Legends of Avantris - Stardust Rhapsody: Anthem | S2E1 | Play the Game

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

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It's that time again. Don your sunglasses, grab your instruments, and lend your cosmic chorus to our Stardust Rhapsody. Let's jam. Some say the universe is a song. That all things are made from the same stuff as the stars. And that every life is a note in the music of existence that echoes through infinity. So when you feel insignificant and alone, just remember, we're all irreplaceable parts of that grand cosmic melody. The Stardust Rhapsody. It's common to have two feet planted firmly on the ground, gaze up at the stars and ask, what's out there? What's waiting for me?

Though each member of the Rhapsody now travels together, calling the ship home, it didn't start that way. They all set out to chart their cosmic destinies on their own. Our journey began in the Janek's sector prison with Pike spinning a tail to Waxley so intense it couldn't possibly be followed. Released into the custody of his trusted partner, Red, Pike is freed, but on one condition, he accepts a bounty for the notorious hacker, hacksore, who's been diverting local funds for a yet undisclosed reason. They, They accept the job. And Rhett introduces Pike to the rest of the team he's assembled.

Quibbly Gones the Bloodhound and Glup Bondo the Esper. With an expert tracer and more muscle, the job should be easy. Or so they thought. They track Haxor to a bot factory on Pillion and make quick work of his defenses. Finally face to face with their prey, they realize he's just a kid. The discussion begins on whether or not they should bring them in. However, they barely broached the topic before Quibbley and Glup drawl on them. A fight breaks out and as it seems our boys may be taking the upper hand, Glup paralyzes

Quibbley and consumes his mental energies. Quibbley crying out for Portia, his beloved, with his final breath, collapses to the ground dead. The gridrunner now known to be Ziggy reluctantly joins the fray, and they dispatch Glup. In an eruption of psychic energy, he decimates the facility leaving a chilling message ringing in their minds. Century 2112 will be one of war. Recently released from the same prison as Pike finds herself in the city of Macquaro, on Vannar. She finds a large presence of scarlet eye activity and knows she'll need some help to shut them down for good.

Remembering Pike was in prison for possession of Redline, the Scarlet Drug, she gives him a call. Together, the four of them hunt for info on Big Thunder, the mysterious leader of the gang and the under crust of McCorough. They hold up with Mrs. Ume, a motherly figure from Coe's childhood, who gives them a place to stay safe. On the way to meet up with Foreman Corel of Keogian Energy, one of the major five companies of Nexus Corp,

Coe threatens some red belts in the street. They then make a plan to infiltrate the high, out of Big Thunder and return to Mrs. Umay's, only to be thrust across the street by an explosion that levels the building. Retribution burning in her heart, Coe takes the party to the hideout of Big Thunder. They infiltrate under the guise of turning in Retton Pike, the hunters who've been asking questions about Red Line. Meeting Big Thunder, Coe finds herself face-to-face with Sagio, a childhood friend from her neighborhood. A rolling blackout

knocks out the power of the undercrust and thunder erupts into the streets. The crew gives chase Coe on her motorcycle and Rhett driving the grab van. The chase ends abruptly in a crash. Big Thunder injects a

souped up version of Red Line he'd been working and the party shuts him down hard. Coe presses him for answers while he goads her about brutality and her sister. Eventually he directs them to the next link in the chain. Pixel, with her ambitions of seeing her name in lights, puts on a dazzling show at the Glitz Room for her fans and her manager,

Grobulous J. Weedlebox, or Mr. W., as she lovingly calls him. The crew there, under the cover of Rhapsody, under the cover of Rhapsody Records, sets a plan to get Weedelvox through her. As they heard from Big Thunder, he's responsible for moving large volume of product through the galaxy. The crew spends time with Pixel trying to charm her to get close to Weedlevox and inadvertently become charmed with her themselves. She eventually gets them an invite to Mr. W.'s mansion where they meet him for dinner. She's mysteriously sent elsewhere before the meeting. The party prepares to move on Weidelvox until they hear that he's reluctantly put Pixel in danger with a friend of the Don's. Take Weidelvox for the payday or go-safe Pixel.

With funds low, the choice is clear. The party hops in their car and jets towards Pixel. The Viceroy swirls around Weedlevox's little songbird as Pixel grows more and more uncomfortable, beginning to fear for her life. The party bursts into the room as the viceroy flees leaving behind his silent undead. Their lives severed from the harmony. They eventually convince Pixel to give them what they need to move on to the next target and away from Weedlevox.

Coe begs Pixel to come with them desperately trying to get through to her. pixel declines until she finally finds herself once more face to face with Mr. W. She realizes everything her new friends told her was true, and she decides to collect on his bounty herself. A bounce in her step she joins the Rhapsody as they turn their sights to the money man, Rex Maxim, and the Seventh Heaven Casino. Rex walks into the casino surrounded by fans, a smile on his face and confidence in his voice, the real space cowboy covered in Rhinestones is here to party and perform, and the gang needs to meet him. Brushing away a memory of sulfur, smoke, and hellfire, Pike catches a glimpse of someone

from his past, he thinks, may be able to help, his old partner Ophelia. Engage to Rex, she agrees to help hand him over, but only if the crew helps her with her mission first. A heist of the casino. They revamp Ophelia's plan to crack the safe and get to work. They pull it off without a hitch, or so they think. Confronted by the security force, they find themselves on a short clock. Ophelia runs to get wrecks while the crew handles the battle. She finds him at a conference for the Don where he speaks about his partnership with chimera bionetics, another key company of Nexus Corp. He's showing off Rubedo for backing,

his new red painkiller that will revolutionize the world. She brings Rex to the Rhapsody, and they celebrate two successful missions before they realize Ophelia has gone once more with all the take from the casino. The party sets off to shut down the dawn, the final rung in the red belt. Rex tells them about a research facility and they investigate site Omicron.

After exploring rooms and rooms of terrible experiments, they come face to face with the side effects of Rubato and its cacophonous origins. Its key ingredient, the blood of a demon pulled from cacophony destroying, the blood of a demon pulled from cacophony.

Destroying this facility, they blast off out of the silent planet and its horrors. Rhett knows they'll need more firepower as Pixel is plagued with visions of the Viceroy, so he turns to a trusted ally, Ace Mechanic Sig Branco. As they secure personal ships, Rex receives a distress message from Anatra on Celadonia, saying the Don has gone nuts and she needs help. They devise a plan to get her out. Rex meets with her solo, with his ship, ready to take her away, before the whole thing explodes. The party confronts the dawn, dispatching the final remnants of the scarlet eye as they go.

Finally, face-to-face with what they believe is the end they realize immediately as they look upon the drained form of the dawn, it ain't over yet. The viceroy, his guise, Lord Harkin Morvane of Sterlock, now proven to be far more than a man, has drained him of his essence, once again severing him from the harmony. Before he can become a silent, Rhett disintegrates him. Pike reveals his prior connections to the Polaris Society and says they'll need Ophelia and her family's knowledge if they're going to face what comes next. They track her down to a vacation home and relay the stakes. Ophelia realizes the death of Avar could be her way back into Polaris and takes the rhapsody to her home

where they raid her weapon stores and get the ecliptic rounds, a weapon designed to kill evil. Vassin, the Viceroy's seat of power, proves to be in disarray and seemingly abandoned by him. They find the development of russetloaf, bred with a reddish, Hugh and realize Rubato died with the dawn. The viceroy found another way to extend his red line to the stars. They shut down the factory and as they do, the viceroy calls to pixel from above them on the moon. A beam of red light fires from his fortress to Vassan and the spirits of those in the town rise up to be consumed by him. They make their way to his cacophonous tower knowing that they have to stop him.

or risk the sectors falling to the dirge of the long night. As they ascend, they face the trials of the tower facing the dark pits within themselves, all except Pixel, who, when her reflection is shown, is faced with the pit within Morvane, learning of what brought him to this and seeing an all too familiar path. Morvane ascending to an entropic night lord is the toughest challenge the group has yet to face, but holding it together against all odds they prevail. Pixel sings his final lullaby, putting him one last time to rest. The beam disrupts and the remaining souls are carried on Pixel's melody back to Vasson.

