Monday Night, Pacific Coast Highway, South of Pacifica
The Golden Avenger pulls the Jeep off the two-lane stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway, and onto a gravelly overhang. Below the road, Protector, Odyssey, and Knightblade can hear the roar of the surf crashing against the rocks below. "It’s a little ways up the road," he says, slamming his door shut.
The fog is thick tonight, and it’s hard to see even fifteen feet ahead, even with the xenon flashlight the Golden Avenger pulls from the back of the Jeep. "Yep, this is the place," Ralph says, hefting the shotgun. "It was a foggy night fifty years ago, too."
"It’s always a foggy night here," the Golden Avenger says under his breath, running a hand back through his blond hair. Ralph shoots him a dirty look.
"Why did it have to be foggy?" Says Protector to nobody in particular. "I don't have a good track record with fog..."
The Golden Avenger leads the group along the road, about twenty yards, before he steps off the road. There’s a sign posted here, "No Climbing or Hiking: Dangerous Cliffs."
"It’s difficult to tell," Ralph says, "But we’re walking onto a vista point. When it’s clear, there are incredible views. A rich cultist built a house here right before the war. Some friends of mine and I found out they were attempting a summoning, but we didn’t make it in time. When we arrived here, about thirty cultists had been eaten by whatever it was they’d summoned, and we did our best to blow the house up." The Golden Avenger gives Ralph an odd look. " I’m still not sure exactly what it was they were trying to bring here – none of us were, at the time – but it vanished into the ocean. When you get closer to the house," Ralph continues, "You can see that we blew up a large part of the ground underneath the house, and that it’s only hanging on in the middle. I don’t know why they never tore the thing down; it’s been condemned ever since then. Every year or two, someone dies, climbing around here."
The five of them walk out onto the hill. Nearing the house, there’s a smell of hyacinth blooms. "Watch your step here, missy," Ralph whispers to Odyssey. "It narrows past the house, and you could slide right off the edge of the hill."
Scanning the area, Knightblade picks up a heat trace, about the size of a man. "There’s something over there," he points out. Visibility is still poor, and it’s only as the rest of them approach that they can see a figure standing near the entrance of the house.
The Golden Avenger cracks his knuckles as the group approaches the door and his eyes take on a serious glint. Ralph cocks his shotgun. Suddenly, the figure at the door laughs, a deep, bone chilling baritone. All five figures pause as the laughter reaches its crescendo.
Seeing the party approach, the Specter turns slowly to meet them. Ralph leads the way, it has been a long time since the Specter has seen him. The demonic laughter wails from the Specter a swirling wall of sound raising for the dark depth within -- a living thing, part of him but separate.
After the laughter dies down, Ralph’s face widens into a smile, though the four others are still taken aback, momentarily stunned. Shouldering his shotgun, he steps past the group, towards the shadowy figure. "Specter," the old man says with a grin. "I’m glad you decided to join us."
"Good to see you too my old friend," the Specter replies. " I wouldn't have missed it." The shape of the Specter becomes hard to define -- fading in and out at the edges, somehow making it hard to look directly at him.
While Odyssey and Knightblade know nothing of the Specter other than his name, Protector has heard of him, for in the thirties and forties, the Specter was the most respected masked adventurer of them all, though certainly the most mysterious. His name was spoken with fear by criminals, and the true nature of his abilities never ascertained. There has been a Specter operating in San Francisco since the thirties – whether this is one man or a succession of them is also unknown.
The group is able to see him more clearly as they approach the house. Standing in front of the boarded-up front door is a tall man, over six feet. His height is accentuated by a black fedora. A scarf covers the lower half of his face, and he is wearing a black cloak which flows behind him in the strong ocean wind. Underneath the cloak is a tailored black suit.
"The Specter of Justice stalks evil, wherever it lies," the cloaked figure says in a deep voice.
'All right!' thinks Shawn, 'this I understand.' he steps forward to answer the dark figure, "Where evil and injustice oppress the weak; there you will find Protector. It's good to see you again, Spectre." Protector smiles very subltly, "I suppose that I should be suprized to see you... but really I'm not." He looks at the house and comments in a more serious lets-get-to-work tone, "I'm glad you're here."
