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Walking out of the movie theatre is rather nice. The air outside is cooler, soft, the sun having set not too long ago, and the warmth of summer lingers without the sun as its blaring accent. It's the time for getting an ice cream cone and walking to a nearby park to sit and enjoy the fall of dusk.
The Sorcerer Supreme, in a cabernet-red polo shirt of light cotton and cream slacks as is his want, leads the way to one side of the wide swathe of pavement and looks around to find his Consort in the crowd. No doubt she's nearby, being his shadow in every facet but the actual casting of shade. The black leather bomber jacket slung over his shoulder and secured from falling by the hooking of two fingers at the collar, is lined in crimson. This must be the Cloak of Levitation in diguise, clever relic.
"I'm…not sure what I just watched, to be honest," is the first remark to makes to Wanda, brows scrunched in a contemplative frown. "It was funny, but at the same time…very dark."
Not so terribly long ago, entering a cinema constituted a crime against imagination. Sitting in the dark in an enclosed space still smacks of a dangerously bourgeoisie activity and moreover, breathlessly reckless. Even in the company of the Sorcerer Supreme, Wanda is unlikely to risk her life and limb in front of a projector. Some things slowly change after months spent in the accelerated timelines of the city. Even the children of the revolution can watch a show.
She critiques soundlessly from behind those impassive amber eyes, truths spun from wholecloth storytelling and what-if setups so prized by Hollywood in the current age. A good diversion from the very real aliens still crowed about in the process. The easier perhaps of the two to spot, her habitual burgundy and black uniform proves unchanging even if its components alter some. Her typical long jacket doesn't work for the heat, requiring a shorter version slashed to the hips, and probably holding no less than eight daggers anyways. Trodding these paths leaves her fingers itching for one of them. "Of course it is dark." Her voice lilts the melting darkness of European crossroads, one half Latin and one half Slavic, with a dose of her own drowning dark notes to boot. "They look at Shiva and smile the deaths-head grin."
Nuclear war. It's kind of mind-blowing. You would think regular bombs would be enough. Leave it to humanity to create a bomb that could wipe out a whole city. Pietro wonders if he could outrun that kind of blast as he strolls out among the crowd of moviegoers a few yards behind the happy couple.
He ate a large popcorn, got up in the middle of the film and got another, then got a third on his way out. Munching on his snack while he walks with a glass bottle of coke sticking out of the leg of his blue, straight leg pants. He wears a white button up shirt with extra wide collars that are all the rage right now. It has a solid blue stripe that runs up the center of the chest with two smaller stripes on each side. The wings of the collar are the same color blue and the pattern continues down his back.
Tailing the happy couple, a silent (Other than the crunching sounds) guardian. He stays back and gives them space. Just there, incase something happens. Secretly he both hopes something happens and he hopes they get to have a normal date. He watches for anything that might cause a problem so he can stealthily take care of it before they know anything is going on. He wants to give them a nice, normal date. Anyone who gets in the way of that will suffer his wrath.
Strange nods, his broody moment lessening slightly for the active conversation with the Witch. "I don't think the government could afford the fallout shelters needed in such an event. Shiva would be pleased with the results…" He falls silent again and then shakes his head. "I might defy the gods to prevent such a thing from occurring." Rolling his lips briefly inwards, he then sighs and squares his shoulders. A scarred hand is offered to the Witch.
"Let's take a walk. There's a small goods-stand a block down. You can get ice cream, chocolate — my treat." There's that charming grin, the one that breaks the line of his goatee. He does love spoiling his Consort when he can.
"No. They do not." The fractured mastery of English doesn't truly attest to the leaps and bounds made in one of Wanda's many languages, though it behooves her to mark herself out in another fashion as a foreigner, a creature not of the same nation as rank and file audience-goers spilling out into the street. Like just as many others, they could be anyone instead of a young woman scanning her whereabouts with those unblinking eyes. Sensitivity for the surreal and supernatural tend to impose white noise on the brunette witch. This time is no different than others.
"You move the pieces. Be the mind for the hands you have. Not all things are done together." Everyone else wandernig out might be worrying about the statistical chance of war; she merely does the calculations, comes up with a variety of alternatives, and presumably pitches how to dismantle the attack. She takes Strange's hand, altogether aware of their spritely guardian. "Too sweet. The kind with no milk, maybe?" Her gaze flicks to that erstwhile twin. "Or let him have the bucket."
That's the problem with Wanda. She's so hard to surprise. She cheats at birthdays too. Prophetic dreams about the gifts.
