(no subject)

[villainized]

Who: Lucifer and OPEN
What: Exploring the town
When: Day 48, all day
Where: Anywhere



If he ever intends to find the source of his vessel’s stability, Lucifer knows that he must thoroughly search the town and its surrounding environs. Not so long ago, he had demons to handle the tedious tasks with which he had neither the time nor the inclination to occupy himself. But the few that are here are unreliable, uppity, and he hasn’t the patience to deal with them. Now, like ever, he has only himself upon whom to rely, and so it is he who searches through the abandoned buildings for signs that might lead him to the answers he seeks.

The town proper. The beach beyond it. The lighthouse. The forest. This world is open to him, and he goes where he wills.

There are, of course, a few points of special interest, and before the day is done, he will have sought them out. But he has time to spare, and fully intends to go wherever whim and curiosity take him.

[ OOC: So Lucifer’s exploring. He’s not going to be walking into anyone’s house uninvited, but he will be going into all of the other buildings and snooping around at various locations throughout the town. Feel free to run into him somewhere! ]

Comments

[greenisnteasy]

Bruce is in the clinic updating his records, and it's so glamorous. He's separating out the people who've disappeared from the people who are still here, and then he thinks he's going to have to ask for another roll call or something. Really there needs to be someone officially in charge of that. Maybe he should talk to Stane, only he's probably an evil patsy and Bruce should punch him in the gut instead, except Bruce doesn't punch people. So it's better if he just doesn't talk to Stane, probably.

And this kind of circular thinking is how Bruce keeps himself entertained as he sorts files, or at least how he does it when Tony's not around. He probably could pass this off on some of his proteges, but there's definitely some naughty Latin on some of these files in his and Tony's handwriting. Bruce figures he'd better do it himself.

[villainized]

While some decisions are made at random, the one Lucifer makes to visit the clinic is deliberate. In this place, he knows, the man who turns into a large, green version of himself spends a great deal of time and he means to speak with him. Initially, he’d thought him nothing but an ordinary human. Now that he’s seen him as something else, some manner of creature he’s never encountered – and what has he, the greatest of his father’s angels, never before seen? – he wants to know more.

He will know more. One way or another.

Despite his feelings about the race in general, it’s with an expression of polite amiability that he enters the clinic, walking as would any pathetic human. He even gives the man a smile when he sees him, as though he was simply another one of his fellows.

“The owner of this establishment, I presume?” is Lucifer’s version of a greeting, vaguely friendly and almost warm. Much, he imagines, as anyone would sound when greeting a stranger for whom they hold no malice.

[greenisnteasy]

In the hullabaloo surrounding the hallucinogens and everything, he'd missed the PSA about how Lucifer is... Lucifer. With all the recent arrivals that Bruce has been trying to place, he isn't too bothered by not recognizing him either. He seems nice enough, a little formal but maybe he's just being silly. Nothing wrong with that. Bruce smiles and puts the folder in his hand down, making some room in front of him on the table.

"I don't think anyone really owns anything in this place, but I am a doctor. I live here part-time." He leans back in his seat and waves Lucifer in.

"Can I help you?"

[primogen_vampirate]

As was her wont, Mina gravitated to the docks at night. She'd long ago given up on trying to burn off the Fae and she'd lost her desire to go swimming. But there was still something about the water that calming. It was home.

Not that Mina had ever had much of a home. Perhaps she was simply getting sentimental in her old age.

That evening, she sat on the edge of the dock, her shoes and blazer neatly tucked away beside her. She'd rolled her shirt sleeves up, revealing the P-shaped scar on her left arm. One leg lazily dangled over the water, the tips of her toes just brushing against the surface as she swung her leg.

It happened that she peered out from under the brim of her fedora, spotting a figure. Oh. The one that had Pendragon twitchy. Not that she could blame him. He was a bloody liar, but he wasn't stupid.

Still. She couldn't help but wonder a little.

[villainized]

Unlike the towns and cities of the Earth he knew, the activity in this place seemed to ebb and flow with the cycle of the sun. The town was so much more active during the day, as if the townspeople expected that what horrors existed in the forests and surrounding waters would only come out at night. He certainly chose to be active once the sun had gone down, but that was both because he preferred the decrease in obvious human activity and because he simply didn’t sleep.

