Spare the Sympathy

[soulsword]

Who; Illyana + OTA!
What; November open log, feel free to pick a day or if you'd like a different topic I can make something else too!
Where; Outside the red building (or inside if you'd like), cemetery/outside the cemetery, or the market. Or
When; Anytime during November, feel free to pick a day
Warnings;None so far




A. Red Building Cooking Disaster

It wasn't that Illyana had never cooked before. No, that was not the case at all. There had been plenty of times where she had been on her own in the demonic wilds left to fend for herself. The meals she made there weren't exactly things someone would call glamourous, in fact a lot of people would probably be vaguely creeped out by what she'd made. Tentacle skewers probably weren't a normal meal for normal people. Normal was something she'd never been though. It was different here though and not just because there weren't tentacles to easily find to skewer. That didn't mean she couldn't learn some new things though, and that was exactly what she was trying.

Trying was the key word here. In Limbo she'd studied nonstop to learn as much about magic as she could. There was no shortage of books either and even now she often returned to the library to learn more. Spellbooks seemed easy compared to this shit though and she found herself...well...struggling to say the least. The kind of struggling that involved accidentally setting the bacon on fire. Actual fire. Which she reacted to by teleporting out of the kitchen with a slurry of Russian curses.

And that was the scene anyone walking by the red building would see. A blonde woman wearing an oversized sweater holding a frying pan on fire while cursing in Russian. It was definitely...a scene.

B. I'll Cast a Spell On You

Was a cemetery really a place someone should just hang out? No. Was it a place Illyana went to occasionally to hang out? Yes. It seemed like about as good of a place as any for some evening spell practice. There was a low chance of running into anyone, or at least that's what she told herself. Who would willingly walk by the cemetery as night was coming? Spooky creepy places should be free of pests that might show up to interrupt.

Or at least one would think they would be. Unfortunately for Illyana she had constant pests that appeared here and there to question what she was doing. Imps. It was always the imps that seemed to congregate around her even as she tried to set up for a spell.

"What are you doing?" one of them said while jumping around her leg, picking up the athame she had laid down on a cloth.

"Shoo," she waved a hand. "Put that down and return to Limbo right now."

It bashfully put it down and then held it's head sadly. "We could help! Get you things! Get you things!" Another chanted.

"No. Remember the last time you helped?" she asked sharply as she light another candle that smelled of sulfur and perhaps...primrose? It was primrose, but a subtle scent of it. Truth was what she was after and that happened to be a perfect flower for that. Or so she'd read once upon a time.

She sighed as the imps continued to get louder and more rambunctious as she tried to prepare for what she wanted to do. This was going to be a long evening, wasn't it?

C. A New Frying Pan

The market was the destination of the day. Mostly to replace the frying pan she'd kind of just eventually chucked into a portal into Limbo. It'd seemed like a solid solution to her problem at the time. But then she'd run into the problem of not having a frying pan. Which meant a trip to the market, which inevitably lead to a few imps dancing around after her. She'd fully embraced dressing for winter and even had the hood pulled up to hide her scowl.

"Why do you all keep following me?" she muttered under her breath with frustration as one jumped up onto a market stall and picked up a frying pan to show her and then it just started to walk off with it, much to the dismay of the clerk. She quickly pulled out a few coins to pay for the pan.

"You have my apologies," she said quickly as she ran after the imp shouting a slew of demonic curses towards it. Maybe shouting in a demonic tongue wasn't the best mood, but she'd lost her temper now.

Comments

[gadaboutdetective]

((ooc: I would never ignore a tag! Never too late with our threads!! But if you’re interested, I would love to talk about new stuff we can do with characters in February <3))

“If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that.” He responded with a small nod of his head, though he blinked at the idea of Pretzel actually talking. “You could do that…? That’s, um… An interesting idea that I’ll keep in mind.” He wasn’t sure what Rhy would think if he brought home a talking dog, after all. It might be best to think about that one before he jumped on the offer.

It was a horrible idea that Llewellyn should not entertain, but there he was… Definitely thinking about it.

Llewellyn looked at the imps again, head tilting curiously. “Annoying you and causing mischief in this one until you give in and go back to the other? Mm… I can understand the logic in that, though I get the feeling they’ll be disappointed.” Illyana did not seem like the type to be so easily pushed, after all.

[soulsword]

"I could. I might charge a price though." And she might not. It would all depend on her mood at the time and on how much entertainment she thought she could get out of it. "Magic can do anything." If you were willing to give enough to it.

"It seems to always be their plan." Maybe it was because her plans to torture people often included plaguing them with petty annoyances. Maybe they just learned from their Queen. Illyana would never acknowledge that kind of thinking though. No, it was much more likely they were just annoying and stupid because they were imps.

"Imps live in a constant state of disappointment. They've grown used to it." Which meant they could be irritatingly persistent.

[gadaboutdetective]

“Mm… Yes, I’ve been told similarly a few times.” Llewellyn responded with a small nod. People liked to say a lot about magic… But he had very little experience with it personally, beyond what people said or his observances of those who used their abilities around him. “I expect charging a price would be sensible? It probably would be a bit of a task.” He added with a small shrug, before his attention shifted back to the imps.

Odd that it sounded like it was their usual plan, and that despite its constant failure, it was one they continued to try. “They are stubborn and persistent followers, then… I suppose there’s something to be said for sticking to it, though I can’t imagine that gets trying on the patience.”