The Specter stops for a moment concidering the person before him. "There was once a Protector, years ago -- are you the same man?" asked the Spector. "It has been decades." A misty hand reveals itself from under his cloak and the Specter grasps Protector's hand in a firm handshake. He acknowledges the rest with a nod. "There is work to be done here tonight," his voice blending in with the sound of the surf below.
Rather than making a snappy comment, Ralph continues forward, until he is standing next to the Specter. "Now we can get started," he says, turning to the rest of the group.
Without preamble, Ralph levels his shotgun at the boarded up doorway and fires. "Whoooeeee!" he shouts.
"Ralph always had his own agenda," the Specter thought as his form became even harder to make out -- seeming to lose all physical substance and fade into a mist. "It is a wonder he has stayed alive all these years."
The house smells dank, and water drips from the ceiling. The Golden Avenger’s powerful xenon flashlight cuts through the darkness to show a scene of serious decay. The upper floor of the house has caved in, nearly covering the floor on which the party enters.
The Specter glides quietly behind the others. Using the light from the Golden Avenger's flash light, he carefully navigates the wall.
The house was probably once glorious. The floors are of rose marble, and what’s left of the walls reveal more marble and mosaics, bits and pieces of their tiles missing. "Um, Byzantine reproduction, probably recreations from the Blachernae Palace," Odyssey absently notes. Water slides down the sides of the walls, pooling on the floor. Pulling out her own maglight to look at the mosaic’s detail, her eyes catch on a pool of water at her feet. An image swirls in and out, inside the pool of water, and her eyes are locked onto it for several moments before she’s able to tear herself away . (See resource page 8)
Scanning with his IR vision, Knightblade does not detect any other heat signs in the building. However, looking at the floor, he does see there’s some sort of sigil carved into the worn marble.
"Hey, Avenger," he says. "Take a look at this."
The Golden Avenger steps forward. "The symbol is covered up by the floor here," he says. "Protector, would you grab the other end of this slab?" Together the two men easily heft the large chunk of ceiling and toss it aside. The seal is more obvious now, especially since dirt has filled in and darkened the carved areas (see turn resource page 8).
"An elder sign," the disembodied voice of the Specter says. "It is used to protect against the minions of the Great Old Ones. Interesting..."
Ralph is busy guarding the entrance to the house while the rest of the group examines the house.
"It does not appear that there has been anyone here in a long time," the Specter says, his baritone sounding somewhat disappointed.
Just as soon as he is finished talking, the Golden Avenger say, "Well, that isn’t exactly true, Specter."
His flashlight is illuminating a body, draped over a book. Odyssey gasps, "I know him! That’s Peter Bartholomew, the Egyptologist missing from Rutgers. I only heard about his disappearance today at work. No one knows how he disappeared, but he had been working late at the university archives when ‘poof," he wasn’t there on the monitors anymore."
There isn’t any obvious cause of death, though Bartholomew’s eyes are fixed and dilated, and his face is contorted in an expression of terror. The book he’s holding isn’t Egyptian, however – it’s in an Arabic script.
Protector steps over and examines the corpse, checking his pupils, looking at the man's hands. "There's no obvious cause of death. No wounds, no marks where he might have been strangled, no indication of trauma of any kind. The distorted features might indicate a poison of some kind." He looks over at the others, "Or maybe he was frightened to death..."
Careful not to look at the book, the Specter moves to examine the body with Protector.
"How did he get in here?" the Golden Avenger wonders out loud. "Did you see any other openings in the house?" he asks the Specter.
The Specter's voice is a low, "No."
There is a rumbling underneath the house, at this point, and the walls start to shake. "What the hell –" Ralph starts, before yelling, "Oh, shit!"
A large white mass breaks through the marble floor effortlessly. It looks like nothing so much as a large white worm – except that the diameter of the worm appears to be twenty feet across. The marble floor underneath the group splits in two, leaving everyone scrambling for footing, and the house groans under the pressure. The worm slithers up with amazing speed, and opens its huge, gaping maw. The orifice which opens is nearly as wide as the creatures twenty foot diameter, and it is dripping with mucus.
