Church of St. Sebastian, Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, Saturday afternoon
At Sebastian's command, Raven had -- unwillingly, but quite literally -- unleashed hell.
Trigon had destroyed his own dimension, sacrificing it to give him the power to free himself and corrupt his daughter. His death hadn't changed that. Thousands of worlds had burned, billions of souls had died, and all that dwelled there now were demons, bereft of their master.
They had a new master now -- Sebastian Blood. And Raven was the portal from their world to this one. Her power tore a hole between dimensions, and now they poured out of her, howling in blood-thirsty rage.
Anakin
"Kriffing wonderful," Anakin snarled, lightsaber out to take on the nearest demon.
Demons
These ones didn't breathe fire, at least? They were all claws and horns and teeth, and they would be delighted to try to eat Anakin. At least, that's what the one swooping down on him intended.
Anakin
Anakin was planning on ending that dream by shoving his lightsaber down the poor thing's throat instead.
Not nice, Anakin.
Demons
Well, that would put an end to its bloodthirsty glee. But it did its best to snap its jaws shut as it died, trying to take the lightsaber -- and Anakin's hand -- along with it.
Anakin
"That's mine," Anakin retorted, using the Force to increase his speed slightly and retrieving his lightsaber unscathed. "I've already lost a hand, thanks."
Dinah
"I am so sick of these guys."
Dinah snarled and threw blast of TK at them, then yelled out, "Someone wake her up now!"
Demons
They were slightly different from the last ones? Cousins, of a sort?
Her TK flung several of the demons back, but there were more where they came from. And eventually Dinah would get tired, wouldn't she?
Dinah
Eventually.
But until then, there was always the Canary Cry.
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee--!"
Tahiri
"It always does come down to this, doesn't it?" Tahiri said with a sigh. She could complain, but she could do something about it at the same time, and was; her lightsaber was in her hand, the golden-yellow blade humming to life with a snap-hiss. "Really, the company I keep."
Again, really not complaining.
Demons
A demon swooped down, thinking it would test its tough skin against the glowing blade. Surely a wee girl couldn't hurt a big bad demon, right?
Riiiiiight.
Tahiri
Had these demons really not learned better than to underestimate Shanie's wee girls by now? Their loss.
Tahiri gathered the Force and sprang, leaping up with her lightsaber extended to meet the demon mid-swoop. No need to drag this out, was there?
Bobby
"Oh, well, now it really is a party," Bobby quipped. "Let's dance."
Jono
As the demons came and the cultists began to scatter, Jonothon found himself at least able to pull himself to his feet. It was a wobbly transition, to say the least. Projecting and amplifying pain the way that he had been to large numbers of people at once was tiring, and there were more than a couple who had decided to muscle on through in that swarm of theirs with their blades and their boots regardless of the pain.
Blind subservience was a terrifying thing.
//But you bastards,// he said, wobbling in place and narrowing his eyes up at the demons, //you, I have nothing against burning.//
Let him be the monster, just this once. It was Jonothon who attacked the demons first this time, letting a blast of fire tear through the air toward any that passed by him closely enough for a clean shot.
Demons
The demons eventually stopped flying out of Raven wtf, and her arms fell back to her sides as she awaited another command from Sebastian. But in the meantime, there were plenty of demons to go around, dragging cultists to their deaths and attacking those from Fandom. Only Sebastian and Raven and a dozen of the cultists remained untouched.
Sebastian
Sebastian didn't seem to mind that his worshipers were getting attacked by the demons. "They are killing those who do not have true faith in the Church of Blood," he declared. "Believe and you will be spared!"
Karla
"No!" Karla's Craft-enhanced voice rang out over the chaos. "He lies! He doesn't control them! It's not your faith that will protect you, and it sure as Hell isn't Brother Blood! It's blind random chance and your luck can't hold forever! Run!"
Okay, Karla couldn't be entirely sure that was true. But from what she was seeing and what she knew of Sebastian, she thought the odds were good.
Sebastian
The cultists were in chaos, many running for their lives, others accepting their fate with mindless devotion.
"You should be running," Sebastian sneered at Karla. "They'll take you, too."
