It's the Price Paid

[vesper_verde]

Vesper was out on one of his nightly patrols. He was hoping for plain, normal criminals. After a few supernatural run-ins with the Defenders, he was hoping for normalcy. Though demonic infestations of mystical doodads was apparently good at making the lesser evils hide out. The city air felt vibrant but wrong as Vesper banked alongside a building. He was scanning the neighborhoods for some sort of heroics to do.

He was just about ready to turn toward home when he caught a faint voice on the edge of his hearing.

"-do you got it? I got the money."

Vesper slowly wheeled toward the sound. It was late enough at night for whatever was being purchased to be of an illicit nature. Something he could stop on his own. Something he could control. After the last six months, he desperatly needed that.

It took a little night-sky circling, but he found the alleyway where the dealing was happening. He silently landed on a rooftop and peered over the edge. Looked like a dealer and two addicts. When he briefly dropped his silence field, sounded like it, too. Vesper put his silence field back up before he carefully scaled down a fire escape. A few quick checks as he went and it looked like the drugs were getting paid for.

Vesper launched himself off the last platform to the pavement below. He hit the ground on the other side of a dumpster and rolled. He came up smoothly and flexed his fingers. Time to go to work. He stepped out into the alley more as he dropped the silence field. Vesper opened his mouth to call out and paused.

In unison, all three people looked at him. It wasn't being noticed that made a cold chill run down his spine. It was because all three sets of eyes reflected light back at him. He was positive he didn't just walk into dogs and cats dealing drugs.

The human shapes of the three bodies down the alley grew blurry. The druggie on the left moved forward a step, the human guise disappearing. A wave of uncertainty washed over him as the demon clacked his teeth together. Vesper was about to take a step back when the druggie on the right, moved closer. The human guise dropped to reveal another demon. Its appearance hit him in the gut with how much he reviled it. He grit his teeth and clenched his fists. Vesper raised his arm to fire from one of his bracers as the dealer moved toward him as well. Its appearance changed as six appendages grew out of the demon's back. With every twitch of the legs on the back of his torso, Vesper grew more confident he could take these demons. He was one of the Defenders; they did this all the time lately.

He wasn't immediately overwhelmed when all three demons attacked him at once. He fired with both bracers. The sonic attack reverberated between the close buildings. Though three attackers at once started to slip through his defenses. One of the spindly, spidery legs darted across one of the pouches on his thigh. It ripped right through the pouch and sent the contents spilling out across the concrete. Thankfully, the armor under the pouch was stronger, but the disposable cell in the pouch clattered against the ground.

Two of the demons redoubled their attacks on Vesper while the Pride Demon bent over to pick the phone off the pavement. It tilted its head left and right. It hit the one number programmed into the phone.

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[pyroprincess]

That particular ringtone could only belong to one person. Stephanie picked up the phone, hoping that maybe he was done patrolling a little early. Maybe he'd have a little energy coming home. If he did, she'd certainly take it from him. She suspected he wouldn't mind that.

"Mi amor. Are you coming home?" He could also be calling to say he'd be later than usual. Which would be mildly annoying, but she knew that his work wasn't always predictable. It wasn't as if hers was either.

[ngm_foes]

The voice on the other end was not her husband's. It managed to be raspy and cold as well as smooth as an oil slick.

"Is this Mrs. Man-Bat? Or the mistress?"

[pyroprincess]

That wasn't a natural voice of any sort and was certainly not Marcelo's. She responded with a cool tone of voice, though the demon on the other end would be able to hear regular thuds as she built up energy.

"I hope you think that was suitably clever. Where is Vesper? You're going to tell me and he's going to be there when I come. And unharmed. If those three conditions are met, then I don't send you screaming off to Hell.

Do you understand? I hope you do.

It's your funeral."

Stephanie tried to keep fear for Marcelo at bay. If this creature or person, whichever it was, harmed Marcelo in any way, she was going to kill it or destroy it. Either way, it was going straight to Hell.

[ngm_foes]

Whatever was on the other end laughed at the threats. Not forced, but genuinely amused.

"Definitely the wife. We don't do funerals where I come from, but since he is such a tasty mortal. We found him just by chance once. Then we followed and fed. Now, we want it all and I cordially invite you to watch."

He gave her the nearest cross streets and how to get to the back alley.

"It'll be so nice to see you again, my dear." Then he broke the phone in his hand rather than hit the end call button.

[pyroprincess]

Stephanie wasted no time in running down the stairs as quickly as she could, into the garage and taking the swiftest of the cars available to her, ready to take her chances with by-law enforcement. It took only a matter of a few minutes before she was at the location, rushing out of the car and into the back alley.