The laughter once again wells up from the dark place that it lives as the Specter moves into action.
"Someone's been feeding these guys way too much Miracle Grow," Odyssey mutters. "Think the Orkin man will make a house call on this?"
It roars, spitting thick, fibrous mucus on Protector and the Golden Avenger, who were standing over the body of Peter Bartholomew. The stench is horrifying, and there is no way to breathe under it.
As the gob flies at him, Protector exclaims, "Unholy Spit!"
The groaning of the house increases in volume, as another gaping maw appears, directly in front of the door, where Ralph is standing. The old investigator’s expression is horrified as he is also spat upon by the second worm.
"Oh, shit! Ralph, hold on -- I'm coming," Odyssey yells, running toward the Ralph lump under the goo.
In a blur, Knightblade's phase sword appears in his hand. "Specter, can you distract that one while the guys get free? I'll try to do the same for Odyssey."
With that, Knightblade activates the sword and the electric blue blade crackles to life. Keeping his position, he waves the glowing blade, and yells, "Get ready to be dissected, you biology lab reject!"
The sound of the Specter's laughter continued to increase in volume and effect, a hurricane of mystical force This is the same laughter that stopped 10,000 rioters during the 60's and prevented their whole scale slaughter by the National Guard. "Would it be enough to stop these creatures from beyond?" the Specter thought.
Knightblade waves his sword, attempting to distract the worm who had encased Ralph in a solid lump of mucusy, fibrous goo. Odyssey runs forward, towards her husband’s wayward golf buddy, hands crackling with golden energy. The amulet around her neck pulses as she extends her hands, and blasts through the mess. She penetrates all the way through to Ralph, but it isn’t immediately clear if he’s unharmed or not, or if the energy blast itself harmed him.
Encased in the stinking slime, the Golden Avenger holds his breath and narrows his eyes as he rips his way out of the creature’s trap. Only a moment behind him, Protector follows suit. The slime clings to their clothing, and the stench is overpowering – a cloying mix of hyacinth and rotting meat.
The worm directly near Protector, the Golden Avenger and the now-invisible Specter rears up, and roars in what someone prone to anthropomorphism might deem frustration. Unsatisfied with spitting upon its quarry, the worm, with lightening speed, slams its head forward, right where the Golden Avenger was standing. Nimbly, he leaps up, flips in the air, and lands on the creature’s back. The worm misses, and slams forward into the tiled wall, smashing the plaster.
Protector, now directly next to the large worm, balls his hand into a fist and drives it forward, into the creature’s immense body. The skin of the worm is hard, underneath the slime, and barely gives at all as Protector connects.
The Specter’s mind focuses on that of the beast directly in front of him, and he pits his formidable will against the beast’s. Attack each other, he concentrates. The attempt to control the creature’s mind isn’t successful, however his laughter grows in intensity as the combat progresses.
"This is no mindless servitor," the Specter announces in a voice that seems to come from everywhere. Pulling from the very core of his being the Specter concentrates and attempts to distract the creature before him into attacking the body of Peter Bartholomew.
The worm which had initially attacked Ralph turns on the armored figure with the energy sword, and Knightblade is forced to leap out of the way as another huge mass of goo flies from the worm’s mouth, landing on a far wall.
Knightblade twists in the air and slices down on the worm as he lands on the cracked marble floor. The crackling energy sword slices through the beast’s thick skin, and rivulets of florescent violet ichor drips from its wound. The worm screams in pain, a hideous shriek. "A-ha!" Knightblade announces, "First... umm, blood, I guess."
The Golden Avenger squints at the worm on whose back he’s riding, and, keeping hold of the worm with his knees while holding the flashlight in one hand, he slams his fist into the creature’s back. His hand comes back, dripping with more violet ichor. "Ugh! This is worse than Blueberry Gunk from the Eisenhower!" he shouts in disgust.
Standing over Ralph, Odyssey takes a moment to assess him. He is not breathing, and his face is horror stricken.
