Di's Dabbling

impending samples

☑ Cullen Bloodstone
☑ Meggan Puceanu
☑ Noh-Varr/Marvel Boy
☑ Adam Warlock
☑ Jeanne-Marie Beaubier/Aurora
☐ Roberto Da Costa/Sunspot
☑ Madelyne Pryor/Goblin Queen
☑ Demetrius Williams/Dune
☑ Simon Williams/Wonder Man
☑ Maxwell Dillon/Electro
☑ Teddy Altman/Hulkling
☑ Ben Gaveedra/Shatterstar
☑ Vlad Dracula
☑ Hercules Panhellenios

"Warlocks," he spat out the word with more disdain than was normal, even for him. "Never met one who wasn't a downright ****." Cullen Bloodstone reached down to grab the handle of a throwing axe embedded in the until-recently-living fellow laying before him. Putting one booted foot on his shoulder for leverage, Cullen grunted and dislodged the blade from between vertebrae with a satisfying squelch.

"You suck at your job, mate," he said to the corpse. Some lookout that idiot was. Cullen ignored the crimson dripping from his weapon and hefted it over his shoulder, pushing open the door that his unfortunate adversary had been "guarding." The smell of nauseating incense and musty books hit him, heavier-handed than any blow. Wrinkling his nose, Cullen moved inward, ghosting through a foyer of sorts that opened into a more proper lair.

He passed between shelves lined with books, tomes, scrolls, relics and talismans. Could this coven be any more cliche? The Bloodstone smirked at himself. He supposed, just this once, he shouldn't be chafing at the stereotype. It was exactly this - this trove of secret, forbidden, hoarded knowledge - that he was there, after all. Splitting the skulls of devil sorcerers was just an added bonus.

Cullen felt his progress was going rather well, and his stealth in it impressive. Until, that is, he passed into the more open central area of the massive chamber and five warlocks materialized in a ring around him. "Well, **** me," he said, grinning.

...

The corpses of the coven lay sprawled across the scene, itself looking like a maelstrom had torn through it. Cullen, sporting a swelling lip and a blooming bruise on his temple, had his back to it all. His focus was bent on the shelves of archaic texts he was rooting viciously through. Piece after piece was snatched up in his hands, quickly scanned, then discarded with a muttered curse. With each failure, his irritation mounted, until he was shredding the knowledge that didn't suit him.

At the height of his discontent, the Bloodstone snarled and shoved the entire shelf he was at over, letting it crash to the floor with a deafening sound. Beneath his leather jacket and shirt, something shifted. Cullen lurched as though struck, throwing out both hands just in time to catch his fall, landing him on all fours. The red gem studding the ring on his finger shone like a tongue of flame. Tendons stood out in Cullen's neck, sweat beaded his brow and bile coated his mouth.

He remained there, struggling with that unseen force, for long minutes. When, finally, the glow of his ring faded, Cullen groaned. He vomited thoroughly, tears joining the contents of his stomach on the floor between his hands. Once that was finished, the Bloodstone rocked back on his heels and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "Useless," he hissed at the nearest fallen warlock.

The episodes were getting more frequent, and more intense. He didn't know what had changed. Didn't care to know, really. So long, Cullen had spent dealing with the parasite embedded between his shoulder blades. He'd gone through phases of opinion toward it, from revulsion to acceptance to embracing it, but now? Now he was done. Done coping, done managing symptoms, done trying to garner control over it. Maybe once, not long ago, the kind of power his condition allowed, and the prospect of having it bound by his will won out against his wish to be rid of it.

No longer. He had made his mind up. He only hoped that a way existed to properly exorcize it, and that he could find that way before it was too late.

Meggan Puceanu-Braddock/Gloriana

"I would say, at this point, this could be properly considered an epidemic."

Meggan soared in a precautionary circuit around the site that was her destination. The small Irish village atop the sheer, thousand-foot shoreside cliffs had been evacuated. That made her job easier. She drifted to a halt, scowling down at the scene, and her eyes adjusted, changing to mimic the microscopic vision of most avians to hone in on the phenomenon below.

"Yes, well, since the rejuvenation of magic, mystic incidents are happening worldwide at a rate like never before." The liaison at MI-13's voice cut through clearly on the communicator in one of her pointed ears. Meggan pursed her lips. It made sense, she supposed, that a region like the UK, ever more rooted in mysticism, fable and lore than most any other mortal region, would be hit by this escalation in magical chaos more severely. "Speaking of, have you sighted the source?"