As the party relaxes, their red-line bounty finally at an end, a familiar face appears in a new way. Polaris ships descend on to Vasson as Waxley returns. He invites Ophelia to come back with him and so she does. As his agents set out to covering up what occurred here. Not the ending they wanted, but the one they got. The party heads to the GBG where they turn in what they can on the Don. Co-Pixel Ziggy become Rank D bounty hunters while Pike and Rhett rank up to rank B. They look at their latest bounty now unlock that swirls on the

screen in front of them. Portia Bella. As the next adventure begins to take shape and an excitement sets in with the gang, Pike steps away to once more listen for the voice of Alara. The smell of sulfur, smoke, and hellfire hits him as terror takes the place of optimism. A voice thunders in on the wind and a name he prayed lost to the past. Cain. As luck would have it, good or bad.

Destiny has led these adventurers here together. Let's see what happens next. Upbeat, bit-crunched music, digitized sound effects, and the excited chatter and laughter of children are all you can hear as you sit around a table in the Meteor Mall franchise of Did Someone Say Pizza? One of the galaxy's most popular pizza arcades. A group of animatronic animals holding instruments

stand motionless on the nearby stage in between sets of their jaunty performances. Waiters bring trays of pizza and other greasy food to various tables of families of all manner of species from across the sector as you wait for your orders. A large sign with the face of Hungary H. Hi, Hippo, the tubular and radical pink hippo mascot of the chain, stares at you with his eternal grin as you celebrate Ziggy's 25th birthday. It's been three months since the nightmare on the moon of Sturlock, and since then you've been on the trail of your night. next bounty, Portia Bella Goans. She's wanted for a long career of violent and particularly brutal assassinations, but despite all your best efforts, she has alluded you through many

close calls. But for now, you're taking a break from your bounty hunting, as it is the time to celebrate. You have that slice, the one with the meat on it. That's right, right in front of me. Okay, you're going to have a happy birthday. Well, thank you. What about that one next to it? You can have this one, sure. We can always order more pizza. We can't? We have the notes for that? I'm not sure about their policy here, but I think that if it's your birthday,

your limit goes to three beers. And that's the rest of the session. Derek, would you like to take the GMC for 13 beers? That's very funny. We need to get to your first, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm thirsty. I'm hungry.

and I'm ready to play everything. Yeah, I mean, I think that, like, there's a couple other birthday parties, but I think, like, I think that girl's turning nine. Well, they're going to have to get the fuck out of the way because I want to play these arcade games. I think that group of kids is probably, like, 13, so, I mean, you know. It looks like they have everything here.

We can play them all, right? Do you want to play dance dance dance rhapsody with me? I would like to play Rhythm, Rhythm, Rebellion. Oh, yeah, no, I don't know that one. We can play all kinds of games. We can play... I have a long list. I'll stretch them out.

I'll stretch them out. Yeah, I want to play the dance games. I want to play the racing games. I want to play the shooting games. I want to play them up games. I want to play them all. Let's see. What would we call that?

This one. The... What's the equivalent of beat? I didn't think of this one. Yeah, well, we have rhythm. Rhythm. That's very good. Rhythm oil.

It also works. I've got games in mind for all of you. Rhythm, Rhythm and Rebellion is at the top of your list. Do you think they have caveman games? I don't know. I don't think they have those here. The waitress is taking way too long. I'm going to get another drink.

Do you want one? I mean, just can you get a pitcher and some of them plastic cups with the hippo on them? Fine. I'll be right back. Can you get ranch instead of blue cheese? Yeah, whatever you want. And I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna go because the wait to take weights long

and I need another drink and I'm gonna go to the bar briefly while they're discussing games and there's chaos and there's all this noise and I'm gonna try to get a pitcher, a beer, a bunch of cups and ranch instead of solutions for our lovely pizza. You walk up to the... No, no, just the ranch.

You won't. Guys, take it away, please, whatever else. You walk up. walk up, you step through, you step through these tables crowded together, that, that ring of the arcade surrounding you is all the walls are lined with it. And also all throughout, you see these large green frond plants also kind of lining the room as it takes on almost a tropical jungle vibe in this section. Did someone say pizza at the Meteor Mall? You walk up to the to the bar top to place an order.

And you see standing there a green nematowin who's been waiting your table. And as you walk up, he turns over to you and looks and says, oh, hey, was there something else I could get you? Yeah, I want

two pictures of beer. Just give you the two pictures. Oh, two pitchers, of course. Yes, sir. I'll bring them right over. He flails with, hey, turns you, he's wearing this almost like animal mascot Scott-esque full onesie outfit with a half mask of like a rhino with the top teeth. Sorry, a hippo with the top teeth coming down. And he has all this like flare attached to him. Really excitedly, it's like, oh, yes, I'll bring.

Just pour the pictures and I'll take him over. No, not. Did somebody say pizza? Carry your own pictures? I won't hear of it. I just had to get that trainee that's called. in for today, but I'll bring the pictures right over to your table. Don't you worry.

Have a seat and have an incredibly pizza day. We also need more ranch. Rinch, you say, of course. How many? One, two, three? Better make it at least five. Five, ranch. Somebody's a hungry boy.

No, it's mixed. I don't need the ranch. Oh, our lovable mascot would love how much ranch you like to eat. Can I at least... There's no limit to ranch and did someone say pizza? Can I at least get a beer from my walk back to the table? Oh, we can, of course, we can do that. Guys, is Pike's gauntlet glowing?

And it like slashes out a little bit. Oh gosh, let me clean that up for you. You got a little on your... And I just start to drink the beers I walk back to the table. And the beers are already three-quarters of the way gone by the time I go back to the table. And you walk off. Where's the ranch? Where's the ranch?

Where's the ranch? Where's the ranch? We don't have any enough with the-Pike. give it to me, the guy's gonna bring it over when he's free. We got plenty of blue cheese on the table. Me on blue cheese is disgusting. Gag me with a spoon. Yeah, he's bringing over two more pitchers.

Did you get the PAL Heavy or did you get the Indigo Pale Ale? I don't know what they gave me. I just asked for beer. Well, hopefully that's the PAL Heavy. That's what's on Happy Hour. Oh my God, did you want to me, chicken strips? No, you didn't ask for that. Boy, why don't get you, get chimkin strips? I didn't need it. I'll get you, so don't worry about it. Yeah, you know what?

I'm hungry. Does anyone... We'll order it when the guy gets back over here. No, I think... I'm not going back up there. No, no, you don't have to go back up there. I don't think he's gonna make it if he goes back up there. What do you mean? I just, I think let him enjoy his beer.

He looks so happy right now. This is a place of happiness. Well, happy than he did this morning. Uh, uh, cheer up, huh? No, you're right. You're, I'll wait. I'll wait. Hi, we, we, wait. Aren't you gonna play some games? There's so much fun that they had here.

And we can mint-max our tickets in order to get the ultimate prize. Yeah, did you see that? Uh, one pod. I'll play some games. Well, what do you want to play? I think you probably want to play G-J. What's that? It's a racing game based on, uh...

