1624/Log 1624

Log 1624
Date of Scene:	24 July 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Constantine, Lara Croft

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Constantine has posed:
Prologue...

The door is almost completely invisible. At the end of a long, dark hallway, and covered in what appears to be several hundred years worth of cobweb build-up, it's all but undetectable to anyone who just happens to be passing by. Many have visited the House of Mystery over the centuries, but nobody has ever managed to find every room within the extremely creepy, ever-changing mansion. Men have spent lifetimes trying to learn the mysteries contained within the house, only to die alone and unsatisfied.

John Constantine steps over the corpse of just such a man. The corpse has been there long enough for the flesh to completely rot away, leaving only the skeleton, bits of hair, and some patches of rusted chain mail. Clutched in his skeletal fingers is a notebook with ancient Goidelic scrawl barely visible on the dusty pages.

"Dear Diary, today I went looking for the toilet, but decided to just stay in this hallway and shit meself instead. Joke's on whoever ends up finding my foul-smelling skeleton. Love, the Weaselly Fuck who Died in the Hall of Forgotten Hallways."

John looks at the notebook for a few seconds, as if debating whether or not he should take it back with him. Apparently he decides it's probably not worth the effort. He's got no idea how to read Goidelic, for starters, and there's supposed to be a match on soon.

"Sorry, mate. But if it makes you feel any better about being dead: It looks like this whole situation was entirely your fault."

Lighting the cigarette that's been dangling from his lower lip, Constantine takes a drag and continues down the hallway. The light from his gas station flashlight isn't nearly strong enough to cut through the almost aggressive darkness that's enshrouding the hallway. With each step, it seems to get darker and colder, and his jacket seems to be getting thinner.

He pauses in the middle of the hallway to read from a notebook that's in a slightly more accessible language: John Constantine's version of English.

"So if I read this right, that means the doorway I'm looking for should be... right here, somewhere. I've gotta stop leaving notes for myself when I'm knackered."

He closes the notebook, and stuffs it back into his coat pocket. Holding up an empty hand, he holds the lit end of his cigarette just about a centimeter away from his palm. "Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it's ALRIGHT!" Flame erupts in the palm of his hand, illuminating the hallway and burning away several feet of cobwebs (and seriously pissing off hundreds of spiders).

"Now we use our little Master Key here... and... we're in"

The door opens, and Constantine steps inside cautiously, but with a certain amount of excitement that might remind one of Charlie when he got the golden ticket, if there were anyone else in the hallway to see his face. Aside from the dead guy, that is. But the look of excitement completely vanishes when he looks inside, and his shoulders slump beneath the shabby trench coat.

"Fuck this. I'm gonna have to trick some sucker into getting it for me."

Lara Croft has posed:
The Basement of the New York Public Library: 2:45pm on a Monday.

No, it wasn't like how you saw it in Ghost Busters. Yes the Ghostbusters fought a ghost in this library 20 some-odd years ago, but the basement in the movie wasn't how it actually looked in reality.

Lara Croft sat at a table by herself in a single room filled with old books, it was a repository of books that were too important to be left out on the public floor, but Lara was a well respected visitor to the library and the staff gladly welcomed her down here (She'd brought several donated books TO this very library, some of which were in this very room with her now).

Lara exhaled, after setting down a thermos of coffee. It was a freshly brewed mixture that a friend had just left moments ago. She was flipping through the pages of one large tome, while cross-referencing a website on her laptop in front of her.

"The Winter Sphere." She said softly to herself, her pink lips barely moving as the words came out like a whisper on the wind. "It looks like I'm going to Death Valley." She said a little louder before sitting back in her chair with a soft sigh, cluthing her coffee between both of her hands as it was kind of chilly down here.

Constantine has posed:
"I hear it's really dodgy this time of year. If I remember right, now's when the senior citizens hold their annual nudist festival."

The gun-toting adventurer was probably looking forward to some quiet time to do her research. And that's probably exactly what she would have gotten, if John Constantine hadn't essentially stalked her all the way to the library.

Lurking in the doorway of her private study office, Constantine leans on one of his hands, propped up against the doorframe. If he weren't wearing a trench coat, he'd still look incredibly shady. But the coat basically makes him look like walking 'Probable Cause', especially in the restricted section of a library. And most especially when he seems to have snuck up from nowhere, as if by magic.

TEN DAYS AGO...

"The Loafers of Silence? Who names all of this crap? Still... guess I might as well keep 'em handy. Never know when I'll need to do some sneakin'."

NOW....

John definitely isn't supposed to be in this area of the library. Especially not after the last time he was here. But there's no way to keep him out when he's got a well-crafted plan.

FIVE MINUTES AGO...

"C'mon, love. Just let us in, yeah? I promise to take you to Big Belly Burger after I finish my business in there."

The librarian looks at Constantine skeptically. She's nearly seventy, and a vegetarian.

"Finish your business? It sounds like you're planning to jack off on one of the books."