Karla
Karla barely gave the swooping demons a second glance. "They can try, you mean. They're not much of a threat to someone with actual power." She gave him a haughty glare. "I can understand why you'd be concerned, though. I would be, too, if I had to suck on a teat for whatever dregs of power I could get."
Now that Trigon was dead, she might not have the same immunity from the demons as she'd had before. She was working on caring about that, she really was. But, really, wasn't that what shields were for?
Sebastian
"I am tired of your voice, harpy," Sebastian said. "And now I will silence it."
He called upon Raven's powers, using them to batter against Karla's mind, seeking out something, anything to use against her, any fear he could use or hope he could abuse.
Karla
"It'll take more of a man than you to do, puppy," Karla returned.
Her mental shields slammed up as he began his assault on her mind, his mental touch leaving oily tracks wherever it went. But she wasn't quite quick enough and Sebastian managed to snatch the briefest of images from her thoughts.
The image of Warren, bloodied and beaten, dangling from the claws of of a demon...
Sebastian
Sebastian grinned; it was easy to identify Warren in the chaos around them due to the wings. "You care for that one, do you?" he said. "I'll gut him just to savor the expression on your face."
Karla
Karla stepped between them, trying to break line of sight. "And I'll flay you alive and wear your skin as a cloak," she snapped, her eyes going slightly wide with the idea that Sebastian knew how much Warren meant to her.
Sebastian
"You will not," Sebastian corrected her. "You'll do exactly what I say or I'll kill him."
Karla"I'll do no such thing," Karla said, taking a threatening step or two closer. "Though I'll add that to the list of things I'm going to make you regret before I'm done."
Sebastian
Sebastian pointed at Warren. "Bring that one to me!" he ordered the demons. "I command it!" Two of the demons obeyed, chasing after Warren, grabbing hold of his arms and dragging him back to where Sebastian and Karla stood.
"Now kneel," Sebastian ordered Karla. "Kneel or they'll tear him apart."
Warren
Warren had been certain that he was going to be dead meat, the moment the first of the demons had caught up to him. By the time there were two, by the time they'd wrestled him back to the ground, why he wasn't dead yet was starting to make some vague sort of sense.
A twisted sort of sense. But still sense.
He struggled, for all the good that it was doing, trying for the life of him to spread his wings to throw the demons off of himself.
"Karla, don't!"
The way he was seeing it, he'd been caught. He was a dead man standing anyhow.
Karla
"Warren!"
Karla looked from her boyfriend to the demons standing ready to tear him apart--then over to a blank-faced Raven, standing like an open door to Hell--and knew what she had to do.
Her knees hit the ground. "Don't," she whispered. "Please don't hurt him."
She crept forward until she was almost touching him, raising her hands in supplication. "Please. I beg you. If there's anything of good or mercy in you, let him go."
Sebastian
"Not so powerful now, are you?" Sebastian gloated, enjoying Karla's submission far too much. "I think you should always remain on your knees. You're so much nicer when you're begging."
Warren
The begging was tearing at his heart. On his list of things that Warren never wanted to see, there was Karla, prostrating herself on her knees in front of that... that...
... Skinny, whiny, annoying little jerk.
"Get up," he urged her, struggling a little more. Because you never knew, right? Maybe this time it would actually work against the wall of dual demonic muscle that he was being held in place between.
Karla
Karla turned her head slightly to look into Warren's eyes. "Forgive me," she whispered. "Please."
And then before Sebastian could to anything more than blink, Karla had whirled back around and thrust her hands into his abdomen. "You're a stupid bastard, you know that?" she asked, her left fist clenching around Raven's chakra. The nails of her right hand was raking down the lining of his stomach, her snake-tooth leaving a burning line of agony where it went. "But thanks for letting me get close to you."
Then she was standing, her right hand still pumping venom into him, and sent Raven's chakra sailing though the air. "Sookie!" she screamed into the din. "Catch!"
Sebastian
Sebastian doubled over, howling in pain as Karla stuck her hand into his stomach. The poison made the pain worse, but the healing he'd stolen from Raven's blood would ensure it didn't kill him.