Uh-huh. It's based on Dash Grayson. I think we have a severe misunderstanding of what a BJ is. A G-dash-J? Oh, DJ. And there's also, there's also cruising G-B-G. That's fun, too. It's also another racing game.

play that or you can play shoot them. Sure. All of that sounds wonderful. Or Hayes 3039? Great, great, great, great. We're going to need more tokens after, as soon as we get the next round of pizzas and we finish our ranch. Pizza! Other saying that Plight doesn't understand that in order to give the attention,

someone else to say pizza. Oh my God. Did somebody say pizza? Stop saying pizza. And then you're waiting. Wader walks up all four arms filled with pizza ball of whatever manner you would have ordered Or two pizzas and two arms carrying both pitchers of pal heavy Oh, here you go everybody

As soon as one of the pitchers hits the table I will grab it and pour myself a beer and then with the remaining pitcher I will lean forward and give it to Ziggy and as I'm handing it to Ziggy Everyone at the table can tell that I have deep bags under my eyes. Like, very unusual. It's very obvious, especially against the color of my skin and the illuminating nature of my species. Absolutely. And I'll just say, you don't even almost need a lot of sleep, right? But you have been lacking it that it's starting to physically show on your body the toll it's taking on you.

Happy birthday, kid, and I'll pour you a beer. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Oh. Now you're going to chug the whole thing. And I'll raise my glasses. I got to chuck the whole thing. You have, happy birthday.

Oh, can I get more ranch in my car? Oh, happy birthday? There's a birth. Happy birthday. I agree. Oh, we saw it ahead of time. Mr. Redd, don't you worry? But please feel free to enjoy all the games.

Oh, my trainee here has brought the ranch for you. Just poured directly to the cup place. Out from behind the nematowin steps an absolutely yoked glowblen that walks out. T-shirt opens up. Uh, oh! Is the situation walks out with you, the circumstance. Oh my God, I wasn't even looking at your face. I was looking at your delectable chest.

You didn't recognize you! Oh, you know what's up? Oh, well, it goes around. That was a different story. I'm not kidding at one shot, in fact. So, no, here, here I am a globet. Oh, it brings you guys to did someone say pizza? It's sick it's birthday.

I was going... We're going to play Rhythm, Rhythm, Rhythm, Rebellion. And also, Pigsaw wanted to know, do you guys have Wackblade? Oh, yeah, of course we got Wackblade here. Yeah, alright! Oh, Pinsel's so good to see you! So good to see you in the big place! Oh, yeah, I've had to pick up a lot of jobs.

Well, ever since the Glitz Room kind of got thinking over by Derek DTF, you know? What? I've been traveling around. Yeah! What? Shockingly, yeah! That makes a lot of sense! That's what we all said!

We were like, wow, what the fuck, man? Derek DTF's taking over. How did that happen? I mean, listen, Mr. W., W. de Gropoulos himself, after he was taking care of, you know, his doorknail, well, Derek DTF stepped up and we're like, no fucking way. This guy, he's such a freak. Oh, yeah.

You put a little responsibility on the guy's shoulders. He kind of cleaned the place up. And he had pants on him, too. Yeah, a little bit of pants. But, you know, to take the meetings. I mean, he's not always wearing him off. He runs that place with a firm grip. At least with his right hair.

Yeah, but then he puts the pants back on. Are you still working there? No, no. I mean, once he made it respectable and whatnot, I had to leave. He made it respectable. Yeah, he kind of turned the place around. Yeah, he kind of like banned. No, I banned glimmer.

I mean, you know, people are no longer in the back rooms doing glimmer off the toilet seats. So it kind of, you know, now it's just good. That's just a good place to come and hang out, listen to music and drink. So here I am working at the Tomontai Pizza. Okay, well, that's great. I'm so glad he's in, you knew? Yeah, I'm training with this guy. Hey, he's been great on his first day.

Look at how he brings the ranch over. You're going to do great here, the circumstance. Well, that. Oh, well, thanks. Yeah, I mean, it's feeling pretty good. Are you going to make him talk like him, or are you going to... Did you have to weigh that? No, I mean, you have to spend at least the first couple weeks here until you get your training onesie outfit,

uh, or your full-blown onesie outfit with all your levels of flare. Oh, that sounds like-marish. Oh, I said Ziggy's birthday. Do you think he could get a like happy birthday boy flayer to put on his shirt? Oh, we can of course get some happy birthday boy flare. I love that. The circumstance, go get some happy boy birthday boy flare. I was hoping you could do it.

Oh, I'll go do it, of course. Yes, ma'am. Well, and I'll get the happy birthday boy flare or anything else you may want. Did I hear Chimkin strips? For me, for me, for me, for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We like to anticipate needs around here. Jimkin strips on their way. I love this place.

Great big, biggie. I really wanted to come. I'm so excited. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't sure if they were going to let us in, but, you know, I think that Red said a picture of what you look like. They said that we become another child. What does that mean? I don't know.

This is what Redd told me. I'm 25 now. I can do all sorts of things. This said upload attachment, and I wasn't sure what else to include, so. Well, we're here now, and the circumstance, it seems like you have a lot of jobs. Are things all right? Oh, yeah. I mean, there's nothing wrong with the hardworking guy, you know?

Circumstances are okay, then? Circumstances are great. All right. You just keep a little GTL going, and then, you know, you keep your, you get your, you keep your days busy with work, you know, what else do you need? What's JTL? Oh, gosh, really? Are you still working at Black Hole Sunnyside Up, too?

Oh, yeah, man, it's a bit of a commute, but that one I got to... I mean, you know, well, yeah, I mean, I only got... I only got, I only dropped the Glitz Room. I just couldn't keep up without, man, I knew I had to leave when, uh, when he fired me. He's got expensive. He's got a expensive. Are you still working at the turbo car place Paradise City or did you that faltered too?

No, no, that's up and running. That's good. Yeah, no, people love the turbo car races, yeah. Did you know that when you get fired, if you don't leave, then you could just keep working there? What? Yeah. What?

That was an option? I mean, it's worked for me in the past. Aw, well, picks your pigs! The rules were different from you, you're like a superstar. You brought everyone into the group. You're one day, I hope. Yeah, I was just, no. Today, today, I mean, your name rubbing lights at the glitch room.

Pixel, pixel, pixel pop. Yeah. Yeah, it was, huh? We'll take those pizzas now. Oh, yeah, whoa. There you go. All right, I'm gonna go help with that flirt. Hey, happy birthday, man, okay?

Happy birthday. I gotta be honest, I wasn't sure COVID-Rong pizzas are just saying the word pizza. That's how you get their attention here. You gotta be careful about saying cheap. So are you going to have that guy coming back again? Don't worry, I'm not gonna say it. You know, I always wanted to have a birthday and did someone say pizza, but we could never afford it.

I mean, I know it's on my birthday, but I'm living vicariously through you, Ziggy. We're gonna play all the games. I think that you're gonna enjoy some beat them up games. We could play Y Ladies, for example. What? Why ladies? It's a team of super-powered women who beat up bad guys.

We can play a sports game. There's GFU Jam. Okay. There's the Nalarisans beat him up. Do they, do they have Thorfair Combatant 2 here? I checked and it's down, but they have Terminal Coral 3. No, that's not as good. No, but there's a guy.

When you hit start, there's a guy who goes, Turnipit! It's really cool. It's really cool. Well, I never really liked how, like, at the very least, you know, they had artists working on the sprites for Thurriffair Combaten, But for terminal coral, they just photographed people. Yeah, it looks horrible. They're wearing different costume.

