2014-02-24 - Booze Notice

How did the old newshound say it? Dog bites man, that's not a story. Man bites dog, now that's a story.



         HOw does the old meetup go? They all meet in a bar.



         What happens when Chaos itself has a sense of whimsy and moves to change things up?



         Existence takes a breath and shivers before moving on.



         A group of poor sods don't qutie walk over into a bar..



         More like the bar walks ove rnito them. A few too many back alleys in one of the more rough hewn segways of the city, a few too much magic taken in and otherwise put upon the faded concrete and brick pathways until some of it comes bubblign out.



         In this case, said bubbling out came in the sudden animation of an almost monstrous visage of a two story barhouse taking on an almost dragonic appearance, rising up out of the ground.

Jason had happened to be walking down the alleyway, tracing other ley lines, other traces of magic, from an encounter of the ink creatures he'd been following. He pauses, as the image of the dragon lurches up, and he frowns, "That," he prescribes, dryly, "Cannot be good." And, he streches his senses out, to see if he can determine the source, or origin, of this particular chaotic creation.

Walking (or waddling) came Howard the Duck. To see.. "Nooooo!!" Mourning.. All that waste of alcohol. All that waste of alcohol. ALL THAT WASTE OF ALCOHOL!

"Well, ennit just the way of things?" John Constantine mutters to himself as the bar rises. He had been wanting to stop in for a pint. Seems that won't be happening now, eh?

<p class="MsoNormal">His eyes flit around, looking, searching for whatever might have caused this. If it's obvious. It might be. It might not. And he steps back a bit, casually drawing a circle around himself with a heel, hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat. He retrieves his cigarettes, pulling one out and lighting it, musing. Already a bit on a bender, stumbling over, Wisdom looked almost a mess. Bleary-eyed, tired. He was singing. Poorly. "Iiiii musta had a million damn unlucky days... but there ain't no cloud that a bottle can't chase away..." And when he spied the rising of the draconic pub, a big smile smacked right onto his face. "They say with faith any soul can make it. But hell, why should I wait, till the clouds go rain on some other sucker's parade?"

<p class="MsoNormal">As another man from another world might have opined it with a bit deal less sanguinity but equal amounts of twisted bemusement. 'The Bar, rising from the grave.'

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<p class="MsoNormal">         FOrming now, looking like some form of almost dragon creature, formed of concrete, brick, and the imbued existence that only the two and a half centuries of life New YOrk City had had put into the cobblestone pathways and two worlds worth of..

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<p class="MsoNormal">         ROAR. A roar filled the air as the stone-formed dragon screeched. Smelling of alcohol, intoxication, fo too many nights spend mourning and too many days spent wasting away.

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<p class="MsoNormal">"Damnation," mutters Jason Blood, under his breath. "And Hellfire. It's getting worse than I thought. Starting to bleed." And, on-the-fly magic is not his forte. Jason Blood does not enjoy performing in public, anyways. Instead, he slips into an alleyway. Hopefully, unobserved.

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<p class="MsoNormal">"Gone, gone, the form of man -- rise, the demon, Etrigan!" It may be difficult to notice the swell of magic, much less so than the huge influx of the stuff that's propelling the draconicly infused bar. The huge, lumbering demon that is Etrigan lumbers out, massive arms and claws hanging low. He bellows at the assemly of estranged magicks, "I spy before me a calamity of darker arts, thou foul thing - I shall rip thee apart." And, the creature begins running towards the antropomorphic building, utterly unafraid.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Bloody damned hell." So, now there's a walking building oozing booze. A rampaging demon. And him with only half a pack of smokes left.

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<p class="MsoNormal">Bollocks.

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<p class="MsoNormal">JOhn /is/ a bit handy with on-the-fly magic, though it's not exactly his favorite thing. He reaches into a pocket, tugging out a small flask of silvery powder, flicking what's left of his cigarette away so he can tap a touch of it out, rubbing it across his eyelids.

