15316/On the Lido

On the Lido
Date of Scene:	05 July 2023
Location:	House of Mystery
Synopsis:	Don't attack the beach.
Cast of Characters:	Meggan Puceanu, John Constantine

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Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Hot. Too damn hot. That's the reality of the UK in climate ravaged life, where poisoned rivers spew out toxic water and the murky shoreline acquires effluent and waste stinking under the sky. Baked on the hottest day globally ever, it's just a heck of a midweek for any local native.

The irate summer faerie queene is no lolling damsel. She stands waist deep in the ocean, surf sluggishly shuffled to and fro. Lashings of trash and rotting kelp are hurled into the car park not that far off, not exactly smelling great. But the destroyed outflow pipe is proof of pique. Her preferred weapon is her bare hands, but a spear of steel and tipped in folded metal--stolen from the trash tipped into the sea--makes for an excellent means to jab at offensive crap that shouldn't be in the sea. Before she's his wife, or a mother, or a giggly blonde, she is this.

Nature's child, the other half to his working class Brit gig. The rural forgotten margins, the spaces between. The wrecked wild places of Britain, once untamed, now despoiled. Best she can do to clean up this little patch of beach. "I *get* why Atlantis wants to flood out all the yobs. I'm half tempted to say they're right."

John Constantine has posed:
What does John Constantine wear to the beach? Well, he's not so much of a dope that he'll go to the beach in his usual togs; rather, he's got a pair of capris-length beach trousers, brown beach slippers, and what can only be described as a beige tunic. He's taken his slippers off and left them back a ways, and is standing ankle deep in the surf, watching his wife do her Nature's Child thing.

Near by, Constantina is on her own, building the House of Mystery out of sand. Of course she is, little genius.

"Far be it from me to disagree, luv. Humanity's a poor roommate, that's for bloody sure." The only reason he isn't closer to Meggan is because, well, she's way over there, waist-deep in the water.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Wearing a ratty trench and a natty white shirt would be odd. Beach slippers are right up there, but given the woman presently in the sea is either prone to becoming a mermaid or part water, she's got no leg to stand on. Maybe seven tentacles for the krakenmaid or a webbed foot if she's feeling pinnipeddy.

"No wonder Manannan drinks. All this, I'd toss back a couple bottles too." Her teeth set as she rummages about study her bare hand, trying to suss out the chemical slurry wrecking sunbathing on the lido. Her natural air conditioning effect is alas out of reach from John unless he gets wet. "How's it you don't just burn the lot? They know all the rivers are fucked, they see the numbers. Do nothing, pour out their shite. Then they demand a bail out to avoid administration. Meanwhile we all choke, no one breathes, and the plastics in everyone are doing mum knows what. It's just a load of..." Swearing in Welsh takes a couple sentences to say bullshit. Little ears, though. "Some days I wish Ivy and Namor would go on their rampage and we just watch."

John Constantine has posed:
"Could." John is under no delusion that he _couldn't_ teach some of the larger corporations just what sort of consequences their actions can have. But.

"But it wouldn't last. One thing you learn as a magician, luv, is that _magic_ balances _magic_, but it can't balance _humanity_. That's why whenever there's a magical threat, we pop up to bury it, but we also aren't out there being righteous avengers with the mystic arts; if we were, someone would pop up to bury us."

He sighs. "Existence on this blue-green marble in space is a delicate balance and every world, no matter where you go in the universe, is the same." Beat. "Except for Mogo and Ego. Those two... well, they don't have a population, now do they?" He smirks.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"But you don't. Why? I have it in me sometimes to think none of the bastards deserve the place, but that's awfully full of myself." The flash of sunlight off the water marks a chunk of plastic and some dislodged netting coming to the surface, something she punts to the heap where surprisingly few tourists or locals want to park. Maybe crazy folks with sign spears are a reason to run.

Toxins don't exactly improve Meggan's mood. It's a tough balance. John has to go speaking sense and the fae battles the irritation to stick her tongue out. "Humanity is going to fuck itself out of a home at this rate."

John Constantine has posed:
"Magic against magic. Humanity against humanity. That's the only way it works, luv. If I start trying to fix the world's _mundane_ woes with magic, that tilts the scales, upsets the balance, and creates a fatalistic domino effect that brings larger and larger mystical threats in." John snorts.

"Why do you think bloody Swamp Thing doesn't do it? Same reason. He knows."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The humble seashore tucked against a non-descript stretch of southeast England hasn't the impressiveness of wild Dartmoor or the fabled position in the British mind of Blackpool. It's no Brighton, awash in tourists and claptrap along the jetty, nor its cousin in New York City, mildly more tacky and far more populated. As American things so often do, Coney Island is merely the louder, brasher, better-funded equivalent.