As Stephanie dashed into it, she struck the wall, hard enough to send a sizable rain of stone debris and dust coming from it. Stephanie glanced around her, searching for where the taunting voices had come from, where her husband was.

[ngm_foes]

While the Pride Demon had done what he needed, he joined in the fight once more while a one of the others pulled out.

When Stephanie finally made it to the alleyway, her costumed husband was obviously flagging from having to fight off two adversaries.

The third entity in the alley was in a human form, leaning against a building wall. She watched the fighting until she heard Stephanie's solid footsteps coming toward them.

The demon shaped as a woman would look familiar to Stephanie as there were at least three photos of her around the penthouse. She looked as she did in the most recent one beside her ten-year old son.

Marcelo's mother looked at the arriving angry mutant. "Welcome, child."

[pyroprincess]

Stephanie had the presence of mind to dial into her fellow New Mutants. They just had to hold on for long enough, and the cavalry would be coming in. If they needed it. Stephanie thoroughly planned to demolish the fuckers herself if at all possible. She had to fight back a feeling of dread when she saw Marcelo fighting- clearly barely holding on. She was ready to join him, and then there was another figure.

She was already angry when she arrived, but fury boiled up inside her when she saw the demon's form.

"Get out of that form." Her hands flicked out and crackling pyroplasm whips formed from her hands, spinning ominously against the walls and the ground around her, cutting through the concrete like a hot knife going through butter. She started moving closer, the pyroplasmic whips lashing out, obeying her every whim, coiling, burning, cutting.

She attacked, as quickly and fiercely as she could.

[ngm_foes]

"Oh, no. That's not happening. Nothing is sweeter than having a man see his wife kill his beloved mother." She eyed the pyroplasm whips and took a few backwards steps. Better positioning to ... dive out of the way of the incoming attack. Her scream sounded like it belonged to the woman whose shape she wore.

"Help me, Marcelinho! Help me!"

[pyroprincess]

"His mother has been dead for years." Stephanie knew a defensive pose when she saw it. The demon creature would have to be agile indeed, though, because Stephanie was extraordinarily agile. "All you're doing is spitting on her grave and dishonoring her memory."

Stephanie struck out, one whip lashing out in the current direction of the demon, the other where the demon looked like it was leaning towards slightly, just a fraction of a second later. With luck one or both of them would catch the fiend.

[ngm_foes]

The second whip caught her as she tried to get out of the way of the first. She screeched and giggled at the whip contact.

Vesper saw it and lunged for his mother, only to have a demon smack him into a wall.

"Oh, help! A demon from hell can't handle fire. Though the rest stings a little." Though the creature was undeniably caught. And the form shifted growing taller and wider. Skin lightening. Voice dropping down.

Sebastian Shaw looked rather pleased at what his daughter was doing.

"Very good. You are a worthy heir. Ruthless. Brutal. We both call your husband 'boy' because he's so beneath our station. He can't mean that much to you. That's why you abandoned him for worthwhile pursuits."

[pyroprincess]

It was a trick. It was a horrible trick. Stephanie's face blanched for a moment, but she maintained the whip's grasp.

"I'm no heir of yours. I'm not!!!" She pulled the demon closer to her and kicked at it as hard as she could. She was no equal to her father in strength, but she could kick far harder than any normal human could. The pyroplasmic whip melded around the demon into a solid shape that couldn't be wriggled out of or easily broken.

"You're not Shaw." She had to remember that. Not to get involved emotionally, except with righteous anger that it would get inside her head. Not to address it as if it were actually her father. Not to forget the lessons she took.

[ngm_foes]

There was a crack and deep grunt from her kick. He staggered back in the solid construct holding it, but he managed to stay on his feet on shaky legs. Shaw coughed up a little black blood, but he smiled at his daughter.

"No, but you certainly are a Shaw. Ruthless, willing to kill. You threw away your moral compass for months, and look how much you achieved. How long until that weakling behind us gets bothered because you have blood on your hands, that you weren't raised to love, that the only reason you reconciled was because you were tired not that you missed him?"

[pyroprincess]

The reaction to the kick was satisfying. The demon, and she was sure now that this was one of the demons that Marcelo had fought earlier, could not adequately pretend to be Sebastian Shaw, who might have been hurt by the heat of the pyroplasm, but would only have been empowered by the blow itself.

"Keep talking. You almost sound convincing." There was a chord being struck, somewhere deep inside, but she didn't let it get in the way of her actions, of her resolve to destroy this foul thing. She kicked it again, this time aiming for the knee, sure that if she could break bones, that she could completely ruin its knees.

