<div class="floatleft">(https://s019.radikal.ru/i620/1611/95/da0a97f5a50f.jpg)</div><strong>Character Name:</strong><strong>Lucifer Morningstar</strong>(https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=304004.msg14845965#msg14845965)<br/><strong>Date/Time:</strong>Monday 29th April 2019 -- Midday<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Perth, Australia -- Lux Carpark<br/><strong>Wearing:</strong><strong>This Tuxedo</strong>(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f2/cf/83/f2cf831d29b18792b6d8fd5230fc9a25.jpg)<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Koriand'r / Closed<br/><strong>Warnings:</strong><br/><br/><hr/><br/>The day thus far had been rather depressingly uneventful. Whilst Lucifer had chosen Perth as his more permanent retirement spot precisely because of its quiet nature and lack of costumed nonsense, he could not deny that he tended to get bored fairly easily. When you were aeons old, it was very easy for the more mundane workings of the universe to lose your attention, no matter how interesting the mortal races thought that they were. Why would he be interested in this banal television show or that new novel when they were over in the blink of an eye to him? Yes, he sometimes derived some small satisfaction from them, but such pleasure was fleeting compared to some of the other distractions he'd experienced over the years. Worth experiencing, but not worth talking about after the fact unless he had to. When you'd spent your formative years creating stars and forming galaxies alongside the likes of Michael and Duma, it was very hard to take anything on the Mortal Scale particularly seriously. Whatever struggles most mortals had tended to be the sorts of things that didn't even register on the list of "things that didn't matter" on the cosmic scale, and as a cosmic being, well...they were beneath his notice, quite frankly.<br/><br/>That wasn't to say that he didn't pretend to find them important; he had a number of employees working at his various establishments, and in order to keep them happy, he had to at least consider their problems and desires and requirements, did he not? Their pithy mortal concerns might not be all that important to him, but they were important to them - since, being Mortal, they had to consider their own lives in greater detail, he supposed - which meant that at least inasmuch as they impacted<em>his</em>life, they had to be at least passingly important to him too. And if not, he at least had to put some effort into addressing their issues. Besides, it was a point of pride that working for him should never be unpleasant; he'd had enough of torturing Mortals when he was ruling Hell - he disliked it then, and he disliked it now - and if they were going to be making his life easier, then it was only fair that he made their lives somewhat better in return. So, in that vein, he'd had to spend the morning flitting around his various locations worldwide to listen to their various concerns and requests in all sorts of employee meetings. Things like pay raises, holidays, sick leave, problem customers, more security, ordering more stock that was inexplicably regionally popular, that sort of thing.<br/><br/>He, of course, took them all on board and noted them down for future consideration, then left for the next meeting. Honestly, he'd retired to avoid the humdrum of bureaucracy but compared to Hell...eh. Lux was not exactly complicated or even vaguely difficult. It was just tedious. He'd only opened the chain a month or so ago, so he hadn't had the chance to identify any beings with the correct managerial chops as of yet, so he was being a bit of a helicopter parent with the managers he had in place at that moment in time. They were doing relatively well, all things considered, but...he was a worrier. This was his retirement plan, after all, and more than that...well, he needed a good network of bases of operations to help him conclude his business in this Universe as quickly as possible. He'd managed to trace the source of his power drain to this Earth - or at least, the local area, cosmically speaking - and then hit a brick wall as the trail went cold. It was infuriating, of course; he was<em>Lucifer Morningstar,</em>First of the Archangels and former Commander Of The Heavenly Host, and yet he was unable to figure out just where his power was going. More and more of his abilities were being drained on a weekly basis, and he had no idea who had the gall to dare to inflict him with such humiliation.<br/><br/>Which just made the meetings all the more tedious; he had to ensure that Lux had a strong, firm infrastructure behind it before he could start throwing its weight around, which meant doing the mundane day to day in order to establish it as a respectable power and set things up in a way that they could run without his direct oversight. But at the same time, that meant that less of his energy was going into hunting down whatever was responsible for the draining of his Divine Powers, which in turn meant that it was going to happen for longer. If he wasn't careful...he was actually a little worried about where that might leave him. Would it leave him with a shadow of his former glory? Or would it not stop until he was entirely Mortal? He'd done that once. Never again. The worry did gnaw away at his stomach, a deep, existential fear for his own existence. He didn't have a soul - Angels and Demons were custodians of Souls, not owners of them - so if he died, he would simply...cease to exist. And that kind of endless oblivion...did not appeal. The tangling in his gut was an unfamiliar sensation for him, cold and tight and vexing, and he did not appreciate it one little bit.