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<p class="MsoNormal">With all this ley line business of late, having something that helps one see the bastards can be useful. And sure enough, the damned bar is parked on a convergence point. "Not entirely surprising," he grumbles as he tucks the powder away, anything that gives off a strong magical aura showing clearly to his eyes. This is why we don't use it often though-- magical things tend to be pretty scarring to look at.

<p class="MsoNormal">The roar of the dragon surprised Wisdom, who had thought this all just some pleasant fantasy, a way to be away from the world for a moment or two. Finding himself on hisbackside, looking up in slow surprise. The realization that this wasn't just a figment was forthcoming - he'd had a lot beforehand. Indeed, the sudden jarring made him realize just how much as he'd bent forward to expunge his recently ingested alchol. Whisky, by the smell of it.

<p class="MsoNormal">It's been like a vacuum. All that existence sucked up and over into it, and for whatever reason hitting that point where the magic has become self-sustaining, rather than bubbling has sprung up into a font, a well. On the upside, it's leeched the magic uot of the immediate area.

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<p class="MsoNormal">         On the downside, they now have a giant bar-dragon to deal with, and they're not -remotely- drunk enough it would seem to deal with something like this.

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<p class="MsoNormal">         The bar-dragon went to swing it's stony tail in a long arc aimed over at Jason, letting out a screech and then going to let out another magical infused roar, before blasting out with..

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">         A breath weapon composed of extremely potent alcohol blasting with all the pressure of a firehose in a long arc aimed over at John and Pete.

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<p class="MsoNormal">         Alcohol problem solved.

<p class="MsoNormal">Etrigan is not about to be taken out so easily, he jumps - surprisingly limber, and athletic, fast, for such a hulking beast. Huge claws dig into the stone tail, and from behind the draconic visage, Etrigan's jaws belch forth a gout of Hellfire at the 'bar'. He rides the tail, as one would a wild horse, snarling, "Stand there dumb and struck if thou will and be a fool," he calls to Pete, and John. "But thy form will soon belittle more than a fleshy pulp, a bloody pool."

<p class="MsoNormal">He's ever-so helpful, isn't he?

<p class="MsoNormal">Poor Pete. He was already having a hell of a night puking in the middle of the street. Now he's being bamboozled by bourbon breath. Soaked, sick, and more or less too drunk to realize what's going on, he was out of the fight.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Dumb and struck?" John asks wryly, as the circle around him bursts into a glowing blue light around him, shielding him from the alcohol blast. "Nah, mate-- didn't catch yer name," and a narrowed set of eyes at the demon... wait... Blood was here just a moment ago wasn't he?

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<p class="MsoNormal">Sod it. That must be his rumored buddy, then. Not someone John's too keen to meet, that's for sure.

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<p class="MsoNormal">The circle might withstand one more blast like that, but then he'd need a new plan. The gears in his head turn, as his eyes trace where the ley lines had been feeding the bar.

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<p class="MsoNormal">"Best bet," John calls to the demon, "is ta cut off the magic at source, innit?" He glances down at Pete, looking both amused and somewhat sympathetic. Ish. "Well, someone's having a bad night, eh? Guess it's just you and me, scaly."

<p class="MsoNormal">How's the old joke go? Three men walk into a bar.

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<p class="MsoNormal">CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK

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<p class="MsoNormal">In this case, the bar was more trying to stomp on them, but it was the thought that counted. Etrigan stuck on the tail, the alcohol dragon letting out a roar and trying to blast off Etrigran with a high velocity cannon of compressed spirits shooting out at it's nose as small bits of stone fell off it and crumbled as they hit the ground.

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<p class="MsoNormal">         Shrieking, trying to swing Etrigan around like a bludgeon and missing the otherwise seemingly unconscious Pete, it tried to hammer over at the circle with the Etrigan on a stick.

<p class="MsoNormal">Etrigan lets go at the key point, and allows himself to catapult off to the side, claws digging into the concrete to stop him from tumbling away, or getting hurt. He charges forwards again, "A mortal who can think on his feet, invent anintelligent plan ... Severe that from the life it draws - it's attention I shall divert - against it, make a stand." He moves towards one of the huge stomping legs, and slashes at it with his claws, attempting to earn the ire of the dragon-bar in whole.

