20198/Escape from the Headless God

Escape from the Headless God
Date of Scene:	07 March 2025
Location:	The Lighthouse of Cold Harbor
Synopsis:	In a between place, Batgirl and Detective Chimp are confronted by an ageless horror! If you run across a cultist named Steve on a dating app, swipe left.
Cast of Characters:	Detective Chimp, Barbara Gordon

---

Detective Chimp has posed:
Recoiling from the horrific sight before him, the Detective Chimp managed to remain heroically calm. He only dropped his lighter once as he attempted to light a cigarette, and spent several seconds attempting to click click click the lighter before the flame finally stayed steady enough to bring him the relief his nerves so desperately needed. Perhaps it would be best not to judge, unless one has already encountered an Olympic sized swimming pool filled with rotting heads and hands. Perhaps under the circumstances, he actually acquit himself fairly well by not screaming and running.

Despite being a selfish and bitter sort of ape, Bobo T. Chimpanzee was never a coward.

"Justice? I think that ship might have already sailed, Bat-Babe. Crime scene like this couldn't a been the work of men..."

A stir in the stale air.

An almost imperceptible shift amidst the foul stench, but obvious to a detective trained to operate on the bleeding edge of danger.

They are not alone...

The chimp felt it too, looking up at the Curvy Crusader with his features alit by the dim glow of a cheap cigarette, fresh concern visible in the lines around his eyes.

The pool filled the center of a room made entirely of stone. Clever of construction, despite the crudeness of some of the stonework, it was clearly a place of worship. But whether it was always a place to discard extra heads was beyond the ability of Detective Chimp to ascertain at a mere glance. At the end, with its arms stretched out benevolently over the pool, a very large stone figure of roughly human proportions, though a bit stretched out and thin.

But the robed figure made of stone had no hands. And no head.

Off to the sides, barely visible in the low light conditions, entryways that seemed to be sealed shut. The detective fought the urge to step back, and simply exit the way that he had come, before they began to...

It was too late.

One of the doors began sliding open, and sounds of activity could be heard on the other end. Voices, uninterested in maintaining their secrecy, apparently human?

Barbara Gordon has posed:
It was a situation that Batgirl didn't like, not one bit. Over the course of the past several years, though, she had begun to more frequently find herself mixed up in magical mayhem. She used to have one Zatanna Zatara on speed-dial, for help with this sort of thing, but as life goes, Zatanna has fallen busy with her own life, and that connection had mostly dried up. This left Babs sorely needing of a magical ally, to help her deal with this kind of a threatening situation. Wishes and dreams.

She had to do something, and do it right now. Even if she had to flee from this place, she had to at least get enough information about the place, to flee and come back later with better suited help. She rapidly considered her options, and with a glance down at the hairy companion beside her, Batgirl snapped a hand to her hip, and retrieved her grapple gun from her utility belt. The gun snapped open in to its ready position, and with a blur of speed in her motion, the woman in black raised the projectile hand cannon up, and launched a grapple line across the pool of severed body parts. When the grapple chewed in to the stone wall behind the handless statue, it pulled upon its own line, causing it to go taut, Batgirl offered a hand to the Chimp, and if he took it, he'd join her. If not?

She shot across the pool of Human refuse. She had no cape on, but her capeless suit did have a sonic wave generator on her back, that created an anti-grav field behind her body, helping her float through the air, as she swept over the pool, toward the doors that were opening up on its other end. When she came down again upon her boots, her grapple line cut loose from the wall, and the Bat swung her body around to press her back up against the door's edge, before she peered from a shadowy corner in to the room where the voices of Humans (?) could be heard within.

She's going for justice, she's going for speed.

Detective Chimp has posed:
It was all that the Detective Chimp could do to keep from screaming the entire ride. But despite the sudden acceleration and the yanking of his arm, he let out little more than a muffled peep as he zipped above the surface of a pool more disgusting than any he had seen outside of Bludhaven. Clinging tightly all the while, his cigarette fell into the pool, where it extinguished in the mucky filth with an unheard hiss.

He took up a position on the opposite side of the door's edge as the crude door finished sliding open, the muffled voices on the other side rapidly growing clearer as the obstruction between them was lessened, and the voiced grew closer...

"... finally a fitting tribute for the Old God, I hope. I didn't realize that he would be so picky about his offerings."

"Careful, Brother. That sort of levity almost borders upon blasphemy. If the offerings are unfit for our Lord, then we must cast the signal ever wider."

