Slain by Elf

The professor joins us in New York from Boston, so I hand him the paper with the translated text on it. After my lengthy library time translating the backwards Latin he saw scribbled on the walls in the catacombs, where jars of blue dust were stored, I thought he may be interested in knowing what was written.

Kinda. But instead of reading the translation, the professor reads the original text, the backwards Latin. He does this whilst in possession of one of those jars of blue dust, taken for scientific discovery, at which point the jar trembles and the blue dust inside coalesces in to... something.

Whatever the dust forms, it looks like it's now living, but not in the form of any creature we've ever seen. All we can be sure of is the ghastly blue hue its skin has. Rather than waiting to see what else may happen, I stomp on the monstrosity, until it stops moving. Hopefully that will be the end of that.

And it would be the end of that, except Madame Za Za opens her big mouth. 'Do we have to make a sanity check?'

'Shut up, Ted!'

'Melee weapons are more effective than guns in Call of Cthulhu, particularly at close range.'

Finding a scrap of paper in his pocket, the professor is reminded of the inscription he saw in the catacombs of the secret society's building. It was scribbled on the wall in chalk, and looked vaguely Latinesque. Wernstrom has some research to attend to in his laboratory, so enlists me to decipher the text because of my language skills and familiarity with libraries.

I take a look, and think I can translate it, once I realise it is, peculiarly, written backwards. Or can I?

'Make me a Library Use check.'

'If I succeed, can I use Google to translate it?'

'Yes.'

'And if I fail?'

'You have to use Bing.'

'Which', says Castle, 'incurs D6 sanity loss'.

Opening a door, rather foolishly on our way out of the vast basement complex underneath a secret society's building, reveals a pair of blue-skinned men. Their blueish hue is a bit weird, that they're completely nude certainly isn't proper, and that they are looking to bum-rush us has our hackles up.

Guns are drawn from those that have them. I don't have my hunting rifle, thinking that bringing it to gain unlawful access to a building would rather work against us were we caught, but weapons easier to conceal are brought to bear. Madame Za Za pulls out a tiny pistol, asking 'who has any weapons? I only have this one-shot Derringer'.

Richard Castle, private dick, readies his revolver, cheerily telling Za Za 'I recommend saving that for yourself. Or the kneecap of one of us.'

'Don't think I haven't considered that', she says. But as the blue men approach, with vicious attitudes, the guns are pointed towards their way and fired.

The Derringer is fired, reloaded, fired, and Castle's revolver needs four of its six shots to take down one of the men. But their eerie strength lets the second withstand the other two bullet wounds and engage physically. Old Man Cole is taken down first, and once Castle's revolver starts clicking against fired rounds the standing blue man deals a nasty blow that knocks our dick to the floor.

Without my rifle to aid the fight, I was trying to get our rescued missing person away from harm. But seeing two of our party injured, perhaps dying, enrages me. I charge forwards with my fists ready, and trade a couple of blows with the standing blue man. My second punch lands heavily, rupturing some vital organ, and dropping the attacker with more force than any of Castle's single bullets managed. If this doesn't get me a nickname, I don't know what will.

The threat is over. We tend to the wounds our friends received and carry them and our rescued man up and out of the building, managing to slam the door behind us, just to get us in to more trouble, but cheesing it effectively all the same.

On finding a mysterious tome in surprisingly deep basement, complete with blood-stained altar, I muse upon the hilarity that a pop-up book of Cthulhu could bring.

Flick through the standard pages of normal prose and, bam, Cthulhu's tentacled face springs out at you. Naturally, I'm not the first to think of this, as Bert says he's 'got a pop-up book of Cthulhu'. How was it?

'It's on PDF.'

'On the far side of the room is a door, that's slightly ajar.'

'My god, it's a non-Euclidean door!'

It's our first full group in months, and so we're back to the main adventure. Does anyone remember where we were? Thinking about how to infiltrate a lodge in 1920's Boston, it seems. 'The very last thing we said, I think, was 'let's work out a plan'.'

Okay, good. So you've had three months to think about it. What's the plan?

'We go in the front door.'

Genius. That's been time well spent. Even better, within minutes we realise that's not the best plan we can think of, and so we come up with a new plan of going up the fire escape at the back, and breaking in at 3 am.

Thankfully, without having to ponder it for another three months, we 'sneak' up the rattling, metal fire escape and enter without anyone coming to investigate the noise. Unfortunately, we find our way up to a floor where there are rooms with elaborate and faintly disturbing murals on the walls.