He twisted his head toward the demons who held Warren. "Kill him!" he shouted. And the demons obeyed, raking claws across down Warren's chest, ripping him open from throat to groin. They dropped his bleeding body to the ground, thinking their work finished.
Warren
If Warren had been asked that morning just how he was intending to spend today, he probably would have said something like 'studying,' or 'going over finances at The Boards' or possibly just 'spending time with Karla.'
Note how 'being gutted like a deer' was not anywhere on that list?
And yet, there he was, laying in a heap on the ground in his own little desperate world of agony, well aware that most anyone else would be dead right now. He found himself wishing, momentarily, that he was anyone else. Because then he either wouldn't be in this situation at all, or at the very least, the pain would be over and he wouldn't have to worry about things like holding his insides in while blood ran out of him in pulsing gouts through shredded, claw-torn flesh.
His innate genetic abilities had re-grown his wings, and had knit the shattered, hollow bones in most of his body, before. Suddenly, he found himself wondering, terrified, if this was going to be too much for him. He had a fairly impressive mutant healing factor. But he didn't think that he could come back from dead, if he bled out or asphyxiated before his flesh could knit.
He passed out, bogged down by shock, blood loss, want of air, the effort that his body was making to piece itself back together again, and pain, before he could think too hard about any of it. Today, the blackness was a mercy.
Karla
"Warren!" Karla screamed, agony in her voice. Oh, Darkness, no, she hadn't thought that they'd do something like this. Mother Night, Mother Night, Mother Night, he was so pale and still.
She blasted at Sebastian with more Sapphire, not even looking to hurt him--though she wouldn't shed a tear if she did--but to simply get him away. Then she turned and dove for Warren's crumpled figure. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I love you," she babbled while her hands glowed blue. The stomach acid on them burned, but she barely noticed, using Craft to try to help Heal him. She wasn't sure what his healing factor was doing or even if it was still working, but she wasn't going to stand by while he bled out here in the church.
Bobby
"No!" Bobby screamed as he saw Warren fall. This couldn't be happening, it wasn't- it wasn't fair-
his vision blurred, a cold haze of fury settling over him as memories of the last few weeks bubbled to the surface. Underground tunnels full of broken bodies, the other Warren's crumpled, bleeding wings, Warren lying in a hospital bed without his wings, the plane exploding...
This wasn't the same Warren, and these guys weren't the Marauders, or Freedom Force, or the Right, but it didn't matter, he was just so fucking sick of all of them.
"Fuck all of you!" he snarled, letting loose a blast of ice, freezing solid anyone unfortunate enough to be in his line of fire.
Unfortunately for Bobby, a temperature drop as severe and quickly as the one he'd just done meant his body didn't have time to adjust, and now he was sort of frozen as well.
Sookie
Sookie saw Raven's chakra flying through the air at her, seconds after hearing her name called. With a dive to her knees, Sookie thrust her cupped hands out in front her as they started to glow gold.
She fumbled as it landed in her hands, closing them around the gem so it wouldn't fall or break or anything. And as soon as it was solidly in her hands, she ran the few feet between herself and Raven, shoving her hand against Raven's forehead and pressing the chakra into place.
Raven
As her chakra was pressed to her forehead, the wound it had left behind healed, sealing the gem back in place. Raven's eyes snapped wide open, and her expression turned to one of displeasure. "Demons!" she snarled, angry but not out of control. "You should not have attacked my friends."
Her Soul-Self flew out of her, growing in size as it sought out all the demons and remaining cultists and pulled them back into herself.
Sebastian
The demons howled and the cultist screamed in fear, but Sebastian, after picking himself up from where Karla's power had thrown him, merely watched Raven in awe. "She's beautiful," he murmured.
His expression changed when the black talons of Raven's Soul-Self came for him as well. "Wait," he protested. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way. She was supposed to love me! Just like Mother. She was supposed to love me!"
His cries faded as he vanished into the netherverse with the rest.
Sookie
Sookie, who had started praying in stunned silence as soon as she'd seen Warren and dropped the wet nap she was using on her hands post-chakra, was running before she knew what she was doing. Bobby's grief and fury had poured through the bond, and she wasn't fast enough to slam her shields into place. She was quick enough to act on instinct, her hands glowing as she reached out to thaw Bobby's face first.