It looks horrible. Did they have look? There's a line. Up in the hell? I'll check. I'll check. Hold on. Hold on.

They've got a directory right here. Let's see, they've got bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. They've got someone didn't eat the bananas. They've got Lodeman, huh? They've got Jackass King. They've got Earth intruders. Some of these sound terrible. Alloy sheds.

Shot, Automaton, 1986, Limanatica, Demons and Devils. Oh, do they have the one where you hunt the large proto-bucks? You know, the one with a gun? Oh, I'll check. That one, too, for sure. I definitely have that one named right here in front of me. They've got Rex Maxim's Maximum Rex, Demolition Derby-style game. They've got Arcade Rexplosion, a lot of Rex Maxim games here.

Wow. Let's see, what else? Gosh. Oh, and they've got the Derrick game. Every arcade has one of those. Do they have recreation wrecks? Recreation wrecks, let me check. Yep, they sure do, they sure do.

They've got everything here. I think you would like the Derek game a lot. The Derek game? Yeah, you put in a token, and then there's this little like hand arm that comes out and lowers, and you try to get prizes that way. The Derek. Oh, the Derek game, I get it.

I don't get it. Sonics, let me. Like D-E-R-R-I-C-G. Derek is another name for Crane Pixel. A lot of these are deep cuts. A lot of these are deep cuts. I'm literally caring right fast enough. Oh, my God.

All right, Will. After we have our dinner, this pizza better be good for 40 notes for a plain cheese. I mean, damn. And I got pepperola. Sprinkle in space dust. Anyway, here you go, and I will hand out little, like,

paper baggy envelopes full of tokens. and I'll give everybody the little baggy of tokens. Everyone gets a gift baggie of the tokens that are allotted with the birthday event. You have as many as probably four or five games each that you'd want to play. Well, I'm gonna have to be really specific and pick exactly what games I wanna play,

but I wanna play games with each of you and end, and, and this is the best birthday ever. Thank you so much, everyone. I know that we've got lots of important bounty hunting to do, but I, I, I, I, I, it's, we get to just chill, we get to just to hang out. I'm gonna intend to play some games, uh, to appease Ziggy. But initially, I'm gonna wait and just watch as like,

presumably the three of you guys should go ham, and play games and try to get a word with red hit after the kids have run off to play games. Before we go, yeah, I've got you a birthday present. You did? I don't think you had to do that. That's really nice. Well, it's not much. but I had it made specially for you. And I will pass over a small gift, and inside you'll find a skin for your joystick,

and it looks like a Lisa Frank. It's like unicorns and space dolphins and little jeans all over it. I love it! It's like a skin for my like grid boy, like console. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I will immediately peel the old one off, which was like the default case.

I never upgraded it, and I'll immediately snap lock the, uh, the, new case on. Oh, it fits perfectly. You got the model right and everything. Yeah, I stole it in the middle of the night when you were drool in. Well, I drew most nights. Which nights with this? Oh. Oh, it's just like a month ago. Okay, well, that's, it's very thoughtful. Thank you, Pixel. I think you might have sleep apnea. I hope not.

Well, Ziggy. I'm not so sorry. I mean, if we're doing gifts, thought, you know, I was going to wait. Because I know he's going to somehow use it with one of these games or something. I'm not going to do, no. I, I, I'm going to say, this is the arcade. There are rules. There are laws. Presidents are after cake.

You get one play per token and then you're back to the end of the line. If you die, you're out. No hacking. If I, if I'm hacking, I can't call myself a leak. I didn't say you were going to hack. I just said that you don't like touching those grimy controllers that are on there. That all the kids have snotted all over. So you like to use your grid boy.

No, that's true. It is pretty snotty. And I, and I, I don't want to get my hands all. You know, people always say, oh, I don't like being around kids, because they're so full of sickness and achy stuff. But, you know, adults have syphilis, so really which one's worse? It depends on the adult, but I understand your point. I'm gonna eat for us. I'll catch up with you guys. Oh. Well, I want to come. Yeah, but I'm hungry. I've been waiting for this pizza. That's why I say, I said, yeah, I tell you yelled pizza at the guy. I'm the one who said pizza. Well, just take it with you. Do you want me to carry the box? I'm gonna bring this tray.

I'm gonna bring this tray. I'm gonna take one of the pictures of beer, and I'm gonna dump it out, and I'm gonna pour all the ranch into it, and then I'm gonna take the picture of ranch with us. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely you do. Either on the table or into the other pitcher that's also there to combine them.

And then you fill that one full with ranch, and as you three, pizza in hand, ranch in hand, run off to begin, exploring the various arcade sections in this kind of almost like jungle-esque room that erupts around you. There's even a section that has at one of the back walls, a waterfall

that's coming out of the walls as it drops down and lands creating almost like a river that runs through the middle section, kind of separating off a more restaurant side from the arcade side. You have to cross this bridge to get to the other. piece and this is kind of where the stage of the animatronics were currently inactive awaiting

their next performance are. Also, I just have to make a quick correction. Because this is the Rhapsody setting, it's not syphilis, it's cyphilous. That's important. That's very critical. That'll be in the book for sure. Thank you. But now with you three. In the list of transmitted diseases. Please, that's going to be incredibly relevant. You three now heading to explore the arcade. That leaves the two. of you at the team. Do you really have to get me this bag of tokens? I'm just gonna give him to the kid.

I mean, first of all, he's 25. He's not a kid anymore. Okay. And I figured we could all, you know, play some games together as a crew. What's got you down, Pike? You just seem off. I mean, it's just... Look, you gotta sleep more or something.

I understand it's important to celebrate the kid's birthday. I'm happy for him. You know, it's a big deal, but... Look, we got work to do. We still haven't found her. And I really don't think that we should be spending too much time in one place. We have to keep moving. Are you still worried about that and that we're going to get hunted down? It's not a worry. Okay, it's only a matter of time. I mean, it's been three months. Look, I'm not trying to downplay. you're what you're feeling the dreams

but have you seen any proof any evidence that that this is inevitable I mean maybe no maybe it's just anxiety right like maybe

you're just I think if you got more sleep maybe we all work on getting a little health here you know we we We focus on, I don't know, maybe doing some of them stretches they talk about on the TV. I stretch.

Well, I don't. Maybe I should. Look, anyway, I'm happy to help you. Maybe we could also, you know. You're right, okay? I is, I have, I got a bad feeling. I'm looking around. Can't even smoke in this goddamn place.

Well, I mean, there's kids around That makes sense, right? Do you want to go outside for a smoke, or you're going to be okay? Yeah, maybe in a minute. Let's just appease the kid and play some games and we'll smoke later. Yeah, I think I saw a drag drug cabinet over there and, uh, how was I on that one?

That's one of my favorites from back in the day. All right, let's go check it out. I woke it up and we'll play some games. Uh, you all head out, you cross that little river that cuts through the establishment. Some people all over that said the happy sounds of cheering as kids with birthday parties are excited as you move through the air, the smell of pizza and sodas

and beer kind of hang about as you move into the arcade section. And you all may play whatever games you want, you can find any game that Derek listed off is extensive list of our game games. Here, I'll post the list for everyone to enjoy. I am going to you find yourself at proto buck tracer.

Hey! Large proto buck tracer. That's a fucking excellent. As these massive proto bucks run across the screen and you have a beam rifle in hand.

as you start firing into them as they cross the screen. Roll a, uh, roll an attack roll. Oh, me? Yeah, oh sure. Let's see how well you know. We're playing D&E, folks. Natural love. You are perfectly lined up and every time you get,

the one you grabbed, every time you fire, the photo, the beam lights up on the screen at least the three or four inches away from from where you feel like you were pointing. Oh yeah. The gun is pointing left, you got to aim to the right. You take out the baby. The baby fall and the dough.