With his back pressed firmly against the stone wall, Detective Chimp held his deerstalker hat to his head with one hand, while the other gripped reassuringly on the handle of his trusty Maglite. Trying to listen to the footsteps, he attempted to get a better idea of how many were approaching.

Five... six? They seemed to be wearing boots of some sort, judging by the clack against the stone floors. And he thought perhaps he could hear the rustle of some sort of robes. It made sense, after all this was apparently a cult. And the statue that they apparently worshipped was also dressed in robes. But these were modern voices. New Englanders, from the sound of it. Surely they didn't build this place, but the stonework was so old that it could probably have existed before any Vikings ever set foot on the shores of this continent.

There would be time for a history lesson later.

The door finished sliding open, the light of torches spilling into the main area and further illuminating both the statue and the grim sacrifice before it.

But though the statue was still in the same place, its position had changed slightly, its torso oriented so that it was facing...

Batgirl?

"Remember the speech, brothers. It's 'We welcome you to the birthplace of One who never died...'"

The speaker stepped past the threshold of the door, torch in one hand, and smartphone in the other. On the screen, his notes app contained the entirety of an incantation.

Behind him there were six more. Seven?

Barbara Gordon has posed:
If these cultists knew that there were visitors on the other side of the pool of death, they may not expect that they came across it to join them on their side so quickly. Though, based on what Batgirl could hear of some of their broken conversation, it was possible they had an inkling of an idea of who she was... Or they were a fan of Detective Chimp.

On said side now, Batgirl kept close to the shadows beside the door, knowing her suit's design would help camouflage her against the stone behind her back, but there was a good chance this gaggle of gruesome grunts would still easily see them, if they just looked to their left, what with a Chimp in a cute little hat standing right there too.

Batgirl saw the light of a smart phone in one hand, the lead goon's hand, as they began filing out of the hallway, and when the last one did, Batgirl motioned for the Chimp to slip past her legs and go through the door the men just filed out from. It was an attempt to slip past them, and in to their newly vacated space, and should it pay off, she'd follow after the Chimp too, to put a little distance between she, and the robed figures with the torches.

Another hand pull from her hip, produced a group of shocking electrical spheres that she primed with a rolling of the balls around in her gloved hand, each one tapped by her thumb, before she dropped them on the ground, and rolled the little explosive electrical traps right at the feet of the cultists! She didn't have her drones down here, but she still had some tech tricks up her sleeve (or rather, on her belt?)

Detective Chimp has posed:
Only too eager to put some distance between himself and the cultists, Detective Chimp followed her lead into the (hopefully) empty chamber. The lighting inside was dim, with nothing but torches affixed to the walls providing a flickering flame. At least these gentlemen were fans of the classics. They were probably guilty of hundreds of murders... but one had to at least admire the dedication to stick to the bit.

As they distanced themselves, two things happened almost simultaneously.

The first thing: The apparent leader of the group of eight cultists looked away from his phone long enough to notice that the statue of the Headless God was not positioned as it normally was. Its feet still stuck in place, it was nevertheless rotated at the hips so that its torso was pointing directly at the room where Batgirl and Detective Chimp had just slipped away. One of its arms was extended, as if pointing directly at them. Or perhaps... reaching for them? It was hard to tell since the statue had no hands. But regardless, it was definitely creepy.

The second thing: Before the cultists could fully grasp the significance of the statue's change of position, the electrical traps beneath their feet went off, sending very unpleasant shocks throughout their bodies! Batgirl rarely missed, and this turned out to be the case once again, as most of the cultists seized up in a brief paroxysm of agony, before collapsing onto the stone floor!

Five down, only three to go. Unfortunately, one of them was the leader, who quickly ditched his smartphone in favor of a sacrificial dagger!

The other two merely had old revolvers. Sacrificial daggers must have been hard to come by here in the horrifying Lighthouse between realities.

As soon as the electrical spheres stopped zapping, Bobo was moving into action, running forward on three of his four limbs, with a sturdy flashlight in the other! Someone was going to get bonked, if the reckless ape didn't get himself shot or stabbed first.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
There was some part of Barbara who felt the need to protect Bobo. Was it some kind of 'unconscious bias'? Nah, Barbara hated that bullshit. She really just liked him, and felt the need to protect him, because he was a friend, or something close to a friend at this point. She'd put that distance between them, and the cultists, to make sure that the Chimp would be okay, especially when she threw the explosive electrical charges. The charges had been designed to protect what Batgirl valued, from herself, to her friends, to innocent bystanders, and this was as good a time to use them as any.

