Fried Squid (Open)

Participants: Elsa Bloodstone / open
Open/Closed: Open
Location(s): A Florida mall
Time of Day: Mid-afternoon
Weather: Warm but overcast
Summary: During a peaceful afternoon's shopping, a Florida-based mall is over-run by tentacled monstrosities. Monster hunter Elsa Bloodstone is quick to subdue the immediate but is forced to call in back up from the mystical heroes and heroines in her speed dial.

She picked her way carefully among the twisted, malformed shapes that littered the mall's floor. The screams that had echoed around the palatial building only fifteen minutes before had faded, and the grunting, gurgling and spluttering that had intersperced said screams had been forcibly silenced. Tentacles lay twitching where they'd fallen and the bulbous eyes of the slain creatures were dull and lifeless, where they had once flashed with hunger.
“It just had to be tentacle monsters, didn't it?” Elsa muttered under her breath, lamenting the state of her attire following her encounter with the other-worldly cephalopods. She sighed somewhat mournfully as she glanced down at her slime-covered jacket, then raised the pistol that she'd carried loosely at her side, squeezing the trigger not once, not twice – but until the depleted clip was empty. The target: an already dead, octopus-faced creature that lay a few feet from her. It bucked and writhed as further holes exploded through it's squid-like skull, spattering the clean floor behind it an intriguing shade of snot green.
“**** you, you slimey *******s.”

Movement in her peripheral vision caught the monster hunter's attention, and she inclined her head, levelling her hand-gun – despite its lack of ammunition – at the source. Raising a brow, she pursed her lips a little as a weighty man in a 'mall security' t-shirt edged into view, clutching a large dufflebag to his chest protectively – her dufflebag. They pair stood staring at each other for a long moment before Elsa lowered her weapon.
“Sorry,” she said in a tone that suggested she wasn't overly sorry at all, “Forgot you were still here.”
Indeed, when the chaos had broken loose, Elsa had tasked the 'officer' with carrying her arsenal while she engaged; a task which had proven far too difficult for him. He'd run to a nearby plant pot for cover, and sat there shaking throughout the entire fight.

After a few more moments stood in almost statuesque stillness, Bloodstone took a step towards the stunned male. With a shrill shriek, he dropped her bag and scuttled backwards, before turning and sprinting for the exit.
“Thanks for the help!” she shouted after him, words dripping with sarcasm. With a soft 'ugh', she moved to retrieve her weaponry, hoisting the heavy, navy sack onto her back with surprisingly little effort. Then, she continued on her former path: careful steps over alien corpses toward a nearby 'Dark Topic' – the place she believed to be the origin of the incident.

As she approached the entrance, the number of octopi strewn underfoot increased, and she noticed strange signs drawn upon the walls and floors, glyphs from some unrecognisable language. They repeated over and over again, leading a winding path into the store. Coming to a steady halt, Elsa cast her eyes over the sprawling markings and sucked loudly on her teeth. Languages had never been her strong suite.

Pushing a hand deep into her coat pocket, she pulled out her phone and shook a long line of 'tentacle spit' off the device. Then, flicking through her contacts, she fired off a number of messages to individuals she thought might be able to help: people who were more skilled in the art of translating mystic symbols than she. The text was simple: 'Sale on tentacle warmers at South Walk Mall. Place is crazy for them – absolute murder. Advertising campaign is in foreign language. Need help translating.'

The ambiguity of the message was unlikely to put people off a response: Elsa Bloodstone didn't tend to work well with others, and if anyone within the superhero community received a message from her, it was serious.

Jericho sat with his legs folded in the center of his study surrounded by burning candles. The dark shadows that danced along the carved walls of the Sanctum were lost to Doctor Voodoo as his eyes remained closed tightly. His arcane energy rolled like calm waves inside of him, a steady flux of magical properties that was kept quelled by usual meditation. The heavy velvet curtains of the study's large gothic windows were drawn to keep out the sunlight of the afternoon, the only source of lighting Jericho needed was that of the small burning flames all around him, as well as the larger burning fire crackling in the fire place a few feet away from him. As the Sorcerer Supreme focused more on the houngan magic deep within him the burning fires around him leapt higher, a vibrant lavender hue overtook the flames.

