1964-05-03 - Tick Tock.
Summary: More weird happens in the Park.
Related: Something Wicked Plot line
Theme Song: None
wanda nyx skali constantine 


It's a quiet day in Central Park. The recently cordoned off area thanks to the zombie incursion, has created this level of strange serenity in the Park — it hasn't been this quiet since October, when the last cataclysmic thing happened in the Park.

For now, however, the day seems all-too-normal. The birds chirp. The sun shines. It's enough to forget that strange things have been going on in the area. Even the space-time continuum seems to uphold its regularity.

The truly brave, however, venture into the greenery just the same — perhaps with a need to step outside the concrete jungle. A woman in the corner of the park lingers at its edge. With a wry smile, she crosses the tape that cordoned off the park, stepping over it with great care.

A man in a long brown trench coat trudges down the sidewalk towards the Park, flicking a match on the ground as wafts of smoke emit from the cigarette hanging from his lips. His eyes squint with skepticism, and, perhaps, a hint of disdain, as they scan the Park, taking stock of each of the few that are in the area.

Deep within the layers of trees, quiet moans indicate that the once-dead continue in their movement. A group of young teens, giggling and goading one another, cross the caution tape, giving themselves accolades for their clear bravery despite whatever lingers on the other side.

*

Wanda arrives from RP Nexus.

*

Wanda has arrived.

*

Poor Central Park takes its licking and somehow keeps on ticking. Probably thanks to deranged citizens like Wanda Maximoff, wrapped up in a dark coat and dark leggings, dark boots and a dark look. Knives rest in her boots, at her back, slid up her sleeves. They make perhaps the simplest addition to the armory used to keep esoteric threats under control. Other options are far odder: bells here and there, strung between the trees. Charms hung from her belt. Marks scribbled discreetly on the soil, tree trunks, benches, things that may glow to the Sight and little else.

She knows the paths well enough. She should. She's danced with demons here and a certain emerald baron. Zombies and coyotes and nasty dessicated bits of antimatter? Par for the course, really. Humming whilst she goes, she treks alongside a path, touching the leyline deep, deep under the bedrock now and then as one pets a particularly well behaved cat.

*

"…" Nyx is watching the people go back and forth. A bit of laughter, a thrown stone or two from teens who are crazy enough to think throwing stones toward the living dead is a good idea- and too scared to let them land within fifty feet of their targets lest the undead are actually paying attention.

Right now the diminutive blonde is beneath a tree. Cloaked in shadows such that only the most perceptive of people would ever knwo she is there Nyx has settled in while wearing a dark hoodie- hood down- and and black jeans, her hands clothed in fingerless gloves. The girl's eyes are a brilliant blue at the moment, peering out at the others here with thoughtful intensity. She has a frenetic energy to her, like she should be moving wildly, and with poignance.

Unbeknownst to others save those who spend their time staring into inky blackness the shadows behind the young woman are pacing on her behalf.

*

Skali was having a bad day. In fact, a bad week was a better approximation. After her riotous display of carnage in Central Park at the behest of one Dr. Strange; the varg had endured a humiliating hose down before entering Namor's penthouse and then hadn't left the residence since. At first she attributed the sloth to some aspect of gluttony; rotting flesh having been bolted down ravenously in the completion of the last undead extermination task. Yet when the chill persisted no matter how often she shifted back into her true form, she had simply resolved to curl up and sleep it off.

With skin itching and sick with a hunger that no measure of raw meat had been able to quell; Skali had finally abandoned sweat-soaked sheets in favor of a walk. The walk became a run, the buildings and other pedestrian traffic of New York blurring as her musculature offered a speed that no human could boast and the hunger, pressing against her gut like a fine pointed blade, encouraged no caution. Perhaps another go at the undead in Central Park was what she needed; satiate that itch of bringing down prey and consuming it while it was alive if alive was applied as a broad strokes term in these circumstances.

Thus she landed on the prohibited side of the caution tape in the uncoordinated fashion that two legs usually bound her two, a tumbling mess of limbs and denim that picked itself off and plucked a twig out of her hair unceremoniously. Grass-stained and dirt-mussed, her eyes were already gleaming as her nose filled with the scents of the park, trying to unravel what she needed from the winds while ignoring the squealing of teenagers at the edges of her awareness. With every fresh peel of laughter, she twitched and salivated. Curious reaction. That hadn't happened in a couple hundred years in response to a human sound.