You drop them, a robo hounder rops and goes, burr-o-ree. As, I will say, out of 25 protobucks, you drop about six of them. And they're all the bad ones to kill. And they're all the bad ones. And so have a negative score at the end. While Pike is watching, and he's obviously very quiet.

He's tired. He's just trying to get through the day. He's standing next to a poster of, a flambago smoking a cigarette that says, remember kids, don't smoke. Animated hands, constantly coming back up to his head. Exactly right. Oh, anybody else? Oh, I'm definitely playing whatever

Derek said, Dance Dance Revolution. There's Rhythm, Rhythm, Rhythm Rebellion or Wackblade. Wackblade or Beat Saber. Both of them. Just jumping back and forth. You head over to Rhythm, Rhythm Rebellion and the lights. It's almost like, like, Hall of Start has the pad where you stand on it. an erupting scene of, almost looks like,

holostar dancers show up on the screen. As the beats start flowing. I'm immediately gonna turn orange. Yeah, hell yeah. As I channel my emotional spectrum and my speed increases by 10 feet so I can go faster. Okay, yeah, hell yeah.

Oh shit. I'll say roll a performance check at advantage. Oh, 29. 29. With a 29, you hop up on this platform, The beats start falling down as the dancers on the screen start to make the moves, and the motions come through. As you, expertly, this is exactly your bag.

You start moving across the platform. People are actually gathering around you with how phenomenally well. High score, high score. You start hitting, you start getting into a, you start getting into a rhythm, rhythm, rhythm. And a big pulsing rhythm words. Perfect, perfect, perfect. It all starts booming across the screen. People are gathering around, are cheering,

but not too loud because they don't wanna break your focus until you finally end with absolutely maximum high score. And the crowd around, oh! Thank you. And if you'd like, you may insert your acronym name into the high score field. Rhythm, rhythm, uh, rebelling. Um, I try pixel pop and that's too long.

I don't wanna just do pixel. So I do P-pop. Oh, that looks horrible, but I accidentally hit enter. Oh, no! Classic. Absolute classic, yeah. After I am done watching Red attempt to warm up on this large proto...

Large proto buck tracer. Large proto buck tracer. Just to appease Ziggy, I try to find one of the racing games that he mentioned. And I'll like kind of like drop into it and I'll have an unlit cigarette hanging from my mouth. And I'll put the coin in and I'll begin to play. And it very much looks like that scene from Breaking Bad with Jesse Pigman in the go-cart where he's like very clearly like out. Oh my God. And like, like, he looks like dead.

There's a smash because of screaming. And the cigarette is just hanging from his mouth. Yeah. I'm just going through the motions. You hop into Haste 339. Give me a maybe like a, I'll say slight of hand or acrobatics and I'll say a disadvantage. Okay, I'll use acrobatics. And when you load it up after you hit the start, uh, uh, chorus of voices go,

Hey! Oh, boy. I got a 90, 20, and an 8. Which gives me 16. Oh, okay, with 16. Uh, not so bad. That's pretty good. You are, even with your, your lack of care,

you sit behind the control wheel, uh, uninterested in the game, but you almost can't have, you have such a muscle memory. Have to sit. Yeah, it's almost like your mind is totally wandered. You're paying zero attention to the game,

and yet even though you do so, you're still pretty expertly navigating this car through this track. And we'll say with this 16, you end your race, you come in third. And though you're not first on a high score, you do also get to input your initial, if you choose.

I stare at the blinking, like, you know, underscore line. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I stare at it for a good like five or ten seconds and I get up and I walk away and I don't put my initials in Okay, yeah and I find Ziggy and I kind of just toss him the remaining few coins that I have and say Here you go, kid. Are you sure? Yeah Go ahead. Thank you And I will just kind of survey the areas I'm taking it all in and like making note of where my friends are and

Just kind of look around and like take it all in After I've played a few a few games of What the fuck is that called? What was it? Terminal Coral 3. Terminal Coral 3. I'm like, I fucking hate this.

This is no thoroughfare combatant. I'll lose. There's no Lieutenant Wiles. I'm off and I get like, I get pissed. Finish her. Finish her. Finish her. As I'll kind of notice

that Pike is down. And I'm going to like walk up Uh, to him. And like take a break while everyone's going, I'm gonna say. You alright, buddy, I'm gonna kinda like slap you on the side of the arm. Huh? Oh. Hey, Co. Yeah. You alright? Yeah. Come on, it's a birthday party.

It's fun. We're gonna be having fun, right? Yeah, you're right. We've been tracking that fucking psychopath for three months. We even stop. Can you give yourself one day off, man? I don't know. It's hard to let up. Are he still Are he fucking serious? Are you still thinking about

Ophelia? No, no. Are you serious? No, co. As you say no, no, that you hear staticy crocoom come over the speakers of the

event. As you see excitedly children in the area all grabbing raincoats that have a big smiling for full smile 100H hippo on them, as you have, in fact, left your raincoats at the table. A just absolute downpouring of rain erupts all throughout the environment without hitting any of the arcade events or outing the tables,

but in the arcade section, and you all get downpoured upon until the rain passes and a burst of wind comes at you from all different directions. and does what it tend to drive you all as you continue to have this conversation. I hate this place. Man, that space element was really fucking loud. What? Why?

It sounds like it was trapped down. I hate to hear you. Oh, my, by the gods. I hate this place. No, no. Coe, she made her choice, man. I'm worried about the mark. We got to get her,

and I just don't want to delay. I don't want to stay. around here. Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean she's assassinated a couple people, but I mean, there's nothing we could have done about. We're just bounty hunters. I mean, three of us are ranked D. And no offense, you guys are only B. I mean, she feels like she, this should be like an S rank. I don't know. I don't know how the hell we landed the fucking bounty. So I mean, you know, don't be so hot on yourself. Come on. Look over there. And I'll point to like a, a group that's like a birthday party.

And I'm like, I have a feeling. See the birthday party over there? Young kids. I think both of those, the ones bringing in the ice cream cake, I think both of them are single moms. And your point? I think that we should talk to. I was going to suggest we get around this two-year limit.

I mean, why not both? And Derek, would you take the GM seat for 13 beers? Instead, Ziggy will yell out. Collie, let your game open. I'm playing a kind of like a scorpion. Oh my god, that's so fucking good. Derek is not paying attention to anything while he's not talking.

He's just thinking about how to make fun and being to this in our world. Great job, Ziggs! Oh, man. After Coe shouts this out, I'll be like, come on. I'll look at the bar, I'll look and I'll say, alright, leave the way.

And I'll follow Coe to wherever you lead. Come on, yeah, I mean, they're way hotter than Ophelia. Come on. You know what I mean? Come on, come on. I'm right behind you. So I am going to say, so the thing is, I mean, they're looking a little tired, not as tired as, obviously.

But, you know, I mean, I think that they could just use a bit of a pick-around. Do you know how tough it is to deal with a bunch of snot-nosed 12-year-olds? Yeah, I can only imagine. Yeah, it fucking sucks. And so, you know, we'll just say hi and, you know, we'll see how it goes. All right, let me grab another drink first. And I'm gonna lead, uh, I'm gonna lead Pike over and just like, Maybe while, maybe try to, if there's like an arm wrestling, like thing, you know, where they have it and they'll give tickets.

Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. You know, say, oh, hey, like, your kid was, like, looking for that thing. I'll try to do the arm wrestling tickets in order to, like, give the tickets to their kid. And then, like, try to make the opening for Pipe. And I would say that you will have noticed, co-specific will have noticed, that you've, like, worn me down a little bit. And you actually see my shoulders drop a little bit and me relax a little. Yeah, just a little.

Yeah. All right. You're absolutely fine. You find one of those almost like giant metallic arms coming out of this machine. And as soon as Derek names it, I'll give you its name. But you find a metallic large arm wrestling device. It's just called appendage wrestling because it works for a variety of different pieces. You find the appendage grapple-

You got appendage rassling. You bought appendage rassling. Now, see, this is appendage rasslin is how you do. All right, well, show me how it's done then. And I roll a, I'd say either like an athletics check or if you want to roll an attack roll. The athletics check should probably counts pretty good. The tagline is, find out what pseudapot means. Holy smokes.

God, this is good. Not a advantage, just straight. 22. 22. With a 22, you grip this appendage on the other side for appendage rassling and you lock in. It gives you the three, two, one countdown. You feel the second you feel the tension of the arm kick in.

Your muscles bulge as you put everything you have into it. And almost in a deft motion, there's a struggle for an instant. As you're putting on a show, not just to clobber it, but really dominate here. You struggle for a moment as then you lock in, you close hard your grip, and your muscles bulge as you start to slam this arm, this appendage, down onto the table. And you go. And then erupts from appendage rasseling as both of the, in fact, single moms at this

birthday party, take keen interest in you and Pike, even, as he's a smile as well, with your absolute just dominance of appendants. That was a little bit easier than the ones that I'm used to. I give you a high five. Yeah, I mean, you know, but I guess

these places for kids, but it's not a big deal. And it's like, what, tickets? I mean, I don't need any of that kid shit. Who needs it? Do you ladies need that? Your kids want some tickets? And I would get the big coil? Oh, wow. For us, we couldn't. You won those. That was amazing, by the way. It's not a big deal. We're just here. I mean, we're just here watching our little cousin. He really wanted to come here, you know, and we, you know, and we had to watch him. It actually required a couple of us to keep an eye on. I mean, he gets into a lot of trouble.

Oh, yeah, kids. He means well, yeah. Kids, they really get up to a lot. He takes a ton. He's a good birthday boy. It takes a village, as they say. You know, he said pizza and hungry-age hippo answered the call. Wow. You're so selfless. Yeah, you know, that's what I'm told. But here you go. Here for you and your kids.

Oh, so nice of you. And it was actually my buddy, my buddy Pike here. This is Pike. He was the one who said that you looked like your kids were actually wanted some of the prizes. Yeah, I think I got a few extra tickets in here. Oh, wow. Thank you. Thank you so much.

And how long are you two here partying for? I mean, how long are you guys partying? I'm never gonna leave! I can be here forever! You know, I think, you know, we're here for quite a while. I mean, it's a big, it's 10, you know, so it's the big one-oh, so we'll be here most of the day if you're around. I mean, yeah, I don't be probably closest to leave.

I'm here. It's 10 in the morning. It's like, it's like, It's what you to know. Well, there's got to be a bar around here somewhere. Some place we want to smoke. Yeah, I mean, Meteor Mall's got all sorts of places. I mean, who knows what's going to happen after they shut this, you know, we're going to close out to someone say pizza.

You can move the party somewhere else. Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. Oh, I think they have a thank Agathosis the equivalent of Friday. Did you just down the road? Just to go. They got everything in Meteor Mall. I think, yeah.

Yeah. Maybe afterwards we get a, couple of startinis if I you know you know we take them home and see you see where I see what happens anyway we got to get back to the party so this is oh yeah yeah no we'll be around that's our table over there that's the birthday boy over there see him so you know probably not going to be too far yeah so he's but you know after this he's big for a kid oh he's a big kid he's a big kid at heart yeah but just to reiterate after this you're thinking T-A-I-T-E-F

TI TI TI TI TRI and TRI TIRF Fuck yeah It's a bit of a tongue Twitters Fuck yeah

How do they stay in business I'm not thinking too about tongue twisters That's for sure And you'll hear From the middle of the arcade Rhett will yell out All right

Rhapsody crew Team meeting Well That's our call Yeah Oh Well yeah we gotta get back

To the party too And we have to Roundup our enormous cousin He is a big boy. Yeah, no, he's got a bit of a condition. And so, we have one of those two. We'll be right over there, okay.

Anyway, and they'll both just reach out and kind of like grip your biceps for each of you for moments to say, oh, yeah, enjoy the party. We'll see you later. Have a good one. And we'll make our way over it. That was so crazy. Not too bad.

It works every time. Yeah. Can I just handwave that I got the high score in Atomaton in 1986? Oh, what is Atom? Atomaton. The equivalent of Robitron 2000, where it's one, you have two joysticks and one moves you and the other. It's a classic arcade game. I would say you, and the other one shoots in a direction in terms of enemies that come down.

You're so proficient at games. I would say roll a computer's track in advantage. Oh, fortunately, I've got a character sheet where I know how much that's going to be. Probably a lot. I think you're already at a advantage. That's disgusting. I get a 26. You get the high score in that, what you just said.

Yep, yep, yep. And you may absolutely input your arcade tag. With eight characters, I type in D-Y-N-O-B-Y-T-E, Dinobite, my hacker name. And it's the same number of characters as I had before Haxor, but that is a deprecated name. I don't use that anymore. Haxor's dead, right? Haxor is dead, as far as everyone else is. I'm concerned and I definitely picked DinoBite because it had the same number of characters for this arcade scenario, not because I'm thinking about it right this second.

You hit, you type in Dino Bight and you hit Slam and it enters in with such a ferocity. You could swear you almost see the screen glitch out for a second. As you lock in your high score and you hear the call, you hear the call from RET for the Rhapsody crew to re-gather and you head your way back towards, you head your way back towards the table, presumably, or where are you calling everyone from? So I'm in the middle of the arcade. Okay. And as everyone approaches, uh, I'll say. All right.

Thank you for joining the team meeting. And by team meeting, I mean team building exercise. We're all gonna play Y ladies. There's six spots on the arcade cabinet. Okay, yeah, fine. If we're all doing this together, does that mean there's tax deductible? Well, I mean, I mean, technically, as long as I can prove this was for business purposes, yeah, this is a ride-off.

Well, it's a morale investment. I call Bohemoth. I love her special move, and I hit a button. Oh, he badger. I want to play this guy. Oh, hey, Bob. I play Honey Badger. Oh, my God.

You all lock in to play. What is my woman? So I'm playing. You're probably playing Sparkler instead of Dazzler. I don't know any of. Oh, yeah, she's definitely playing Sparkler. You're definitely playing Sparkler. I was always a fan of risky tactical maneuver.

Oh, oh. That's fucking. Oh, he's in that version of this game? That's awesome. That is really hilarious. Yeah. And Z, you're playing. Wait, is X-Men actually a game?

Yeah. Yeah. It's one. It's like, like, Mortal Kombat. And Street Fighter. Well, no, it's like the Simpsons game. kind of like... T-M-N-T.

You go through and find NPCs together. Like a boin-a-lob? Final Fury is like a... Fatal Fury and double-d-d-d-d-d- and you'd move forward through the background and then often there were like

areas where you get a wall... Like the Jean-Claude van Dam game. Yeah, kind of like, like, contra, like any, you know, kind of anything like that. It's a two-d game. It's a two-d game. Yeah.

