"Do not worry yourself with the problems of old men, querido."

There was a darkness in every corner of the world, in every wicked street and deadly shadow, in small towns and rampant cities, the earth was stained with the monstrosity of humanity, buried deep in the crust and dancing with the flames of hell. And when you had moved around as much as Eris had, the thing was that eventually, you were able to smell the darkness the moment you stepped inside of it without even having to witness its damnation, to touch upon the ever patient ruin that would possess you completely, swallowing you whole and spitting you out while calling it salvation.

So, in other words, Hell's kitchen was just as dark and dingy as she'd remembered it to be. It had felt like a lifetime ago that she'd tasted that disease of mocking holiness that festered and burned like a saint to a pyre, that typical brand of death that struck her like haunting phantoms, the echo of the people that had once walked the pavements and who's crimson sin soaked deep down into the cracks...she definitely didn't miss it, she found, in fact, there was a part of her that had been content to never see the dreaded place ever again.

And yet, there Eris stood, a glass of wine held loose in divinity stained fingers and dark eyes cursed with madness glaring out the stained glass window that bathed the city of Hells Kitchen red. She could feel it, could feel next to everything, the suffocating feeling of the masses anguish and rage, could feel the pain, the dangerous intentions leaching their way through the air giving her a headache, pounding away at the walls of her brain until she felt fit to burst...sometimes, most of the time really, her mutation was more of a hindrance than a so called blessing, her simple abilities of being the psychic wonder.

"Come away from the window now, querido. You know it will only temp you to be nosy."

The familiar voice came from the large table in the middle of the living room, over-looking the terrace where the skies were beginning to dip into glorious hues of amber, obviously intended for the peaceful serenity that seemed so out of reach for their rather dangerous way of life. For a moment, Eris contemplated ignoring him, to fall into the abyss of pettiness and open the flood gates of her mind to consume the world completely...however, the last time she'd done such a thing she'd been unconscious for a month, and she had no desire to repeat such a spectacle, and so with that in mind, she finally turned around to face them with a sigh.

Now you must understand that Javier Moreno was not a good man, no, he wasn't even close. He had paved his way through the monsters of the world with brutal efficiency by simply having bigger teeth than the lot of them, he had clawed his way through the ranks of the criminals underworld until his very name because something to fear, something to shudder at, something to avoid because of the horror stories that surrounded him like ghosts. The harbinger of raptured souls, the reaper, the executioner in a handsome suit with tanned flesh hiding the ruined monster within.

Javier Moreno was not a good man, it was true...but he was an incredible father, and he would burn the world, turn it into ash and soot and let the flames lick at his blood-stained flesh riddled with sin, just to keep his daughter warm if she so much as shivered.

And perhaps that was why she tore herself away from her dark thoughts of turmoil without as much as a sigh as she began to walk over towards him, trying not to laugh at the simple picture of the Reaper sitting oh so casually in his seat at the head of the table without a care in the world as he picked at the strawberries upon his plate, already sinfully at ease in their new home while she, as she always did, felt like she was dancing upon the edge of a steep cliff and risking it all to fall into the abyss of the worlds damnation where not even she could crawl out from. "I like the new windows by the way, very modern renaissance but let me guess...one-way glass?"

"Of course it is, I have no intention of peering eyes seeing what I'm doing in the privacy of my own home. But if you like it so much, then perhaps I can have it installed to the rest of the windows too, a part of your birthday present considering I have been struggling for ideas." Javier hummed, waving an idle hand as if the answer had been obvious, which, in a way, it had been considering the young mutant knew her saviour more than she knew herself sometimes, being raised and taught to be human by the man who liked to pretend he anything but until she resembled something tolerable and not some feral beast that had been created for war.

"Well, I have always wanted a castle."

"Ah, unfortunately I'm afraid I'm saving that present for when I've done something particularly unforgivable to win back your favour." He chuckled, the rich noise dancing through the room like melody sin as he lifted the glass to his lips and winked over the rim of it, finding himself partially amusing even though they both knew that all she had to do was ask and it would be hers by the time night would fall and settle around them like a blanket of shadow. Some may argue she was spoiled, that she was pampered, that she was selfish...but she had long since learned that her father had decided she deserved to be, so who was she to stop him?