Karla
Karla had no idea what was happening on the other side of the fight. Recklessly throwing Craft into a newly-summoned Healing web, she watched as Warren's flesh stitched together with agonizing slowness. "Come on, come on," she whispered, urging his body to Heal faster.
She would exhaust herself at this rate. It didn't matter. Nothing else mattered but making sure he was all right.
Bobby
He'd promised. Promised that Bobby wasn't going to have to watch his best friend die once again but here he was lying on the floor and he wasn't moving and Bobby couldn't move either-
Except he could, now, breathing in gasps that were on the verge of becoming sobs (and he wasn't going to think about why he was breathing when the rest of him was made of ice. Mutant physiology was just plain weird, everyone knew that by now) if he didn't get ahold of himself.
"You really know how to... warm a guy's heart," he joked weakly.
Sookie
"Getting there," Sookie said softly, her bright gold hands moving down to his chest to heat him through there, too. It was taking all her restraint to be careful with him, her movements delicate in spite of the emotional turmoil she was going through.
Bobby
It wasn't too long before she'd managed to warm him up enough so that he could move again.
"Thanks," he told her. That one little word didn't really do how grateful he was justice, but time was sort of of the essence at the moment. "Needed that."
Sookie
"I know," she said, quirking a little smile at him. "Hey, you'd do the same for me. You have done the same for me," she amended quietly.
Karla
Slowly, so slowly it was almost painful in itself to watch, Warren body began slowly coming together. Karla could have cried in relief. He was still unconscious--and if he hadn't been, Karla would have used Craft to make him so--but he was no longer gushing blood onto the ground.
With crimson hands, Karla lifted his head into her lap, raining tears and kisses onto his face.
Raven
The demons and cultists were gone, but the black wings of Raven's Soul-Self still filled the room. The energy swept around those who still remained, more gently now, as Raven teleported them all away from this place.
[OOC: Preplayed with the wonderful blondecanary, furnaceface, glacial_witch, justwantsquiet, longislandiceme, not_a_parakeet, sith_happened, and weetuskenraider. NFB, but OOC is happy!]
Trigon had destroyed his own dimension, sacrificing it to give him the power to free himself and corrupt his daughter. His death hadn't changed that. Thousands of worlds had burned, billions of souls had died, and all that dwelled there now were demons, bereft of their master.
They had a new master now -- Sebastian Blood. And Raven was the portal from their world to this one. Her power tore a hole between dimensions, and now they poured out of her, howling in blood-thirsty rage.
Anakin
"Kriffing wonderful," Anakin snarled, lightsaber out to take on the nearest demon.
Demons
These ones didn't breathe fire, at least? They were all claws and horns and teeth, and they would be delighted to try to eat Anakin. At least, that's what the one swooping down on him intended.
Anakin
Anakin was planning on ending that dream by shoving his lightsaber down the poor thing's throat instead.
Not nice, Anakin.
Demons
Well, that would put an end to its bloodthirsty glee. But it did its best to snap its jaws shut as it died, trying to take the lightsaber -- and Anakin's hand -- along with it.
Anakin
"That's mine," Anakin retorted, using the Force to increase his speed slightly and retrieving his lightsaber unscathed. "I've already lost a hand, thanks."
Dinah
"I am so sick of these guys."
Dinah snarled and threw blast of TK at them, then yelled out, "Someone wake her up now!"
Demons
They were slightly different from the last ones? Cousins, of a sort?
Her TK flung several of the demons back, but there were more where they came from. And eventually Dinah would get tired, wouldn't she?
Dinah
Eventually.
But until then, there was always the Canary Cry.
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee--!"
Tahiri
"It always does come down to this, doesn't it?" Tahiri said with a sigh. She could complain, but she could do something about it at the same time, and was; her lightsaber was in her hand, the golden-yellow blade humming to life with a snap-hiss. "Really, the company I keep."
Again, really not complaining.
Demons
A demon swooped down, thinking it would test its tough skin against the glowing blade. Surely a wee girl couldn't hurt a big bad demon, right?
Riiiiiight.