The murals shouldn't be disturbing, as they seem pretty normal, but something seems off. A couple of us are gently disquieted by the images, and so when we enter the third room, where there is obviously a mural behind another drawn curtain, I avert my gaze. Or try to. I sneak a peak anyway.

The mural is of space, full of stars, with an ominous black planet at its centre. The image instils within us a sense of our own insignificance and a dreadful desolation. 'I am Russian', I protest. 'This is normal.' But not normal enough.

My mind is sent in to a state of shock, and I enter a catatonic state. Madame Za Za suffers some amnesia, hopefully as temporary as my catatonia. And Cole is somehow triggered in to experiencing teratophilia. Private dick, Richard, is the only one unaffected by the mural, but maybe not for long, what with having a gammy leg. He'd better keep an eye on Cole.

The pre-frontal cortex. This is where the nuclear warhead needs to be planted and programmed to detonate. Dropping the warhead in the right place turns out to be a pretty easy task, given that its location doesn't need to be particularly precise. Making sure it detonates is also surprisingly simple, particularly given the Troubleshooters' complete lack of experience with weapons of mass destruction.

Convincing the nuclear warhead's bot brain not to detonate within a few seconds, however, turns out to be a trickier task to accomplish.

'Detonate? Of course I can detonate! Let's play the countdown game! Three! Two! O—'

'No no no. We need you to detonate, bu—'

'It would be my pleasure! Three! Tw—'

'—but not straight away. How about counting down from a higher number?'

'Like three? I can do that! Thr—'

'No! No, try 3,000.'

'Can I count down in thousands?'

'No. Um, count down in halves.'

'Okay! 3,000! 1,500! 750!'

'Argh, it's like talking to a child!'

The Troubleshooters, miniaturised and injected in to Stan-U, have somehow reached Brain Sector. Their mission to plant a nuclear warhead in the pre-frontal cortex of the rogue High Programmer is coming to a head.

The revamped internal structure of Stan-U's brain looks similar to Alpha Complex corridors. 'Can we take off our suits?' says Carmen-R, worried that her hat-hair won't look good for the cameras. What cameras? Who knows. 'George-R, maybe you can keep your suit on.'

'No, I think I'd like to take it off too.'

'But you're carrying the nuke.'

'I don't think this environmental suit will protect me from a nuclear blast.'

'No', says Betty-R, 'you probably need a fridge for that'.

Betty-R returns to silo 543, Eric-R no longer with her, to reunite with George-R. 'Did you see the alert The Computer sent out, to launch a nuclear missile at Sector ZQD?', says Betty-R.

'Yes. I tried to launch one', George-R lies, 'but it didn't work. I pressed all the buttons, nothing happened.'

'Did you try pressing them again?'

'Yes. Still nothing.'

'How about turning it off and back on again?'

'Turn off a nuclear reactor?'

'Sure. What could go wrong?' But before they can see just what can go wrong with turning off a nuclear reactor, they notice from security camera that some Armed Forces goons have dumped a body bag in the airlock of silo 543. They go to investigate.

Pulling the body bag in from the airlock, George-R and Betty-R ponder what to do with it. 'It's probably a mutant commie way of trying to get in to the base.', says Betty-R.

'Let's throw it on the slime mould sofa', suggests George-R.

'Good plan.'

'Hey, let me out!', comes a shout from the body bag.

'Yep', says Betty-R, 'this is an obvious mutant commie plot'.

'Don't you recognise the voice?' says George-R, a little unsure.

'Nope.'

Easily convinced, George-R helps Betty-R pick up the body bag and throw it over the railing to the ground floor of the silo, which is beneath two feet of toxic water. Betty-R is not happy with the original plan. 'That water's filthy. I'm not carrying him now. Let's look for a pole to push him with.'

The body bag, hearing the plan to dispose of whoever's inside, is getting restless. 'Guys? It's me! Eric-R! Let me out!'

It is indeed Eric-R. His replacement clone stumbled in to IntSec and Armed Forces following Herman-G in their own way of finding Stan-U's secret base, and now Eric-R has been unceremoniously dumped back at the silo after Seeing Too Much. It's only a shame that he waited so long to identify himself to his comrade Troubleshooters, who have left the room to look for a pole and didn't hear Eric-R say who he was.

'...guys?'

Eric-R's Troubleshooter colleagues return. With a pole. Eric-R feels the pole push in to the body bag, and him under water, and so tries again to identify himself. 'Guys! It's Eric-R! Help me out of here!'

'It does sound like Eric-R', says Betty-R. 'And now that he's underwater, it even sounds like the last time we drowned him.'

'Should we let him out?', asks George-R.

'In a minute.'