[soulsword]

"I've never thought about charging for my services." Maybe she should have. Not for spells to talk to dogs, but maybe other spells. Would people actually pay for something like that?

"Everything they do is trying on the patience." That much was probably obvious to anyone that had the displeasure of interacting with them. But they tried. Failed. But tried. "Though I suppose they're more tolerable than N'astirh and S'ym. At least imps on their own never came up with a plan to invade Manhattan."

[gadaboutdetective]

Llewellyn hummed lightly, “No? Well, it’s nice to help without charging, of course… Especially if someone is in a bind.” Which seemed to be a likely enough occurrence, really. “But I do expect there are those who would pay for assistance of a magical nature, especially those less experienced.” And it seemed like this was a world where having some form of income was useful, at least compared to other places Llewellyn had been. This world reminded him a little more of home if you removed some of the unpleasant societal expectations and added in magic.

The detective blinked at that. “I don’t know either of those names, but that does sound more troublesome than anything your imps have attempted.” At least based on their conversation, of course. “That… sounds like quite a story…?”

[soulsword]

"I didn't say I offered help without charging either," she smirked. For once it was the truth. While there were people she had helped, there were also plenty of times where she'd just ignored what was going on here. Her brother would probably be disappointed. There was a weird twist in her stomach at that thought. Where exactly was that coming from?

She shook her head. "I would not expect you to. They aren't popular enough demons to be put into your stories." They'd have liked to have been though. Notoriety walked hand in hand with power, and power was what both those fools were always after. "Perhaps it is. It caused quite the commotion back home." Practically everyone got involved in stopping the invasion.

[gadaboutdetective]

“Depends on the day and the person, I presume?” He responded with a little tilt of his head. She definitely reminded him of someone… So he got the distinct feeling she might help someone if she was inclined to, but she wasn’t going to go out of her way either. Perhaps it depending on how foolish the person had been, he mused to himself.

“I can imagine I’ve been to Manhattan. While I’m sure my world and time are rather different, I can still imagine that would be rather chaotic and difficult to resolve if demons were suddenly showing up out of nowhere.” Her imps here were inconvenient at most, from what he could tell when they’d been taking people’s things to impress her. An actual, full scale invasion of more capable demonic entities in an unsuspecting city? That would be horrifying…

[soulsword]

"It spread to more than just Manhattan before we could stop it. If you think these little guys are annoying, you should see the bigger demons. The ones who can actually hunt," she said with a shake of her head. The useful ones. "I went to a future once where the demons had completely taken over. Not just them but the Old Ones too. The ones worse than even the demons of your nightmare. It made what happened in Manhattan look like a children's playground."

[gadaboutdetective]

Llewellyn shook his head at that, “I’d rather not, if I’m being honest.” The imps were enough for him, honestly. The detective could barely guess how to deal with some of the things he heard were dangerous in this world, let alone the idea of other things like demons that liked to hunt.

Honestly, the whole story was quite horrifying in his opinion. “I can imagine a lot of things, but not that… You and the others you worked with stopped them, eventually?”

[soulsword]

"Most would choose the rather not. Unfortunately some of us had no choice," she said with a shrug. Most people didn't realize how lucky they were to have choices. They had no idea a choice could even be considered a luxury. Sometimes she resented that.

"I did. Sort of. It's complicated and cost a great deal to me. And ultimately turned out to be for nothing." Yet somehow she didn't actually sound annoyed. In fact she almost sounded...amused? Amused was the word for it. There was no denying that there was a certain amount of irony in her heroic sacrifice really being for nothing in the end. "Most humans eventually wrote it off as a shared hallucination. That was probably better for their simple psyches." She paused for a second. "No offense."

[gadaboutdetective]

“I’m sorry, that um- does sound complicated…” He shook his head a little, “I know how difficult trying to do something and it turning out to be for nothing can be.” Llewellyn added with an apologetic tone. Even if she sound amused by it… He wasn’t in the habit of making light of something like that, even if he wasn’t sure what had happened exactly… It had never been pleasant in his experience.

Humming a little at the ‘no offence,’ Llewellyn offered an awkward shrug, “None taken, I think… I can understand that. The human mind might, uh- find it easier to process things that way, if it can’t repress it entirely.” It would be silly to take offence at something that was true. There were a lot of moments in his life that he could barely remember… Then there were others he wished he could forget. “And I know several colleagues of mine in my world would probably do that, just… based on my knowledge of them.”

[soulsword]

"Mutant lives are always complicated." Too complicated for her own tastes. What would her brother say in a situation like this? Probably something about how what mattered was that they tried even if it didn't work out. Something naïve and overly optimistic. It was unfortunate she wasn't more like him. She titled her head and gave him a weird little smile. "Did yours result in you dying and being brought back from beyond the grave too?"

It probably didn't, but at least the question was kind of funny. Sort of. It was funny to her.

"You're much more reasonable about that than most people."

[gadaboutdetective]

No, and it was really only funny to her. Llewellyn looked rather alarmed at that, eyes widening for a moment. “Uh- no… No, though I think we’ve established that those sorts of things are… not common where I’m from.” He responded with a small, awkward duck of his head. He doesn’t volunteer what he meant either, because it certainly didn’t compare to that. Plus, it wasn’t something he liked to go into the details of.

A surprised laugh does escape him to hear that he was more reasonable, “Mm… Not sure that many people would agree with you on the reasonable part, but I know how easy it is to forget sometimes. I suppose I know well enough that the mind, well… the human mind, as you put it, is a tricky thing.”