[OOC: Mild gore warning.]

A package sat innocuously in front of the apartment door.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about the package. It was a small, cardboard box, held together with clear masking tape, with a white sticker identifying the recipient as Christina Anierim de Torres. Passerby who glanced at the tag out of curiosity would wander off, confused, unsure of who the recipient was - the person living in that apartment went by Mag, not the name on the box. But while there was nothing particularly terrifying about the package itself, people still strayed away from it in fear.

It was probably due to the growing puddle of blood forming below the box itself, and the logo painted in blood on one cardboard side.

Ragnarok.

It was easily recognizable by now, the symbol having been spray-painted at every Ragnarok attack that had occurred. But this was not a threat. No, in fact - this was a gift. (The blood was an accident. The box's contents got leaky.)

If someone were to open the box, they'd first find a few items on a piece of cardboard separating the top of the box from the bleeding part of the box. First, a note. "All this and more is waiting for you," it read. "Come to this address, Tuesday at 2:45. I have a deal for you." Scrawled below was the address for a warehouse on the docks, purchased by a company which, if the money trail was traced back far enough (but it wouldn't be), lead straight to Ambrose Jaager. In the corner was the Ragnarok symbol again, with a serpent right above it - Jörmungandr's specific symbol, as anyone who followed the news would know. Then were two photos - one, of a 2002 Mustang Cobra, taken in the same warehouse that the address lead to. And two, of the ground right in front of the Mustang Cobra. Namely, what lay there - a corpse, blurry face aimed at the cameraman, arms splayed out but one appendage missing a hand.

And if someone were to take out the slip of cardboard hiding whatever sat underneath, they'd find something rather gruesome. A hand, severed at the wrist, with a rather distinctive gold ring on the clammy ring finger. The fingers were wrapped around a beautiful gun, a Glock 18C Automatic Pistol, which was another gift. The blood hadn't gotten to it yet.

Down at the address he'd written on the note he'd signed, Ambrose waited, curled up in his monster form as he stared pensively at the body in front of him. Not quite a corpse, really - the man was alive but sedated, because Ambrose was sure his new recruit would want to meet her wonderful father in person.

He lifted his head and turned it, glancing matter-of-fairly at the pile of corpses behind him. It'd taken quite a while to locate the man, and he'd left quite a body count in his wake. Getting up, he moved to the nearest corpse, grasping his teeth around its leg and dragging it to the large, open door, which lead down a short pier to the deep water. Seagulls flew and cawed overhead, and far off, a boat's foghorn sounded. Above, the sun was shining. The body was heaved over the end and plopped heavily into the water. Turning around, Ambrose began to trudge back to the building to repeat the process.

What a lovely day.

It was early. Well, it was four in the afternoon. For Magnum, it was far too early to be awake. Way. Too. God damned. Early. Yet Magnum was awake. Her nightmares had returned; flashbacks to her mother, to the orphanages from her younger years in the system, to the acts she’d committed in her new life. They happened the same way each time. They refused to release her until they were done. They included the same people with the same expressions plastered on their faces. The Chief of Police in Chicago smiling sadly down at her, trying to put on a brave face for the girl who was found sobbing in her mother’s blood. The looks of hatred from other children as they realized they had another face to compete with when potential parents came to visit. The dank chill that permeated the air on the first night she ran away. The violence she’d witnessed. The violence she’d taken part in. Tears were dried to her face every morning after the dreams, requiring face wash to eliminate the salt grains plastered to her skin.

After her shower, Magnum decided that going back to bed wasn’t a safe option. Neither was going out, really, because being a criminal in broad daylight was much more difficult. Only the extremely light-fingered crooks could pass as normal citizens in crowds of blue and white collar workers rushing to and fro. Anyways, this was not her forte - Mag stole from under people’s noses, not their asses. It was morning though, which meant that she had nothing to do except exercise. She pulled on her trainers, the only casual set of shoes that she actually owned, a sports bra, and running shorts. Cardio in New York was better than in LA, she had to admit begrudgingly.

Her hand landed on the knob, turned slightly, shook the door loose, and pulled. However, she noticed a package on her porch. Bending down, she could tell that it the sides included graffiti of a famous mutant gang. She could also tell the box contained a bleeding object, because of dark red stains which permeated the cardboard. None of these qualities attracted her attention though; it was the name on the box which scared her. Christian Anierim de Torres it read.

No one, absolutely no one, knew her full name. That was not a thing that happened, Magnum had made sure of it. She’d changed her appearance, destroyed most of her social service images, and had stopped identifying as anything other than Magnum. The fact someone could find that, even a mutant as powerful and reckless as Jörmungandr, terrified her. That name connected her to the government, to a murder trial years ago, and to her father.