It was as his path took him down near the sea that Lucifer spotted the woman sitting so calmly on the dock, and it was the novelty of the sight that drew him closer. Some, it seemed, weren’t so afraid of the dark after all.

“This is the part where I remark on the pleasantness of the evening, isn’t it?” His voice was cool, the tone mildly friendly, as he stopped a short distance away. Far enough to speak at a conversational level, not so close as to breach the boundaries of her personal space. “I think that’s how the little ritual goes.”

[primogen_vampirate]

With two fingers, she flicked up the brim of her fedora. Courtesy certainly dictated that much. Yet, at the same time, she shook her head a little bit. "I don't thinks so," she replied. "As this isn't a speakeasy and I rather doubt you're trying to...what was the phrase? 'Pick me up.'"

Although the irony of it was a bit laughable. After all, Mina had been called a 'devil worshiper' far too many times throughout the course of her unlife. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. But the clerics of the Lancae Sanctum were not exactly known for being truthful. It was much more convenient to tell stories.

"You know," she said, leaning back against one of the pilings, "I've been told you're rather dangerous." She didn't sound particularly concerned. Conversational, really. Because she saw an immense opportunity at the moment. A dangerous gambit, perhaps. But really, what did Mina have to lose at this point?

Church?

[bostonhowler]

Brigid finds herself gravitating toward the church again. Her fingers run over the uneven knots of the make-shift rosary that she'd made. It isn't perfect, and it isn't even close to being right, but having it is comforting.

She walks in, curtsies and then slides into a pew. Her head bows and she begins the rosary.

Her recitation is interrupted when a certain smell wafts in her direction. Brigid raises her head, looking around. It's the smell of otherness that she remembers from St. Raphael.

"St. Raphael?" She whispers the name cautiously, hoping she hasn't disturbed him.

you bet!

[villainized]

There’s something about churches that both amuse and infuriate him: humans build them to worship his father, like God is so short-sighted that he can only be found in a construct of human design. Of course now, Lucifer wonders if perhaps he is as short-sighted and foolish as the humans seem to believe him to be. But then, there’s so much bad blood under the bridge that it’s hard to think of his creator in anything approaching neutrality.

The girl’s voice reaches him without difficulty as he steps forward into the church, and Lucifer smiles, amused instead of offended, though of course it might go either way.

“Right family, wrong archangel,” he corrects her, moving forward so that she can see him from the periphery of her vision. “He is my younger brother. My name is Lucifer.”

Awesome

[bostonhowler]

She twists so that she can see him more fully. There's respect and awe in her posture, but not fear and terror. She lowers her eyes in respect and goes to her knees.

"St. Lucifer." Brigid murmurs. It's the only title that seems appropriate for him. "I didn't mean to disturb you, my apologies."

Her fingers still run over the homemade rosary in her hands in a steady cadence. Red hair falls out of it's clip and brushes her face, but she doesn't move.

[servingmichael]

Raphael was walking a slow path around the the porch around the lantern room, his fingertips trailing over the railing. He almost gives off an air of boredom, he head ducked slightly as he walks, but his feet are too deliberately placed, movements too purposeful, both relaxed and controlled.

He wonders how long it will take The Lightbringer to show up at the lighthouse, assuming it will only be a matter of time. It's almost a dare to come find him, a challenge to what they will each claim as theirs - and he doesn't, after all this time know Lucifer well enough to guess. But it's a big tower of light, so surely as some point, he thinks, Lucifer will show up.

And yet - he's not actually in the mood for a fight. Perhaps he is simply bored.

[villainized]

"That's a little trite even for you, little brother."

He makes no production of his arrival, simply settling into a corner as though he's been there all along. Arms folded over his chest, expression set into cool neutrality, he looks at Raphael with more patience than perhaps he should, considering the long eons of bad blood that stretch between them. Of course Raphael would seek him again. This isn't Earth or Heaven. All bets, as the humans say, are off.

Glancing away, he gestures to the room with a quick flick of his eyes. "What do you want? I assume it's something, else you wouldn't have bothered with this."