I know he's not in the original. No, he's in this one. It's in this one. Risky. Risky maneuver guy. Risky tactical maneuver. is absolutely in this. Ziggy, I know you got something. I know you got something. Who you plan? I'm playing school teacher Y, obviously.

He's a big school teacher Y in his hover chair. He's so overpowered. I'm going to Proctor why. Yeah, I can't believe no one's playing day runner. As your as your sixth auto include member on your five-person team, day, day run. You're getting night crawl. It's a day runner. Day runner. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh no, the six players are just a random game. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, right? Yeah, the full ring coat and the hippo half mask pulled over. Sorry, Kim. He's looking so happy. We picked all of the best characters. You're stuck with a totally normal number of eyes. Oh, that's okay, right?

Ladies boots up and you all run through. Uh, roll. Group check for me. With whatever you think is relevant to the character you're playing and just tell me what the where the totals are A computer check with a game console Oh god Oh yeah Provisioncy computer console proficiency I don't think I'm not revivision than that

I think Ziggi I'm not Zieg is definitely provision and has to yeah I'm not The GM says so I will add it to my character sheet You're a hundred percent What is it It's computers I get a nice well game console two proficiency is what I'm going to add as a official But he meant there's just slow moves

Behemoth is very cool, but it's tactically always a bad choice. With my natural 18, I got a 19. Oh! I got lucky. I got lucky. It's the beer and the confidence we're bidding on single moms. What happened? Oh, yeah, I think you missed that.

Oh yeah. Exactly what I said. They played with single moms, yeah. They're gonna meet up at... T-A-I-T-E-F. T-A-I-T-E-F after this. Thank you. if that's just the equivalent of Fridays.

I got... I see, I see. I got a natural one, so with my computer's bonus, I get a one. Rough. Oh, I get a 19. Let me just roll for the kid. Oh, my God.

This table are leaning towards me. The kids aren't doing very well either. No, no. It's a hard game. I get a 28. This is bullshit. Oh, my God. As co-called out, co-well, professor, schoolteacher Y, and Sparkler, and, and, risk-attackism.

And risk-intactical. Just start blasting through. You guys are moving so back to. Oh, what the fight. Why can't we go last? We should probably go later. We should probably go later. from there. Behemoth and Badger, HoneyBadger,

and a day runner with a totally number of eyes. And a day runner with a totally number, regular number of eyes. Are all three kind of maneuvering around like trying to figure out that controls haven't quite gotten there. With your powers combined, you very mediocrely, uh, you in terms of the high score for your party, uh, you end rank at like 23rd of the of the all of the series

as you try and blast through It's a popular game That's real good guys Break through the barriers School teacher Y Overpowered all the time It was roughing through these things He's a broken character

Is it using Esper powers To tear through you get to the final boss What is it? Big Zaham goes down Oh fucking Big Zah Ziggie! Stop You're stealing my kills! What the fuck?

I'm just playing the game school teacher, why? What the fuck? What the fuck? Anyway, you do mediocre. You beat them, but not a record time. You rank 23rd, and you may input a team name in the 23rd spot should you choose to do so. We'll say with the highest score, the controller that actually starts inputting the name is left to you, Ziggy. Well, there are eight characters, as everyone knows, for any high score name, so I type R-H-A-B-S-O-D-Y.

Hell yeah! We are immortalized in my lily. Didn't we have a group name something, Pee Pee Pee something? I don't know. We asked that for me. Pee-P-R-R-S. No, we put Pea-Mey-R. Oh, we did it's Rux.

R. Rex. Peepy rooks. Hey, kid. What's your name? You did a great job playing totally normal number of eyes. Oh, yeah, my name's, my name's Gerbert. Jerbert. We haven't any started yet. No, I'm saying.

Gerber. Gerv. It starts with the G then. Again, I ask you, why not Chad? Why not? Little Gerbert, I know that we just met you. Little Gerbert. But...

Is it Gerbert or Gerber? Is Jerbert? Jerbert. Jerbert. Jerbert with a G. Today, you're an honorary member of the Rhapsody crew. And just... Yes, that's awesome!

Just remember to tell your mom how cool we were. Oh! We're just... Nice. Nice. That's right kiddo. If only my dad was here to celebrate with me, but he's a deadbeat and is gone. Yep.

That's tough. Oh, what a tragedy. Jackpot. What a terrible tragedy. I don't say this. I'm definitely going to be the best that you got awesome! We got 23 because of you. If you want to join us for cake later, you're more than welcome.

Yeah, Jimbert. It's Ziggy's 25th birthday. Yeah. It's the big two. I know. I'm so, I'm crippled. I'm gonna have to walk around with a space walker here. I told you about the hologrum. That's smirk, my God. Oh, my God. Wow, that's brilliant.

That's it. That's the one. That's the one. Well, Jerbert, it was good defeating the forces of evil. Oh, big Sam. I love seeing Big Sam go down. Yeah, Big Sam sucks. Yeah, Big Sam's so. I wasn't expecting Big Sam at the end there.

Oh, Mom doesn't let me say that. Oh, you guys are so much fun. Anyway, I should go back for pizza with my party. And we should probably go back for cake and presents. Yeah. Okay, well, it was great playing with you guys. Have a good one. Yeah, good luck.

You guys, Gerbert. Have a good one. Um, you walks away. I feel bad. I should have told him. I had to run off to the little pixels room because I think someone shit in our pizza. Wait, one. They shit in our pizza.

Oh, can someone say pizza? Oh, no! Oh! You know, I did hear rumors that they would take all the left-over pizzas, shit all over it, and then reassemble. Kill myself. We have a special time. Oh, it's time. That's me.

It's over on top of myself and crush my own skull. And you'll see your waiter at the fleet of this amount of other staff members as well as the circumstance as you take your seats back around. And they kind of swarm around you as he holds in his hand a sparkling pizza, like dessert pizza in his hand with sparklers coming out. As he goes, now when we say happy, you say birthday star. with hungry age hippo you're our special keys time star and you're and did someone say

he places down the dessert pizza but the dessert pizza down first he places it down and they bring you anything else that you may have asked for or wanted as they begin to discerters. Does it look like the sparklers are edible or do we're gonna have to wait for them to go out Do we have to risk our fingers in order to pull them off?

You think that you could blow them out, but whether or not they're edible, you'd have to try. Don't eat sparklers, Zaghy. I mean, it's- I can see the look in your eye, don't do it. How many beers is he had? I'm on my third beer, and rather than blow them out,

I will clap and wave and not breathe all over the food and put the sparklers out if I can. Now, Ziggi, happy birthday. Now, enjoy your children. birthday establishment beer. I will, thanks. Everyone enjoy a slice, come on. Get in here. Okay, yeah, we got the Chimkin Tenders!

I thought it was supposed to be Kate, but I can't. This is chocolate. It has like a chocolate. It's got a chocolate cookie crust. It's got a chocolate cookie crust, and in the center, there's almost like a layer of what it equates to ice cream with a lighter creamy topping on top and then sprinkles all around it. And it eats almost almost.

like more of a frozen mud pie. I hope that's a big malformed chocolate lady finger on the sign. That's the slice you get, Pigsaw. Give me the smallest slice. That looks rich. That looks really rich. Oh, come on, Redd. Oh, having Ziggies eat seeds all the time. The rest of us never eat sweets. Well, Pigtles eating sweets all the time. I'm gonna have a slice. Just give me the smallest one. It is all I mean.

And I'll take a bite. How is it? How does it taste? It tastes. He's like shit. It tastes like it probably came out of like a frozen box, like something you could get at the store if you wanted to just buy, buy cake and have it at home. It doesn't taste like anything special, but still, it doesn't taste bad,

it's certainly not homemade. You'd find your way to enjoy it. Man, it's a little dry. That's all right. That's okay. You know, it's all right. It's really good. You know, but still, I'm finally celebrating a birthday. Someone said...