Quickly, she snatched the box inside, set it in her sink and stripped it of the addressee tag. Picking up an old lighter, she lit that on fire and let it burn on the counter while she retrieved the knife from her purse and sliced open the box. Inside was a paper including time and location details, promising rewards if she appeared somewhere on Tuesday at 2:45. The note was signed by the illustrious Jörmungandr.

Then, there were two photos. One of a dream car she’d only ever mentioned to three people. The other of a man, minus his hand. Below, a layer of cardboard separated the note and images from the rest of the box - and presumably whatever had been bleeding. She removed this with caution, vaguely aware of something in the back of her mind alerting her to a trap. Much to her relief, it was only the severed hand missing from the image. On it was the ring that she remembered after having gone through her father’s case file so many times before. With a small breath, it dawned on her that the man in the image was her long lost father.

The ignorant man had raped her mother while Lucia was working a case and had then left the undercover officer to handle the consequences. Luckily, this was not for naught. From the legal end, he had been arrested and jailed with a life sentence for drug and prostitution businesses, as well as an illegal weapons shop. From Lucia’s end, she ended up with the daughter she’d always wanted. Not that Magnum actually thought her mother would be proud of her now.

She liked what she saw, even if this man had managed to find her true name. This also meant he knew something about her - but what? With the Cobra, it probably had something to do with wanting her to race for him. A man of that status wouldn’t have to resort to hiring a driver to pull in cash, though, he was far too rich to even consider doing something of that nature. He might want driving lessons though. Whatever the case, Magnum decided in that instant she would show up at the place around midnight to scope it out, then sit and watch for the elusive billionaire or one of his henchmen to arrive.

After properly disposing of the hand, she sat back to wait. Today had suddenly become interesting.

At 9:30 in the evening she went down to the garage and started switching over her muffler system. Although hearing the Jag purr made crowds go wild, it would not be conducive to an undercover ops situation.

Two hours later she was done. Magnum let the car down from its custom lift and slipped the keys into the ignition, listening to the low rumble that was softer than almost any car on the market. This would do. As the clock struck 11:45, she pulled her beautiful red baby out of the garage and headed for the warehouse at the address listed.

When she arrived, it was just past midnight. She threw the gears into neutral and applied the parking break, sitting in the empty parking lot just before the pier’s entrance. When Jörmungandr showed, she would see him.

Someone was sitting outside, waiting in a car. Magnum, as she preferred to go by now, and she was almost two and a half hours early. The time that Ambrose had written out, before he'd switched back to his true form, had been an entirely arbitrary one, to be honest. He knew that he would be waiting at the warehouse no matter whenever she decided to show, and he knew that she would show. Nobody could resist his recruiting charms when he really tried.

Ambrose himself was watching the watcher, perched on top of a nearby building. The one Magnum was parked outside was actually a neighboring one to the building he owned and currently was sitting on, whose address Ambrose had written down specifically so he could watch her behavior from afar. He debated making his presence known, since he was here anyway, but eventually decided to let her wait a bit. The time had been 2:45, after all.

About two and a half hours later, Ambrose swooped back to his warehouse, making a deliberately showy entrance as he looped around the area, stopping briefly to land on the roof of the warehouse he wanted her to enter, before looping again and then diving down out of sight from the parking lot. He wound around the docks a bit to enter his building from the shipping entrance (the only entrance he could fit through), and to conceal whether or not he'd actually gone in. It was night, sure, but the light pollution and the security lights on the docks would make him visible enough.

Inside the warehouse, it was pitch black, except for one small area surrounded by translucent plastic, illuminated by the kind of downward-facing lights used to illuminate crime scenes at night. In the circle of light was the scene that he had photographed and sent to Magnum, minus her father. The only thing different was another box on the hood of the car, and the dried bloodstains spattering the warehouse floor. Inside the box were the keys to the car, and a warning that if she or anyone else tried to hotwire it, it would likely detonate. There was also another sheet of paper, this one with another set of instructions, promising her father and more gifts like the the Cobra if she followed them.

1) Check the trunk and find the map.
2) Follow the map to the marked destination. (The X on the map marked an area a little bit upstate, but this warehouse was thankfully in the far north of the city already, meaning it wouldn't take her more than forty-five minutes to reach her destination.)
3) You can figure out the rest. (The marked spot was Ambrose's old dumping grounds for bodies he didn't want to be found, as rare as that was. It was a bare dirt field, now with a conspicuous shovel sticking out of it.)

Ambrose easily swung up into the rafters, above the scene, where he would be completely out of sight in the pitch darkness but could spectate from above to see what would happen below. How she reacted to the situation would be rather telling.