Gloriana murmured in the affirmative. "Yes, it looks like a buggane." The mighty creature's flesh was the color of drying mud and its thick, stumped fists pounded at the base of the cliff like thunder. Rocks dislodged from the sheer face in a deadly hail and even as Meggan hovered there, she heard one of the structures of the village above collapsing from the seismic upheaval. "Lovely. Well. You're clear to engage."

The shapeshifter didn't need permission. She'd already begun to operate. Resonating calm, soothing understanding, Meggan let her emotions saturate her surroundings. They sunk gently into the outrage of the furious buggane, but not only him. So too did her influence wind into the fibers of nature, pleading for the rocky cliff to hold itself together and spurn the growing fractures that the troll's attack was spinning and widening. Rocks began to fall less densely, and the buggane's blows wound down in rhythm.

"Well?" asked her liaison. "When are you going to make contact?" Meggan scowled. "I already have," she replied scornfully. "Be quiet, please." Floating serenely down, she locked eyes with the buggane and smiled at it. The creature recoiled and snarled, but she was undeterred. Meggan came to touch down innocently on the crumbling shore beside the creature and looked up at it, a tiny nymph before a gnarled giant.

The two watched one another, one openly, the other defensively. Moments passed and they communicated, scarcely at first, but more and more openly, in modes other than speech. The buggane's body language relaxed further and further until, with a thump that shuddered through the earth, he plopped down on his rear and leaned his head down over Meggan. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the tip of the troll's nose.

"Gloriana, report," her handler demanded. Meggan refused to let annoyance encroach on her content moment. "The buggane is no longer a threat. The resurgence in magic woke him up from a millennia-long hibernation, and he was displeased with the mortal neighbors that had moved in upstairs while he slept." Meggan drew away from the buggane as it straightened, then labored onto its feet again. She floated skyward, staying level with his black eyes.

"Well, I'm glad you have a new pet," grumbled the MI-13 agent in her ear, sounding very much the opposite of glad. "But what now? Somehow I doubt it's going to play nice with the villagers." Meggan rolled her eyes at the narrow-minded, confrontation-oriented attitude of her liaison. "Actually, I've convinced him to relocate. I know a spot just perfect for him." She flew a halo around the buggane's head. Hopefully Brian wouldn't mind having a new guardian to the Braddock Academy's borders.

Madelyne Pryor/Goblin Queen

The doors to the old, stately mansion shuddered and burst inward, banging against the inner walls of the foyer. A half-second later, two bodies were hurled unceremoniously through them, where they hit the polished marble floor and slid to a stop... Right at the feet of a dense throng of robe men who crowded every square foot of space in the cavernous hall.

"Can you feel it?" a voice curled through the air, seductive and enticing and altogether treacherous. The robed men assumed various ready positions, energies swirling in their hands, spells poised on their lips. No one had ever penetrated the defenses of their cult's headquarters before. Not for the centuries that it had existed. Too many enchantments were girdled around it, and yet? The guard necromancers - ever before just for show, needless due to those same protective charms - lay, drained of life, empty husks, before them.

"Magic," the voice continued, floating in from a wall of impenetrable dark just past the threshold of the manor. "Magic is not only alive again. It's thriving like never before." One cultist moved to the front of the pack, and the added embroidery to his robes and heavy, emerald-studded pendant hanging off his throat named him the leader. "Precisely," he hissed. "Which means we are stronger than ever before." Drawing back both hands, eldritch energies flared like two inverted suns in his palms and hurled them at the threshold.

Or, that's what he aimed to do. As the cult leader went to loose the spell, his arms shuddered and he stumbled forward. They fizzled out of existence and the hooded necromancer clutched at his head desperately, groaning. "I know," the feminine voice sighed. "Sad, isn't it?" From the yawning black a heeled boot entered, followed by the tall and nonchalant form of a woman in black garb with flaming, auburn hair. The other cultists yearned to defend or attack, to check on their leader, but everyone was rooted to the spot.