[servingmichael]

"Trite but to the point." Once Lucifer is there, Raphael continues his pacing just long enough to put him a polite distance from his brother, hands folded loosely behind his back - he wasn't hiding anything, it was simply what he found comfortable.

"I wasn't aware a cease fire meant ignoring each other's existence." Gabriel may have chose to leave, and he assumes Lucifer has grown used to being without his brothers, but Raphael isn't. And of the two archangels, the sting of Gabriel's abandonment is more fresh. Not that Raphael didn't have his own agenda, but he still wasn't used to being on his own.

If he allowed himself to examine the emotion he so ruthlessly suppressed, he was frightened by it. And what little brother doesn't seek out an elder one when they are frightened?

"Have you found anything interesting?"

[thezerothlaw]

Daneel is in the cemetary of the churchyard, looking at graves both fresh and old, and considering the uncomfortable realities of death. Nothing about it a comfortable thought process, but he feels obliged to push himself through it.

He leans on an old tombstone for support, lost in though.

[villainized]

Since being released from his cage, Lucifer has encountered the machines of the humans. Automobiles. Airplanes. Trains. Computers and cellular phones. But he has yet to encounter robotics, and certainly nothing as sophisticated as Daneel.

When he steps out into the cemetery, he thinks for a moment that he sees yet another human. One more hairless ape underfoot and in the way. But there’s a smell in the air that has never accompanied the presence of a human before, and there’s an energy, a sort of electric tension in the air, that he never senses from mortals. Curious, he moves to the stranger’s side, appearing next to him as though he’s been there all along.

“Do you know the one buried here?”

[thezerothlaw]

Though perhaps surprised by the stranger's sudden appearance, Daneel shows no sign of it. He turns to Lucifer, his expression neutrally curious.

The nearest grave is an old one, the engraving worn and faded. "This grave was present long before I arrived," he says, without looking at it. "I was not acquainted with him, nor do I know of anyone here who was."

And it's still troubling in a vague way, though humans die and that is normal.

[goodluckkobra]

Kobra had decided to go on his own search. His cigarette stash is depressingly empty and this place is hard enough with the cigarettes. It's his last vice, as far as he's concerned, and he's allowed to keep it.

It's outside the grocery story that he spots Lucifer. Loki number two--he'd taken to calling the guy that because he fucked the other Loki first--had warned them about the guy, right? As a good little newly-converted pagan, he should probably listen, but his heart's not really in that and he can't be more than just kind of alright.

"Hey! Satan!"

[villainized]

In Lucifer’s experience, there are two types of people who would call him Satan. Those who don’t believe him to be who he is, and those who believe themselves somehow capable of escaping his wrath should it choose to visit it upon them. Turning to assess the source of this particular instance, his initial thought is that this one’s leaning more toward the former than the latter.

It takes a second, humans all look the same to him, but after thinking about it, he realizes that he’s seen him before. An angry little man promising to burn the world if his woman was not returned to him.

“Yes?” Between one second and the next, Lucifer crosses the distance between them, suddenly there only a handful of feet away. “What is it?"

[goodluckkobra]

"Just saying hello, man." Kobra grins. He's still a little struck by all this magic gods bullshit. All sorts of fucked up things go on where he's from, but they all have technological explanations. It's all science-y shit and, yeah, that may as well be magic, but it's not.

About the fastest way to get him interested in something is to warn him off of it. It's how he wound up with the first Loki to begin with. "You seen any smokes around? My search isn't going so great so far."

[hung_garian]

Avoiding conflict's recently become one of Gabriel's main priorities, what with two other archangels here, but avoiding conflict doesn't have to mean avoiding Lucifer entirely. Admittedly the difference between their points of view on issues such as humans, and the way their last face-to-face meeting turned out, both mean that even a conversation meant to be civil could go south pretty quickly, but they're still brothers. It seems a shame not to talk at all when they've got an opportunity like this, without an impending Apocalypse and with a truce in place. And, which is the deciding factor in this, Gabriel's missed him.

He lurks around for a little while, just watching (and half-trying to talk himself down, because he shouldn't be risking pissing Lucifer off and breaking the truce just for the sake of a chat). Lucifer will probably notice him: he's not making any particular effort to hide himself. Before long, though, he competely fails to talk himself out of it, and makes his presence even more obvious - but still at enough of a distance to make a totally undignified exit if necessary, because love is one thing, but trust is another entirely.

