Exo-Politics [Typhon/Closed]

[Lazarus Carter]

9:03 AM
JANUARY 29TH, 2012
PARALLEL OF A DOWNTOWN D.C. STREET
ENTROPIC CHASM
INFERIS

The familiar drum beat of a song he couldn't remember the name of pounded rhythmically in time to his footsteps down what had once been a downtown street. Barely a block or two from his hotel; this area of D.C., after exploration in both his world and this other dimension, had become almost permanently mapped to this sector of his mind. But things were starting to catch up to him; the university term had begun back in London, and Lazarus was stuck here in Washington for some bizarre, inexplicable reason. The flight tickets his family had bought him had long since become overpriced pieces of useless card, expiring a couple of weeks ago, now, and every time he clicked onto a website to attempt to buy more, his finger faltered, hovering above the mouse button as the cursor lingered over the "Purchase" button.

And then he just closed the webpage and turned the computer off. For some reason, he was bound to this place, now; what he'd seen had changed him, that much was obvious, but the knock-on effects were slowly swelling and growing in amount and intensity. Education, travel, career; all of it became nothing but an irritating ambience when the truth of the world became apparent to you. The existence of something that had only ever haunted you in your dreams. The prominence of such a supernatural threat you'd condemned as folklore and superstition. A waking myth. A living legend.

So, now, through walking, either in the apocalyptic Chasm or the similarly grimy streets of America's grand capital, the redhead knew this place like the back of his hand. Still unsure of how long his tenure would last, he hadn't really stayed in contact with Yuuko or the twins; and only Satan knew what was happening to that Jerome dude right about now. Probably locked up somewhere in Siberia with a car battery hooked up to his testicles. He still felt bad about that, but joking deflection - even as his mind wandered - was the way he dealt with the responsibility of leaving a team member to the hounds, whether it was his fault or not.

"I sold my soul for a second time," The teen hummed off-beat, continuing his tour of the Chasm. It'd become a morning occurrence, now. How swiftly his fear of Inferis had degenerated into simple familiarity; and his encounter with the Thundercats a few days ago - or whatever the fuck they were actually called - had pushed him off, beyond the boundaries of this land and region, and into a new sphere entirely, some semblance of a Demonic port, a great black ocean spanning off into the horizon. Daunting to think just how long this Hell stretched for - but the fright and xenophobia had quickly became dulled by a cocktail of gunpowder and epinephrine.

Slowly his walks had weaned from companionship, and become simply solitary exploration. Between the pistols and his banshee cannon, or "Echo Trigger", as he'd somehow instinctively dubbed it, Lazarus felt he was reasonably well-armed, and safe enough to prowl even through these dangerous streets in public. There was no safe time to walk through Inferis; and though it had taken his time, the redhead had learnt simply to nut up and just start dealing with it. He didn't stray from combat, now, and though he was smart enough to isolate and silently escape a situation where he knew things could only end in him becoming part of some breakfast tribute to a Demon king or whatever, experience, be it in groups of birdbrains or slightly more independent Demons, was far more welcome than it would have been, say, three weeks ago. "Cause the man, he don't paaaay me," The subsonic humming of an almost decade-old Britpop single continued.

But now, on his own, walking down these streets purely to sate a trivial curiosity, things was far more easier. Hands in his pockets, Nomads or shout-cannon ready and waiting at his disposal at the snap of his fingers, the ruined cityscape lit up even this early with a synaesthetic blur of smooth, quiet, subtle colours, it was something pleasant to do, in a twisted sense. Satisfy the macabre, really. Walk through a ruined city taking in the scenery. But everything about this Hell was twisted; and acclimatising to that was key to being able to operate in it with a semblance of your sanity remaining - people could too easily lose it over here, Lazarus felt.

It was strange to be able to take such awe in simple collections of a spectrum of glowing colour. It made the redhead feel almost simple; but at the same time, from a young age, he'd viewed the world through a kaleidoscopic lens, or rose-coloured glasses, pleasantly dumbstruck by such simple occurrences of nature or humanity. It took a lot to perturb him, as a child, and even more then to disrupt his faith in the little things, life's simplicities; he was fairly easy to please, unlike his adoptive siblings. Lazarus hadn't ever viewed this as a bad thing. Taking such pleasure in the simpler things meant that he was just an easy, comfortable, laid-back person to entertain, able to easily engage himself in a household where Kurt, Irv, and Jen were all flying around rampant for one reason or another. He was more of a close cousin than a brother, the eldest Carter son had thought, in reflection; but this was comfortable, understandable, and, above all else... really didn't bother him that much. Gave a sense of intrinsic individuality he could rely on.