As the couple walks along a lone figure steps to the edge of a building above and behind them. It was waiting. The figure is quite clearly a demon, a classic lower level type drawn by the scent of so much power walking around together. Lowering itself to all fours it crawls slowly over the edge of the building, it's long demonic tail tipped with a poisoned blade to make it easier to drain its victims of magic.
The couple might feel a slight buildup of magic as the beast crouches against the stone and wiggles like a great cat about to pounce on them… then it's gone.
By the time they sense the disturbance and turn to see what it is, there will be nothing there the only odd and sad thing will be a paper bucket of delicious popcorn falling to ground on the sidewalk and spilling it's salty, buttery goodness…
Truly the cost of evil is high.
"Let who have the bucket?" He has time to frown again, not understanding the immediate meaning of Wanda's statement, and turns his head to follow the direction of her golden gaze. Strange has time to pick out what could be a familiar face from the crowd when…
That feeling of being watched increases tenfold; combined with the guillotine of imminent attack, he flinches and wheels, placing himself between whatever triggers his Mystically-heightened senses and —
— nothing. To the crowd about them, he's just reacted to nothing. The roll of the popcorn bucket, spilling its contents, catches his eye and he keeps his readied hands at his waist, glancing to the Witch. "«Beloved»…?"
The witch knows the flavour of the infernal. It sings in her soul, a resonance equivalent to the distant hum of electricity along the lines to animals sharp of ear and other senses besides. With her Sight fully strobed, it takes her but a moment to react to the initial pricklings; less of conscience than hard-learned lessons. A tremor embeds itself deep in the marrow of bones, some place scoured of any light. Before she much considers the consequences to actions, her amaranth-saturated pupils are blossoming and focused somewhere higher. The hunt is on.
One usually leads to many. It's not often a singleton out there, unless they're playing the wrong game. "Fallen. Small." Her teeth grit together, the pangs setting off the same old queasy feeling through her veins. Both of them, the children of wicked circumstance. Somewhere. When Strange focuses on the popcorn bucket, she's at something of a loss. Not a food often eaten.
"You feel anything else?" An idle question she's not listening for a response, not from Strange or her afterecho out there somewhere, sensed to a degree. He's the silvery-violet spindle slammed through her soul, after all.
Elsewhere, in a church, on holy ground, Pietro convinces the lesser demon that being in hell would be much, much better than being in New York using logic, reason, a quick dip in the baptismal pool to offer him some refreshment and very persuasive high speed punching. Pietro is so nice he even gives the demon something valuable to take with him back to hell, a nice steel capped, glass bottle of coke. Once some other demon pulls it out and cleans it off, it will fetch a handsome price in hell.
Even at his speed it takes him a few minutes to convince the demon to return to hell of it's own accord and not come back leaving the couple together for some true alone time.
"Not in the immediate area," Strange replies quietly, following her attentions to the side of the building above them. He can pick out lingering smoke, ashen palm and footprints of the demonic visible to the Sight, but…they simply disappear. His attention shifts back to the popcorn bowl, now kicked into the gutter of the street and its spilled contents attended to by myriad pigeons. Those flying city-rats never miss a chance to feast.
"Which him were you referencing?" the Sorcerer asks, wondering if — oh, if — it was a certain someone. His steely-blues shifted towards frosted-violet twinkle ever so slightly as they rest upon Wanda.
"Not the children." Their subtleties apply differently, and she knows the varied signatures of their auras moving around her. It's a point of familiarity when fifty percent of the family comes directly from her involvement, stitched from warped time and soul-stuff. Wanda frowns and turns, a full rotational circle that gives only the vaguest sense. Her wrist flicks and the investment of energy into forming a spinning orb visible only to the mystics. Its lavender light darkens in response ot her forming will, the pinch of her fingers giving the directional finder something to work upon. It bobbles and wombles, seeking with greater acuity the direction of the nearest direct relation.
Good luck escaping from that. "What waste this is."
Xavier had told Pietro he needed to find ways to express his anger in a more positive, creative manner. Does tormenting a demon count? He's a few blocks away inside the first church he ran into. The good thing about America is that churches are not hard to find at all. When she checks on him, as he is sure she will, she'll find he is enjoying himself toying with the vile thing. It's a kind of joy that Wanda can understand where as few people can. Joy in not only stropping evil, but punishing it. Pietro has always enjoyed punishing the guilty, perhaps a bit too much. Extremism tends to run in the family.