Constantine looks genuinely shocked, and genuinely wounded. "What!? I would.... of all the... you oughta be ashamed for even THINKING that, Dolores."

Dolores' expression doesn't change a bit. "Really? Because you look exactly like the kind of man who would do something like that."

Reddening slightly, Constantine persists. "What if I promise not to do that? Will you just give me five minutes alone in the... ah... bugger this... SOMNUM!"

John taps Dolores forehead with his index finger, and she passes out like magic, her geriatric face whacking her keyboard as she slumps forward.

NOW. AGAIN...

"I uh.... might have heard the librarian mention something about it when I was talking to her on the way in. Right before she told me it's okay for me to smoke back here." Pulling out a fresh pack of Silk Cuts, Constantine smacks the pack several times against the palm of his hands, to pack the tobacco tightly inside the cigarettes.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara's coffee holding hands were lifting the mug up to her lips when the voice sounded out and she paused and then sat forward in her seat and turned to look at the trench coated man standing in the doorway. Shady he looked, yes, but he also looked like a jaded and disgruntled detective or police officer in a way as well... though its possible that Jonah had had Lara watching too many Noir films in recent years.

"Uh... and who might you be?" Lara asked her fellow Brit as she decided to stand from her chair and sat her coffee thermos back down onto the desk in front of her, brown eyes going to that pack of cigarettes he was stamping.

Lara had had a lot of trouble altely with agents of Hydra and members of its sub-division, Trinity, she wasn't sure if this man might be one of those but she wasn't taking any chances either, her gun was nestled inside the dark navy blue jacket she had on, up against her left side, she had a tanktop on beneath that that was tucked into a pair of dark faded green cargo trousers that hugged her lowerbody.

"This area of the library is for permitted personel only, Sir." She said to him softly then.

Constantine has posed:
The cigarette is placed in his mouth, but he doesn't light it right away. He actually doesn't seem to have a lighter on him.

"Huh. My guy said you were from England. Didn't say you were from the posh part of England though. If I'd known, I would have worn my other tie."

There's something both affable and dickish about the way he talks, his Liverpudlian accent unmistakable to anyone who's ever listened to a Beatles album. He didn't exactly answer her question though.

Extending an only slightly grubby hand, he puts on his second-best smile and does his best to not look like someone who came to the library in a trench coat. "Name's John Constantine, and I won't insult your intelligence by pretending that I didn't follow you here. But... give me a couple of seconds to charm you before you threaten me with physical violence, yeah?"

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara listened to the man's pitch to let him speak and she just drew in a soft breath in through her small nose. She was from the posh part of England... arguably the MOST posh, she was nobility, even if she tried to ignore it and has since ran away from it after the untimely death of her parents.

Lara's eyes fell down to his offered hand, she didn't care about dirt and grime, she almost literally bathed in it for a profession... Lara took a moment, but eventually reached out to accept the offered hand and she shook it gently once. "Its awful warm outside for a trenchcoat, don't you think, Mister Constantine?" She asked him then with a leveled gaze. Lara drew her hand back then and she stood beside her research desk, hands going down to her sides, she eyed him. "How might I be of service, to the point that following me is a necessary tactic to acquire said services?" She inquired then.

Constantine has posed:
"Wait wait wait... I didn't say anything charming yet... ah... screw it. I'll just have to let my unseasonable coat do all the charming for me, yeah?" Grabbing the lapels of his coat, he raises them up a bit to show it off. It's... a coat. Nothing special about it.

Reaching into the coat, John produces a slightly rusty-looking flask and pulls off the squeeky top. That probably answers her question. Good luck fitting all the stuff Constantine carries in a v-neck t-shirt.

"It's not so much about what you can do for me, it's more like... what you can do for me in exchange for the thing I'm planning to trade for the favor. If you follow."

He takes the cigarette out of his mouth, and takes a sip from the flask. Whatever it is, it smells pretty strong.

Spoiler alert: It's scotch.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara listened and watched the man and his homeless-person mannerisms... at least, partly hobo-like in nature. "Cigarettes and booze?" Lara asked then after hearing what he had to say. "At only--" She glanced toward the clock on the wall. "A handful of minutes after two thirty?" She looked back to the older gentleman and she just gently shook her head and smirked.

"Okay, Mister Constantine, I uh... am all ears to hear what sort of favor you need in order to exchange it for an item, that you want?" Lara would dip her chin then and her dark eyebrows would rise up as she wasn't sure if she got that right. "How many flasks have you gone through yet today?" She asked further then, offering a bit of a tease to this rather character-full stranger, who may yet still be far more trouble than she dared get involved with, but then again... Lara just spent the past weekend fleeing from a helicopter of armed gun-men firing down upon her and middle-aged man in a giant red cape who was nearly as disgruntled in emotions as John here seemed to be.

"I'm busting with anticipation." She said with a dry sense of humor.