7742/1000 Faces: Dead Zone

1000 Faces: Dead Zone
Date of Scene:	08 September 2021
Location:	Oblivion Bar
Synopsis:	John gets some sharp advice from the sharpest dressed necromancer. Between the sniping, truths and wisdom reveal themselves. Or they both need to desperately hug it out.
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Hela, John Constantine

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Hela has posed:
Oblivion Bar may usually host the mystic community as it pleases the proprietor. Needless to say, it has not pleased the bokor for weeks to host company.

Papa Midnite has done many things in this time since paying handsomely for a theft, a liberation as it were. He hasn't reopened shop. No fancy balls or Midnight Markets invite guests to sample the best kinds of libations. With Haiti savaged ruthlessly by storms and darkness, the world turns in a very different axis.

The man is dressed in black, facing a skull on a table before him. He pours a dram of rum for himself. Not one for her, for what would be the point?

"I am not having too good a day, sweet sister. Your insistence ruins perfectly good liquor," he murmurs.

The skull leers.

John Constantine has posed:
    Well, it's about to get worse Papa... or maybe this time better? John Constantine arrives on the scene as he always does, all brashness and loud and cocky bullshit. "Aye, just tell him his savior's here, would ya?" he asks of the first person he meets in a voice that's sure to carry, perhaps all the way to the underworld that's so fecked up.

    His hands are shoved into the pockets of his trench coat. Why? Likely hands on something to defend himself with should the need arise.

Hela has posed:
Wards reinforcing the Oblivion Bar's confines equal those protecting the pocket dimension. While the source of his faith no longer remain in the world, at least without submitting to a darker and more distasteful master, Linton Midnite is not powerless or absent of purpose. The shotglass resting between him and his sainted sister's thrice-damned skull contains a dark, stormy liquid; beautiful in its darkness, a promise of sweetness filted through the burn. What could be said about the plight of his people that is not contained within that drink?

Those dark eyes leave the eyesockets he's stared into for centuries. His smirk builds, thickened. "Things wouldn't properly being going to shit without you carrying the smell."

John Constantine has posed:
    "No, mate, sorry. What I carry is the way out of the shitter," John corrects. He pulls on hand from his pocket, still a bit of a distance from Midnite. He lets the fingers of that fist uncurl to show one single seed at the center of his palm. It's the only one he has with him. He's crazy, not stupid. "You want it fixed? Tell me what you know of it and tell me about that little costume piece you just had to have so badly and how it fits in."

    Truth be told, in this moment, John could be a whole lot more smug than he actually is. There's not a lot of that there, just confidence and a real desire to set this crap right again.

Hela has posed:
"What does a man do if he has no place and no place to run to?" Papa Midnite is a tall man, even seated. Those broad shoulders that marked him as an ideal worker and a threat square as he sits back. The thin patterned scarf wrapped around his neck in a careless knot sparks dark shades, flowing like a wine-dark stain down the front. "I have gathered enough ancient knowledge to smell the stench rolling off of you. Never knew when to stop acquiring, like your benighted forebears." Observing the seed clasped in the magician's palm, he has enough of a poker face that the skull is more likely to give a fixed grin of surprise.

"What do you take me for, con man? Waving around your drowned seed, you would think to impress me?" He glances to Cedilla. "Sweet sister, the man wants a blessing for a family. What would you opine?"

Her response is a pair of low flames dancing in the sockets. He smirks. "Quite right. There is great fear and anxiety gathering in storm clouds, a beacon for those who survive off human emotion. Off human experience. Off life. Here you are, radiating death with every failing breath, come to counsel me on fixing it all. A distinguished irony, the haggard slouching servant of suffering and death bringing doomed tidings."

John Constantine has posed:
    "There's more where this came from," John points out in regards to the single seed that he curls a fist around again. He shoves his hand back into his pocket. "I've a map, a location... a place to head it off at the pass or at least try to."

    He takes a step closer and offers, "Smell again..." Because surely there's something lingering there other than death and suffering.