Five out of eight cultists rendered in a state of stunned shock? That was a pretty good stat, but it still left three more.

For a second, Babs was distracted from the results though, when she saw the statue had turned toward them? It was pointing at them? At her? That was so damn unsettling, and further reinforced her desire to have a magical friend on speed-dial again, but they did not exactly grow on trees.

"Bob!" Batgirl called out, as she saw the Chimp fly through the air, rushing the three still standing, and though it meant going back at them, and back toward the pool of death, AND the creepy statue, she had to go. Because her friend was in danger again.

Thus, Batgirl rushed back in, a blur of black armored female body, with bat-ears pointing from her masked helmet, and her red braided ponytail swaying behind her shoulders. she rushed the three men, and wasted no time to deliver a hard kick to the side of one of their knees, a kick meant to instantly debilitate the cultist goon, and drop them to the ground. As Bobo went for one, Babs bounced her body over to the third goon too, striking with a haymaker meant for their hooded jaw!

The fight was on, and the statue was hopefully limited to only pointing at them...

Detective Chimp has posed:
Whatever protective impulse the Magnificent Finder of Tasty Grubs might have had, it apparently expressed itself in bursts of recklessness. But though he wasn't an especially skillful fighter, there aren't many people who would want to get into a fistfight with a chimpanzee. It's a good way to lose one's entire face, as a few disturbing news reports have made clear.

It was his good fortune to be partnered with a larger, more intimidating fighter, or he might have gotten hit with a couple of revolver shots despite his impressive speed. But as scary as a charging chimp might be, it's nothing next to a brawling bat. At least to a certain subset of the cowardly and superstitious...

As Batgirl took care of the other two, Bobo managed leapt into the air and gripped the last remaining cultist's robes with his prehensile feet. Holding himself in place while the cultist screamed in fear and confusion, Bobo brought his flashlight down on the poor guy's head several times while unleashing a torrent of shrieking chimpanzee warcries!

The cultist slumped, and fell over, with Detective Chimp clinging tightly the entire ride to the floor. The cultist wouldn't be getting up anytime soon, but didn't appear to be dead. Maybe short a few IQ points moving forward, but there was little sympathy to spare for someone who (allegedly) was involved in a scheme to fill up a giant pool with heads and hands.

With one of Batgirl's targets knocked unconscious, there remained only the group's apparent leader, who was clutching at his disabled leg while the rest of his party went down.

"Dammit!"

He practically wheezed as he brandished his sacrificial dagger in the other hand. Clearly, this man was no match for Batgirl. Or even probably for Detective Chimp. The hood of his robe had fallen back in the middle of the action, revealing a man who couldn't have been much older than the average college graduate.

A perfectly ordinary sort of man. Barely old enough to buy cigarettes.

The sort of cigarettes that Detective Chimp was desperately fumbling around in his tweed jacket to find.

"You're magnificent! No wonder the Old God likes you... with a head like that..."

Click click clicking his lighter, the chimp looked from Batgirl to the cultist, and then back.

"Is he talking about you or me?"

Barbara Gordon has posed:
The haymaker landed, and with it, the man hit the ground hard, not unconscious, but clutching the side of his face. It let Batgirl sweep her body through the momentum, and spin around to stare at the Leader, clutching his ceremonial dagger. Memories of Skyrim quest lines filtered through the nerdier side of Barbara's mind, but she couldn't focus on that aspect of her life, and had to focus more closely on the fact that there was a maniac in front of a pool of literal death, clutching a dagger and talking about ...

A quick glance was given to the statue, and Babs realized she was standing rather close to it. That creeped her out immediately, and she rushed forward. "Your head." She said to Bobo, as she swept past him.

The cultist slashed his dagger at the Bat, right across her chest, but her armored suit deflected the blade, causing it to harmlessly strike her armor, save maybe a small scratch across the outline of the Bat symbol over her bust.

She closed in on him, and in a bout of fear, he cried out, as she clutched his dagger wrist, and squeezed. Her suit had built-in technology that enhanced her strength, and with a crunch of bone, she crushed his wrist, before she spun him around to put his arm behind his back, and her knee behind his own. She dropped him to the floor, his chin bouncing off of the stone with his teeth rattling together within his mouth. Tears welled up in his eyes, as Batgirl kneed the small of the man's back, and clutched his arm behind his spine, while holding his wrist bent upward awkwardly.

