The Temple of Artemis(Pre-Event/Intro Thread)

[Ada Wong]

While Koren was presumably busy inspecting his ridiculously chiseled pecs, Crowley decided that he really ought to make some use of the precious time he had. After fumbling around in his jacket pockets for a few seconds, he produced a blue ink pen he had pilfered from a street-side café on the sly and a gently used napkin. Once more his sunglasses were dutifully arranged so that they balanced just so on the bridge of his nose, and soon afterwards Crowley was ready to leap into action.

His snakeskin shoes papped softly against the stone floor as he sauntered over towards one of the more populated corners of the temple, beside a few ridged marble columns and a relief carving of snarling hounds sinking their fangs into a rather disgruntled stag. Pretending to inspect the drawing more closely, his thin tie and sharply-tailored suit dark against the lighter grey walls, Crowley listened as what appeared to be a living garbage pail prattled on about his glorified perception of death, pain, and probably more death.

It was true that Crowley had only dabbed a few marks on the leafy, brittle napkin, for about halfway through the animated garbage can's speech the demon surmised that the guy was positively nuts. Most of what he said was reasonable, sure, and the whole waiting for others to strike first tactic was great in Crowley's opinion, but no one who was one hundred percent there would let themselves be overrun with so many lecherous maladies. There had to be a million cultures of bacteria crawling along the big tin can's backside alone.

Backing away, his keen yellow eyes hidden quite nicely behind his shades, Crowley pretended to shuffle backwards so as to get a better look at the carving. Behind him, at the pinnacle of all the ambient light fountaining into the room, the luminous visage of Artemis looked on with the very same amount of divine interest Crowley reserved for the artwork. Which was very little, perhaps average at best. He was far, far too tired to appreciate much of the Grecian splendor around him, and any half-hearted attempts to do so felt pale and washed-out.

Still, something the enormous conflagration of sickness and disease had said rang true in the fallen angel's mind. You cannot heal Might-Have-Beens. Crowley could beg to differ— the Apocalypse That Never Was disappeared without a trace from the minds of at least half the world he once knew, swept away on the whim of a deviant Antichrist, and that was a pretty gargantuan Might-Have-Been.

Napkin and pen in hand, Crowley continued to scribble as he wandered back over towards Koren. His head canted inquisitively to the side when he drew up alongside the Adorned Armor, nose downturned while he interestedly doodled an impromptu stick figure battle. Once he had finished, the demon slid the pen back into his breast pocket before crumpling the napkin up and stuffing it into an odd corner of his jacket.

"Nice conversations going on around here," he commented to Koren, who was mostly the only other person within chatting distance. "Absolutely riveting. I think we'll probably be better off as just the two of us, in any case. The dynamic duo, that'll be you and I."