    The stench of the divine, perhaps? One doesn't spend an hour or so in a cage with an Arch Angel and not walk away without a trace of it?

    "If the Demogorge is to be stopped, if we stand a chance at setting this shite right again, drop the bullshit, Midnite and tell me what you know. I've been through the Underworld, to the Temple of Wisdom, I've spoken with the Angels. I have *almost* all of it, enough maybe to give me an edge, but every little bit helps, aye?"

Hela has posed:
The stench of angels and demons or devils don't particularly cause Papa Midnite's nostrils to flare. He's scented worse in his time. "O high and mighty one," he spits back with an arc of black amusement. "Have you come to wade among the humble men and women to uplift them? A man like me knows a bargain. I know what you paid to acquire such goods. They never come cheaply."

The skull remains a participant to the conversation in some obscured way, though his sister is at best an ephemeral being.

"The Demogorge," he repeats slowly, "will cut through all those you pride yourself upon serving. Is that your end game? To let it eat through them, and acquire your freedom? It would not surprise me in the least but I doubt you like your odds."

The drink he swirls up, and paints a drop of it across the skull's upper jaw. Then the lower, with care shown in death he never showed the woman in life. Or maybe he did. "The dead have risen. From all corners they come, Constantine, made to bear witness to this sorry pantomime. Another thing your country did us no favours bringing, another grain on the heap of sorrows bestowed from an overly proud, faded country. Now, of little consequence." The bland smile lifts. His eyes gleam.

"'You.' As if you will stride alone down the battlefield in that coat, is that how you plan it? You aren't having me play your reveille. A eulogy, then. There will be no descent into the blessed depths of death for you. No one's meeting you at the crossroads. The cemetery has been made of sweet brown earth and still green fields, the fence the mountains and the sea. Who will leave offerings at the altar and beseech the saints who belong to the Queen of All Saints, when there is no line between the living and the dead, Johnny boy? The barriers no longer stand. That's what clings to you, though I doubt half know it differently from the moral corruption in there."

John Constantine has posed:
    "I don't have time for this, Midnite," John announces as he turns on his heels. "Flowery words and dribble. I've enough to figure it out, just thought maybe you'd want to stack the deck further in your own favor. Thought wrong."

    He heads back for the door, pulling a Silk from his pocket along the way. John doesn't look back. Papa Midnite may have a poker face, but John's entire body is skilled at the game. What mortal man wouldn't be terrified in the face of things coming down the pipe now? But all that shows when he walks away from the Bokor is swagger and arrogance that leaves a trail of smoke in its wake.

Hela has posed:
"You're not listening," the bokor says to the retreating magician as he turns. "Where do you think the Underworld went?"

It's that simple a question, no more and then no less.

John Constantine has posed:
    John stops and turns, if his eyes rolled any harder they might be heard rattling around in his head. "I don't bloody well know. I'm here, asking you to tell me what you *know*, not play games with flowery shite and riddles. Just *tell* me, Midnite, for fuck sake, if you have something to say, just try, once... just once... to just *say* it."

    Because time's short and John's so done with games. "Just tell me or don't. Maybe it's sodded off to the circus for a holiday, aye?" Normally he'd never just admit that he 'didn't know' something, but this isn't a normal time, this isn't a normal thing and there's no fucking shame in it, right? Not knowing a thing about something that's *this big*?

Hela has posed:
Papa Midnite's mirthless grin is cut ivory and warm chocolate, the promise of warmth where none at all exists in his making. He raises the glass of rum, what remains, and takes a deep sip. The elixir of life for some hasn't much of a warming sensation for him, but then it's become a memory of things gone past. "I thought no line between the living and the dead would be clear enough. Sweet Erzulie Dantor's tits." And what breasts they are. "When no line exists between them at all anymore, the world _is_ the Underworld. Or vice versa. Glass half full, glass half empty." He flips the little vessel over. "Things start not working. They break down. The dead can die permanently. No great ever after. No happy peace."