"Settling in alright?"

[villainized]

Although he feels the slight tingle of Gabriel’s presence, Lucifer does not act on it. Or acknowledge it in any way. That his brothers are keeping him under their watchful eye comes as no surprise to him. In fact, he expects it. Truce or no, the town is crawling with humans and they are ever so protective of their little pets.

He lets him come to it in his own time, just as he did once before. This time there are no banquets of gods, no painfully transparent deceptions. Just the two of them. And nary an archangel’s blade to be seen.

For however long that lasts.

“Why do you ask questions when you already know the answers?” he asks, turning to face him but not taking a step in his direction. “I would have thought your little collection of humans would have been keeping me under surveillance.”

[hung_garian]

"Course they aren't. On a leash, remember? They're staying well away."

Or at least he assumes they are, since the village is still standing. For his part, he doesn't move towards Lucifer either. He feels as if he should, to show he's not scared if for no other reason, but then again, he is a bit scared, and for the time being bravado takes a back seat to self-preservation.

"Not that they'd be interested anyway. No fire or brimstone or even moustache-twirling - must be losing your touch. And as it happens, I asked because it's a little more polite than going through your trash or bugging your phone line. So, assuming that I haven't got my squishy little human spies to write me hourly reports on your progress and might actually be interested in an answer -- how're you settling in?"

[rigging]

He has no idea what he's doing, really. Looking for stuff to draw? He's been itching to do it for a while, and for that, he needs to be a place where he can be alone. The library is usually a pretty decent place for that sort of thing, since at most he's only ever seen like, two people there. He's flopped out on the floor in one of the aisles, sketching idly, and when he hits a block, he leaves his stuff on the ground and walks around the books, running his fingers along the spines.

Looks like it used to be a schoolhouse, which is pretty cool. He's not really expecting anybody to be in here, though, so he's not paying attention, humming to himself as he looks through some of the dustier books on the shelves.

[villainized]

Jesse isn’t alone, though for a time Lucifer is content to let him operate under that assumption. There are few reasons for him to engage the human population on his own and the truce he’s struck with Gabriel hangs heavily over what interactions with them he has. With his lack of patience and occasionally hair-trigger temper, he’s found it easier simply to avoid them than to have to actively avoid slaughtering the lot of them.

But this one seems inclined to remain in the library. When he begins exploring the shelves, Lucifer steps out from a nearby doorway, hands tucked in his pockets. It’s a show of relaxation and a visible lack of a threat. Not that he needs weapons, of course, but the humans probably don’t immediately realize that.

“Looking for something?”

[foundacause]

Meg knows lying low at the house is the best chance of staying alive in terms of avoiding Lucifer and Crowley, but there is only so long Meg can stare at the same four walls before she'll start going insane - and she refuses to become a ukulele obsessed weirdo who tortures innocent people with 'Three Blind Mice' all day, every day. She's been on the receiving end, it's not pretty, the poor guy is lucky to still be alive.

Sometimes she just needs to get out of the house and enjoy the fresh air. And hey, she might as well make the most of it because the way things are looking, if she ever gets back to her page on the calendar then she's going to be with Crowley downstairs for a long time.

Typical really, that one of the two people she wants to avoid is the one person she runs into. Damn. She could flee, but there would be little point in that. If he wanted, he could wipe her out of existence before she could even turn.

"... Enjoying the view?"

[villainized]

He hasn't seen hide nor hair of the town's resident demons since speaking to them both over the wrist device, but Lucifer knows that they're still here. Having no use for them, and recognizing that they have no desire to interact with him, he hasn't sought them out. There was simply no need.

That he encounters Meg now isn't altogether surprising, though he silently applauds the fact that she doesn't run. The truce exists to protect the humans, not the demons, and as he is responsible for their existence, Lucifer would accept no attempt by anyone to tell him that he could not exterminate them should he choose to do so. Surely Meg, in her association with the humans and angels, knows this. And yet she faces him.

It would almost make him proud, if he gave a damn.

"Of a dilapidated human town?" He shakes his head. "Not particularly. Should I assume that you are?"