Lucy and the man known only as Murmur stepped out of the old Cadilac, staring at The Three Z Club, one of the most dangerous clubs in the city, where they were supposed to be meeting their informant. Murmur just stood in silence, while Lucy talked incessantly about some demon-worshiping cult in Bucharest she'd dealt with last week. Murmur's cell phone gave a quiet, whine, inaudible to most people but easy to hear (and, as a matter of fact, annoying) to someone such a him with enhanced hearing. "Hey, Luce," he said, "Shut up for a second. This might be Cthulhu." This, of course, was the one thing gaurenteed to anger Lucy. She was-and there is simply no other word for it-a chatterbox, and nothing could anger her more than people telling her to shut up. Her eyes glowed with the fires of her homeland, and her skin turned ivory-white for a moment.
"Don't you DARE speak to me like that!" She shrieked. "You may be my superior, but I can still kill you without lifting a finger."
"You can," Murmur replied smugly, "But if you do, my distress beacon will go off and you'll be captured and thrown into a stasis cell." Lucy tried to respond, but nothing would come out of her mouth. The fires in her eyes went out. Murmur picked up his cell phone and flipped it open.
"Hello?"
"Agent Murmur, this is project director Cthulhu. Have you found the informant? Is he there?"
Murmur cringed inwardly. Though he'd been project director for the three years since Shadowmaster's death, Cthulhu had never managed to figure out the concept of subtlety. Just because the phone lines hadn't been tapped before, it doesn't mean they wouldn't ever be.
"No, sir," Murmur replied. "No sign of him anywhere. And we just circled the block"
"What? It's been two hours! You're sure he's not anywhere in the club?" Murmur cringed. "In the club? Sir, you told us we were supposed to meet him outside the club."
"What? No I didn't. You better get in the club quick. He might have left already. We can't afford to lose this guy."
"Yes sir." Murmur shut his phone and walked into the club.
It was poorly lit, and the few lights within seemed to gutter constantly. The entrance smelled faintly of smoke. Some death metal band was playing a very loud rendition of "Be the Rain". A small-built man sat at the bar wearing sunglasses. His hair was a fiery red. This, they supposed, was their contact. Lucy sat down next to him.
"Does the name 'Victreal' mean anything to you?" she asked. Murmur cringed again, this time as much outwardly as inwardly. Lucy had never been to good at subtlety either. But at least she had an excuse. She was new to this, She would learn.
Probably.
The man turned around. "Victreal? Why, yes, that name meant something to me once." He shook her hand. "I suppose you're agent Murmur? You're very late."
"Actually, that would be me" Murmur said, outstretching his hand. He normally wouldn't have been so obvious, but it seemed safe, considering how uninhabited the bar was.
Come to think of it, it was completely uninhabited. No bartender even. That was strange.
"Ah," the informant said, shaking Murmur's hand. "I suppose this young lady is fodder of some kind? You send her in to see if your informer plans to kill you?"
Murmur wrinkled his nose. "Do not presume, sir, that Our Fellow Heros is as barbaric as the late Victreal's syndicate. We do not use members as fodder."
"Of course," he said.
"I would like to inform everyone that the two chocolate things tasted like some kind of toffee balls, and they were delicious."
Murmur cleared his throat than turned around in surprise, and a small-built man wearing a hat walked through the door, carrying a bag of chips. The informant turned around. "Who the hell are you?" he almost yelled. Lucy looked a bit surprised by the man's random hostility towards the hated man, who raised his arms in a gesture of surprise. "I'm a guy who's supposed to be talking to somebody named Murmur," he said. "Who are you?"
"Wait," Lucy said, confused, "You're the informant? The Little Onion, or something?"
"Yes! You took like forever getting here. I went out to buy some dorritos and now this weird yelling guy's here and-and where's the bartender?" The red-haired man chuckled.
"Victreal wishes you well," he said in a smooth voice, "and Lucy, your father is deeply ashamed of you." There was a smell of burning flesh, and where a slight, red-haired man had sat a second before, there was a huge creature that could be compared to a flaming skeleton. "And Onion, when I take these two out, you're next."
A blast of flame struck Murmur in the chest, knocking him down and singeing his shirt. Trying to overcome his shock, he whispered several unintelligible words under his breath. The flaming skeleton shook its head, then laughed. "Clever, Murmur, but I've heard about you. That trick of yours doesn't work on me. I'm not one of you flesh-sacks." He snapped his fingers and a column of flame appeared, reducing Lucy's body to cinders in a few seconds. She didn't even try to avoid it. Instead, as her form was comsumed by the fire, she laughed.
Lucy had disappeared, but there was an aura in the place, one of spite, and a kind of rebellion. A deep voice chuckled.
"You thought that would work on me?" Lucy, and yet definitely not Lucy, said. "Don't you know anything? You should've researched your targets better."
It was then that Murmur had a flash of memory, the first time he'd seen Lucy in action. When held at gunpoint by a mobster hired by a vampiric rival of the Director of Research & Development, she had said something like "Strike me down, and I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." A clichŽ, to be sure, but he now understood what it meant.
"I," she intoned dramatically, "Am Lucille Von Stryfe, Rani of wrath, and you are found to be guilty of the sin of wrath, many times over. For this, I sentence you to up to 80 years in torture in torture chamber 45-C on level 4 of hell, in accordance with Demonic legal code-" what followed were several words in a language that sounded like human screams. Murmur understood none of this, but he understood one thing:This creature would be in hell for a long time.
There was a sound like a cross between a cold wind and an infant crying, followed by a horrible, greating rippimg noise. The flaming creature screamed, and one of it's legs vanished. It seemed that oblivion was crawling up it's body. The thing shrieked in surprise. "No!" it yelled, "I'm supposed to outrank you! I'm the Caliph of Pride!"
"Wrath outranks Pride right now," Lucy's voice said smugly. "Check the bylaws. If Father has any problem with it, he can talk to me about it."
The thing shrieked and completely disappeared. Murmur stared in shock. "What just happened?" The real informant, now identified as Little Onion, asked, dumbfounded.