Perhaps some Norman lord battled over the place. Could be a Spaniard or Dutchman or German came ashore that one time to harry sheep and a couple peasants little better clad than they, and stole a bale of wool, some taxes, or a girl's virtue. While their daughter plays easily enough in the sand despoilt by uncaring successive governments, Meggan turns sea-glass eyes on the distant shore beyond the slowly tilting outcrop shaped by glaciation and the reckless changing of sea levels. "There's a shallowing out there. Once ripe with animals and plants, a long time back. Its echoes still stir the sea," she murmurs, distant enough to audibly be listening to something /other/ than Ceci or John fully. "Time was that humans once dwelled there and remembered the world differently. It drowned. Same people raised their henges on the chalk when they came from the lowlands, the ones the druids and pagans get drunk around on solstice-time cos they think it connects them to ancient power in a leyline. Don't know what that's down there in the sea but fancy it spoke to Swampy once. Or whatever Swampy was if he was a something that long back. Thing is, the world drowned 'cos of natural things. And technicalities, cyanide and earthquakes are. /I'm/ natural."

An agile swipe tosses the spear right at a rock, where steel either bends or rock cracks.

John Constantine has posed:
"Fair enough, luv, but you asked me why _I_ don't do it. I don't do it because the consequences of fuckin' about with magic to solve the world's mundane --if apocalyptic nonetheless-- problems could prove to be far worse, far quicker." John smiles at her. "You don't do it because most of the year you're too nice." Is he teasing her?

Maybe a little.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"Which means I better not do it. Who's the brighter of us, mm?" Pointing a finger squarely at John may be the second least accusatory thing to happen in the last twenty-four hours, and the woman stalking from the waves releases her elemental hold over them, no longer sorting out the noxious stuff brewing under there. The admixture of plastic or foul contaminants gathered up so far rises to the surface in a titanic belch, stinking of sulfur and rot, thrown in an overhand toss away from child and husband to steam wetly on the pavement. "Still can go round and punch that stupid outlet pipe. Thames Water is lucky I don't back the river up through their plant and wreck it proper."

John Constantine has posed:
John looks utterly smitten as she stalks his way, after disposing of her 'haul'. He holds his hands out to her for her to come closer, and once she's close enough, he wraps his hands around her wrists and pulls her in, pressing a kiss to her mouth and then pushing his forehead against hers.

"If you did that, I'd work overtime just to keep whatever demons might surge from it at bay. Just for you, luv."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"You have enough demons for a bar in hell, and none of them have any sense of humour. Already told you I'd sit beside you down in the furthest corner and make faces at Nergal, didn't I?" Her sea-glass eyes flicker a moody green, lit by too bright a hue that sunlight passing through a wave might attain. Meggan wags her finger just before he pulls her in, and the two of them fit together like cheese toasties and tomato soup. John gets to be the cooled one, awash in the softer air and comparative chill. "Not right to add to the burden without knockin' a few heads together on your behalf."

She shrugs her shoulders deliciously, boneless and purposefully askance in nipping at his lower lip. Just for a moment. "I'm put out by all this, but it's not new. We can loll about here having a time of it."

John Constantine has posed:
"Uh huh." John seems amused. "Given our lifestyles, I don't think it'll be long before the next time we have to deal with something worthy of our combined talents, luv, so no need to go _searching_ for it." Especially since his damn synchronicity kind of does that _for_ him, except with the one demon he _wants_ to find.

He gives her ass a little smack and then looks over at Ceci. "She's going to build all of bloody London if we let her."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Meggan idly rolls her shoulder and winks at Ceci back there recreating whole takes on the Battle of Baden Hill or some fabulous twist on Napoleonic theory and strategy. "You act like we're constantly under siege. To hear tell, that's only one part of town and it's not us. I never hear much out of Batman in Gotham. You think he's got the whole problem there licked?"

Her smile widens, and she squeezes John in a firmer hug, not quite letting him wiggle away. "Why not let her build the map and just spot where 'e is?"

John Constantine has posed:
"We are constantly under siege," John points out, "It's just that others pick up the slack when it's easy. They leave the hard stuff to us." He winks at her and then leans in to rest his cheek against hers. "I think Bats creates his own problems by being a territorial narcissist, to be honest. He doesn't have anything _licked_, we just hear nothing from him because he's busy with everything he's got to handle because he won't take help unless he's trained it from bloody childhood."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Meggan shakes her head and sets her chin on John's shoulder, nestling into the crook between his jaw and the point where his shirt gets in the way. Her breath flutters faintly across his skin, skittering into his hair where the darker ash meets the brilliant flaxen gold curls that spell the bounty of the summer sun in all its fury. "Always happening. This place is a focal point and I've never gathered why. Not the biggest or grandest planet, we're not Coruscant or anything spectacular. Yet they always come." The wrinkle of her nose marks his jaw, and she nudges John into another hug.

"You oughta get him a nest of chocolate eggs. Cadbury Problems. He can raise them and eat them if they're naughty."