pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name

[redfive_wizard]

Characters: Lucifer Morningstar and Dairine Callahan
Rating: PG-13
Time Period: Modern Day
Location: The castle grounds, though fairly far from the castle
Relative Date: Sometime not too far into the dinosaur plot, but after this
Status: Closed

Comments

[2_winged_angel]

Lucifer glanced at the girl, raised an eyebrow, and back to his 'guest'. Death threats were a trifle crude as far as intimidation tactics went, but if she had the resolve to act upon them, she might be useful later on. He resolved to test her on the matter at some point, if circumstances should be such that he continued his acquaintance with her

[2_winged_angel]

Lucifer nodded, and stepped towards the circle, gesturing towards Dairine to do likewise.

"If you would care to join me, then," he said, holding out his hand to her, his face betraying no particular emotion, "I suggest you stay in direct physical contact with me at least until we arrive. The journey is likely to be... hectic."

[redfive_wizard]

Dairine listened to the explanation with interest. It made sense. And it was a really good idea. Not one she would have come up with, for a number of reasons, but she had to admire it, at least a little bit.

She took "Sam's" hand without any discernible hesitation. She'd had It inside her head, after all. This wasn't going to be an issue.

With the other arm, she held Spot close to her body. She had no idea what this sort of jump was going to be like, but it would probably not be what she was used to, which meant that it probably wouldn't be that pretty. She didn't want to risk losing Spot along with her lunch.

[2_winged_angel]

Lucifer led the girl by the hand towards the circle of blood on the ground. He was mildly impressed by her adaptability; he had known she would be shocked and upset by his animal sacrifice - indeed, that was a part of the reason why he did so so abruptly - and had wanted to see how well she would be able to recover from the shock and upset and take advantage of the situation. Honestly, she was doing quite well. There was promise in this one. She showed signs of moral flexibility

[redfive_wizard]

It wasn't like normal transport spells that she'd felt before, but that might just have been due to the fact that it didn't work. Well, it worked to the level that a spell always works, but not to the level of a spell working and being useful.

She fell back onto the grass, making sure to toss Spot a bit away so that he wasn't pummeled by any stray limbs. She lay there for a few seconds, winded, then sat up. Well, she thought brightly, At least I'm not throwing up.

But on the other hand, this was sort of scary. If even the Lone Power couldn't get out of here... Well, maybe it was just a weak shadow of It, or something like that. Still... She shivered.

Then she looked at It, trying to figure out what to say. For the moment, she settled for, "Well," figuring that It'd start talking soon enough.

[2_winged_angel]

"Quite," Lucifer grunted, not, for the moment, disentangling himself from the girl, who was for the moment more or less sitting in his lap. He propped himself up by his arms and surveyed the situation.

Belzephor the Wretched lay face-down in the grass some twenty feet away, still partly covered in blood and gore, but very unambiguously and physically present in the here and now. He also seemed more dazed by the transition than the other two had been. The circle from which he had been flung, and the doorway out of here which it represented was no more. On the up side, the otherworldly stench it brought with it was fast-fading.

He grimaced faintly, curling his lip with distaste. "And now we know that this barrier exists between worlds, as well as within this one. One must give our captor some credit for thoroughness, I suppose."

[redfive_wizard]

"Yeah," Dairine said. "That's one way to put it."

She stood up and looked at Belzephor. "So he's stuck here now, too?" she said. It came out as a question, though she'd meant it more as a statement. It was quite clear that he'd become more than just the construct he'd been earlier.

She went over to Spot and picked him up, checking to make sure he was okay. He didn't look too impressed about the whole situation. They were clearly going to have to have a long conversation about this in the near future.

[2_winged_angel]

"So it would appear." Lucifer said, standing up and brushing himself off. "Who knows if it will prove to be significant or not, but it does at least seem to indicate that it's possible to come here without the intervention of our host or his helicopters." He frowned contemplatively for a moment, wondering idly about those machines; if it might be possible to hijack one of them as they dropped somebody off. Another mystery for another time.

He reached into his coat and withdrew a fresh cigarette, which he lit with a spark from his finger and took a drag from it before exhaling contemplatively. "Ah, well. To be honest, I would be almost insulted if whoever is orchestrating this inane psychodrama were sloppy enough that my very first attempt to escape were successful. There are other realms, and other means of opening ways between them. There's no reason to believe that just because he's locked the way to the most obvious one, he'll have locked the ways to all of them."