<p class="MsoNormal">Well, that swing fizzled out the last of the power in John's protective circle. Good thing he was already planning to move...

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">...to the primary ley line feeding the bar. Trenchcoat flapping in the wind as he runs forward, John moves towards the trickling blue light along the ground... the damned bar was draining it. That wasn't good.

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<p class="MsoNormal">"Can you keep it occupied a bit, mate?" John calls to Etrigan. "THis is going to be a mite tricky."

<p class="MsoNormal">Poor Pete was getting quite the show. The bar-dragon let out another screech of fury, stone wings not quite capable of flight in the littered back alleys, going to stomp along as it went to advance over at Etrigan, the slash taking out some of the stonybrook dragon's facade and turning chunks once more to concrete cobblestones. The dragon had taken in enough nexus energy for it to become self-sustaining, but if it could be cut 'off' over from the battery while at the same time weakened, the built up energy could be dissipated and dispersed, and then the reaction fizzle.

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<p class="MsoNormal">         the alcohol-dragon let out a roar then and went to try and leap over at Etrigan in an ungainly arc, one of the cleaved off cobblestones of the side reading in long since faded graffiti 'Kilroy was here'.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Do not doubt a Prince of the Pit, a Lord of Hell -- I will kill it, if thy abilities, mortal, are too weak to dispell." Etrigan is then somewhat crushed, by the leaping, and the demon too slow to dodge. Yet, for it's trouble, the dragon's gut gets not only bathed in a backwash of incendiary Hellfire, but treated to a one-two punch to the stomach that would flatten a schoolbus into tinfoil.

<p class="MsoNormal">John concentrates, working on severing the link between the bar and the ley line. He generally prefers trickery to outright magic use, but that is usually against opponents with brains, not just overpowered inanimate objects.

<p class="MsoNormal">It clicks. The line stops feeding the bar... so it's just a matter of burning out the rest of the magic already infused into the structure. "Got it!" All right, so maybe he looped that line back into another, and that might cause other problems later. It works for now.

<p class="MsoNormal">The dragon doesn't noticably weaken, but it is getting no more energy than it has stored from already being fed within it, and it lacks the higher levels of innate awareness to realize it's lifeline has been cut. As it brawls over with all the single mindedness of an elemental.

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<p class="MsoNormal">What goes flying when hellfire meets magic infused alcohol? Physics. The dragon has a hole through it, alcohol spurting out all ends as it let out a shriek as flames spewed, and now the alcohol was on hellfire, gradually turning to steam and smoke.Etrigan rolls back out of the way, then lurches down, and jumps as high as he can, colliding a fist, hard, into the dragon-bar's jar, doing (unknowingly) a rather good impersonation of a 'Superman' punch, with immense power behind it, and a rageful bellow of his own. The demon is most at home, when fighting, or just being downright nasty. He'll let the creature spew, and burn. But that doesn't mean he won't help speed it on it's way to a rather quick, and unhealthy demise, either.

<p class="MsoNormal">John... well, avoids being stomped on. He's not much of a physical brawler. So he finds a place to observe the dragon go down.

<p class="MsoNormal">The dragon might have lasted longer but for the sheer force of Etrigan's punch then, which had felled far mightier beasts than it. Letting out a shriek and a mournful warble then, it's magic effectively erased, the dragon shattered, stones shooting up and over to the air and then collapsing down over to the ground then in a shower of debris, where John's quick feedback looping of lexus lines would make thier presence known as spoutnig out from the ground came a self-sustaining fountain of Guinness.

<p class="MsoNormal">Etrigan spits at the corpse, even as it crumbles, and begins spitting up a booze gesyer, as a fallen dragon might spurt blood. Etrigan's eyes are bright, and he not even winded, yet. In the least. His fists clench, and he turns to look towards John, "The demon-draught of ink left this in it's wake; magic untamed, unchecked, bleeding forth it's own life to take."

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<p class="MsoNormal">Then, the demon looks over towards Pete, and snarls, some, glaring at the man, almost challenging, but he does not instigate confrontation. Yet.