"And are you? Planning on doing something unforgivable that is." Eris asked carefully as she sat down, lips still quirked in a playful grin, the mischievous affection of her old man greeting her like an unfurling of a flower as she tentatively opened her connection to the world just a bit, just in the comfort of the room, in the comfort of her saviour as she looked at him just as brightly as she had when he found her through the flames of her damnation and saved her...looking at that feral desire for survival in her eyes, the blood around her mouth and the bodies that dropped before her with only a mere twitch of stained fingers.

His sins outmatched her own by the thousands, he'd been steadily piling up the corpses of rot since a blade was placed in his hand, the melancholy screams of the ghosts and their mourners following him around like a phantom in the night...but whenever he remembered that night, remembered the terrible screaming, remembered the scientists in their hysteria tearing out their eyes and tongues and flesh when confronted with the monster they'd created as she showed them the abilities they'd enhanced in their greed...it was hard to remember it was his daughter sitting in front of him, and not the devil himself.

"Only to the eyes of the law and God, querido."

She hummed quietly, looking down to the table to hide her smile as she drummed her fingers against the cold glass that leeched the barely there warmth of her flesh. She knew where his thoughts had gone of course, not that she tried to pry into the ruin of his mind regularly, but even without being a telepath she would of noticed because of the sudden darkness that flickered in his comforting eyes of gold...it had been the first and last time she had stained her hands with crimson mortality, the first and past time that she had wiped humanity from the roots and left only to primal desire to maim and destroy like a beastial monster in its place.

Vengeance had been a bittersweet poison on her tongue when she had swallowed it down whole in her desperation for ruination, but with it came a freedom that she had only dared to dream of in the ominous darkness of the night when the scientists took pause. Sometimes she wondered if one had managed to escape the slaughter, if they had ran, if they had disappeared, simply waiting for a moment to catch her and drag her back into damnation...but among the monsters around her, the monster that was her father, she was well hidden...after all...who would think to look for a leaf in a forest?

"Careful now boss, I don't think the big guy upstairs likes that kind of talk."

And then all at once did Eris's mood sour like milk on a hot day at the voice of her fathers right hand 'man' when she strolled into their living room with a bunch of papers in hand, feeling her upper lip curl in a snarl, feeling the animosity fester in the air as Severia's eyes glared down upon her for half a second, never daring to linger longer in the presence of the butcher, the Reaper, the harbinger of souls...because everyone knew what happened to the last person that was so open with their unease at the mutant that sat amongst them with a taste for chaos and destruction in the mocking of prayer.

"Ah, but what is God to a nonbeliever?" Javier chuckled at his most trusted bodyguard, smiling ruefully as he leant back against his chair to toast up at the ceiling as if daring such a being to come down and strike him with their divine power. Perhaps if there was justice in the world, perhaps if there was an uplift of righteousness and light in a world shrouded by darkness and sin he'd hold some fear, some hesitation, some belief in an omnipotent saint that would burn him for his discretion...and yet he knew how likely that was, if there was a God, he would already simply be bone and dust.

"And what's a nonbeliever to a God. There, see? We can all sound smart and mysterious when we want to." A small crack formed in the table directly beneath Eris's fingertips as she scowled dangerously, feeling very much like a child about to throw a tantrum as she kept her fiery gaze upon Seveira as if that mere look alone would set her alight. The older woman who was so muscular she could put the Rock to shame had never liked her, had taken one look at her and declared her feral and untamable, nothing but a mistake, ruination waiting to happen and had tried to pull her boss away from the child at every chance...only to come up empty every single time with new nightmares suddenly keeping her awake at night with the whispering of wraith curling around her mind like mist.

Because, you see, her father's men usually failed to remember that while Eris didn't share most of his...well, she suppose they could be called short comings in a way, there was one that she did trait she possessed, one thing that she had swallowed and left to rot in the poetry of her stomach...and that was her brutality when it came to the cruel destruction of revenge.

However, it appeared that Javier had heard the underlying rudeness that coated his daughters voice, had felt the sudden surge of power through the air that twisted at his once content emotions, giving him a taste of what blistered it's way through her veins as he glanced over to her while trying to hide the amusement that shone in his gaze...before he waved his hand idly at his second in command with a quiet chuckle. "Of course, querido. Now, please Sev, you know how I feel about work at the dinner table. Why don't you take a well deserved break and go out or something, you won't be needed tonight."

