enough to cut on her self control. But she masters that, shaping the realm they are within, for all the volatile cracks might show in her reflection. "Help can be for you, ja? Though you run to that house, very loud, and someone much worse than me may answer."

Is she intimidating? That's entirely relative.

*

ROLL: Wanda +rolls 1d100 for a result of: 83

*

Oh, shaping the energy is easy for Julian. Working when constantly at full throttle and it takes effort not to just explode everything is another matter, entirely. In that manner, him and Wanda might be able to shake a proverbial fist together. Wanda's manipulation is so subtle that he isn't really sure what happened, only that he's facing the girl now and his car's behind. "Worse than… fuck off!! She told me all about her scary family! I get it, you're all mighty and strong, don't break an arm jacking yourselves off!!" He tries to just turn around yet again and bolt for his car. Why is she getting in his way?! And why does everything seem all wonky?!

*

He's going to swear at her and she refuses to give into the bitter words flung back at her. Another slice of motion with her hand and the folding of space continues unabated, fans stretching around her and winding routes that lead back on themselves in ways that no Euclidean geometry could really ever attain. The road going up takes considerably more concentration than before, but that bend at a right angle leads the ground going up a 'wall' where the horizon used to be. "I am not the problem. Erik is." He may hear her and he may not, but the point is, she speaks. "It will hurt if you lie. No lies, I help. Better than her father at this. Her brother may just kill you."

*

Okay, what? It feels like Julian's moving, the way his feet grip the ground, the way motion propels him forward, but the car is remaining a few meters away. This is utterly disorienting, and he's already in a poor mental state. Which is generally a bad thing, with his particular power set. Assuredly a good idea to have brought him here. "How can you help?! It's not my fault she's dead…! I—I'm trying to SAVE her!!" He hefts his arms, and green energy surges from his hands. With a rumble he attempts to heft his jaguar up and just telekinetically move it over to him. Rather rougher than he should, but. Hope hasn't died in him. "She melted in a bathroom!! She… she looked surprised, shocked. She… asked me for help…!!"

*

Sorceress. Witch. She is the things made of her, and the impatience finally infects the young woman enough to spread her hands in front of her and invoke a glimmering pool of silver-frosted light that grows dark as wine at its heart. Delicately traced sigils fill in the inverted triangles pointed upon one another, making for an excellent diversion. "She did not tell you all. I know my blood." Her voice carries the faintest hints of distortion in the crystalline realm, in part because the walls around them rotate, reality defined by the details. She is going to be starved after this, and whatever bakery awaits her has no idea how much devastation she will wreak. "I know when they live or do not live. This I can read. But no reading as you are an insect, going here, going there. Stop it!"

The treacherous lash of her voice sinks quieter than rises higher, in part because of the energy she pulls out of herself, tapping the natural world. "Maybe she melted. Is there no skin? Only to light and dark?"

*

"What…?" It's true, all that Julian really knows are a couple names, and Erik himself. He made a potent public display with the giants, and she mentioned them both having magnetism. Beyond that, and even the abilities of her kin, not a thing. "What do you… she died!!" He states this with angry ferocity, hot tears building but not flowing in his eyes as he lets his car fall to the ground, impacting hard enough to break the axle. "I saw her!! I talked to her! She was real! She… she knew everything that was her! Her life, her family, her dreams!!" …was it real? Lorna was off, he had always felt, but… "She melted! Into, a puddle! Of goo! Like, flesh-goo… then I blew it up… I,I didn't mean to, but there should be enough left to… to do something…" Wanda will know, at the very least, everything Julian says is truth. To himself. There is no deception here. The fact a popular dance club blew up about five minutes ago is also truth, if she has a means of verifying that in short order. But Lorna? The real one is also definitely not dead.

*

"Yes, and so did her brother and is he dead now? No, he is not." Wanda keeps her footing when the car falls back down. Gravity behaves according to the plane, and she keeps folding and bending them in the strangest of ways. Down can actually be sideways, and it doesn't appear to be that far. At least he isn't going to be driving from one side of the street to the either while turning at geometric angles. The scent of all those fluids thrown around in the vehicle's battered state will unfortunately assault her sooner than later, but cause no harm to the street beyond. Unless Julian believes he's walking away with buildings carved like Lego blocks from grass, molded into impossible topiaries.