"Oh God, Ralph," she cries. "You can't die. Who'll ever correct Tony's slice or give me fashion criticism? Damn," Odyssey mutters, "I am not going to let you go out of this life because some overgrown pasta primavera noodle spit clam sauce at you."
That image suddenly causes Odyssey's stomach, which has been rolling ever since these two worms showed up, to flip. 'Can't get sick now,' she thinks. 'After all this, when I'm home safe in my own bathroom, yes. But not right now.' Her brows knit in concentration and Odyssey clasps one hand on the amulet around her neck while the other hand rests lightly on Ralph's forehead. More golden energy pours from the amulet, and soon he begins to breathe again.
The Specter moves to Ralph's side.
Protector connects again with a punch, though this time he penetrates a little further into the creature’s skin. The density of the skin is far tougher than the Tiger 2 he’d punched through during the Battle of the Bulge.
The worm pulls its head out of the house’s wall, and attempts to roll over onto the Golden Avenger. The house itself lurches to the side, tilting at a nearly ten degree angle. The Specter focuses his will on the beast, and forces the sound of his laugher into the creature’s mind, causing the worm’s attack to fail. The Golden Avenger manages to stay atop the beast, though he shouts "Get Ralph out of here! The whole house could go!"
The Specter picks up Ralph's unconscious form and begins moving to the door. Picking up his still form the Specter moves toward the door and safety for Ralph. "If anything you have become lighter, Ralph," he whispers under his breath.
The worm closer to the front door turns on Knightblade again, its mouth open wide. He looks into the gaping maw and utters a resigned, "Oh, great." This time, instead of spitting at him, however, it descends on him – and his entire immediate area, Odyssey’s maglight included – and swallows them whole. Knightblade finds himself in a pink mouth, the veins running through the tissue inside casting a low, violet light. Muscles in the beast’s mouth and throat – or what Dr. McBain believes to be its mouth and throat – begin to convulse, as if attempting to swallow the armored figure whole.
"Now you've really got me pissed off," Odyssey says, planting her feet on the sloping floor of the ramshackle house. "Listen, you overgrown noodle, you're going to regret ever having slithered off whatever evil plate you came from." More golden energy flares around the woman, and the room brightens as she blasts away at the worm.
Crying in pain, it squirms, slamming back and forth into the walls. "Energy seems to hurt them more," the Golden Avenger says, flipping down from the worm’s back.
The Golden Avenger hefts Bartholomew’s body and grabs for the book the Egyptologist was covering. Protector slams his fist into the other worm’s thick hide, this time connecting more solidly. The area around where he his becomes immediately inflamed – in violet.
Ignoring the stench, Knightblade begins to take deep breaths as he reaches down to pick up Odyssey's maglite and deposits it in one of his armor panels. Before taking one final breath and holding it, he says quietly, and mostly to himself, "When this is over, you and I are going fishin', buddy."
He adjusts his blade to full intensity, reverses the handle, and grips it tightly with both hands. Throwing himself towards the creature's gullet feet first, he imbeds the blade into its soft throat. Then as the beast begins to swallow him, its own strength draws the blade through its soft inner flesh.
The worm rears again, and to the heroes in the rapidly collapsing house, there is a bright pink glow running down one side of the worm. The Golden Avenger dodges underneath this worm, and moves past Odyssey. Ralph’s body is floating towards the door, in the invisible hands of the Specter.
Tyler struggles to maintain consciousness and his grip on the sword. He keeps repeating to himself mentally, over and over, "Cut your way out. Cut your way out," in an attempt to focus his mind past the pain. Another slash to the worm’s intestine slices all the way through the skin this time.
The house is coming apart at the seams. A portion closest to the ocean breaks away, and slides down the hill, crashing onto the rocks below. Protector, now the closest to the edge of the cliff, is forced to dive backwards as the worm he’d been fighting suddenly withdraws, pulling back inside the hole it had made. Around him, the marble cracks, and the ceiling -- such of it as was left – crashes down.
Knightblade is barely able to pull himself from the worm when it too begins to descend, back into the deep hole it had emerged from, its unholy shriek adding to the roar of surf and the groan of the house.
