The Vampire Not Actually Known As Count Choculata, granted the ashy form of a wraith whose lower half was a twisting whirlwind by clawing his way into the watery lotus that was the Mistress' Evil Jar, crossed his arms and glared at the jock guard known as Fate Twister. Fate was similarly naked ectoplasm upper-half tornado decked with ash lower-half, but instead put his hands behind his head and grinned smugly.
"Like what you see, Choculata?" he said, as if taunting the jailer he had gotten killed, and by extension the other bread-flavored undead.
"Fate, for the last time my name isn't-" the vampire started.
Unfortunately, he was cut off rather bluntly by Fate's "I don't care, featherfangs." and decided to let him continue talking against his better judgment. "Mistress is all laughing her ass off at the porch pirate getting out and dad's cleaning up the human world."
The vampire facepalmed, a motion seconded by the other now-quite-ashed vampires waiting in the resurrection queue, before snarking "If you don't care about me, then clean up your own mess. You're the one who let him out of qliphoth suppression and woke up the Demon's Hand."
Fate grunted and looked aside, failing to find a good dodge to guilt. "So the mistress doesn't care as long as she's entertained, right? You set off a bomb at point blank and she just said 'go for it'."
"She loves a good transformative show." the vampire commander laughed. "Quit screwing pigs and start picking out a body plan before I do. Maybe I'll come out as your competent twin or something and shock him by not dying in three seconds."
"That was one guy who liked straw, I swear...And you got oneshot in a floor commander body." Fate pointed out while consulting the lotus buds for something prefabricated he could twist to match his look. "I'm totally not gonna-"
The vampire commander pulled from the ether some gift cards for mystical gems in standard nebulous boss powers fashion, prompting shocked whispers from the various dead vampire comrades and an uncomfortable eyebrow raise from Fate.
"I was saving for an upgrade, and the hazard pay bonus came in." he said simply. "In fact, I might get a cool title now that I'm going adventurer. Your grandfather may outpace even this as the Warden of Rose, but I do want a fighting chance against that demon."
The vampire got to work throwing together a new boss-body in the way an old master of dungeoncore-craft might beseech his Mistress for power. Insultingly picking a standard slight-musclegut bodyplan with the same rounded plain face as Fate's natural body, he really did intend to come off as the more competent twin of that insufferable lout. Abilities were selected and manufactured in a blitz, upgrading from a mere vampire to a great sorcerer-archivist. A truly ridiculous quantity of jeweled relics and expensive foods appeared and disappeared in rapid succession as one of the Evil Jar's blossoms prepared to spit out a body that rapidly pulled in the vampire's ghost.
Within the new body, the form of a book-soldier enclosed the ghost as pages, a leathery overcoat of pseudo-parchment and rune-veins generating magical inks to paint an elegant argyle of yellows on the covers. In a torrent of magic, the Evil Jar spat out a book, and the naked form of a short bully of a grey-haired alcoholic eighteen-year-old was squelched out of that book.
"Hahahahahahahaha!" the technically-newborn old man shoved into a youth laughed, dramatic colors popping around him like so much flak. Spreading arms wide, he declared "I am Doom, Eternal Tome, and-"
He looked down, double-checking something he'd vaguely seen when spawning from a book.
"Wow, is this why you bully people?" he said, turning around to flaunt the inoffensively mini package to the assembled dead. "It's kind of small."
The resulting scream of rage from within the Evil Jar confirmed that Doom was very much right about Fate Twister's underwhelming and apparently natural manhood. Doom rolled his eyes, turned back, and snapped, causing an elegant black suit and reddish cape suitable for classic vampires to pop into existence about him.
"If you don't like it get a better one!" Doom shouted more clearly, intending to explore his copy more privately later. It was about time Fate got more creative with what the Mistress offered him, and hopefully a mixture of rage and embarrassment would prompt radical difference. Or at least putting something impressive in the pants, what'd he think was gonna happen?
Doom strode confidently toward the deployment teleporter, dialing in some floor locations to hopefully catch up for a rematch.
-
The Mistress flipped aside her ebony tresses and took another sip of red wine from her glass, observing Alex's prison break progress through another dungeon floor via stereotypical mystical scrying television in the fancy stone office. An ancient hurricane-sorceress who had formed from the ghost of an African woman in the ancient past of this world, she adjusted position atop her fireside throne and clicked together her leather boots.
"Grandmaster Warden." she requested to the empty air, causing the heavily armored old man known as the Warden of Rose to materialize by her side awaiting further orders. "Charming as it is to see that Demon's Hand go, keep it contained in the central dungeons of Elcorp facility for now. I can handle resealing it the hard way if you fail, but..."
She took another sip of wine. Apparently prolific amounts of alcoholic beverages were a pretty common pastime at the Elcorp Dungeon.
"Please don't fail." she requested, polite in the way one might be to a trusted servant they expected the best of. "Alex would be much more fun on site."
"Of course, Mistress." Warden Twister acknowledged. "Should I secure Lady Vanessa?"
The Mistress chugged the rest of her wineglass, set it aside, and began chugging the wine bottle. A significant amount of alcohol later, she said "Please see to it. Her French-drama magecraft is impressive, but she's not the type to think she can bind a demon of that rank. Free-spirited as she is, she has a bad habit of kiting idiots like your grandson's crew into goading her. Maybe it's just a submissive kink?"
The Warden of Rose let his great aegis-helm tilt demurely. "Perhaps. I will request your daughter move to a saferoom and will monitor the perimeters from there."
An acknowledging nod later, a blur of rose petals fell to the ground as the Twister patriarch exited. The Mistress conjured a bottle of white wine and poured herself another glass. This was going to be a long day, and hopefully an entertaining one. She contemplated redirecting some corridors to mess with Alex further, reviewing the various stereotypical supervillain facility functions she could will with but a spell or a button-press. With the Evil Jar safe in her secure private fortress area (not to mention being something a demon that size wouldn't be able to explode without a whole cycle of ages blasting it up), nobody had to worry about such matters as being killed or transformed into something ridiculous...giving them free latitude to transform into the most absurd battle-bait for fun.