*

John frowns as the teens toss rocks in the general direction of the moaning noises. His lips twitch into an all-too-easy sneer, wholly unconvinced of the world at large and the offerings of 1964. His nose wrinkles — the stench of death fills the air — wafting from the walking dead that linger in the depths of the Park. "Typical," he mutters under his breath, as if some nearby ears will catch his cynicism.

The group of teens splay through the park, moving about the edge as individuals rather than a pack, granting a kind of odd circle — connected in sharp corners rather than perfection — as they trail around the Park's edge. Others seem to join in, what very well could be, a graduation prank, enacted for unsettling those that look onto the Park and its depth.

Constantine takes another long puff on his cigarette and sniffs hard. It doesn't take a paranormal detective to know something is off, even if it is a grad prank.

The students begin to laugh louder, and three titter off from the edge, and bolt, with all of the strange enthusiasm of schoolgirls as they move towards the Park's Centre.

It happens so quickly that no one can stop it, but the teens' eyes change. All at once it happens, bearing deep darkness as their fingers splay at their sides. One of those in the centre lifts her arms, exposing a crooked 'd' tattoo on her arm emblazoned in red.

*

Proof positive these children are soft creatures, tempted by danger, passes with every moment. The brunette sorceress on the ground doesn't actually touch the soil, tapping the leyline to keep her balance a few inches up. Flotation comes almost naturally.

Disapproval etches vague lines at the corners of her thinned mouth and narrowed eyes. A missing stone goes skittering somewhere off into the undergrowth, another enticement for whatever shuffles out and about. City kids, what do they know about dangers that lurk in the dark northern woods where legions went in and no one came out?

If she had a scarf it would be wrapped around her. Instead, she skulks where the melting perturbations in the park call to her Sight the strongest. How can she not notice so noisy a beacon? Wanda has a talent for this, staying unseen and shrouded by the natural hour, blending in almost as well as a woodsman at times.

*

Skali has partially disconnected.

*

Nyx tilts her head slightly, blinking as she looks between the teenagers nearby. She's just about to roll her piercingly azure eyes when she notces the slight change that is beginning through all of them. The girl pauses, takes a deep breath, and… Silence. She doesn't seem to have a clear idea what it is she intendsto do.

In that moment Nyx is actually visible, pulling fre of the shadows like play-doh being separated from a child. They cling to her like she is part of them but ultimately fall away. She is movign discretely toward where the teens are gathered, her steps now only hidden by normal means. Nothing stops those boos for clicking agianst the pavement as she goes, either.Really ,the blode just wants to get a better look.

*

Out of the miasma hanging heavy in the air, Skali could find at least one scent with a semblance of familiarity. It was on the collar of the Good Doctor often enough, his skin, his person marked by the woman he took as a mate in ways that most could never discern under such circumstances. Picking her way over the spider web pathways separating groves of trees and grassy expanses of clipped lawn, the disheveled and nervously charged woman came upon Wanda in a staggering sort of way, as if she couldn't quite get her limbs to align as they normally did. It was a far cry from the usual grace that married her step with the earth she walked upon in the seamless way of true predators.

There was no introduction, just a casual observation that rasped around a throat that ached, "That doesn't seem normal."

A casual nod towards the teenage girl suddenly struck as if by God's own hand in that rigid, enraptured way as she supplicates the heavens for something. Skali was pretty sure she didn't want to know what. Her teeth ached where they buried in her jaws already trying to streeeeetch outside of this body.

*

Skali's words seem to fall on deaf ears. If any of those present can hear her, the teen entourage doesn't give any indication.

The circle, with its clouded eyes, seems to draw together in a single point. Pained moans escape the lips of the now rapt students, taken by something known yet unknown. Seen yet unseen.

Heads turn to the sides, oscillating in strange lines that meet no pattern like a person fighting sleep that closes on them — whether they will it or not. The pattern may be concerning enough, yet beyond it, in the centre, where three have gathered, things have become strangely coloured. Black and white emanates from the centre, starting with the trio — above them like a gathering cloud. But the energy is strange. It's familiar, it's black. The abyss created around them draws things to the dark.