She hadn't thrown away her moral compass- she'd simply neglected her husband. It was awful, but it wasn't the same. And she had missed him, she missed him desperately. But she had been tired too.

[ngm_foes]

The kick to the knee sent the creature down to the ground. It had no real way to catch itself with the solid pyroplasm pinning his arms to his sides. The Shaw form wavered as it coughed again.

"That's my girl. Show me how a Shaw does it."

[pyroprincess]

Stephanie took a breath. The demon wanted this. She hesitated for a moment. The demon wanted her to give in to her rage.

Since when was she in the business of giving demons what they wanted?

And yet, this demon was in the way of her husband.

She took another deep breath, exhaled and gave it her best knockout blow.

"I'm coming, mi amor! Hang on!"

[ngm_foes]

The demon shaped like her father crumpled to the pavement when her blow connected. As it went unconscious it lost Shaw's shape.

While Stephanie had been dealing with the Doubt Demon, one of the demons fighting Vesper had been steadily growing in size. It was starting to fill the alleyway. The Fury Demon looked over when Stephanie called out. A low rumble came out of its chest as it moved to intercept Stephanie.

One of its large hands swung down and then up to try to smack Stephanie out of the alley.

[pyroprincess]

Stephanie simply put her hands down towards the ground and used a jet of pyroplasm to fly up as high in the air as she could- at a burst, she could go a few hundred feet in the air and then try to land on the Fury Demon, forming a pyroplasm spike in order to strike at it as soon as she could.

[vesper_verde]

Vesper, in the meantime, was not successful in escaping the Pride Demon's grasp. He was slammed against the ground. His armor spreading out the impact was the only reason his right-hand ribs hadn't caved in. He grunted and raised his right arm and fired two flare sabots into the demon's face.

The unearthly squeal didn't bother him as much as checking up the alley. The other demon had grown immense. He rolled away from the demon clutching its face from the brightness.

He lowered his right arm and tilted his hand the other way. The alleyway filled with a deafening noise as the sonic blast smacked into the back of the Fury Demon.

[ngm_foes]

The Pride Demon bellowed with a screech as the flares were in its eye sockets. The fire wasn't damaging, but the brightness was conducive to being able to see. It tried to pull the flares out with its spindly fingers. Though its annoyed yelling was drowned out and cut short by the massive noise coming from somewhere near its feet.

The Fury Demon wasn't expecting the blow from behind. It had been waiting for the woman to come back down. It fell forward onto the pavement, momentarily dazed.

[pyroprincess]

Stephanie landed hard- and surely would have ended up a splatter on the sidewalk had she been a normal human being. Thankfully, her powers allowed her to absorb the force of the impact and convert it into power. Silver linings. She had been running a little low and the fall had refueled her nicely.

She didn't really like the sonic wave that hit her as well, but it didn't do her any real damage. And she was able to convert the concussive force into even more power. The more power she had, the more solid her pyroplasm could be.

Stephanie whirled around as quickly as she could, forming a lance of pyroplasm to strike the Fury Demon.

[vesper_verde]

His whole body felt like a bruise. But Vesper tried to pull himself off the ground. He felt hollow inside, like there was nothing left to give. Anything he had felt earlier was gone.

He staggered up to his feet and dug into a compartment on his utility belt to reload his right bracer.

[ngm_foes]

The energy the Fury Demon had been feeding off of had dissipated. As it pushed itself off the ground, it was rapidly shrinking in size back to its normal shape.

The Pride Demon was still clawing at its face. Though the flares were starting to flicker out.

[pyroprincess]

The rapidly shrinking Fury Demon managed to elude Stephanie's lance's first strike by dint of its rapidly shrinking but she was able to reorient herself and stab at it again with a swift and powerful thrust, putting all her musclepower behind it.

Stephanie's anger was rapidly dissipating, even though she had a huge amount of energy built up in her. She just wanted this over with so she could take her husband home.

[vesper_verde]

Vesper noticed the light flickering and hurried to load his bracer. He turned and closed the distance between him and the demon. He swung his right hand into the demon's center-mass. When his hand solidly connected, he fired off his bracer.

Armor-piercing flechettes ripped out the back of the demon and embedded in the far wall. As the demon hunched into the blow, he brought his left arm up to the creature's head and fired off a 2-ton concussive air blast from his bracer.

[ngm_foes]

Stephanie's pyroplasmic thrust ripped the demon partially in two. Its legs wobbled before the parts in twain sloughed off and hit the ground.

The demon in front of Vesper had finally had the flares in its eyes die out. Just in time to spray ichor on the back wall. It managed a surprised gasp before its head disappeared entirely under 2 tons of power.