Previously On: Pulp Cthulhu The Two-Headed Serpent, Ep3

Encounter 3. Bolivian camp… Big Mitch tossed his aviator’s scarf over his shoulder despite the fact he didn’t fly. Lungs heavy with the blue beauty of the day, he inhaled deeply then wheezed out his thirty year’s smoker cough. Damn those Lucky Strikes. He probably should have waited until he was older to start smoking. Maybe at ten. From the corner of his eye, he saw the little skinny rich girl and gave her a chin lift. Her squint and cocked head conveyed the universal “WTF?” more clearly than any verbal, “WTF?” can convey WTF. Ah, there was the sinuous Simone. Big Mitch gave HER his infamous chin lift. After a moment, she raised a ruthlessly plucked eyebrow, the left one, in the feminine equivalent of the chin lift. There we go. He took another less deep breath in….okay…he was in. What a beautiful day to be barely alive in the jungle of Bolivia. Maybe he could blast some more shit up today. He revised that hope as the noise of propeller planes came into camp to take them to New York City. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe Shapiro. Caduceus HQ, New York City Debriefing with Shapiro the asshole. Shapiro the asshole yapped on about not one but two groups of serpent people. Jesus H. Christ on a Crutch, like one is not enough? There’s the Big initial worshipers that founded the race and live underground, thank God, and don’t want to have much if anything to do with people, thank you again Lord above. Then there’s the other group, the Night People that worship Tsathagua or Ticonderoga, something like that that want to, oh, DESTROY HUMANITY. They have super weapons and can cause volcanic eruptions and more shi,, shinola like raining ash for 90 years then repopulating the earth with more serpent people. The factions don’t get along so guess who we’re allying with. Cads goal is to protect mankind from the Inner Knight people, but for some ungodly convoluted reason they can’t reveal them to the plan to humanity. They’re all involved in society and government BS or so Shapiro says. The Chosen One wants to speak to us tomorrow, oh joy, but in the meantime we were left to our own resources. Izzy wandered off to read palms, Sameer went to the university, the rich chick wanted “to Lunch” and Simone has something hinky going on about her dead husband. Some twerp Filmore Cassell tried to schmooze up Simone to get info on Caduceaus and a possible heroin trade. He says he has some “associates” that want to talk to her. This will go well. Associates! I hang out in my shop trying to organize my junk. We end up in Brooklyn of all places at a small cafe to meet Cassell’s wiseguys. Teddy who must be brighter than she looks notices that the place is filled with men, only one woman. She also points out that the bulges in their jacket don’t mean they are happy to see us, but they’re armed.

It’s the Banano mafia. Yeah, Banano. I had to bite my tongue, but a banana joke is really not worth dying over. They say sit. We sit. Some pipsqueak 20-something year old twerp comes out. He’s the Don if you can believe. Joseph something I can’t pronounce, was he a Banano? He wants to know about Caduceus and if it plans on interfering in the NY drug trade. This they heard from a reliable source. Something about the warehouse in Redhook. Tense times but at least the food was good and no one died. Yet. Still didn’t get to blow up anything. Next day Izzy spots one of the mooks loitering outside Cad’s offices. It’s a busy day today. Simone notices on some of the Caduceus' maps that they are tracking a hepatitis outbreak in Borneo. God, the back of beyond and the last place I want to go to. The Chosen One wants to reward us by teaching us some spells so what the hell. Effing Shapiro slinks in with some unwanted information about the hepatitis outbreak. They think it’s something more dastardly as the death count doesn’t sync with an outbreak. Damn it. The handwriting is on the wall. Gonclaves, another Cad man, will join us regarding Inner Nights kill-all-mankind weapons and blood tests. We troop to the file room where Izzy asks about the warehouses of Redhook. One is full while the other is empty as a backup. Checking numbers, the shipments are not balanced. The product is a chemical agent that is noted as insect repellent. Bovine scatological. Ten bloody guards are there and no amount of charms these dames dish out is going to trump that no matter what they think. The empty warehouse is a breeze. Redhook Warehouses…Later that night We get into the one warehouse easily, and Izzy picks the office lock. She uses the radio to communicate. In the other warehouse there are hundreds of crates, a veritable warren. Four guards are talking at the bay doors and there is a shipment coming in that has to be unloaded. There is a hatch of stairs close by. We find a crate open full of TNT, the lid falls down with bad timing but we escape. Next morning… effing Borneo… Shit.

We take a nice commercial plane then are shuffled on to a puddle jumper. Izzy screams and scares the bejeezus out of everyone because she saw something fishy on the plane. Yes, ON the plane, not in the plane, damn it. Three monsters are not the wings. It is fucking Night Assholes attacking the plane. The pilot having more than a modicum of intelligence screams in fear. Still, not the best feeling seeing a grown man cry like a little girl. Not me. I ready my weapon as Izzy readies some poison on hers. Sameer does something as well, but I am focusing on getting a bead on a monster. Teddy does some fancy schmancy Wall of Force thing and takes out one of the bastards. Not bad for a stuck up little, pain in my ass debutante. Unfortunately, she Walls of Force a hole in the plane near the pilot who cries some more but he’s basically okay. Yeah, two monsters AND a hole on the damn plane but we are A.O.K. Well, there goes the co-pilot. Poor sunuvabitch. Dropped by one of those Night Mares. Simone shoots at the monster as do I with my 38, and we take out two of the suckers. Damn if I did not miss something, ‘cause there are four bastards left. Izzy gets grappled and someone takes it out. More crap goes down but Izzy finally takes a creature out with a poison dagger in a very nice move. Then we land.