Magic may have been more energize than in history. But that was not the only tool at the fingertips of the Goblin Queen. "You'll find that all of your motor functions aren't responsive, I'm afraid. Don't worry. I've left your pain receptors active. My pets prefer dinner and a show." Madelyne spread her arms. This manor had been positively saturated with dark magicks over its long and storied life. It was so thoroughly immersed that nearby ley lines had rerouted to converge here to bring more power with them.

That alone would've made her job easy. The state of magic itself on top of that? If cultists like these, who were mediocre and paltry beforehand, were now powerful enough to make waves? Even a pawn can get promoted when it crosses the chess board. What happened when a queen did the same? Maddie grasped the fibers of space with unseen hands. Using herself as a conduit for the powers of Limbo, she shredded those fibers apart. A bone-shivering growl rolled through the room and, one by one, scaled, perverse creatures began to coalesce in the dark and limp into the room.

The goblins prowled toward the gathered cultists, selecting their meals carefully. Madelyne smiled contently and, snatching the edge of her cape, turned in a flourish to stride into the parlor that adjoined the foyer. She left the door open so the chorus of shrieks that started up could roll in freely. This would be a perfect roost for the Sisterhood that she had in store.

Hercules Panhellenios, Prince of Power

It made sense, he supposed. Olympus's utter destruction at the star-strewn hands of great Nyx and her children was a tragedy, true. A tragedy and an end. But not the final end. Rather, the close of one volume in an epic saga spanning the width of creation. The stage was set, the first act of the next installment was underway.

The Olympians were coming back. He had felt it from lightyears away, the waking of his father. That is what drew Hercules, the Prince of Power, so very far from the mortal planet that he had so long called home. The fervent search for his divine family - those that he had mourned and buried and grieved for. Yes, they were being reborn. Into what shape, Hercules knew not yet, having not found them.

But they weren't the only fables stepping into an interstellar new genesis. Hercules would even guess that it was Zeus's second coming that had set the wheels of cyclical mythology spinning. Which explained then why now, on a foreign planet several galaxies removed from that which spawned him, Hercules had come across an old foe.

"Come now," he plead, trying to put kindliness into his booming voice. Easier said than done, since he was simultaneously clambering out of the crater his body had just made in a sheer, rocky wall. "This is a time of new beginnings. Must we cling to the weft and weave of a story the Fates have already finished? If you'll recall, most of our tales are tragedies."

Hercules smiled, brows raised in a pleading expression and held his empty hands up in a show of surrender. He, truly, had no desire to court violence. The hydra that glared at him with all eight of its current eyes hissed and tasted the air with its four heads. "We ssssstill feel the sssssting from the ssssstumpsss of our neckssss," it chorused in skin-crawling unison. Hercules rubbed the back of his neck with one broad hand. "Aah. Yes, well. I do apologize about that. I was only following orders," he tried.

That, though, was the wrong tact. He found out the hard way. The hydra had been reborn much different than the scaled beast that Hercules first assailed during his immortalized labors. Rearing back its heads, ionic energy rattled up its throats, spilling out from between countless fangs and barreled straight for the Prince of Power. Hercules had just enough time to heave a weary sigh before the four-tined onslaught met his skin... and sent him flying further into the alien canyon.

Demetrius Williams/Dune

The arena was a very specific nodule of the Ten Rings's power. Their talons were sunk into the flesh of society worldwide, built up like a disease in the fibers of humanity from years of secret, subtle toil. The arena, though? Well, "subtle" wasn't a word that really came to mind.

Its name was spot-on. As advertised. Not, really, that incredible or show-stopping or innovative. Because it didn't need to be. People weren't complicated. Put them all together, they boiled down to the same despicable, selfish, sadistic husks.

Gather the toughest superhuman fighters together and pit them against each other? Sold out house. Make the venue and establishment super exclusive - super expensive? The billionaires fought each other for tickets, for the right to dump fortunes into the betting pool; into the Ten Rings's pocket. Most of them didn't even care who ran it, and they didn't try to hide their management. Those who did know were so corrupt it didn't matter anyway.

Tonight, though? Tonight was a special occasion. Because one of the Ten Rings themselves was in attendance. Sitting in the most honored box of the circular arena, Dune stared down with half-lidded eyes at the boil of bodies duking it out on the floor. His thick arms were crossed over his thicker chest and the hood of his robes was cast aside, revealing his buzzed head and lips configured in a disapproving line.