"What is this place?!" She demanded, her voice growling with an other worldly demonic undertone, her modulator back on, and it creating another layer of unsettling vibes to this dank tomb of a murder hole.

"who are you?!" She further questioned, bending his wrist more to create a lightning bolt of pain through his body!

Detective Chimp has posed:
The cries from the cultist were almost pitiful, if one could forget that he was at least an accessory to all the carnage within these walls. But he was on the ground so fast that his teeth were rattling against the stone before the dagger clang clang clanged off to the side.

Good thing that Detective Chimp was there to pick it up. Looking at it with the flashlight, he exhaled twin plumes of smoke through his nostrils, only then registering just how brutally efficient the Batgirl was. Seven cultists down in about as many seconds. But he had helped, a little, despite really only being there as the designated sex symbol of this particular crimefighting duo.

"It's... ACK!"

As tears began leaking out of the corners of his eyes, the cultists fought to take in a breath despite being in incredible pain. A broken wrist and a slam against the stone floor will do that to a guy.

"I'm Steve! You don't know me... but... ACK! Gods... you're in way over your head, Batlady..." The irony of the statement seemed lost on Steve, but Detective Chimp caught it.

"This is an UNPLACE... between the old and new... it was supposed to be a tomb, but our god is clever... so clever..."

Shining his flashlight on the statue, Detective Chimp started briefly as he realizes that the 'statue' is leaning forward, as if trying to reach out for... he really hoped it was more interested in Batgirl....

"They just can't help coming here. Over and over. Over and over. So many sacrifices... so many fools. But now, at long last, we've found a fitting sacrifice for him... look how pleased he is!"

Keeping one eye on the statue at all times, the simian detective searched the other cultists while the more menacing member of their little dynamic duo played the bad cop. Quite a few revolvers were getting tossed into pool of heads, just to be on the safe side in case any of them should suddenly wake.

One of them began to stir. Not on Bobo's watch. Down came the Maglite, and the cultist stopped moving.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
Batgirl was keenly aware of the creepy statue moving about just behind her left shoulder. She didn't have time to deal with that in the here and now, though, and as she heard the plop sounds of the Chimp tossing weapons in to the pool of death, Babs adjusted her pin of Steve... "Right..." She quietly said, not really liking his answers. Her free hand moved to her belt once more, and a few small loops were pulled from the side of one of the sleek black pouches. She pulled one loop over Steve's wrist, and slid her knee down between his legs. A second later, and...

Zip. Zip.

Steve had his right broken wrist zip-tied to his bent-back left ankle, leaving both behind the small of his back and above his butt. "You should've just become a Youtuber, Steve." Babs growled in the voice of a demoness, right down toward hhis right ear.

She stood up, the leather and armor of her suit creaking against her body, as she spun her head to look at the statue. she saw it leaning, and from her wrist, she turned on a two thousand lumen torch that shined right in to the statue's headless space, across its chest and over its lap.

"I don't know what the Hell you are, but whatever this place is? It ends, tonight." She told 'it', before she paid a glance toward the Chimp.

"Give me the dagger." She said, holding her gloved hand out, as she kept her left hand aimed toward the statue, drowning it in that blindingly bright light, even if the thing had no visible eyes.

When the dagger's hilt hit her gloved palm, Batgirl spun it around in her grasp, her fingers clutching it by its ornate blade. She drew in a breath, before she looked up... cocked her arm, and tossed it with a practiced ease.

this was no batarang, though, and this was aimed right at the statue's heart.

Detective Chimp has posed:
"What are you going to do with..."

As the dagger spun through the air, Detective Chimp's question died in his throat. Once again, he was impressed to such an extent that his tingling feelings of admiration and his persistent feelings of fear were both overwhelmed. The dagger sailed in an unfailingly accurate arc, the statue's slow-moving arms completely unable to block the attack, even if it had the sense to be aware that it was in danger. At the end of the day, it would turn out to be a moot point, as the dagger embedded in the stone chest with a loud 'CHUNKKK!' that caused the metallic resonance of the dagger to be quickly stifled.

"Damn girl... should have played for the Knights..."

Though the creature/statue had no mouth, the noise that came out through the hole in its neck seemed almost like a scream, though mingled with a violent hiss as foul air rushed outward from its chest cavity. Its movements were far too slow to really register as a reflex action, but it seemed to tense up and then relax over the course of about a minute.