John Constantine has posed:
    "Forgive me for being a little slow on the bloody uptake, Midnite," John shoots back. As much as the two are always at one another about this or that, poking each other, occasionally trying to kill one another even, Midnite might just notice it for what it is... Constantine is frazzled.

    ...and maybe he even knows *why*. It's not like the man to sleep when shit's bad, it's not like him to hide away and take a break from it or let someone else deal with it. How long since it started? How long that he's been trying to fix it? Props given to his dogged determination anyway, aye?

    "Sounds a party," he mutters under his breath. "But how's the fact and the knowledge of it add to the home team advantage?" Seriously Papa, spell it out for the boy, he's bustin' his ASS to set the Ghede right too, after all. "Please," wow... he must be tired. "...just cut to it?"

Hela has posed:
Midnite unfolds his legs from under the table. Crisp black pants tailored with a razor-sharp fold could cut throats and send dresses fluttering to the floor. The command of movement is entirely unlike John's, swaggering with that supremely deep-rooted confidence that allows no quarter to the world itself.

How long since Baron Samedi died? How long since the dominos fell? Longer and not long enough.

Truly he is good at not hurling something at high speed at Constantine's head. It never helps, since certainly this will prove itself to be less than useful confronting the irksome dabbler. He runs his hand over his head, hair pushed back. "Don't die. Deny anyone power over the dead, for they can be used as sacrifices as well as the breathing can." Is this a test? It could be, though he's left to collect a little salt shaker. A twist removes the cap, contents poured out. "Were I to offend against the very laws of death, ti gason, they would be my army unable to resist my command. Shock troops that far outnumber whatever the military or the teams of heroes, because how many have died over history compared to alive now?"

John Constantine has posed:
"...don't die seems to be a theme," John mutters under his breath, to himself. "And how am I supposed to deny the Gods of Death that remain... power over the dead?" It's so incredibly unlike John Constantine to show weakness in front of an 'enemy', but is Midnite really that? Sometimes, maybe, not always, sometimes not, sometimes an ally. Fuck all it's complicated is their Facebook relationship status to one another.

    "I'm not a God, Midnite," John offers a little on the quiet side. "I'm not Lady Death, I don't have three Gods and a fancy necklace around my neck. I'm just a bloke from Liverpool that wants to stop the end of the mother fuckin' world."

    He waves a hand as if dismissing his own words. "Okay, don't fuckin' die, I've always been pretty good at that one in the past. And you can't build an army of them because you'll be pissin' off the wrong people or some such. But there may be a way for the home team to use them in the way you can't? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

Hela has posed:
Name another necromancer remotely friendly to the side of life, even if Papa Midnite has his significant differences with a common cause held with many in the magical community. Using the dead for his chosen purposes would probably be reviled in most quarters. Yet it beats dealing with deranged pseudo Egyptian cultists or a family of Portuguese blood sorcerers or Vedic dark dharmic executioners in finding out answers.

"Never called you that. I know the blighted line that spawned you." Hard feelings serve the prickled path between them, and for damn good reason, though not one he cares to much illustrate. Something two centuries past started by Hugh is just part of the dark twists in the road. "Lady Death is no god either, though hardly made of whatever you are. Though stop pulling that mask down. You aren't just a bloke and haven't been since you were out of britches." Whatever they could be called, clothing issues of middle England aren't exactly his concern.

"I have standards." He underlines the point by sharply biting the word off, Creole accent turned into a wedge driven between the syllables to pry them open. "Enslaving souls en masse to fight a battle is not one of them. While I could, I do not. There will be many with no such limits. You can expect if the gods choose not to use them, their followers will. Opportunistic cultists or those who cannot resist the lure of power. They will have access to an enormous resource, like giving a child off the streets a credit card without a limit. Get rid of that asset so it can't be abused."

