17189/Bad Dog, No Biscuit

Bad Dog, No Biscuit
Date of Scene:	15 February 2024
Location:	Dusk Sculpture Garden
Synopsis:	Canine-friendly. Really.
Cast of Characters:	Meggan Puceanu, John Constantine

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Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Gotham doesn't pay too much mind to people disappearing. It happens here more than anywhere in the US, probably. People just come and go, those unhoused not noticed, those on the transient lifestyle train forgotten when they don't step off the platform at the next station. Slumlords, poverty, and new opportunities elsewhere take far more than sinister means.

Not that sinister issues aren't happening.

Human trafficking is an ongoing issue. Plotting by crazy lunatics not kept in check by the Bats. Others.

But when one of those going missing is a teen babysitter who also teaches your kid's art class, or at least *helps* in that art class, matters take a bit of a turn. Meggan doesn't *like* interfering very much in the way Gotham is, because it's not her city and no one really wants a faerie rampage that ends in confused law enforcement, dead faerie, and grumpy Batman. Do they? All the same...

"Olivia's part of the art collective here, and they said she was working on some kinda sculpture in her free time. No wonder they weren't comfortable coming down here." By day, the crooked shapes and weird constructs are really none too friendly. But this is a garden meant to be seen by night, strange and odd and *loud*, whispery and groaning, the river wound inside its odd ways. Neither is it purely a place where someone ought to go alone. Luckily Meggan isn't alone.

Though sniffing the air, she makes a bit of a grimace. "Not picking up anything but a lot of conflicted emotion 'round here. Figure it's good a time as any to wander about."

John Constantine has posed:
John Constantine *loves* interfering in Gotham. Pissing Batman off while also doing his job for him warms John's cockles in a way only comparable to some of the stuff Meggan does in private. But his daughter's art teacher (or something) is missing and Cici was upset (in her very stoic, ultra-mature way) and that takes a little of the joy out of fucking around in Gotham for John. He's all (mostly) business now, in his suit and coat, cigarette between his lips as he cracks his knuckles, fingers laced and palms pressing against his chest. _Kr-krack_.

"If'n there's something here, it'll bloody come out eventually. Just might need a wee bit of a push. Let's walk the place once, see if it shows up, and if not, we'll do ourselves a lil' bit'a conjurin', luv." He slides hand into Meggan's, because this is what they consider a romantic outing.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Art assistant in the Young Rembrandt program, probably some chick trying to get a bit more spending money on the side for university. She isn't all that old. Nor all that troubled in the age bracket to disappear into thin air.

Meggan rubs her tattooed wrist, pulling at one of her fingers when that awful crack of knuckles and fluid moving through the joints sends a shudder through the winter-borne fae. Her eyes shut and for a moment, her body seems to shrink just a smidge. Losing its usual height, a couple inches, probably makes John a tad more on the imposing side when she isn't almost seeing eye to eye.

Her bone-white braid tinged in gold shifts into its sunnier side with effort, a bit more of a dusty blonde than Galadriel is visiting this place for the weekend as a shade. That really tends to weird out the normies. Her hand curls around his, and then she huffs a sigh that leaves a stained cloud of condensation on the air. Rare, given she's usually warm enough to be at room temperature basically wherever she goes. "You're all sentimental. Watch in a month and I'll be a soppy sentimental mess too."

The proof of many artists working at different times litters the ground in detritus pulled in and not hauled away. Many of the sculptures are assembled in situ and they're works in progress, scarecrows that twist on the wind or creak in motion like weird wind-vanes found on farms far, far from Gotham. Plenty of places to hide, plenty of things to see. The effect is meant to be evocative, creepy.

John Constantine has posed:
"I don't know how to not be sentimental, it's what gets me into alla my troubles, luv." He squeezes her hand. "No surprise this is the kind of art we'd get in Gotham, though. I'm constantly shocked the city isn't more haunted than it actually is. Solomon Grundy alone would make most cities occultist marvels," he surmises, ambling along. "But Gotham's always seemed like the Addams Family decided to go all Alabama and procreate in one single spot for fifty generations..."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"That the great secret, you've a heart under there after all? Let's hope the ripe crew of monsters and villains out there don't hear that, they must think you're in it for the ciggies and a fifth." The smirk on her lips is slightly feral, canted just enough to reveal the tips of sharply pointed canine teeth. Sharper than normal, anyway, since the urge to strip her skin and drop into another form is rather demanding, a niggle in the back of the skull.

Haunted houses and creepy art would probably put Gotham on the tourist map, except it's *Gotham*. Tourism imperiled by the Narrows pretty well shunts everyone to New York. "'Bout right that, all the families are inter-bred. Inbred? Like Egyptians or something."

And the wealthy, moneyed class faces the derelict warehouse that doesn' t feel like much. Stopping in front of a ramshackle structure adorned in metal plates and plastic scrounged from the harbour, a testament to waste and renewal, hardly warrants much attention. More interesting is a barbed-wire sculpture wrapped around the figure of justice cobbled from a lot of different pieces, all hailing from the historically black neighbourhoods in the city. There are in fact some! But between those stretches, shadows slink, watchful, eyes brimming with darkness.

John Constantine has posed:
"Everyone knows I'm a bleedin' 'eart, luv; it's what makes me dangerous." John stops, though. He frowns at the shadows in between the art sculptures, his eyes narrowing. "You feel a chill run down yer spine, Meggan? Smells like wet, dead _dog_ in here." He's run into enough Barghests, Xolotls, and the brood of Cerberus to know what an Cthonic puppy smells like.

He gives a short whistle. "Heeeeeeere, puppeh puppeh."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Probably a cause for why she's spontaneously and reflexively wants to turn into a wolf or a cat. Claws aren't tipping her fingers, else John might have a problem with being scratched, but the blonde looks more than a little disturbed staring into the darkness. Teeth grit; she flexes her shoulders back from where they round, protectiveness cast off. "Don't feel it that way, but something wrong."

One monster knows another.

The linking presence tracks them, not stupid enough to emerge, its low panting laughter the sort of canine mockery that gets wrapped up in trouble and then some.

John Constantine has posed:
"I can smell the stench of the grave on it," John says, releasing Meggan's hand (just in case). "I've a feelin' it ain't the friendly kind, either." He looks around, and then brings his cigarette up to his lips, brass first, pointing up. Then he _blows_ on it.

The ensuing flash of bright, orange light that accompanies the multiplied and empowered embers that rise into the air is enough to see by, and its magical source means it'll illuminate even the translucent apparitions that might be haunting --or hunting-- them.