A minute during which Steve screamed a loud "NOOOO!", and then began sobbing. But whether from pain, frustration, or the loss of a beloved deity, it was probably better not to ask.

Detective Chimp only carried a single pair of cuffs with him. But he managed to use them fairly creatively to lock two of the cultist goons together by the wrist. As the disturbingly young cultists began to come to, they found that only one of their revolvers was left outside of the pit full of heads, but it was locked firmly in the grip of a chimpanzee who seemed to be willing to use it if they didn't march like good little soldiers.

Not for the first time, the chimp was grateful that he didn't actually work for any police force. This was one crime scene that he had no interest whatsoever in rummaging through.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
If she were to be questioned later, Batgirl would admit that she had no idea if the dagger throw would have worked or not. She simply had a hunch, that the magic of the dagger - if it had any at all - would equal the magic of the strange statue... which very CLEARLY had some measure of hocus pocus behind it.

When it did work, she internally breathed a sigh of relief, after watching it slowly seem to fade out of whatever presence that was possessing it. Should she take the dagger after? She considered it, and even stepped closer to the statue, but not close enough to risk some kind of a horror movie jump scare, she wasn't that stupid.

When she heard the men protesting the treatment that the Chimp was paying them, Babs turned to look down at them. She smirked. She moved to the Leader, and cut his binding, before she reattached it to his other wrist, keeping his hands bound behind his back. She hoisted him up, and kept her light on their faces. "We're leaving." She told them, before giving one more look to the pool of death...

As she marched the men through the bowels of this dank tomb, Batgirl made sure that her eyelets were closed, and her camera system was cataloguing each of their faces, to cross-reference them with all information she had on this place. She wanted to know everything about these young men, by the time she made it back to her tower tonight.

She gave another glance to the Chimp beside her too, seeing him armed with a revolver. It was adorable, if not a bit dimenished by the sheer stench of this foul place.

Outside, the Bat-drones were circling the light house island, waiting for their Mamma Bird to return to the surface, the drones having already put out emergency signals to the coast guard, and subsequently the local law enforcement agencies.

Detective Chimp has posed:
In the end, perhaps not the most satisfying ending to a mystery that started in an alleyway in Gotham. But there's never a truly satisfying ending when murder is involved. At the very least, the crime spree appeared to be over, and the most pressing questions resolved. But the question of 'why?' would have to be left to the proper authorities, who would doubtless have many follow up questions. Unfortunately for them, they'd have to get some of those answers from a chimp in a Sherlock Holmes suit, and a girl dressed up like a bat.

As the rented boat sped away from this cold harbor, the lighthouse flickered behind the pair of detectives against a pitch black sky. Even after knowing what horrors lay inside this twisted no-place, the light still seemed warm and inviting. It was easy to imagine steering straight for it on a night very much like this one.

Behind the wheel of the boat, Detective Chimp had upgraded to a celebratory cigar. Though perhaps there was nothing to celebrate, aside from the simple fact that he was still alive, and still able to enjoy a quality smoke on a chilly boat ride back to Gotham City. Beside him, the ice was just starting to melt in a glass of bourbon, next to a notebook that would certainly need a few more entries.

"You did good tonight, kiddo. Got all the makings of a great detective."

"Chimpgirl... has a nice ring to it."

Barbara Gordon has posed:
By the time the men were passed off to the authorities, and the two strange heroes were sent on their way, Babs found a place to recline in the boat. She had her long jacket draped over her lap, and her mask was pulled off. She held it in her lap, and was running a finger over it, while her wrist computer ran diagnostics, and communicated with her systems back home in the tower. She gently bobbed up and down in her seat, to the motion of the ocean, and had a smile cross of her pale pink lips in the moonlight shining down from above. At his words, she was smiling, but at the last few, she openly laughed.

"Thanks..." She quietly said, as she looked over at him. "I'm impressed, though. I think I'm going to recommend you to the GCPD, to utilize more often. It may get you a few more bucks to toss around. Maybe let you buy a watch built in the past - oh, I don't know - decade?" She grinned, before she looked forward to the bow of the boat, and where they were headed.

"I don't know what that was back there... But I do intend to find out." She said, over the sounds all around them. "Hopefully that is the last demonic statue I have to tangle with too." She cast him another glance then. "Thanks for your help too. I'll make sure to leave a review on your website, letting everyone know how brave you are..." She smiled, then quirked a brow. "You don't have a website do you?"