<br/><br/>He did his best to avoid getting tangled up in the affairs of Mortals, as beneath him as they were, but when he found whoever had dared make him feel something as base and<em>common</em>as<em>worry</em>- he was<em>not</em>scared; he was above fear, and always would be - he was going to bring down the full wrath of Lucifer Morningstar upon their heads. Sodom and Gomorrah would look like a child playing in the sand compared to what he would wreak on whoever was responsible, because as much as that cold, clammy feeling gnawed at his stomach, it also served as fuel for the burning rage that smouldered in his chest. He was not a malicious or vindictive man...but if you decided to interfere with his affairs, he was not a forgiving one either. In that respect, then, he supposed he should be pleased that his life thus far in this Universe had been rather boring; he'd avoided this timeline and others like it precisely because the superheroes and villains - as they called themselves - were far too noisy and meddlesome to leave him in peace for any great period of time, but in the months he'd been there, he'd actually not experience all that much in the way of disturbances. It seemed that Perth was as quiet in this world as it was in his own.<br/><br/>Of course, no sooner had he thought that - sat at his desk, filling out the requisite paperwork to address the employees issues so that perhaps they could leave him alone for five minutes and actually do something on their own for a change - than a loud earthen explosion sounded throughout the building, and the entirety of Lux trembled under a sudden, violent tremor. He paused as his desk rattled in place, lifting his pen to avoid it scrambling across the page, looking up at the room as it shook. The pictures trembled, several falling off of the wall and shattering on the ground, and he could hear yells of sudden panic and alarm coming from the offices and the main floor below his office - which overlooked the club as a whole - as the mortals scrambled to find cover. He wasn't particularly worried - he could fix any damage that did occur with barely a thought, and he was not yet at the stage where an earthquake was anything for him to worry about - and simply calmly waited for it to subside. Earthquakes were uncommon in Perth, certainly, which made this occurrence an atypical one, but they were not unheard of. They had a decent sized earthquake every couple of years or so, as he understood it, but there was something different about this one.<br/><br/>Earthquakes normally took several long handfuls of seconds to subside, and tended to begin slowly, peak, then trail off. But this one...it felt less like the motion of tectonic plates and more like the tremor you felt when something heavy and fast collided with the ground nearby. Combined with the loud earth-shattering crash that had preceded the shaking, and he would be more than willing to bet that that was not one of your run of the mill, mundane earthquakes. Whilst the mortals ran around panicking to themselves about the various ornaments and glasses and other assorted objects that had been knocked over and broken by the tremor, Lucifer himself was far more interested in what might have caused the rumble in the first place. The prospect of something having crashed outside his club was enticing; it was by far the most interesting thing that had happened to him in months, and he knew himself well enough to know that he could not resist the curious urge to investigate. It might be nothing, he might be wrong, but then again...it might be something capable of actually distracting him for more than five minutes. He pushed his chair back against the wall, smoothed out his tuxedo - no sense in dressing sloppily; he was a gentleman, after all! - and flexed his Will. There was the sound of fluttering wings, the sound of feathers beating against the air, and he was gone.<br/><br/>He appeared a moment later to the flutter of wings outside the club, standing in the car park in the cool midday air. It was an oddly temperate day for Australia - it was usually warmer than this, even during the winter - but that was not what caught his attention; temperature ever really registered with him, in all honesty, and what was far more interesting was precisely what state the car park happened to be in. Whereas before it had been a fairly standard sheet of painted asphalt, it was now looking somewhat more...uneven than it was supposed to. Cracks and rubble lay strewn across the ground, large bumps and holes pockmarking the area round it, cracks leading away from a rather large crater, out of which sprouted the edge of what he could only assume was something not from Earth. Now, he hand't explored all of the corners of this particular Earth, but this did not look like something a human would have created. The aesthetic was all wrong, for starters, and it looked much more high-tech than anything most humans would be able to even design, let alone build. Given the depth to which is was buried beneath the ground, too, and the force with which it had presumably crashed, he was going to go out on a limb and say that it was extraterrestrial in nature.<br/><br/><strong>"Hrm."</strong>He made a sound of idle consideration as he regarded the scene. The carpark was easily fixed, of course, and this was not the first time he had encountered a non-Earthling, but he had to admit that it was still interesting. He'd met and seen some aliens here on Earth in this universe, but this technology looked very, very different to what the Martian and the Kryptonians had access to. So...a new species he had not yet had the opportunity to investigate? He smiled to himself. Yes, this was much more interesting than paperwork. Whilst not novel for a being as old as he was, it was still an interesting diversion, and he had to admit that he was exceptionally curious about what sort of alien creature would make its way out of the ship. Was it human-looking, like the Kryptonians? Was it simply a different colour, or was it a different shape entirely? Carbon based lifeforms were so generic. Personally, he was hoping for something more unique. A silicon based lifeform, perhaps, or maybe even something like an invertebrate gelatinous creature. They didn't have anything like<em>that</em>in Hell back where he came from, so that would most definitely be an experience to write home about.