"Does the evening's entertainment divert you, master?" Dune rolled his eyes, which narrowed further after the fact. "S'fine," he mumbled. "Don't ya'll have any contestants that pose a threat?" The curator for the arena fumbled and fidgeted, tripping over himself to please. His eagerness made Demetrius's already thin tolerance shrink. "Oh, but of course, master. My apologies. Let me rearrange the itinerary. If you'll excuse me."

Dune basked in the momentary solitude when the curator darted out of the box. Reaching out, he grabbed the bottle of iced beer beer that he'd opened earlier. Throwing back a mouthful, he smirked nastily around the lip of the bottle as the announcer belted the change in plans - Demetrius's boredom creating results.

The arena floor cleared and huge doors built in the battleground's outer wall hissed open. Out, one scaled limb at a time, a serpentine, scaled monster lumbered. Smoke funneled from its nostrils and, opposite it, a squad of similarly dressed contestants stared wide-eyed at their foe. Dune lowered his beer and leaned forward, brown eyes glinting hungrily, white teeth splitting his lips in a dazzling, predatory line. "About damn time."

Adam Warlock

The asteroid belt drifted ever onward around him. Kernels of stone, some as small as a pebble, others wide enough to house full cities ebbed on the current of the stars. Despite its robust size and breadth, it was utterly devoid of life. That was why he'd chosen it, after all.

Despite the cold vacuum of space being inhospitable to life, ironically it was hard now to find a corner of the cosmos that didn't house it in some way or another. And it wasn't that Adam Warlock was spurning life. No, he was seeking solitude. Solitude which would let him meditate on himself.

On his identity.

Adam sat cross-legged on a chunk of asteroid just large enough to comfortable host him. His gold, shimmering eyes peered into the star-studded tapestry of space before him without really seeing them. Quite recently, his life had changed more than all of its shifts and chapters previously. After giving the sentient Infinity Stones souls to bolster their sense of individuality, the Soul Stone, ever and always his companion and symbiotic guardian angel... Had abandoned him.

He felt... Like he didn't know who he was.

The mage considered the time, and realized that he hadn't the faintest idea just how long he had spent on that rock. Weeks? Months? Surely not years? But he didn't know. Adam was not unused to crisis of personhood, thanks to the odd and unique eddies that the tide of his existence thus far had run. Yet never had he felt so rudderless. So empty. He could have bled, right there, into stardust and not felt a thing.

Maybe it would even be better that way?

Energies shuddered through the empty stretch of space around him. Adam's brow creased, confused at first, until a spec before him tore a hole in reality and belched a starcraft into the ether. The ship was vast, but still so far off it looked minuscule. Adam needn't use any of his paranormal senses to realize that something was amiss, though. Light and energy sparked along its hull and it shed vital components and pieces, leaving a path of destruction in its wake.

For one, long, ponderous moment, Adam wondered if he should let events run their course. He could watch, or even turn his back and look at the other half of eternity. Self-disgust was the first pungent emotion to strike his apathy in weeks. Adam scowled at himself and pushed off of the seat he'd been fastened to for innumerable days. His legs screamed, even his physiology protesting at having been static for so, so long.

Adam shut the discomfort out. He didn't know who he was, but he knew what he wasn't - he wasn't someone that would let tragedy befall others. Not when he had the power to help. Strands of quantum magic exploded into luminescent life around his hands. His eyes blazed bright as spells, formulae and words of power sprang to mind and to lips. He bent his will toward the distressed space craft spiraling through the nothingness before him.

And... For the first time since the Soul Stone's desertion, he felt some echo of identity flounder to form in the empty recesses of his heart.

Noh-Varr/Marvel Boy

"What is it, do you think?" Noh-Varr was doing a much better job of holding his end of the conversation aloft. He'd never struggled to run his mouth, though. That was a quality that he was very aware he possessed. But he couldn't help but be disappointed in the individual who was supposed to be sharing in the discourse with him.

The Skrull that fired blast after blast from his laser cannon was too busy panting and cursing to really add much. Fortunately, Marvel Boy was a chivalrous enough soul to pull both of their weight. "All of the cosmos - literally, not figuratively, endless and boundless. All of that for species such as ours to travel and yet?"