Tahiri
Had these demons really not learned better than to underestimate Shanie's wee girls by now? Their loss.
Tahiri gathered the Force and sprang, leaping up with her lightsaber extended to meet the demon mid-swoop. No need to drag this out, was there?
Bobby
"Oh, well, now it really is a party," Bobby quipped. "Let's dance."
Jono
As the demons came and the cultists began to scatter, Jonothon found himself at least able to pull himself to his feet. It was a wobbly transition, to say the least. Projecting and amplifying pain the way that he had been to large numbers of people at once was tiring, and there were more than a couple who had decided to muscle on through in that swarm of theirs with their blades and their boots regardless of the pain.
Blind subservience was a terrifying thing.
//But you bastards,// he said, wobbling in place and narrowing his eyes up at the demons, //you, I have nothing against burning.//
Let him be the monster, just this once. It was Jonothon who attacked the demons first this time, letting a blast of fire tear through the air toward any that passed by him closely enough for a clean shot.
Demons
The demons eventually stopped flying out of Raven wtf, and her arms fell back to her sides as she awaited another command from Sebastian. But in the meantime, there were plenty of demons to go around, dragging cultists to their deaths and attacking those from Fandom. Only Sebastian and Raven and a dozen of the cultists remained untouched.
Sebastian
Sebastian didn't seem to mind that his worshipers were getting attacked by the demons. "They are killing those who do not have true faith in the Church of Blood," he declared. "Believe and you will be spared!"
Karla
"No!" Karla's Craft-enhanced voice rang out over the chaos. "He lies! He doesn't control them! It's not your faith that will protect you, and it sure as Hell isn't Brother Blood! It's blind random chance and your luck can't hold forever! Run!"
Okay, Karla couldn't be entirely sure that was true. But from what she was seeing and what she knew of Sebastian, she thought the odds were good.
Sebastian
The cultists were in chaos, many running for their lives, others accepting their fate with mindless devotion.
"You should be running," Sebastian sneered at Karla. "They'll take you, too."
Karla
Karla barely gave the swooping demons a second glance. "They can try, you mean. They're not much of a threat to someone with actual power." She gave him a haughty glare. "I can understand why you'd be concerned, though. I would be, too, if I had to suck on a teat for whatever dregs of power I could get."
Now that Trigon was dead, she might not have the same immunity from the demons as she'd had before. She was working on caring about that, she really was. But, really, wasn't that what shields were for?
Sebastian
"I am tired of your voice, harpy," Sebastian said. "And now I will silence it."
He called upon Raven's powers, using them to batter against Karla's mind, seeking out something, anything to use against her, any fear he could use or hope he could abuse.
Karla
"It'll take more of a man than you to do, puppy," Karla returned.
Her mental shields slammed up as he began his assault on her mind, his mental touch leaving oily tracks wherever it went. But she wasn't quite quick enough and Sebastian managed to snatch the briefest of images from her thoughts.
The image of Warren, bloodied and beaten, dangling from the claws of of a demon...
Sebastian
Sebastian grinned; it was easy to identify Warren in the chaos around them due to the wings. "You care for that one, do you?" he said. "I'll gut him just to savor the expression on your face."
Karla
Karla stepped between them, trying to break line of sight. "And I'll flay you alive and wear your skin as a cloak," she snapped, her eyes going slightly wide with the idea that Sebastian knew how much Warren meant to her.
Sebastian
"You will not," Sebastian corrected her. "You'll do exactly what I say or I'll kill him."
Karla"I'll do no such thing," Karla said, taking a threatening step or two closer. "Though I'll add that to the list of things I'm going to make you regret before I'm done."
Sebastian
Sebastian pointed at Warren. "Bring that one to me!" he ordered the demons. "I command it!" Two of the demons obeyed, chasing after Warren, grabbing hold of his arms and dragging him back to where Sebastian and Karla stood.
"Now kneel," Sebastian ordered Karla. "Kneel or they'll tear him apart."
Warren
Warren had been certain that he was going to be dead meat, the moment the first of the demons had caught up to him. By the time there were two, by the time they'd wrestled him back to the ground, why he wasn't dead yet was starting to make some vague sort of sense.