And its allure is apparent.

Those that had lingered on the edge of the Park (without black eyes) seem to be rapt by the accumulating darkness and its imminent effect on each. Like moth to flame, several begin to, very slowly, draw towards the blackness, as does whatever nature seems to still occupy the Park.

John's hand lifts towards his cigarette and his pam catches the spark, drawing it to a ball of flame in his palm. He throws that fire towards the grass in front of the trio in an effort to create a barrier between those drawn in and the black abyss.

The flame, however, is sucked away, as if eaten by some unknown force or a vacuum.

*

Nyx is walking toward the shadow with careful steps, her eyes widenign slightly as she's approaching it. they are amethyst now, though still blue when one cants their head a specific way. A deep breath is taken and she laces her fingers together as she is turning her head to look back over the people nearby. She is walking and yet doesn't seem quite aware of it.

A blink follows when Nyx looks around again to realize she is ten meters closer than before. Now the pale, darkly garbed blonde figure is starkly visible to anyone watching. It's unclear how close she is going to get that darkness overhead. She stops walking, and instead turns slightly so that her gaze falls upon John. The fire was a bit of a wakeup call, at least. "Do you know what's going on?" Seems like he might, under the circumstances.

*

The whispers of an exotic fragrance cling to Wanda's golden skin, the promise of black roses grown in one place on Earth. The same rare perfume occasionally inflicts itself on the saturated orchestra of her aura, but not often. Hints thicken at least for Skali, and she gives the varg only the briefest of looks. Their encounters in the Sanctum Sanctorum are certainly memorable enough not to go without comment. "Do not let the darkness touch you." A terse, quick warning. All the while her hands weave threads of energy unseen, giving her the impression of starting to dance. Yet the precise flicks of her fingers shape complex yantras with a single effect.

The tattooed girl and her companions in the middle of the circle drop through the ground as a chained circle limned in plummy radiance erupts around their feet. She shatters the pattern from the middle out, and the open holes send the unfortunates tumbling to one of the police cordons. Quite literally atop them. There's a reason she has spent days and days scouting every acre of the park.

*

Skali didn't expect to hug it out with the Sorcerer Supreme's lady friend. The terse warning was heeded, but definitively unnecessary, as the spire of darkness erupted from the bowels of earth itself and the wolfling stumbled back a pace. In most circumstances, time would have been taken to signal her intent to let her human guise fade with a word of warning and a peeling off of confining clothing. The threat of dark tidings in the wind seized her guts, forcing instinct to take over. It was with a snapping of bone and sinew she collapsed beside Wanda while musculature reformed and the massive beast took place where woman had once stood. There was a shake of fur and flesh, and then her head lowered, glowering at the centralized hub of shadow where evil spilled out. A low growl in the back of her throat voiced her discomfort and jaws chattered with an agitated need to rush into the bleak nothingness, to find a foe and rend it apart instead of waiting for the woman at her side to do a chakra dance or whatever was occupying her time.

The varg flicked her tail with a huff.

*

For a moment it seems like John might not have heard Nyx speak. But, after watching the trio in the centre disappear into a portal beneath them, his nose wrinkles and he seems to find life. "Not a clue," he offers with a faint shrug. "Well," his tongue clicks, "maybe one. Would hate to be clueless." He spans his finger to point to those in the circle, "Like that lot." His expression sours at that — a surefire indication of his thoughts on the matter. And then, compulsively, he pats down his pockets and finds a packet of Lucky Strikes from high he extracts a cigarette and proceeds to light before the one in his mouth is out. It's possible he might not recognize the brevity of the situation.

With the trio interrupted, the darkness remains, but halts in its growth. One of the teens on the outer edge of the circle shrieks loudly — an angry, altogether spiteful sound that echoes back to her, but not in her own voice. No, in fact, it echoes back through the black. Low. Angry. Unsettled.

And the sound seems to draw a much more serious expression from Constantine. "We should distract them. Maybe," his eyebrows draw together. "I see no artifacts. I see no particular source of magic. So… concentration, yeah?" he winks at Nyx before treading to one of the teens and flicking her shoulder. This… is not enough of a distraction.