Noh-Varr completed another step in the seamless dance of acrobatics he'd been stringing together. The shots of the Skrull's futuristic firearm boiled the air around him, and Marvel Boy made sure to dodge the bolts by centimeters. You know. Just to piss his adversary off. Noh-Varr lashed out with one hand at that point, slapping the Skrull sharply across his green, furrowed face.

The Skrull's head snapped to the side and he gasped at the pain. Noh-Varr, meanwhile, took the opening to stop, one hand on his hip, the other gesturing as he spoke. "We all flock to this silly little planet like locusts." Marvel Boy was looking aside in thought, but ducked without batting an eye when the Skrull's arm transformed into a razor-sharp claw and snapped out at him, slashing the air where his pretty head had been.

"I'm not bashing Earth, you understand. Some of my best friends are humans." Noh-Varr, in his crouching to avoid the claw, threw out a lazy elbow to the Skrull's leg, knocking it out from under him so he fell roughly to one knee, leaving the two of them eye-level with each other. Marvel Boy gave a friendly, almost confiding smile. "It's just funny, isn't it?" The Skrull snarled in his native tongue, peppering it with expletives from several interstellar languages.

Marvel Boy's expression frosted as spittle flecked his cheeks. ZZzzpPPp! One of his gauntlets liquidized, ran up his hand and re-solidified in a blaster that dealt one, decisive round into the Skrull's chest point blank. The green-skinned alien was thrown backward by the impact and landed in a steaming, groaning heap ten feet away. "Yes, well," Noh-Varr straightened and returned his blaster to its bracelet configuration, "not everyone has a sense of humor as good as mine."

Simon Williams/Wonder Man

One good thing about New York City was that it was almost impossible to stand out. Take, for instance, the fact that Simon was wearing red-lensed, reflective sunglasses in the middle of the night while he ate at an outdoor cafe in Little Italy. Most other towns, you'd get a look or two, but here? When the Fantastic Four or Spider-Man were just as likely as not to zip overhead partway through your appetizer?

Simon didn't stand out at all. And he enjoyed that. With the shades concealing his glowing, crimson eyes devoid of pupil or iris, and the leather coat zipped up to carefully hide the identifying, crimson W splashed across his wide chest, he was just an average New Yorker. Maybe some heroes enjoyed basking in the spotlight and adoration of the public. Once upon a time he'd been one of them.

Years spent as an Avenger and movie star had whittled away any fondness of the clamoring attention. He was highly appreciative when he could go about his business without the flash of a camera aimed his way. And Simon was well on the path to having one, glorious, mundane evening with his own company - in itself something that, once, would've saddened him, but now he was content with.

Stupid of him, he knew.

When a screech and wail of tires cut through the wall of sound that New York always had, followed by a high-pitched siren going off, Simon paused with some pasta hovering on his fork in front of his open mouth. With a carefully silenced sigh, he popped the last bite back and waved his waitress over to pay. "Did you hear that?" she asked, distractedly pulling out his bill. "Sounds like it's coming from the jewelry store two streets over. That poor place just got robbed last week!"

As she spoke, Simon paid deftly, leaving a generous tip. "Don't worry, miss. I'll handle it." He shrugged off his jacket, revealing the symbol on his sleeveless black shirt. The waitress's eyes glinted with recognition, excitement, then fizzled out into half-lidded disappointment. "Wait, you're Wonder Man, right?" Simon paused, about to kick off the pavement and get to work. "Yes?" he said, questioningly. "Well what good are you going to be?" she crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. "It's all over the news that you're a pacifist now."

Simon's lips pursed, fighting off a scowl. Scarlet motes of ionic energy started bleeding through his pores as he drifted off the ground. "Yes, I am. But that doesn't mean I can't help." He turned his back on the waitress, who was clearly not convinced. While he sped away toward the sound of the still-wailing alarm, a prickly part of him wished he could go back and change the percentage of his gratuity.

Teddy Altman/Hulkling

The way their bed was positioned, when the sun was just rising, it would slant onto the foot of the bed and warm Teddy's toes - being taller. To most this would've been cozy incentive to snuggle in and sleep longer. To Teddy? His body made it an alarm clock.

Feeling the warmth on his feet, Teddy stirred and rose, propping himself up on one hand and rubbing at his eyes with the other. Once his vision focused, he glanced over at the dork next to him. Billy was the least graceful, photogenic sleeper ever, with his hair plastered to his forehead, his mouth half open and one arm sticking up at an odd, inexplicable angle.