A twisted sort of sense. But still sense.
He struggled, for all the good that it was doing, trying for the life of him to spread his wings to throw the demons off of himself.
"Karla, don't!"
The way he was seeing it, he'd been caught. He was a dead man standing anyhow.
Karla
"Warren!"
Karla looked from her boyfriend to the demons standing ready to tear him apart--then over to a blank-faced Raven, standing like an open door to Hell--and knew what she had to do.
Her knees hit the ground. "Don't," she whispered. "Please don't hurt him."
She crept forward until she was almost touching him, raising her hands in supplication. "Please. I beg you. If there's anything of good or mercy in you, let him go."
Sebastian
"Not so powerful now, are you?" Sebastian gloated, enjoying Karla's submission far too much. "I think you should always remain on your knees. You're so much nicer when you're begging."
Warren
The begging was tearing at his heart. On his list of things that Warren never wanted to see, there was Karla, prostrating herself on her knees in front of that... that...
... Skinny, whiny, annoying little jerk.
"Get up," he urged her, struggling a little more. Because you never knew, right? Maybe this time it would actually work against the wall of dual demonic muscle that he was being held in place between.
Karla
Karla turned her head slightly to look into Warren's eyes. "Forgive me," she whispered. "Please."
And then before Sebastian could to anything more than blink, Karla had whirled back around and thrust her hands into his abdomen. "You're a stupid bastard, you know that?" she asked, her left fist clenching around Raven's chakra. The nails of her right hand was raking down the lining of his stomach, her snake-tooth leaving a burning line of agony where it went. "But thanks for letting me get close to you."
Then she was standing, her right hand still pumping venom into him, and sent Raven's chakra sailing though the air. "Sookie!" she screamed into the din. "Catch!"
Sebastian
Sebastian doubled over, howling in pain as Karla stuck her hand into his stomach. The poison made the pain worse, but the healing he'd stolen from Raven's blood would ensure it didn't kill him.
He twisted his head toward the demons who held Warren. "Kill him!" he shouted. And the demons obeyed, raking claws across down Warren's chest, ripping him open from throat to groin. They dropped his bleeding body to the ground, thinking their work finished.
Warren
If Warren had been asked that morning just how he was intending to spend today, he probably would have said something like 'studying,' or 'going over finances at The Boards' or possibly just 'spending time with Karla.'
Note how 'being gutted like a deer' was not anywhere on that list?
And yet, there he was, laying in a heap on the ground in his own little desperate world of agony, well aware that most anyone else would be dead right now. He found himself wishing, momentarily, that he was anyone else. Because then he either wouldn't be in this situation at all, or at the very least, the pain would be over and he wouldn't have to worry about things like holding his insides in while blood ran out of him in pulsing gouts through shredded, claw-torn flesh.
His innate genetic abilities had re-grown his wings, and had knit the shattered, hollow bones in most of his body, before. Suddenly, he found himself wondering, terrified, if this was going to be too much for him. He had a fairly impressive mutant healing factor. But he didn't think that he could come back from dead, if he bled out or asphyxiated before his flesh could knit.
He passed out, bogged down by shock, blood loss, want of air, the effort that his body was making to piece itself back together again, and pain, before he could think too hard about any of it. Today, the blackness was a mercy.
Karla
"Warren!" Karla screamed, agony in her voice. Oh, Darkness, no, she hadn't thought that they'd do something like this. Mother Night, Mother Night, Mother Night, he was so pale and still.
She blasted at Sebastian with more Sapphire, not even looking to hurt him--though she wouldn't shed a tear if she did--but to simply get him away. Then she turned and dove for Warren's crumpled figure. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I love you," she babbled while her hands glowed blue. The stomach acid on them burned, but she barely noticed, using Craft to try to help Heal him. She wasn't sure what his healing factor was doing or even if it was still working, but she wasn't going to stand by while he bled out here in the church.
Bobby
"No!" Bobby screamed as he saw Warren fall. This couldn't be happening, it wasn't- it wasn't fair-
his vision blurred, a cold haze of fury settling over him as memories of the last few weeks bubbled to the surface. Underground tunnels full of broken bodies, the other Warren's crumpled, bleeding wings, Warren lying in a hospital bed without his wings, the plane exploding...