"Sir...I don't think that's a good idea-"

"Unfortunately I don't care what you think. You may be the hired muscle but you'd do well to remember just how I earned my many names." He said swiftly all the while holding that cheerful tone, practically singing in the dying light that danced across his face and painted him in shadow...giving the older woman a glimpse of something dangerous flickering across his once warm eyes as he stared her down, a calm rage that was as cold as the ice of the sea as he looked upon her and froze her in place as he took another drink of his wine, letting the red soak his upper lip into something bloody...before he suddenly smiled, all teeth and bite and venom.

"Plus, there will be no cause of alarm because Eris will see far faster than you would if I were to be in any danger...one of the many benefits of having a seer for a daughter I assure you." It's what she's here for after all, the thought remained unsaid but Eris had heard it all the same as she flinched carefully at the hesitation, looking down to her ring-clad hands that she began to fiddle with anxiously, forcing back the memories of what she had to give up to stand beside him, of who she had to give up to keep her father safe from bloody blades and ricocheted gunshots...of a life that had been in her reach only to be snatched away by loves cruel hand.

It felt like a century ago that she was just a girl trying to make her way through University, just another face amongst the weary masses, insignificant and unimportant to everyone because they all had far more important matters to worry about and an antisocial and weird Eris had definitely not been one of them. Well, almost everyone...because there had actually been two people who had become her problems, who had practically taken her under their wing, who had been her saviours, her friends, her almosts. For a short while they had been her everything, and perhaps that was why that even now it fucking hurt to think about sunshine eyes and crimson sin glasses.

And then the abrupt sound of a door closing shook her out of her thoughts as she jerked in place, fingers drifting towards her temple in preparation with her powers flaring out like smoke...only to realise that it had simply been Severia finally leaving the father and daughter duo to their own devious devices.

She let out a breath she didn't know she was holding, letting it swirl around in the dark air as she closed off that connection to the world, drifting away from the screams, the emotions, the overwhelming thoughts and feelings she could change with nothing more than a twitch of stained fingers soaked with divinity. Power was a curious and damning thing and there was so many ways to hold it...her father with his brutal efficiency, Severia with her brute strength...and Eris with the abilities to change dreams into nightmares, bliss into agony, love into hatred, sight to illusion and human beings into willing puppets.

"I thought you said you didn't want me there at your meeting? Already getting cold feet, father dearest?" The young mutant grinned with a flash of teeth, a look so alike Javier's own that he didn't dare comment on the rather sarcastic term of endearment that had pulled at his heartstrings most pathetically as he lifted his eyes to stare down at her from the head of the table, something resembling a warning in his gaze as he leant back against his chair.

"You shouldn't worry yourself with the problems of old men so quickly. It's a tiring enough business as it is." He sighed quietly, rubbing at his nose with his thumb and forefinger as if that would ease the aching weight of his headache that was steadily forming the more he thought about the meeting at hand, being forced to grin his teeth and bare it, all for a man that was coming up upon the criminal ladder far quicker that he was comfortable with...but he would be a fool to turn away the hand willing to shake his own. "And no, I don't want you to come I'm afraid, far too many prying eyes for my comfort when it comes to your safety, and you know that I don't gamble when it comes to such things."

That made sense, of course it did, because in all of her years of living under the shadow of his crimes, Eris had never known her father to play so idly when it came to her protection, well, not when he could help it, obviously...and yet something told the girl that she most definitely wasn't getting the full picture as she squinted at him uneasily. "Alright, so if you don't want me there...where do you want me then? Unless you're giving me the day off as well which, let's be honest here, I definitely deserve far more than Severia. Do you know how exhausting it is playing psychic wonder with all your men? Some of their minds are absolutely rancid."

And even that was generous, she thought to herself with a slow and dramatic shudder that rolled up her spine, sticking her tongue out in absolute disgust as she caught a drop of wine that had curled at the corner of her lips to swallow it down alongside the bile that had suddenly rose in the scarred ruins of her throat. God, the things she had seen swimming about inside the rather horrifying insight to the thoughts of men could have her in therapy for years, and the amount of people she'd had her father fire or take more...extreme measures with for the comfort of her own mind.