"You blew up her melted body?" This causes a moment of particular reflection, and her shoulders tighten. In an older soul, she'd be pinching the brow of her nose. Right now, this is not the case. Pulling herself together is as hard for her as it is for him. "She does this too well. Finds trouble. Causes big explosions. Makes other people clean it by fire and by patience. Too much petrol in one woman, only looking for a flame. You are that flame. You have a name, flame? I am Wanda." Wouldn't that have been easier earlier? Yes, it would have. "Trishul, I have the way of a saint. When you say Lorna is dead, you say she melts to the ground and spoke normally. Yes? What this could be…" It's not quite a question. She releases the burning sphere, the triangles within it locking to an elaborate yantra, a pattern rather akin to a mandala, sacred art of the East. Her golden skin would give her away as foreign. The light spirals and burns, taking on a gossamer shape that swings hard around her dusky head, and takes on twenty-nine or so reflections from the faceted dimension they are within. "Melting. Going away like wax, not water. It is a way to travel between places. An ugly one, but possible. Lorna herself cannot do this. Her gift is the earth, not transport in space."

*

"Her brother died, too?!" Julian states, although he doesn't sound quite as emotionally struck by the detail. "Is… is someone after your family?" He never felt she was in this kind of danger from talking to her, for sure! He's tripping. This is a bad trip. The world doesn't look right, his body isn't moving right, but he didn't take any drugs with Lorna, no, he wouldn't do that, he… "What are you doing?" he finally asks Wanda, as if revealing how sheerly idiotic he was in his blind rush to have failed to pin this on her earlier. "Dead. She, she melted away. Tried to talk… r-reached towards me… then…" He grasps his head, crackles of green energy once more as he tries to suppress his telekinetic power. And then the strange girl is doing something new, when all of this is far beyond what he expected this evening. He just wanted a date. To relax and laugh with someone, without it being a mutual lie of base attraction. Maybe this is his punishment for not just sticking with being a womanizer. "Jesus christ, can you speak like a sane person?! Are you saying she's not dead?!"

*

"Yes." That answer she can provide without the least bit of hesitation, for all that the spell burns through its orbit, and shrinks, twirling down to a rapidly revolving, affectionate star tinted a peculiar shade, undecided upon whether it wants to be the rich rust of an autumn evening in Vermont or orchid, a bruise upon the world. The answer he gets isn't English, for what it's worth, but skating flat out into German.

"«Yes, I can.»" Is there a reaction, any recognition? Maybe it makes sense given Lorna speaks pidgin Polish. "«I am looking for her. She is not dead. I can still feel a trace. This does not tell me where she is. You are a hazard to others with all the noise around you, it wants out. Take a deep breath and catch yourself. It would be inconvenient to find her as a ghost.»"

*

"…what?" Julian murmurs, when Wanda appears to confirm that Lorna is not dead. That's not right. That can't be. She died. He saw it. Unless that puddle got teleported somewhere, and reassembled, but that seems a bit ridiculous… And now she's speaking in some kind of crazy tongue that Julian doesn't understand. That doesn't help matters in the slightest, but for some reason he can't leave, and Wanda's doing /something/, and he just… he grasps his chest, trying to breathe. Calm down. Calm down, first…!

*

Trust that not to work. Wanda shakes her head, and sighs under her breath, devouring the irritation into herself. She throws back her shoulders and repeats herself, English, flat and precise. "She lives. I looked for her. I found her. I do not know where. Sit and be calm. It will take time to see where. Someone else will be faster." Fast enough to bend time, practically, living in his own little bubble, but that's neither here nor there for him to know. Julian is trying, and at least she can give him the benefit of that doubt, trying in her own right not to move at a greater speed than she does. "Too many questions. She lives, and you will not go to that house. He will not thank you. He would say I have to do this, anyways."

*

That still doesn't seem to be particularly calming down Julian, all things considered. He grasps the side of his head, staring off into the od distance. "She suffered so much." he murmurs, in shock. "When… she melted… god. I… I hope she's alright…" Right now he's no longer actively doing something to make Wanda's life more difficult, which is certainly a boon. For now.

*

The collapse of a dimension and the transition from one state to another is not easy. Entering is easier than leaving, too, for that becomes evident when the car sits exactly where it was on the road. He hunches up where he was. And the emotionless Witch — far from the truth, but the strength of appearances applies — brings her to her feet through a ring of shards. They hurt, as the spell bobs up around her eagerly, the tracer on it completely invisible to mundane eyes. "I will look for her. And when I find her, and this person, you will have vengeance. Yes?" How odd Wanda knows vengeance, but not other more common terms. Well; needs must, and all that.

*

"…all right…" Julian murmurs, somewhat deflated. Perhaps he ended up doing the right thing. Wanda appears highly capable, if somewhat like talking to someone that churns out Edgar Allen Poe lines, at times. Although his fists still tightly clench, teeth grinding in his mouth. He didn't want to be like a child, though. Running to tattle and have the teachers take care of things. Is there really nothing more he can do? Assuming geometry is sensible once more, he heads back towards his car, pausing when it's not mildly banged up where he dropped it, but not in the mood to question convenience in order to settle himself in the driver's seat.

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