<br/><br/>He was disrupted from his musings - standing at the edge of the crash site, arms folded patiently as he simply stood and watched; why should he get involved at all? he was there simply to see what happened, after all - by the sound of a door opening, and as his eyes flicked over to where the hole was appearing in the previously smooth outer surface - yes, certainly not human in origin - he actually found himself mildly and delightfully surprised for a change. The occupant didn't step out. Oh no. She - and she was obviously a female -<em>flew</em>out instead, streaking out into the sun with a graceful twirl. His eyebrow lifted in bemusement. She was humanoid, which was a momentary disappointment, but it was short lived as he took in the rest of her appearance. Setting aside her odd choice of spacesuit - after a customary glance up and down, of course; he was no prude - she was an exceptionally intriguing individual. She moved through the air as if she was born there, with the grace of a practised show swimmer or figure skater, flowing through the atmosphere like water. That level of comfort and grace was rare amongst mortals, so already, she had his attention.<br/><br/>And as he looked closer, he could not deny that as a humanoid female, she was - frankly - stunning. She was tall - exceptionally so - and statuesque, with curves in all of the right places, a delicately symmetrical face and long, flowing hair that flickered in the sunlight. To put it plainly, she would be the envy of almost every succubus back in Hell for her almost offensive levels of beauty and the generous nature of her curves and assets, which actually made him smile a little. The thought of a Succubus learning that there was a mortal more attractive than her? Oh, he might have to find one just to be able to witness the<em>epic</em>tantrum that would follow. But that wasn't what caught his attention. Yes, to a human her delicate, smooth, coquettish facial features and ample curves combined with the revealing nature of her skintight spacesuit would immediately make her fodder for the fantasy bank, it was something else entirely that caught Lucifers eye. For one, she was the most gorgeous shade of orange, like a sunrise after a storm, her skintone mimicking the gentle light of an orange star. Her hair flickered behind her in fiery corntrails that seemed to burn the oxygen as it passed with its intense heat, more like a streaking comet than hair.<br/><br/>His main job upon the dawn of creation had been to create stars, and he'd always harboured a kind of longing love of the celestial giants, a need to create just one or two more of the flickering, beautiful wonders of nature. And right in front of him was a woman who seemed to harken back to that beauty. Whilst he was old enough not to simply stare at her slack-jawed - he was not an idiot or a pervert, and she was not the first beautiful woman he had seen in not many clothes - he was not made of stone. To say that she was not attractive would be a lie, and whilst he was many things, a liar was not one of them. Of course, it was only a matter of time before she noticed him, and upon doing so, she exclaimed in a foreign tongue - her language, obviously - and made her way towards him, alighting on the cracked and shattered pavement. She stepped forwards, her movements languid and graceful, sashaying her hips almost subconsciously as she did so. Much more graceful than most mortals, he had to grant her. She lifted her hand in what he had gathered in his scouting of this universe was the universal greeting, which he mimicked, but he did not speak immediately. He knew most languages in existence, but he had some gaps, admittedly, and her language was one of them. Well. For the moment.<br/><br/>He was not omniscient, so he didn't immediately know her language or even what it was called, but now that he'd heard a few sentences from it, he could utilise his Reality Warping abilities to rewrite their own existence a little. Not by much - there were limits - and he couldn't give himself knowledge that he didn't have. That would be an absurd paradox. What he<em>could</em>do, if he so chose, was allow understanding. He could rewrite the local reality just a fraction to allow her to understand the general thrust of what he was saying, even if she couldn't identify the individual meanings of the words. It was all about playing with perception, and targeting specific points in her mind. Whilst he couldn't rewrite her brain, he could at least subtly poke certain sections to get some kind of an empathetic resonance so she could identify the tone and intent if not the specific meaning. He paused, closing his eyes in concentration - this always took some effort, since he had to be careful not to create too much of a spacial disturbance and as weakened as he currently was it took a great deal more energy than it usually would - and after a few seconds, his Will<em>clicked</em>into place he felt with his Cosmic Awareness the reality of the local area bending just a hair. He opened his eyes, which momentarily flashed a deep, almost demonically crimson red as his powers took effect, before returning to their "human" blue.<br/><br/><strong>"My apologies, miss,"</strong>he said airily in English. Whilst she wouldn't know the exact words, she'd at least understand the<em>concept</em>he was attempting to transmit; namely, that he was regretful, but he couldn't understand what she was saying.<strong>"Yours is one of the few languages I don't happen to know."</strong>Again, his ability wasn't translating his words - he'd need to know her language before he could translate his words into her tongue, and to tamper with somebodies mental abilities was not something he could do easily - but she'd get the general gist of things.<strong>"Do you happen to have any understanding of English, or perhaps a different non-terrestrial language?"</strong>Unlikely, but it was worth a try. If it came to it, he could always hop onto one of the worlds he'd discovered and steal a translator, but that was more effort than he was willing to go through unless absolutely necessary. That being said...if he had to, he would. After all, she was the most interesting diversion that he had happened to stumble across in years, perhaps longer, and he was not about to pass it up easily!