Teddy's heart thundered at the sight. He leaned in, pressed a kiss to Billy's brow, earning a vague shift and faint smile on his sleeping lips. Then Teddy nimbly launched out of bed, padded to the window/wall in sock feet, and closed the blinds, cutting off the fledgling dawn and plunging the room back into lazy twilight. Another short jaunt displaying his epic ninja stealth skills later and Teddy was out in the wider living area of the apartment.

He shuffled quietly around the kitchen, humming a tune to himself while he popped some Eggos in the toaster and started a pot of coffee on. Billy notoriously hated mornings, whereas Teddy loved them, so while the sparkly demiurge got more beauty sleep, Hulkling spent the first few hours of the day in content solitude... Usually watching cartoons. (Always watching cartoons.)

Teddy turned on Netflix, started a show he was halfway through - volume down, subtitles on - and was just pouring himself a cup of coffee when a dull boom radiated through the walls. Hulkling blinked, automatically shapeshifting his ear canals to mimic a biology that would increase his sense of hearing. In no time flat, he honed in on the source of the noise.

He grimaced, shooting a look at the bedroom door. No Wiccan. Hulkling carefully put down his cup, then ran as quietly as possible to the nearest window. On the street below, two costumed creeps were fighting. Neither of them were a hero, either and, thanks to momentary copying of an owl's microscopic vision, he could see that the object they were fighting over was a nondescript duffle bag that just screamed "full of something illegal."

Teddy checked the bedroom again - nothing. He slid open the window as fractionally as possible, his body narrowing and becoming more malleable to fit through the minute gap. By the time he was reforming outside, his skin had darkened to a rich emerald, his physique exploded with muscle gain and two membranous wings sprouted from his back. Hulkling speared for the pair causing the ruckus, who were standing just behind the perimeter wall of Central Park.

"Hey!" He touched down with a buffet of wind and a rattle through the ground underfoot. The two costumed (man, those were cheap - and tacky) guys froze in a tug-of-war with the bag. "My fiancé is trying to sleep," Hulkling scowled, crossing his arms. "I don't even care what this is about, or what's in there. Just play nice - and quietly." They were still frozen, but their eyes darted toward each other and a kind of understanding passed through the air between them.

"Oh no," Teddy facepalmed. Boom! One of them hurled a ball of energy at the ground, creating an explosion of force and topsoil that rattled the window panes of the three nearest buildings. Hulkling groggily opened his eyes, laying flat on his back thirty feet from where he'd been a second ago. "Ow," he groaned pathetically. Something had caught his eye, though. Fear widened them and Teddy winced and shook his head, looking at the two fleeing criminals.

"You idiots," he sighed in pity. Blue light was radiating from the windows of an apartment on the top floor of the nearest structure. "You woke him up." Teddy felt kinda bad for the turds. Not too much, though. Billy would be up after this, for one, and for two, it was a major turn-on to watch his boyfriend whoop villainous butt... Which gave Teddy an idea.

Vlad Dracula

The building had once been a hotel, the finest in the village of Pripyat. Now it housed eternal, deathless royalty.

He stood in what would have once been its master suite, looking out its broken panes through the mist-choked night. After Russia had given Dracula dominion over the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone per their agreement, tourism had been officially banned within its perimeters. The fact that there was a sizable tourist market in the first place, that people would pay to come and trivialize or fantasize historic disaster, was evidence enough in Vlad's opinion of humanity's worthlessness.

The official reason for this unilateral ban was undisclosed. But it didn't work. Of course it didn't. To those who craved to walk this irradiated soil, the taboo only grew with the pronouncement. Guides still lead groups of backpackers through the skeleton town; journalists still photographed the corpse of civilization to head their irreverent articles. They just had to be more careful now to dodge the guards. This "caution" nudged many tourists into nocturnal forays.

Even now, Vlad could count covert flashlights worming their way through the zone; he counted three groups at least. They courted danger to feel alive, or so they thought. Waving their geiger counters and trampling on the dark memories that eddied there. None of them could know how real and tangible the peril in the Exclusion Zone had recently become.