Odyssey, Protector, and Knightblade all emerge from the house, as the remainder of the property crashes onto the rocks below. A large portion of the hillside is now gone, too, from westernmost tip of the jutting cliffs. Where the house stood, there is only a tiny landbridge across to the rest of the hill – on either side of the house, the ground, aided by the worms, has collapsed.
"Great," says the Golden Avenger. "What were those things? Who was controlling them, Specter? Specter?" he looks around.
Ralph and the Egyptologist are lying on the ground. Ralph is breathing, though it’s labored; the Egyptologist is not. In the distance, and baffled by the fog, it sounds as if emergency vehicles are on their way.
"Sheesh, maybe we should hire out as a demolition crew," Odyssey says, before running over to where Ralph is lying on the ground. "Geez, Ralph, don't give me a heart attack like that," Odyssey says as she kneels down to check him. "Stop complaining, I'm trying to see if you're OK."
Knightblade is covered in violet florescent goo; as are the fists of Protector and the Golden Avenger.
After checking on Ralph, Odyssey moves over to Peter Bartholomew. "Nothing personal guys, but you smell like something my dog got into once," she says as she checks the body of the seemingly dead Egyptologist. "You might want to clean that purple goo off you. It could be toxic."
"Are you OK, Knightblade?" she asks over her shoulder to the silver knight. "There's nothing like be used as a chew toy by a giant worm to put a crimp in your day."
Knightblade's vision starts to blur. He thinks he hears someone say his name, but he's not certain. Now that he's free of the beast, he desperately needs fresh air, but each breath he takes fills his lungs and nostrils with the fetid stench of the worm's foul ichor.
He looks around him. Everyone else seems alright. "Benefits of a superhuman constitution," he guesses to himself. Then his gag reflex kicks in. He stumbles to the bushes barely undoing the seal on his helmet. Just as he pulls the black mask underneath, up and over his nose, he begins to heave.
Finally, through a mixture of will and semi-fresh air, Knightblade's purge ends. With a raspy voice, he asks, "Would somebody get this crap offa me? Drop me in the ocean. Blast it off. I don't care what you do. Just get it off."
"There's a way down to the beach only about fifty feet further down the road," the Golden Avenger says. "I'll be there after I let the Assault team know what's going on," he looks at his hand. "Ugh."
"C'mon Knightblade, I'll help you," Odyssey says, putting an arm partway around the shoulder of the armored figure and steering him toward the beach. "Once you get this goo off of you, you'll feel better." There's a shimmer of golden light that flows around Odyssey's medallion, down her arm and around Knightblade and then it disapates. "Hmm, strange, that didn't work," she says, mostly to herself. Knightblade continues to feel queasy.
Partway down the hill, Odyssey starts to increase her pace because the smell of the goo that has fixed itself to Knightblade's armor and the residual smell of him being sick has started to play havok with her own stomach.
'I reserve the right to be sick in my own bathroom,' she wills her mind and body. Thirty yards from the beach, Odyssey's mental picture of her clean and wormless bathroom becomes really inviting. A tendril of golden energy snakes out and suddenly, before she or Knightblade can really even think about it, the crunch of dirt underfoot is replaced by the soft pile of a bathroom mat and tile.
"Oops," she says a little sheepishly, glancing at Knightblade who is standing in, well, the tub. Tangled about his head and caught on his armor are several pantyhose that had been drying on the shower curtain rod. Pantyhose, that have taken the alarming image of worms, at least to one who has just battled the slimy creatures. Swallowing down her rolling stomach, Odyssey snatches the offending items down and stuffs them in the bathroom hamper.
"Nyack...," Knightblade croaks, startled, "Geez, Odyssey, don't do that without warning me first."
"Sorry, I mean really sorry," she says, turning a rather bright color of red. "I guess I got a little distracted back there. It's just suddenly my bathroom seemed a lot better than the great outdoors. Um.. you can have this one," she blurts out before taking off pell mell for the dowstairs.
This leaves Knightblade alone, in the bathtub of the master bath. The bathroom is decorated in blue and white. There are several towels hanging conveniently on the rack and a basket of those guest soaps next to the sink. The countertop is also covered with an asundry of personal products including shaving cream, hair spray, brushes, some make up, toothbrushes, and a blowdryer.