And to speak of individuality, the whole "being able to walk in Hell" thing wasn't too bad for entertainment, either. Made him feel almost special. But this was to be the extent of Lazarus' deep, sentimental, reflective daydreams; for it would not be for a few more moments that his wanderings would be disturbed by another of Demonkind he'd not yet encountered - and, surely, this would be far more different than the other being of sentience he'd run afoul of...

[Typhon]

A young boy walked among the rubble that was this general oddity upon the plane of Inferis, for it was not every day when one saw a city so similar to that of modern times. Such a place intrigued the young boy, who was quite far away from where he normally took residence, but he honestly didn’t care about getting lost, nor did he truly care about any sorts of dangers that might occur. Most things dangerous to normal individuals were but paltry insects to one such as him, as after more than 4000 years of endless combat, most fools who tried to enter combat with this seemingly harmless child soon met their demise with swift precision.

With unsettling red eyes, his bleach white hair and flesh, concealed by bandages, he would look quite odd to those that look upon him, but odd is quite subjective in a place such as Inferis. There were so many different sorts of the creatures that wandered among the endless damnation that was this living hell, some more ferocious and curious then others. As always, the young child wore his beige poncho and baggy shorts, at this point in time splattered with a smidgeon of blood, a result of some combat that occurred at some time earlier. The oddest thing though, was what he was dragging behind him as he walked. The scraping sound of metal upon earth could be heard as he continued forward, dust being thrown up in slight amounts as the broad sword that he dragged behind him moved through the dirt. It was quite a lovely weapon, one that Typhon had found as he wandered about among the blood-strewn fields of the undercroft. Some poor whelp had probably lost it in his throes of death, a pity to some, but not to one such as him.

The reddish hue of the sky that overlooked this odd replication of a city upon the world of the living brought forth the illusion of walls that which were the color of blood. It was almost guaranteed that there was truly blood strewn across these walls, but it would have long since dried, blending in with the colors of the area, unless of course, fresh blood was to be added to this collage of depravity. The child that moved through this desolate land, while not exactly worried about dangers but still on some sort of alert, heard a sort of noise that he had long since forgotten. Some sort of guffaw was it? Multiple different sorts of sounds, changing in pitch tangent with some unheard tune. The boy racked his brain for the last time he had heard such a noise, for no one sang among the Undercroft. Back in his short time as a pharaoh, he remembered a performer attempting to appease him through the use of dance and song, an attempt that was all but folly, for she fell before him shortly after. Singing… No-one of any corrupt or pessimistic nature, honed after thousands of years of torment, would be singing in Inferis. Was there another sort of being about? One who was quite young in the spectrum of existence? It would seem that Typhon would have to find out.

Down the street, within Typhon’s vision, was a young man, seemingly entranced with the sort of macabre beauty so common among Inferis. The teenager seemed quite happy with his little walk, and also seemed as though he would not be hostile at the first sign that something was amiss. Sending his new broad sword clamoring a short distance away from him, Typhon began to move with quicker pace than before. Not exactly a gait really, but more of a skip and a hop, seemingly acting like an average child who had no care in the world. By this point he could obviously be heard, for he was approaching the teenager at a moderate pace, gleefully giggling slightly as he did so. Hopefully this individual didn’t see Typhon as an immediate threat; for he didn’t think he was going to kill this ‘young’ lad. Taking a stroll through these mystical lands was a noble cause, and Typhon was not the type to take that away from those who wished to experience it.

“Hey there mister! What are you doing here?” Spoke the young boy, feigning the ignorant curiosity of a young child. Though if the teenager attempted to turn around and see Typhon, he would instead see nothing, for Typhon’s ability to move at hypersonic speeds allowed him to ‘teleport’ in a sense. Instead of being where he once stood, he would instead appear behind Lazarus. He would not move again should the teenager turn to face him yet again, and would instead cock his head slightly to the left, as though he was a very curious individual. Just being within the presence of Typhon would most likely make Lazarus’s skin crawl, for this little boy was definitely a deadly creature, exuding a sort of aura that made those near him feel that something was terribly amiss.

