Who: John Constantine What: An awakening/plot begins When: Monday morning Where: His lock up Warnings: Not really Status: Closed Narrative
John wasn't normally up this early in the morning and he wasn't exactly up early this morning either. He was actually up late since he hadn't even bothered to go to bed yet. The night before he'd picked up the bracelets he'd given to Zee to absorb the ambient energy she was throwing around on the cruise ship because they were pretty stacked with energy and he didn't want them to accidentally overload. He'd handed over a new pair but her energy levels weren't quite as crazy as they had been so John didn't think they'd wear out as fast as the first pair.
In the meantime it left him with a pair of mystic batteries that held enough charge to fuel whatever spells he wanted to use them on. That wasn't something to be gotten rid of lightly or wasted and since this stupid backwater had decided to give him his lock up after the count down he took them there to store them away until they were needed. Place like this usually put something into your hands for a reason after all.
The lock up was full of every mystic thing he'd come across in his travels and studies that Constantine had thought he would need some time in the future. Or maybe he wouldn't need it but he sure as hell wouldn't want anyone else to have. Like the Ace of Winchesters. Created by a Texas Ranger in the old west and made of the metal from a halo, gems from Hell and the bones from a saint to make it. Oh and a soul sold to an unknown demon. Can't forget that bit of the spell. It could kill anything you shot with it, except apparently Alec Holland and his daughter Tefe. Their consciousnesses didn't reside in their flesh forms exactly but you could at least off their body for a bit.
There were jars of herbs and ingredients everywhere for use and dozens of skulls, boxes of strange bones and odd weapons such as what looked like a long dagger or short sword made up of two thin blades. Ellie had made it with his instructions and it was just as deadly as the Ace of Winchesters. It definitely needed to never leave the lock up.
He took the bracelets out and put them on a shelf next to a box that Tefe's father had given him a long time ago. It was just an old root in an ornate box that Holland had said needed to never see the light of day again. John hadn't been feeling too charitable toward him at the time because he'd just been body jacked and flown to the swamps so Holland could use his body for his own purposes so he hadn't asked much, just chucked it in the lock up and left it there.
He'd left the bracelets on the shelf then started making the rounds of the items in the lock up to make sure nothing was missing, broken, or gaining sentience. That wasn't a joke, mystical objects left alone in a room with lots of other mystical items sometimes did some very freaky shit. He was deep in looking through things and thinking about his bed when there was a soft 'clink' behind him.
Frowning John turned away from the shelf he was going through to look for the source of the noise. He had to walk back along his route to find what he was looking for. The bracelets were no longer sitting in a clear space on the shelf near the box, they were clear up against the box. That must be what made the sound he'd heard.
That was potentially not good. There were a lot of reasons that the bracelets might have moved but in here, with all the other things around it most of the reasons he could think of didn't end well for him. John's frown deepened into a scowl as he reached out to move the bracelets away from the box.
The box exploded and vines whipped around his hand and the bracelets at the same time. "Fuck!" John stepped backward but the vines just dug into this arm and wrapped around his chest. Using a spell to try to fry it off of him misfired when the mystical energy was instantly absorbed by the plant making it stronger. He ended up crashing backward into another set of shelves and falling as the plant dug roots and tendrils under the skin of his hands and arms draining off his magic to make itself grow.
Later it would be more subtle and work in secret to reproduce the people it found but right now it needed an agent to work through to bring it more to feed upon. The ones who knew magic usually knew others and it would be natural for them to call them for aid. It had to use most of the energy from its first victim to make the pod to copy him but it still had the bracelets to keep it going until it had more to feed on.
The clone grew with the memories of the host and thankfully it was normal for John to keep a change of clothing at the lock up since it couldn't mimic the fabric. It understood from the memories that often mystical battles were hard on the clothes so he kept a change here with his ingredients. It pulled on the pants and shirt, there were no shoes but the host was the kind that people would just roll their eyes at his lack of shoes and move on so it didn't care.
Now he just needed to bring more food. There was a perfect candidate for the first victim. It fished the phone out of the pocket of the host before the pod closed him in completely and pushed the button that would call Zatanna. With her they could grow very fast and far and take more hosts.