Knightblade shakes his head and turns on the shower. He uses cold water first to clean out his mouth and then switches to scalding hot to clean off the armor. Despite his revulsion, the scientist in him takes over. Before the last of it washes down the drain, Knightblade removes a vial from his gauntlet and collects a sample of the putrid, purple pus. When he is finally satisfied both he and the tub are goo-free, he turns off the water after returning it to a lukewarm state.
After patting his armor dry with a towel, Knightblade goes in search of Odyssey.
Odyssey, having fled the upstairs bath embarassed beyond belief - Knightblade saw my pantyhose! - retreats into the kitchen. There she opens up the refrigerator looking for some milk to calm her stomach. Ah milk, it does a body good, she thinks as she absent-mindedly pulls out a glass and pours some into it. Grabbing the glass, she swallows down a gulp before her rolling stomach does a double flip.
"Pffft," she garbles, spitting milk all over the counter. "Oh yuck, blech," she mutters spitting the rest of the expired milk out into the sink. She immediately runs the water and starts washing out the taste.
After a few frantic moments of rinsing to get the junk out of her mouth, she turns off the water.
"Great, I make it through revenge of the Chinese noodles and then I get sick because Tony can't read the expiration date on the milk carton and throw it out."
Turning off the water, she hears the steady thonk, thonk of Knightblade walking around upstairs.
"I'm down here," Odyssey yells.
A few moments later a cleaned up Knightblade appears in the kitchen.
"I've got some Windex if you want that fresh from the car wash shine," Odyssey says, teasingly. "If not I guess we better get going. Sorry about the detour. I'm not completely familiar with this teleport thing. I think I can get us back out to the house."
As Odyssey and Knightblade move off down the path, Protector shucks his jacket, wet with worm spit, and tosses it in a heap on the ground. Then he pulls off his gloves and peels the mask off of his wet face, dropping them on the pile too. A miraculously still-dry hankerchief appears from his pants pocket, and runs it through his hair a few times, toweling off the residual juice.
The Specter returning from his survey of the area and comes up to the Golden Avenger and says: "This will not be the last time we see these creatures. The people responsible for bringing them here are still free to work their evil. I will do what I can to track them down." He pauses for a moment and then continues, "I will bring my resources to bear on the problem. You can contact me through Ralph or meet me at the statue of Robert Emmett in the Golden Gate Park tomorrow night at 11." Having said this he quickly walks down the to the road and gets into a waiting taxi -- which was not there a moment ago.
"Great," he says gruffly. "Now where do we go with this?" Pictures of Carol at the mercy of that monstrosity they had just fought come to his mind. 'God help those cultists when I find them,' he thinks. "Avenger, do you have that book?" says Protector as he kneels down beside the corpse of the scientist.
"Yes," the Golden Avenger says. "But I think that before anyone looks at it, PRIMUS staff should analyze it."
"Definitely. I was just concerned that it went down with the house," Protector responds.
Protector reaches for the maglight in his pocket and realizes it's in the gooey pile of jacket. Thinking better of it, he does a cursory search in the dim light, which turns up nothing of any use. Standing, he smacks his balled-up fist into his other hand, "Shoot. Nothing!" He looks over at the Golden Avenger and says, "I'd like to help however I can. Is there anything I can do here?" Then he sifts carefully through the egyptologist's clothing, checking his pockets and looking for anything that might be concealed on his person.
However, there is little here to be found for there is nothing concealed on his person, other than his wallet, which confirms that he is who Odyssey said he is, that he is a registered Democrat in New Jersey, and that he has a Citibank Visa card and a lot of keys.
Sanity-loss quirk assignments: these work like in GURPS:
Knightblade: Can't eat raspberry or cherry jell-o, and feels
nauseous at the thought of it.
Odyssey: Can't eat linuini with white clam sauce anymore, and feels
nauseous at the thought of it.
Specter: Wakes up with the scary "falling off a cliff dream"
once every two weeks or so.
Protector: Gets the uggies after he sees someone spit.
Golden Avenger: Can't eat Blueberry Gunk, but then, he never could.