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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[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.

[pyroprincess]

Stephanie took a deep breath as the Fury Demon collapsed and seemingly died, dispelling the pyroplasmic lance and turning towards her husband- physically full of power and brimming with energy, but emotionally exhausted.

She saw the image of the one demon in the guise of her father for a moment. It was a surprisingly hard image to get out of her mind. She remembered how unhesitatingly she'd struck the demon in his mother's guise.

How much of her father's daughter was she?

It made it hard for her to look at Marcelo.

[vesper_verde]

Vesper stood there for a long moment, looking at the dead body at his feet. He took long, deep breaths to try to not start hyperventilating. He wanted to rub his eyes, but the green protective lens got in the way.

Slowly, wincingly he turned around. No, he hadn't been hallucinating under demon duress. His wife was standing in the alley, too.

[pyroprincess]

With everything having been done, Stephanie felt a weird crestfallen feeling, even as her body thrummed with energy. She slowly turned around to where her husband was, weirdly almost afraid to look him in the eyes.

"Hey." Her voice was thick with emotion, but something seemed to be keeping her from just running up and embracing him. She felt strange and dirty, guilty. Ashamed. The demon had shown her the things she feared the most.

[vesper_verde]

He looked down at the glass all over the alley. His sonic blow had broken quite a few windows on the surrounding buildings. The alleyway faintly sparkled like that. But the damage meant police were coming very soon.

Vesper had a mask on. One he could hide behind to pull the torn fragments of himself together. He squared his shoulders like a hero should and walked over to his wife. Curious people would come see what happened in this quiet.

"Thank you. For your help." His voice modulator had not been damaged. He didn't sound like himself, but at least he didn't sound like a cartoon character this time. He gently put a gloved hand on her arm. "You should go home. Your husband's probably waiting for you."

[pyroprincess]

If there was anything, other than more demons, that Stephanie didn't want more it was her husband trying to do the hero thing. Part of her understood why he was doing it, but it still hurt. She already felt weirdly distant from him and this only emphasized it.

"Okay. I will." She tried not to look hurt, but she was too emotionally raw to perform well. She rubbed at her eyes. "Tell him to come quickly." She didn't walk away so much as she slunk away, trying to shake her weird and terrible emotions before Marcelo came home.

[vesper_verde]

He watched her go, aware he had hurt her. He looked down at the hand that had touched her than at his bracer. Even with machines helping he wasn't...

He turned so he could open his wings without burying them into the sides of buildings. With assists of the jets, he was into the night sky and heading directly for home.

[pyroprincess]

Stephanie realized as she left that the notion that she'd get there before him was a stupid one, he had jets and didn't have to follow traffic laws. She did, and now that the dire need to race home had elapsed, she actually was obeying them.

As she drove, she started to have a harder and harder time holding herself together. By the time she'd reached the elevator, she was sobbing. She waited at the door, hoping that he couldn't hear her, almost praying that he couldn't.

I'm such a mess, what does he even see in me? I'm a mess and I'm a monster, too.

She hadn't hesitated for a moment when the demon assume the form of his mother.

Was that because she was clever? Or because she was ruthless?

[vesper_verde]

Marcelo had gotten home well before Stephanie. He had peeled off his Vesper costume and then thrown lots of things around his one room base of operations. Most of his gear ended up near the trash can. He left the room and didn't bother to close the door like he normally did.

He went right toward the liquor cabinet. He went to his side of it and started pouring a drink.

He heard Stephanie sobbing. His hearing was superhumanly acute, and he had been waiting for his wife to come home. His jaw clenched as he set his bottle down. He leaned over with a small wince and grabbed one of the bottles of Spanish wine from the chiller compartment. He uncorked it and went to the front door.

Marcelo opened the front door with a bottle of wine ready for her.

[pyroprincess]

Stephanie came inside almost as quiet as he could, taking the bottle and looking at him for a long moment. She couldn't really form the words, any words at all. Stephanie just wordlessly looked at him for a moment, too many emotions on her mind.

"Thank you." She managed to say, taking the bottle.

"Are you okay?" Stephanie also managed to get out.

[vesper_verde]

He swallowed, tasting bitterness in his own mouth. Marcelo knew if he opened his mouth to say something, it would be words he would regret. Instead, he gently closed the door behind her. Though he wasn't sure if it would be weakness or anger.

And he couldn't lay that on Stephanie. Couldn't make himself do that. Since the day they that got serious, he had done everything in his power to try to make her life better. To relieve her burdens. Sometimes at an inner cost to himself.

He nodded an acknowledgement to her gratitude. His hands felt useless when she took the bottle from him.

He managed to get his eyes up to about her nose before he lost his nerve. He shook his head to answer her question. Then he turned back to the liquor cabinet.