Looking upwards towards the teenager, Typhon’s demonic eyes would make contact with Lazarus’s, perhaps betraying the true nature of his being, that of a warmongering death machine. In relation to size, Typhon was almost comically short in comparison to Lazarus, with the latter having almost two feet of height upon the other. The young boy had no idea how the teenager would react to this almost impossible experience. One moment, he was alone, and the next, a disturbing presence had brought itself to him. Hopefully he would not be violent of course, for that would force Typhon to take action, and he really didn’t want to end such a curious person. Would this teenager attempt combat with Typhon? Who knows? Such a hypothesis would have to be tested within the next few moments.

Such thoughts would have to wait of course, for he now had to await his new friend’s reaction.

[Lazarus Carter]

It wasn't long before another peaceful, out-of-tune, daydreaming walk was interrupted by the tones of another, different voice. But this was not eerie, nor cackling, nor deep and rumbling, or ominous in any defintion of the word; instead accompanied by the blissful ignorance of a child and echoing from behind him, came the squeak of a smaller entity than he was used to encountering in Inferis. “Hey there mister! What are you doing here?”

Lazarus spun around; and though puzzled to the lack of any being's presence, heard the ambient background noises of its existence back where he had originally been looking, and pivoted around once more. That was... odd. The voice had came from one place and then the boy had appeared in another. And as he tilted his head and looked up at the redhead, the American lowered himself to a crouch, down to the child's height, and cocked his head in response.

Bleached white skin in tow with bright albino hair; pink-red eyes and stale bandages wrapped tightly around a visage, the boy was almost difficult to look upon for the enigma of whatever injuries he'd endured; but the kid was seemingly unperturbed by this, all the same remaining curious, and, by very definition, typically childlike. After a month, now, of experience, it was unlike Lazarus to so easily waltz into the web-like snare that yet another Demon had spun; but herein lied a weakness that many humans possessed. That natural ability to supposedly "discern" between essences human and less so vanished with the short, stumpy face of childhood; that flagship bearer of human innocence. Not for a moment did he consider the possibility that this child was anything other than some curious occurrence; and didn't think that it possessed the capacity to so much as consider doing another harm. "Uhh..."

Dumbstruck for the most part, Lazarus was somewhat unsure of how to act, but figured that replying to the kid's question, rhetorical or not, would be a good place to ask. So the redhead shrugged at his newfound and bandaged companion. "...I'm just walking around, I guess." To be fair, that was more or less the truth. He had no real reason for being in Inferis other than it was sort of just a daily, near-ritualistic thing now. "What about you? How'd you get in here?"

Scratching the back of his head, the teenager continued to ask his questions. Based objectively on appearance, Laz would have said that the kid couldn't be any older than ten, and no younger than six or seven. And it was here that he finally considered the curious circumstances of this meeting. What was it that led the child to be so blissful in the presence of this universally harrowing energy that flowed through Inferis with vigour, indiscriminate and exposed on a base, sensory level to, he could only presume, every human soul, be they ignorant in ignorance or perceptive in close to absolute knowledge. "You got parents around here, or something?"

He kicked himself almost immediately after asking the question. This was a curious occurrence; and whilst this was a curious dimension, to him, it was far more likely that the kid had been here for a while to acclimatise to this than having been simply brought along for the ride by some junkie Ritualist or callous bastard of a Hunter - Satan knew you could run into the latter. But even if this kid did belong here; so far he had made no gestures of malevolence, and the little guy was cute enough. The whole switching from one side to another thing had spooked Laz a little; but maybe the boy was just ignorant of his abilities. Whilst the redhead had more or less put the entirety of his faith into this being a peaceful encounter, whilst he detested its existence, the month-old part of his brain at the very back that had conditioned itself to readiness for combat considered the contingency that shit could hit the fan and battle could rear its ugly head once more. After all: the Nomads were only ever a snap of his fingers away.

Finally, he extended his hand, and tried his best to put on a warm enough smile. Hell, maybe this was something new altogether, something he'd not yet experienced or been told about, just a lost soul or a lost kid wandering who'd found their way here some time ago. "My name's Laz." The redhead explained slowly, jerking his head softly towards his hand, indicating the want for a shake - though should the child recoil, he'd throw his hands up and assure that he meant no harm. "What do I call you, little guy?"

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