*

"…Concentration? That makes sense. That's how I'd do it,' the diminutive woman replies with a mutter. She takes a deep breath and straightens to her full height of just under five feet then stalks toward the group in question. The fact they were just scooped up and tossed away is noted and set aside. Nyx is doing her best not to worry about it until shes' sure this isn't some kind of a wild dream.
Nyxyx raises her arms over her head, splaying bared fingers in her gloves. Shadows rise up around her in the form of long, dark spikes that are too dark to be a normal black, absorbing nearly all the light that strikes them. These follow the cutting gesture she makes with her hands and fly toward he teenagers. They jerk out of the way and whirl toward her, dodging the barrage and stumbling back. Black eyes return to their normal browns and blues.

Nyx keeps walking in that direction, just in case. The shadow following her broadens. At least it isn't the same soul-eating, light crushing darkness that's overhead. Nyx's eyes, on reflection, are amethyst. Not blue. Right now, at least. "It's always something…"

*

How delightful: once woman in particularly odd clothes, now wolf. A nod to the lupine curtly indicates assent. Is it even worthwhile to state 'Try not to eat the children?' Someone else's problem at the moment.

Leyline energy already charges the witch's aura, and Wanda advances a step to the darkness. Her arms remain outstretched defensively, possibly a little too similar in posture to the droning collective. On immediate glance she could fit in, but the surge of frosted amaranth bleeding over her eyes isn't at all like the black emptiness. Currents of fate bring her closer, and she stops in the grass, staring at some long-haired bohemian in a leather vest and loose, colourful pants. Splayed fingers lift, burning ephemeral light charged into lotus petals enveloping her wrist. "«Durga daya!»" Four syllables to discharge a curse and it fires arrow-straight over teenaged heads to slam that naughty hippie off his feet. The force may be excessive, but he goes tumbling end over end away from the blighted area.

*

Skali shudders as the force of the attack birthed by words and witchcraft sends at least one misguided youth splayed onto the earth. A few mincing steps were taken forward, a drop of her head and slow extension of her limbs as she stalked the stumbling arrangement of teenagers surrounding the blackness. With pointed ears pinned back, she froze with a soft whine of desperation, haunches twitching as the hunger pounded relentlessly in her senses until it throbbed with every pulse of her heartbeat. Sinking forelegs to the ground, she lay dejected on the earth, shivering worthlessly as instinct warred against sense.

The Asgardian wavered in such a fashion for a long minute that seemed to stretch into hours while she capitulated her control. Her body writhed across the dusted earth towards the blackness inking into existence from the earth, as if submitting to it while crawling in supplication to its center. And with every step, the gold in her eyes got a bit darker, like it was eclipsing from the edges in proximity to the shadows falling.

*

The hippie removed and the distraction seems to crush the efficacy of the spell. Nothing is being sucked into the blackness, and those present that had been so attracted to the dark now do the sensible thing, and walk away from it, taking their leave and allowing it to linger as a hole in the middle of the Park.

In fact, with the hippie removed, several others see changes in their being. Those that had been closest to the hippie shake their heads, as if coming out of a trance.

John hums helpfully to himself, as if taking all of this in. He reaches into his coat and extracts a pad and a pen which he helpfully scribbles something down, tears off the sheet, and hands it to Nyx.

Following that odd action, he reaches for one of the nearby teens and grasps his shoulder, tugging the lad away from the circle, and away from the Park altogether. "Think we have a purpose for you, friend. Me and my associate would like to have a chat, yeah?" he winks again in his nearly neurotic way before drawing the teen into one of the nearby alleys.

If Constantine is concerned about the hole in the middle of the Park, it certainly doesn't show.

But even as the pair leave, t he hole remains.

*

Nyx takes the piece of paper she ewas offered and glances at it briefly before taking a deep breath and turing her gaze toward the sky. Other people are sensible to leave the hole aloe. Nyx is going to stand and observe it for a long while. The shadows around her, at least, have calmed, returning the girl to just being an albinoid wraith with blonde hair and vibrant eyes standing in the middle of Central Park at midnight.. The more mundane sort of eyecatching and unusual. As John leads off the teenager Nyx lances that way briefly but doesn't interrupt. She is waiting for something to happen. If anything will. it could be a long night.