This wasn't the same Warren, and these guys weren't the Marauders, or Freedom Force, or the Right, but it didn't matter, he was just so fucking sick of all of them.
"Fuck all of you!" he snarled, letting loose a blast of ice, freezing solid anyone unfortunate enough to be in his line of fire.
Unfortunately for Bobby, a temperature drop as severe and quickly as the one he'd just done meant his body didn't have time to adjust, and now he was sort of frozen as well.
Sookie
Sookie saw Raven's chakra flying through the air at her, seconds after hearing her name called. With a dive to her knees, Sookie thrust her cupped hands out in front her as they started to glow gold.
She fumbled as it landed in her hands, closing them around the gem so it wouldn't fall or break or anything. And as soon as it was solidly in her hands, she ran the few feet between herself and Raven, shoving her hand against Raven's forehead and pressing the chakra into place.
Raven
As her chakra was pressed to her forehead, the wound it had left behind healed, sealing the gem back in place. Raven's eyes snapped wide open, and her expression turned to one of displeasure. "Demons!" she snarled, angry but not out of control. "You should not have attacked my friends."
Her Soul-Self flew out of her, growing in size as it sought out all the demons and remaining cultists and pulled them back into herself.
Sebastian
The demons howled and the cultist screamed in fear, but Sebastian, after picking himself up from where Karla's power had thrown him, merely watched Raven in awe. "She's beautiful," he murmured.
His expression changed when the black talons of Raven's Soul-Self came for him as well. "Wait," he protested. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way. She was supposed to love me! Just like Mother. She was supposed to love me!"
His cries faded as he vanished into the netherverse with the rest.
Sookie
Sookie, who had started praying in stunned silence as soon as she'd seen Warren and dropped the wet nap she was using on her hands post-chakra, was running before she knew what she was doing. Bobby's grief and fury had poured through the bond, and she wasn't fast enough to slam her shields into place. She was quick enough to act on instinct, her hands glowing as she reached out to thaw Bobby's face first.
Karla
Karla had no idea what was happening on the other side of the fight. Recklessly throwing Craft into a newly-summoned Healing web, she watched as Warren's flesh stitched together with agonizing slowness. "Come on, come on," she whispered, urging his body to Heal faster.
She would exhaust herself at this rate. It didn't matter. Nothing else mattered but making sure he was all right.
Bobby
He'd promised. Promised that Bobby wasn't going to have to watch his best friend die once again but here he was lying on the floor and he wasn't moving and Bobby couldn't move either-
Except he could, now, breathing in gasps that were on the verge of becoming sobs (and he wasn't going to think about why he was breathing when the rest of him was made of ice. Mutant physiology was just plain weird, everyone knew that by now) if he didn't get ahold of himself.
"You really know how to... warm a guy's heart," he joked weakly.
Sookie
"Getting there," Sookie said softly, her bright gold hands moving down to his chest to heat him through there, too. It was taking all her restraint to be careful with him, her movements delicate in spite of the emotional turmoil she was going through.
Bobby
It wasn't too long before she'd managed to warm him up enough so that he could move again.
"Thanks," he told her. That one little word didn't really do how grateful he was justice, but time was sort of of the essence at the moment. "Needed that."
Sookie
"I know," she said, quirking a little smile at him. "Hey, you'd do the same for me. You have done the same for me," she amended quietly.
Karla
Slowly, so slowly it was almost painful in itself to watch, Warren body began slowly coming together. Karla could have cried in relief. He was still unconscious--and if he hadn't been, Karla would have used Craft to make him so--but he was no longer gushing blood onto the ground.
With crimson hands, Karla lifted his head into her lap, raining tears and kisses onto his face.
Raven
The demons and cultists were gone, but the black wings of Raven's Soul-Self still filled the room. The energy swept around those who still remained, more gently now, as Raven teleported them all away from this place.
[OOC: Preplayed with the wonderful blondecanary, furnaceface, glacial_witch, justwantsquiet, longislandiceme, not_a_parakeet, sith_happened, and weetuskenraider. NFB, but OOC is happy!]