John Constantine has posed:
    "So, get rid of the dead... a whole lot of the dead..." John runs a hand back through is hair. Getting rid of the dead is one of his specialties... when dead isn't upside down and the underworld isn't the actual world and ... yeah. Necromancy? Not really his cuppa.

    "Whatever it is I am, it's not in the league with what I've been playing ball with." That's really, really hard for John to admit, so hard. But not as hard as making the decision to break his deal that kept the people he loved safe. After that, fuck it, do what needs doing and all it. Even if it means humbling himself in front of Papa Midnite.

    "Any advice as to how to go about that? Any funky little voodoo dolls layin' around? Maybe a gris gris? A power ring that glows all shiny and black? Oh, I know, maybe a fuckin' HAT?"

Hela has posed:
"A hat. Do I look like a common wizard to you?" Linton Midnite has many qualities and humour is one of them. "A doctor in a crumpled kaftan and sweatpants?" If they share one thing in common it's that diabolic opinion of sweatpants and leisurewear, something almost anathema to the vodoun high priest in his immaculate garb. He would truly and utterly be disgusted to be reduced to such circumstances. Just shoot him. Papa Midnite even scowls. "Keep black rings out of this. One of the green would be a rare enough acquisition, and they are concerned with other matters. As usual."

What's the point of contempt when the light-bearers are so wrapped up in their own worries?

"Let me write down the moment when..." He sprinkles the salt on the bar in no particular pattern that meaningfully arises to reveal itself. The damage done earlier has been partly cleared out, but not replaced. "The good Baron fell," he says sharply, "to an Aztec god torn apart before dusk on the same day. Power moves and flows. It is not a static thing. Wouldn't you be so much better off redirecting what is there?'

John Constantine has posed:
    "Well, you *do* like your bloody hats, they're just not pointy. I'm thinking Slitherin though," John points out, but it's not so much a poke meant to irritate like it normally might be, it's truly in jest.

    "All right, I think I get what you're sayin'. But seriously, what was up with that mask that you paid so much for it?" He's so beyond beating around the bush, if only because he's *beat* around himself. "So what's going to happen, for you, if I get this done?" ...and damned if he doesn't sound more concerned than like he's trying to point out that there might be a favor owed if he fixes it? Whoa! It's even sincere, not a con, or a trick. Just sincere desire to know if Midnite will be okay at the end of it.

Hela has posed:
House Slytherin? Please, he'd be in Uagadou, but since no houses have ever been named within, he cannot possibly answer.

The salt shaker is placed back on the bar, psuhed aside. "Something I wanted. A curiosity, and readily available for my means," he responds a bit flatly. "It's not for you to care about, Constantine. Your part in its acquisition is done. The girl from Gotham with a wiser tongue than yours summed it up best. I will take care of my own, the way I have always done. No one else looks out for me and mine. They have clawed their way up from the hardest fall, and that is all you ever need to know." His smirk shows again. "Suppose the mages and sorcerers cease to blindly fumble about. That witches and warriors finally act. Assume that a proper response happens. I will walk through the churned dirt and razed fields with my sister at my side, and sing a tune. Plenty can set things to rights, though plenty it took not paying attention at all to allow it to get so far."

John Constantine has posed:
    That last bit, it makes John bristle more than a little bit. He squares his shoulders shoulders and sets his jaw. "I paid attention, Midnite. But really, I'm a bloke from Liverpool that slings some magic about. Where were *you* when I've been planning meetings, asking for help, trying to figure it out on my *own*? Hiding here in your bar. Have fun with your little mask, I'll let you know when I clean this fuckin' mess up."

    He turns to walk out, tossing his spent Silk to the ground to stub it out with the heel of his shoe as he walks. "Fuck you too, Midnite, a pleasure as always!" he calls out once he's near the door, he even flips the Bokor the bird over his shoulder.

    *Asshole*,

Hela has posed:
"Saving the forgotten, as is always the case with you white men," Papa Midnite snipes back with characteristic ease. "Look past your own ego, Johnny boy, you might learn a thing or two."

So it goes. So it always has.