"Master, we found this one trying to break into the building." Vlad did not turn to see the shaking mortal that Baroness Blood held by the scruff of the neck. "I-I-I just wanted to stay the night. I didn't know the hotel was... occupied? The subscribers for my YouTube channel would double with this kind of stuff!" Dracula lowered his head, massaging his temples with the thumb and middle finger of one hand. "Pitiful," he remarked.

"Who are you guys, anyway? What tour company are you from?" the man asked, his simple mind trying to piece together the situation in the bounds of his understanding. Refusing to see the broader picture out of necessity or ignorance or both. They had to be careful how much they hunted. There were only a handful of his clan now, but too many disappearances and the tourists would stop. As it was, their prey willingly came to them every night. Dracula couldn't risk testing the boundaries of Russia's pact just yet. He was still too weak.

"We are hungry," Dracula sighed, crimson eyes staring out over the Zone again. He shifted that gaze pityingly over his shoulder at the straining man. "And you? You will have to suffice." Vlad saw dark, hopeless comprehension dawn on the mortal's face. He saw, too, the scream racing to burst from his chest. Dracula was quicker, though. His fangs sank deep, smothering the sound as it struggled to escape.

Maxwell Dillon/Electro

His senses shifted and wavered, one coming into focus while others would blur. And he was pretty okay with that. Not knowing what was going on brought... Well, not peace, really, but an apathy that he didn't mind. Until, like waking up from a dream, they all decided to play nice.

"Wuh?" Max questioned, groggily. He looked around, taking in his surroundings in bites as his brain struggled to work. Pools of magma; belches of flame; obsidian stone; cage made of fused bones. "'m'I in hell?" The question was kind of rhetorical - it made sense if he was, all things considered. Max didn't expect to get an answer. Least, not one more than a "yeah."

"Actually, it's more complicated than that." Max started, turning in his prison to see that at his back a pillar of the cavern he was in had been blown apart and a throne carved into the uneven top. On it lounged a blonde guy in way too tight leather pants, shirtless, sporting a glowing pentagram on his chest and enough abs to make Maxwell envious. "You are," the guy said, pinched brow and laced fingers showing he was getting his major brood on, "but not in the normal way.

"It appears that some of your actions close to death put your final destination in question. So much so that your soul was lost between planes until I stumbled upon it and brought you here." Maxwell didn't pretend to understand all the words. There was still a kind of indifference permeating him, enough that he didn't have the energy to feel any one particular way about everything. Just resigned, maybe? Tired, mostly.

"Now," blondie added, "I'm trying to decide what to do with you." Max lowered himself down in his cage until he was seated with legs crossed under him. "What, you mean like which way to torture me?" he asked indifferently. The blonde snickered. "No. If I should send you back." That popped Max's bubble of carelessness. He frowned. "What, you can do that?" The guy on the rock throne lowered his hands, leaned forward and grinned. "Would you like for me to?"

Max sat and pondered that. With some work he reached back to the memories he had there at the end of his life. Like a baseball bat across the back of his head, they smacked into him. He shuddered. "I dunno," he admitted, scratching at his forehead through a wince. "When I - died," he said, marveling at the word, "I couldn't even get near people without worryin' 'bout fryin' 'em. It... ****ing sucked. Maybe hell is better."

He looked over his shoulder, through the bars of his cage and into the fiery distance. "Well. That decides it." The blonde stood and Maxwell nodded in acceptance, waiting to be hauled off to some eternal torment. "Use this chance wisely, little man. Few people get a do-over." And then Max's form discorporated and was sent surging through planes of reality... Back into his mortal body.

Lightning struck the nondescript gravesite where Maxwell Dillon's murderers had dumped his corpse. Dirt was flung thirty feet into the sky from the newly carved crater. Steam rolled up and ozone flavored the air. At the heart of the lightning-blasted hole, Max gasped for breath. Struggling into a seated position, he looked at his hands, at the earth around him, at the sky, then the pain in his body nearly made him black out. "****. Couldn't'a let me stay dead?" he groaned.

Ben Gaveedra/Shatterstar

Indecision was the enemy. It could spell the difference between life and death, victory or defeat. A micro-second of hesitation or doubt. That's all it took. Shatterstar had been a nemesis of that trait since infancy; had all but eradicated it from his mind.

Or, so he thought.