*

It isn't exactly legal to hurl things into the hole in the middle of the park. Though no doubt just about every New Yorker from here to Staten Island, 'Where One Man's Trash is Another Ounce Smothering Us' will try this. They deserve what they get, really.

Wanda frowns at the sight of Constantine escorting one of the teens away, but she hasn't much of a leg to stand on when it comes to complaining. She did teleport three of them to a heap in front of the police. The offensive gap in reality lingers above her where she scours it for proof of antimatter or, frankly, soul-eating destruction. Someone is going to be informing the good Doctor, soon. "Trishul, there is a hole in space at the Park. This is not good." No, not at all. Simplified English serves its purpose.

Because the Asgardian wolf-woman has gone and wriggled along on her tummy, turning into another victim of that shadow. All sorts of swear words might come to mind, but the most obvious one is simple. "Skali! Get back!"

*

Skali wanted to stop, really she did, but there was something about the way the sweat had finally cooled in her pores, the way her skin had finally stopped itching, and the hunger - it had been ripping her guts apart for days now- and yet with every pathetic step forward it abated just a little more. The words of the woman at her back were regarded with a flick of that long tail, a glance over a heavily muscled shoulder, a low whine that twisted into a strangled yelp of pain as her body twisted, shifted in upon itself, struggled back towards a human guise and then was lost once more to fur and teeth snapping at empty air. There was a song in the center of that plume of blackness that grated upon her nerves, stroked forgotten parts of her person and called endlessly to all pieces of her no matter how human or wolf she tried to be.

And as the twisting mess of flesh and bone formed and reformed in a desperate attempt to stay away from the center of hell forming in Central Park, she gasped, "Help."

*

"…Oh, what in the world is- going on… there? I don't even fucking know. Gods, wolf people, wizards, giant holes in the sky, magic castles with dragons. Everything is real. Disbelief means nothing." Shaking her head, Nyx takes one last deep breath and then she breaks into a sprint toward the middle of the park.

"I'd say I don't get paid enough but I don't- oh, fuck it, who cares… You! Okay. I'm going to try to help. Hang on." Nyx is rapidly approaching Skali and watching as the tornado of flesh and teet hand fur is being dragged away. The wolf is enormous- and angry. So Nyx waits, avoids a clawed swipe, and as Skali is fighting back toward a human form she goes in. The girl is tiny but she's strong enough to lift a large human, at least.

And then Nyx just has to pull, trying to drag her toward the edge of the park. Assuming Skali doesn't expand to the size of a Siberan tiger in the mean time.

*

Gods above and below. The ugliness of the situation requires action, and most obvious, immediate one, is removing the wrathful hound from danger. That means two things, and one of them is bound to be ugly. Wanda brings her hands together, swiping down. Fractalized crystalline planes dance around her for an instant, and it's straight into the Mirror Dimension she goes, the varg being threatened with the same fate.

*

Between fur and fang, the woman feels something tug at her body and those golden eyes align upon the effort to drag her away from the darkness. Yet there was nothing of familiarity in her gaze, the usual sun's gold heat lost as she was pressed beneath the hand of compulsion that swayed her instincts in favor of driving closer and closer to the cold nothingness only a stone's throw away. And now a mortal would threaten her efforts, would dare to impinge her desire to draw nearer still?

The beast transformed even as she was drawn back, a rippling of hide and blood and skin that coalesced around jaws lashing out to slam down around the arms so willing to offer her the aid she begged for. Yet while the teeth formed, they never pierced skin, splitting instead into millions of pieces that never fit together right even as the varg fell apart under the sudden pull of the Scarlet Witch's power.

It left Nyx sprawled alone in this dimension, with only a hot exhale on her skin to remember the near savage mauling by.

*

Nyx hits the ground with a great deal of force. She is groaning as she does, looking over everything around her to confirm what she just saw. Giant wolf? Gone. Park? Still lacking an ordinary sky. She slowly rolls over to her back and flops there or a seocnd, staring up at the hole. It's calling the girl but she bites her bottom lip and shakes her head for a moment. "No… Nope. Not doing this. Nope…" Instead she listens to the calls of the shadows as she drags herself away from that portal. Crawls a few meters, then slowly stands and walks. There's time, for now.

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