In Jericho's mind's eye he could peer deeper and deeper into the magical well within himself. Deeper still. He could see the imprint of the cosmos within his own magic, the essence of primordial magic that was unlocked only by his ascension to Sorcerer Supreme. Those traces and imprints became more apparent as he felt his connection to his own magical potential strengthening. And then his phone went off.

The Gunner of God dropped from his levitated stated and landed onto the small pillow beneath him. Jericho opened his eyes with the tiniest trace of a frown on his face. He stood quickly from his square pillow and made a barefoot stride over to his large Macassar ebony desk where his cell phone rested. It wasn't a phone call but a text and that was not a highly usual method anyone Voodoo knew used to contact him. The shine of the phone reflected on Jericho's face as his dark eyes quickly scanned over the words on the screen. He then glanced at the name of the contact and raised a brow.

"Swirling portal I call open
Unbolt the gate by these words spoken
South Walk Mall, I hath chosen"

Doctor Voodoo recited the spell as he shrugged on his crimson cloak. As he grabbed up the magical staff of Legba Jericho stepped through the portal he had called forth. In an instant he was no longer in New York city and suddenly deposited in a Florida mall. Though the text message very clearly stated the location was a mall - that was about the only thing clear about it - Jericho was still somewhat surprised to see where he had arrived.

Jericho's eyes followed a trail of strange octopus creatures that littered the mall floor before settling on the woman who had summoned him there. He supposed this explained the "tentacle warmers" line in his text, if only somewhat. The houngan was still very much in the dark. Voodoo stood stoic with his hand on his staff, still cautiously surveying the area before the Dark Topic store. "I wasn't aware you still had my number." As a hunter of the supernatural, Elsa Bloodstone was someone Voodoo had crossed paths before, her family line was quiet well known in the world mystical dangerous things.

"You could have snapped a picture and requested a translation you know." Jericho commented quite cheekily, it was apparent to him that Elsa wanted a little more assistance than in just the scholarly way.

Elsa Bloodstone

By the time a swirling portal of mauve energy rippled into existence, Elsa had taken a seat by the store’s front window, back to the glass, feet propped up on a handful of tentacle-faces. Slimy though they were, their lack of skulls and jellied innards made them surprisingly comfortable – like a water bed for her lower legs. She chewed idly on some jerky, a shotgun laid across her lap. Her clothing remained covered in slime, ichor, and other cephalopod juices – Bloodstone had been a monster hunter for long enough to know that there was no point hosing herself down before the job was done. Doing so was basically begging for more creature guts.

She raised a brow as a tall, dreadlocked man in a cloak stepped from the eddying portal, and it shimmered closed in his wake. Elsa recognised him almost instantly as Doctor Voodoo – the better Sorcerer Supreme, though if it had been put to a vote, she’d have preferred the small, bi-curious Asian witch or the emotionless Russian disc hopper to inherit the mantle. She’d have preferred their assistance too, but she didn’t have the time or inclination to be too picky: beggars couldn’t be choosers. As long as it wasn’t Strange – Elsa had considered opening fire if it’d been his face that popped out the rip in reality.

"I wasn't aware you still had my number."

Elsa shrugged nonchalantly, popping a chunk of dried, salted meat into her mouth. Stashing it in her cheek with her tongue, she replied, “Neither was I.” She made no move to get up. “Surprise for both of us!” Even though she attempted a tone of mock excitement, her words were too droll to sound anything other than sarcastic. Allowing the hunk of cow to work its way back into prime chewing position, she remained silent for a good few moments while Drumm looked at the devastation about him.

"You could have snapped a picture and requested a translation you know."

She swallowed before answering. “My burner phone doesn’t have a camera.” Slowly, she pushed herself to her feet, one of the squid heads ‘popping’ as she did so – a wet squelch echoing around the mall as it exploded underfoot, spurting thick ropes of octopus goo up her leg and about her immediate vicinity. Nonplussed, she offered out her snack to Voodoo. “Jerky? There might be some seafood chunks in there but I think I picked most of them out.”

Then, with a sidelong nod at the symbols covering the store and the path toward it, she focused their attention on the task that required the sorcerer's aid. “Does this graffiti mean anything to you? Or is it just kids messing around with a set of Lovecraft stencils.”

Jericho Drumm