"Excuse me, sir, do you need some help?" Ben blinked. Ten minutes, he realized, dumbfounded by that truth. He'd been wandering like a scared animal for ten minutes through the rambling Manhattan florist. Shatterstar shook the shock of it off and, turning, easily plucked his lips into a signature, debonair smile. He rubbed the back of his neck, a touch embarrassed, with one hand while the shop worker frowned at him.

"Erm. Yes, actually. I- Well, I can't decide." Ben looked up at the woman timidly. This was all so strange, and a prideful wedge of him wanted to spurn the help and do this himself. But it was too important. This was too important. The worker smiled sympathetically. "Dude, don't sweat it. I help thirty guys like you a day. Now. Who's the lucky recipient?"

Shatterstar turned to admire a series of arrangements, fiddling absently with the petals of a flower. The worker batted his hand away scornfully, he flashed an apologetic smile and promptly stuffed both hands in his pockets. "The most beautiful man in the world," Ben admitted with a mild shrug. The worker's crispness melted. She moved behind the nearest counter and deftly knotted her hair in a bun. "Well? Tell me about him."

The mutant chuckled, slowly wandering along the aisle while he thought. "Where to begin?" But, Ben did find somewhere to begin and the more he put his feelings into words, the easier they came out. He verbally worked through the ups and down in the relationship, and came to a stop, leaning his back against the counter, staring wistfully up at hanging planters of flowers. "That's why this is so important... And hard. I just want to pick the right one."

The worker tapped his shoulder. Shatterstar looked back to see her dabbing at her eyes with a tissue with one hand, and with the other gesturing at a bouquet of flower. Ones she'd spent the entire time Ben was talking arranging, using his heartfelt confession as a guiding string for each selection and position. Shatterstar's mouth fell open. "It's... It's perfect," he whispered. And it was. Not only was Julio distilled perfectly in the arrangement, but it wasn't just any Julio - it was Julio as Shatterstar saw him.

He reached over the counter with inhuman strength and dexterity and snatched the florist, pulling her safely over it and into a fierce embrace.

Jeanne-Marie Beaubier/Aurora

The alarm blared and red lights flashed. Jeanne-Marie pursed her lips, trying (and failing) to shrug off the way it boiled through her notoriously shallow reservoirs of patience. She latched her final boot into place and stood, striding for the nearest airlock.

"Will you stop?!" She finally hissed at the alarm right over the chamber's door. "I get it! I'm going!" Aurora managed to conquer the urge to pulverize the speaker and bulb with a blast of light. Fortunately, when the airlock's door hissed to a sealed close behind her, it cut off most of the sound. At the last, Jeanne-Marie tucked her hair into a helm that anchored into place against the collar of her AFSS suit.

She pressed the clear button. The outer door rolled open, yawning onto the vacuum of space. Jeanne-Marie let the pull yank her out of the station and into oblivion. Correcting her trajectory, she snatched control of her propulsion and soared like a meteor toward her dispatch location. As she flew, Aurora's comm. link, built into her helm, came to life.

"Now, are you sure that you can manage this? Without Northstar, I mean?" the liaison back at the station asked. Jeanne-Marie could tell he was trying very hard to not sound patronizing, and that made it ten times worse. She scowled and poured on the speed. Down below, in the upper limits of the atmosphere of the Earth, a speck was quickly growing in size. "I don't have a choice," she pointed out frostily, "and yes. I can."

Far below in New York City during a fight of the Avengers, the green-skinned creature called "Abomination" had been hit into orbit by a blow from Thor. Jeanne-Marie's mission was a very simple one: hit him back. She rocketed to position with precious seconds to spare and, pulling hard on her stores of energy, she began to shimmer, then radiate a near-blinding, white/blue light.

Abomination's body, sizzling from breaking through the different layers of the atmosphere, finally ejected into empty space, spiraling wildly toward her. Aurora pulled back one arm and her radiance reached entirely new levels. With a bellow, she lashed out, putting her whole body behind a furious haymaker that connected with the chest of Abomination. There was a burst like a miniature supernova and the creature was sent like a bullet back from whence he came.

In the quiet aftermath of the collision, comm.'s fizzed and sputtered, reconnecting through the fading haze of expelled energy. "Well done, Aurora. I stand corrected." Jeanne-Marie, though, floated limply in the void. Didn't stop her from smirking. "You're damn right," she said. "Summon my brother to come collect me. I am going to pass out now."

And she did.