[redfive_wizard]

"I guess," Dairine said. She didn't bother mentioning that you probably couldn't get back out in one of the helicopters. She'd heard something about an attempt at that, and it had failed, though she wasn't exactly sure how. Maybe they'd just been sloppy, but probably it had to do with the border again. It was like one of those traps with the spikes. It was easy to go past them going in, but a lot harder to get out without impaling yourself.

"But I think it would be even sloppier to lock just some dimensions and not all of them." She was thinking of it all in terms of alternate dimensions and realities, which was a good enough approximation at least for the time being. She'd be doing more research later, to see if she could figure anything else out.

[2_winged_angel]

"Well. That may be so." He shrugged. "If so, let us hope that he is at least that sloppy. We benefit no more from giving him too much credit than we do from giving him too little. At least now we have some sense of what to expect from that search

[redfive_wizard]

Dairine considered telling Belzephor that she'd had nothing to do with this, but in the end left the protests off as unnecessary. It was, unfortunately, pretty clear who was running things around here.

It was also clear that, at least for the moment, Sam was stumped, and if this wasn't going to be a quick get out of jail free card, then there was no use in her hanging around further. She had things to sort out, and hanging around the Lone Power wasn't going to help with that.

"Well," she said again, "This has been fun."

She was still playing her cards close to the chest, but she found that it was a lot harder to say she was leaving without formalities to fall back on.

"We should probably exchange numbers."

She was offering her number to the Lone Power. This was a first.

[2_winged_angel]

"Hm. Yes, I suppose that would be prudent. I hope that I don't need to waste my time enumerating the reasons why it would be foolish of you to pass it around. I have no interest in fielding calls from..." he waved his hand about, vaguely, "...anyone, honestly."

He extracted the necessary information from the device, after a bit of rummaging around inside of its works, and received hers as well.

"I'm aware of the importance that you place on oaths," he said offhandedly as he worked. "and it is one thing that you and I have in common. A deal is a deal, if you will." He looked up from the machine, peering directly into her eyes. "If you will reciprocate, then I swear this oath to you: I will share with you any pertinent information pertaining to means of escape from this prison that I may come across, if you will do likewise for me."

[redfive_wizard]

Well, there it was then. His statement stopped her train of thought dead for a few seconds. She covered this up by pulling out her own phone and fiddling with it, putting in his number and giving him hers.

She thought, vaguely, about a time when good and evil had been more clear cut. Back then, she wouldn't have made a deal with Darth Vader. There was absolutely no way.

But now, though.... She had to weigh the consequences, and she wanted time to do that, but there wasn't time. What it came down to, though, was that she wanted to get out of here, and if that meant working with the Lone One, at least a little bit, then she just might have to. If that was what it took to get everyone out, then someone was going to have to do it.

"All right," she said. "Agreed."

She hoped she wasn't making a huge mistake.

[2_winged_angel]

"Good." He placed the device back into his jacket's inner pocket

[redfive_wizard]

Dairine rolled her eyes at the demon's exit. She'd meant what she'd said earlier. She had much bigger things to worry about than him, as became even more clear when he splashed back down to the earth.

Still, she did take Sam's warnings into consideration. Not that she wasn't already concerned about sleeping. She'd put up a simple spell to let her know if someone barged into her room. Of course that had become slightly more complicated when Vala had moved in, but Vala also provided an extra layer of security, which was nice.

Nevertheless.

"Yeah," she said. "I don't think he'll be too much of a problem."

That, at least, felt normal. A confrontation with the Lone One was never complete without some sort of flippancy on her part.

[2_winged_angel]

"Good, then," he replied. And it was. She was, at least for the moment, an asset to him, and one he didn't care to see out of the picture for however long the metaphysics of this place took to ressurrect one.

"That would seem to conclude our business for the moment." He glanced down at the slaughtered animal, which even now seemed to be gathering flies. "And I think I'll leave this as is. Since you're so concerned with these animals' well-being, I'm sure you'll appreciate my leaving some hungry scavenger a free meal."

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he began to amble away. "Be seeing you, then... Neighbor," he said over his shoulder.