In the house of the Grand Poobah

<snip>
The well dressed Lovecraftian horror saw them and cocked his head in surprise. "By Jove! What the devil are you doing in my home???"
</snip>

Cass hauled out the blaster she’d acquired earlier from the market trader “Execution contract s- Oh, shit...”

Her bravado died the instant the combat droid rose from behind one of the sofas and trained it’s weapons on her. Dick screamed like a girl.

“I don’t think so” the Grand Poobah said, airily. His tentacles twitched nauseatingly when he spoke.

“Yeah, probably not” Cass smiled nervously, her eyes darting between him and the cybernetic monstrosity currently targeting her.

“I’d advise you to lower your weapon”

“If I do that, you can just kill us”

“If you don’t, my little toy here will kill you anyway”

“It might be a good idea to listen to him, Cass” Thomas said in a low voice.

“Yeah, I was just getting to that”

“Hnnnnuurgh”

“Okay” Cass yelped as the combat ‘bot whirred and whined threateningly “Doing it!” she raised her hands and held up the weapon.

“There now. That wasn’t difficult, was it?” the cthonian horror moved towards them, his wingtips tip-tapping on the floor.

“I’m sorry about my colleague’s enthusiasm” Thomas said as the mass of tentacles in a suit walked towards them “You know - Ladies, eh?”

Cass shot him a murderous look but wisely chose to say nothing.

“She really is very flighty” Belvedyr agreed. He was still sore about having had his head removed by her “Not to mention condescending, prickly, aggressive, generally bad-tempered and aloof”

Dick nodded “You forgot sardonic”

“Ynneeerrrgh”

“I am here, you know!” Cass snapped “And still holding a weapon!”

“Ah, yes, about that” the Grand Poobah came to a halt, just in front of them “Can you tell me why a small crowd of humans, including a walking corpse and a near naked man-baby, have chosen to march into my home, waving guns around?”

Up close, the stench of Aqua Velva was eye-watering.

”Heh” Thomas nervously shuffled his feet and looked at the floor “You’ll laugh at this...”

“Yeah, why don’t you tell him about that job you found for us?” Cass said “I’m sure he’ll be interested to hear the specifics”

“Oh?” the Grand Poobah settled back against a nearby sideboard and folded his arms “Do tell - I’m all ears”

With the combat bot still targeting them, nobody felt like pointing out that, more accurately, he was all tentacles.

“Well,” Thomas began “you see the thing is, we were told that a - y’know - a monster lived in these caves and that there was a reward for killing it; so we ah... heh...” he petered out beneath the withering gaze of the Grand Poobah.

“A monster you say?”

“Yeah” he laughed “In fairness, we were imagining something a little different to this”

“They were offered eight thousand to kill you” Belvedyr said, helpfully “They were all keen. I can replay the conversation if you like?”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary” Cass snapped.

“Well, one thing is accurate” the Grand Poobah nodded “There certainly is a monster living down here, but not in the way you thought. I’m much, much worse.

“Tell me” he continued “Who was it that offered you money to kill me?”

“Oh, uh, just some guy I met in the market” Thomas replied

“I’ll double what he offered in return for you bringing me his head. I intend to feast on his brain”

“Done” Cass said without hesitation.

“Oh, er...” Thomas hopped nervously from foot to foot.

“Right” Cass clapped her hands together “We’ll be off and back with a nice warm brain for you in a bit”

“You’ve a day” the Grand Poobah said, pleasantly “After that, my associates will hunt you down and I’ll feast on your brains”

“Understood. Let’s be going” Cass turned and hurriedly waved everyone out of the man cave.



“What the fuck have you got us into, Plisken?” she rounded on Thomas as soon as they were far enough away not to be heard by the Grand Poobah.

“I don’t want to cut someone’s head off” Dick wailed “I’m a Quantum Biologist, not a murderer!”

Thomas grimaced “You know what the worst thing is?”

“Go on...” Cass said, dangerously.

“The guy who gave me the job was a cop”



<tag>
So, it turns out that the Grand Poobah is some sort of crime boss, running his empire from his reclusive man cave in the abandoned mines

Do we have the stomach for a bit of gory wetwork? - If not, what are we going to do?

We can’t easily get off-world and if we don’t show up for the next vaculav (or worse) session, we get an automatic arrest warrant

Over to you...
</tag>