"You know, you never did tell me what Richard did that was so awful that it resulted in his termination now, did you?" Javier murmured, swallowing down the last of his wine before standing up and walking away as her narrowed eyed glare lingered at his suited back in rising suspicion, watching him closely as he leant down and began to rummage around in one of the boxes yet to be unpacked with a light furrow to his dark brows, humming and harring as the rustling of whatever crap he'd hoarded filled the silence. What the hell was he doing now? And most importantly, why hadn't he answered her rather important questions?

"No I didn't and you should count yourself lucky...god, that poor fucking cow. Couldn't sleep for a week after that horror show."

"Language, Eris." He said without even looking over his shoulder at his daughter, before finally, he seemed to find what he was looking for as he made a soft noise that burned the back of his throat, standing up straight and pretending he couldn't hear the way his joints creaked together like a rusty hinge before he slowly turned and began to make his way over to her, holding a sleek black box in steady hands stained with sin. And then when he was merely standing a few spaces away from where she was sat looking up at him, he placed it down upon the table in front of her with a dark smile curling at the corner of his lips.

Which really did not exactly fill Eris with confidence as she hesitated for half a second, ring-clad fingers dancing over the lid as she honestly debated risking opening it because the last time Javier had handed her a black box she'd opened it to find some poor bastards fingers...well, in his defence his victim had deserved it for trying to kill her, but still, it's not like she wanted to actually see it. However, she could feel his excitement, his fear as it festered in the air, and so, with a quiet sigh, she slipped the box open, to find a ghastly mask staring back at her, wide-eyed and lifeless and absolutely terrifying.

"You're not going to the meeting because I have in mind a far important job for you, little one...because I do believe it's time for my little phantom to finally make her debut to Hell's kitchen...don't you?"
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Now, a phantom was a twisted creature indeed, an apparition of death that flirted with the darkness of shadow, a ghastly misery that fed off of hatred and despair because it craved the chaos of pain, another word for a ghost, a wraith, nothing more than a mere trick of the light to the haunted minds of the masses...and apparently, it was just the title for a mutant like Eris who could disappear from your eyesight like an illusion of holiness. Not in the literal sense of course, but having the ability to dull the senses was an absolute gift of a power when it came to seeing, hearing and feeling things that people weren't all too keen to let out in the open.

And it especially came in handy when she was using such a gift to spy on Javier's future 'associates' that, like himself, dabbled in the bloodthirsty destruction of hell's kitchen where remorse and morality ran dry like the desert, each grain of sand soaked in innocent blood, in the ruin of their land where they had built their own empires on the corpses of hollowed gods.

But unfortunately, she was only one person, well most of the time anyway, so that meant that she had to stretch herself out most sparingly as to not raise suspicion and to most importantly, not collapse under the weight of her own psychic mutation. And so tonight, the Phantom has found herself weaving into the criminal world of the Russian mafia in the comfort of the dark where they believed themselves to be oh so safe, not knowing about the creature listening in to their conversations standing right beside them, not knowing about the monstrous spy unfurling the seams of their minds and plucking out all kinds of information that was all kinds of delicious.

And that lead Eris to where she was now, leaning against a crate at the edge of some kind of awful smelling harbour that stunk of fish and rot...and feeling very uneasy indeed as she watched the Mafia's lackeys herding a group of women into one of the large boxes, taunting and jeering with an electroshock taser sparking blue as it burned against their flesh and made pain erupt in the ruin of her mind as she felt their terror as if it were her own.

She felt her upper lip curl behind her mask the longer she watched, disgust pooling in her gut as they shoved at the women like they were mere animals being sent off to slaughter, bile clinging to the walls of her throat...and rage beginning to settle beneath her skin as she heard their screams. Her father was a monster, and she had been raised with that streak of cruel villainy just like he had been...but there had been someone who had taught her about mercy, about salvation. And it was their voice that she could hear whispering in her ear in Javier's place as her fingers began to drift to her temple, deciding that this was one of the rare times that the Phantom would play hero.

Except Eris had barely even taken a mere step towards the sinful ruin, had barely seen made peace with the awful violence she was about to commit, about the blood that would soon stain her hands never to be washed away because it seemed that someone had simply beaten her to the punch...in every sense of the word.

Because she hadn't even blinked and there was suddenly a man dressed in black appearing out of the shadows and raining down on the Russian men with righteous fury, snarling like a feral animal, like a beast, like the devil himself brimming with ominous danger and threat. And good god, none of them even stood a chance, not with their numbers, not with their guns or knives, not against the man in the mask who was absolutely letal in his own kind of mocking justice....and she should of ran, she should of hid better, should of blurred all of their senses until they were floating in nothingness so she could leave...but she didn't dare, she didn't even try.

The way he fought was terrifying, it was true, an intricate dance of bloody destruction as crimson stained the rough gravel of the pavement below in splatters, throwing punches, drifting through the wind like it bowed to him, a physical aspiration of rage that just kept getting up every time he was forced down with his teeth bared and bloody. He was brutal and insatiable and fucking beautiful in a way that only chaos could ever hope to be as he put them all down like dogs in the street, one by damned one until he was the last standing, soaked through with righteous sin and broad chest heaving as he desperately tried to catch his breath.

All the while the Phantom simply kept her wicked eyes upon him because how could she even attempt to look away? Her mouth hanging open, her heart pounding in the darkness around her and not even flinching when he screamed hid ordered for the girls to leave, to stay in the light and find an officer which finally sent the would-be victims of the Russian's trafficking ring running like their lives depended on it, like the hounds of hell themselves were nipping at their bleeding heels without as much as a thankyou.

Impressed was far too shallow of a word to describe the way she felt as she slowly drifted closer under the guise of her blurring, in fact, it seemed like a mockery, an insult, a mere taunt because the brutality of violence she'd just witnessed was breathtaking, was worthy of worship...a spectacle that had her ready to fall on bended knee to the glory of gore and horror that she'd been raised upon in every sense of the word. But Eris had always been a greedy creation, wanting everything from a world that had tried to give her nothing but misery, and such things would always be her downfall as she unfurled her mind in an attempt to leech her way into his own in an attempt to see him.

Only to find out that she had managed to open the floodgates of absolute fucking agonising hell, a hurricane, a tsunami of darkness that was an abyss of ruin and anguish that was drowning her in a sea of suffering that kept pulling her beneath wave after wave after wave until she could taste salt scratching at her throat. And then Eris had no choice but to yank herself out of the masked mans conscious with a sharp scream, her breath a gasping sob as blood dripped down her nose, staining her teeth in red, red, red as she splutted and cursed with her mind in sickening turmoil at the mere glimpse at the psyche of the man in black.

The guilt, the anger, the hatred, the longing and the grief, all of harrowing and painful and so overwhelming that Eris felt the cold creeping promise of numbness as it began to tempt her, to stop that awful onslaught of emotions that had slashed at her flesh like a festering wound thick with disease. And then she finally raised her head, looked up in an attempt to glance at the man who seemed to be unraveling by the seams of sanity and froze in horror at the sight that greeted her...at the man wigh his head turned and staring right at her...as if he could see her through the fog of her blur, as if he knew exactly where she was.

And so, naturally, the young mutant had no choice but hit the ground running as fast as her legs could carry her before he could even have a chance of coming closer, frantically wiping away the blood and the sweat and the tears, forcing the shields of her mentality higher than they'd ever been before until she was nothing but an echo, nothing trick of the light, nothing but a whisper of phantom as she just ran and ran and ran.

But it was hours later, when the sun was beginning to drift across the horizon and paint the skies in hues of blood orange, settling across it like crimson sin in the quiet of the oncoming morning, Javier Moreno walked into his living room and found his daughter standing at the window of their home with her wicked gaze staring out into the abyss of Hell's kitchen with her face set in contemplation...even as he came up beside her, even as his hand pressed against the cold flesh of her still breathing corpse, even as he whispered her name in the dying light, she still looked out to the streets below where the howling mourning of ghosts still reached her. "What have you seen, querido?"

She had seen everything, she had seen the men they were going to work with just like he'd asked of her, she had seen the shame of sin, she had seen a nightmare, she had seen hell, she had seen anguish in it's most purest form of destruction. However, most frighteningly of all, she had finally seen..."A world on fire."