It's candy corn. Please, God. Yeah. It's fine. By the architect. You know, I just wanted to have friends rich enough to have a birthday party. Did someone say pizza and Ziggy? Thank you for being my rich friend. Well, I mean, we're not like wealthy wealthy. We, we've made a few notes because we

We've all worked together. We're doing okay. We're supporting ourselves as for us. Things are looking up and we should all be happy and feel good about what we've accomplished. Keep in mind that you've earned those notes, all right? We all have. Yeah, I mean, I'm licensed and I have a good feeling about this next mark. I think we're right on our trail.

I mean, she's been a tough one, but it's lucky we got the payout when we did, so, you know, it tides us over. Is it present time? Oh, well, I mean, I'm not expecting anything. I think. Uh, Picks already got me this really cool case. Who wants to go next? You look like you want to go next, right?

You're like vibrating. I suppose I could. I mean, unless you had something for Ziggy. Well, I got something, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna make you wait. You're about to shake and fall out of your chair. Uh, I'm gonna hand you an envelope. It's just a white envelope in a bad handwriting

that says Ziggy on the front. Oh. Thank you. I like tear the side off and blow into it and pull the whatever the content. It's a threefold, I guess twofold and three parts, printed out piece of printer paper with like a black and white print out. And it says gift voucher, kill a hertz speeder rentals, 100 notes. A rental a voucher? Well, Ziggy, now that you're 25, you can legally rent cars and airspeeders, so I figure...

Yeah! Whenever the time comes, you have a gift certificate, to kill ahertz. Oh, well, I mean, now that I'm 25, I can also watch ultra porn, but this voucher also, you know, I can, I would love to rent some time and then spill a drink in the back. That's so expensive, thank you. Keep your boys going. Do you say ultra porn? Well, oh, man. And my shit jokes were too far.

I'm making a feature-rama reference. I'm making a feature-a-refer. I'm making this actually happen to us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am elated. You can see the joy it is very genuine on in Ziggy's face, even if he makes jokes. And he, I'll stuff it into my pack.

Happy birthday, Ziggy. Thank you, thank you. The next time we're on a world, I guess, I guess rentals aren't me. Nice. Mine's not as practical, but here you go. And I'll reach into my jacket pocket, and with two fingers, I'll pull out a small square about this big,

and it's rats, not well, and I kind of toss it at you, and it hits the ground, it hits the table, and it'll clatter, and it kind of sounds like plastic as it slides to a stop, and it kind of spins in front of you and stops. I'll gently undo the synth tape, and I'll pull out for whatever the customs are. As you pull it out, you realize that it's a clear plastic top loader. And inside is the closest approximation to the card that you gave to Rex Maxim,

he trashed, he threw in the trash compactor. It's not the exact copy of the card that you threw in there because Pike has no idea what that card actually was. But he did the best that he could. I did the best that I could to find you a replacement of your special edition Rex Maxim collectible trading card that you gave to him, that he ultimately trashed. It's Rex Maxim's Rhinestone!

Thank you, oh, this is so cool, thank you. Yeah, you know, I- It looks like it's in really great condition too. This is amazing. I did the best I could to find the replacement for the one that that jackass threw away. I'll treasure this. This will be a special part in my collection.

Thank you, Pike. It's the least I could do. You earned it. Slip it into my pack and make sure that it's very safe and secure. alongside the voucher that Red gave it. What is Bob to create one purple ether? Well, you never set down and learned the game.

You need ether in order to get comments. That's just gibberish. That doesn't mean anything. No, it's part of the rules. Oh, or for the game. I send you the whole PDF. I guess we have PDFs now. I'll study up, Ziggy, just for you. Maybe when we get back to the Ratsy, we can play a game.

I mean, I know we're playing games all day, but like, my birthday is the whole day thing. whole day thing, too, you know. Well, I think this place closes at like eight or nine, so, I mean, the night is young. Yeah, assuming we're not doing anything afterwards, I'm sure that'd be fine. Zee, I've never really been able to afford to buy anybody anything.

So, I spent a couple hundred notes, and I got you three things, and I'll, like, reach down into, like, a bag, and I'll pull out, like, a stack of, like, of three boxes. This is way too much. I mean, I've never, never really gifted a birthday present and was actually able to afford it. This is amazing. This is what it feels like.

It's cool, huh? Can we get to do this every year? Oh, I'm really touched. This is really amazing. Thank you. Yeah. I'll open the first box on the top of the past. Yeah, the first box.

I mean, that's the biggest box. I mean, I know that it's your favorite. And I know that, like, people that are kind of like, you spend a lot of time on the hypergrid, like a bunch of figures and put in your room. so I got you a really highly detailed, articulated figure of Jackie Chalupa. Oh, my favorite. You almost killed Mace.

What's Jackie Cheney? Oh, it's his main and it's Thoroughfare Compatant, too. It's for your character. Yeah, it's a Jackie Chalupa from Thurriffurefair Compatant 2. Oh, those are thighs. I know, but Nikki is asking. The references are going like 18 degrees. I'm so lost.

It's Johnny Gorno from... Yeah. I love it. I love it. I give her a big hug, and I give Coa a big hug. Oh, and then open up the smaller one first. Oh, okay.

That's the least, that's the least, especially expensive one. Yeah, yeah. And I know you're always listening to kind of that weird, like, really bright, cute music that they do the little dances. And I thought that maybe, I think now that you're old enough,

you can probably enjoy some real music. So, I mean, that was my first, It's the first orphan maker album that I ever heard. Carnage Saint. Yeah, I mean, it's a Carnage Saint by Orphan Maker. Does it look like a cassette that I would need to pop into a player or so, or is it a card that I might be able to insert into my Grid Boy? It's definitely a cassette.

You would need to like probably find an attachment. I have no, I don't deal with that kind of like high-tech. That's fine, that's fine. Oh, I can't wait to listen to this. This is really cool. Thank you, Cole. Okay. this one was the most expensive. And just like Red said, now that you can legally rent an airspeeder, sometimes the cup holder situation is never good. And you're always spilling your drink, and it's

hard to keep your rody warm. So I was never able to afford anything from the more acute depiction. And so I ordered this from the more acute depiction. It's a magnetic cooling cup holder that keeps your drink. it's like gyro something so it never spills and it never tilts and you can attach it to any airspeed or car ship so you can always keep your roadie cold and with you wherever you go. I love it. I immediately pop the top off and even though there's almost certainly like a plastic film and speckles of microplastics on the inside I pour my beer into it and I immediately start drinking it. There's like a plastic aftertaste to it but I noticed that as I, turn it, it like wants to stay vertical. It seems to have some sort of

gravidic core. Yeah, that was all that was like 300 notes. Wow. Do you believe that? That's fucking awesome, right? This is really special. How much did it go? It's so high-tech. And 300, only 300 notes. 300 notes for a cup? Yeah. It's got gyro technology and it keeps it cool. I can't even picture you in a more cute depiction. That's not been weird to walk into that story. Right? Yeah. Well, thank you, girl. I was always always a dream.

To shop at the more acute depiction, is sharp room. Oh. Yeah, it's right next to River Rock. Yeah! Anyway, happy birthday, Ziggs. Oh, thank you. Enjoy orphan maker.

I will, I will, I will. This is already the best birthday ever. Thank you so much, guys. All right. I guess we'll order, wait. Are we at our limit for beer? Almost certainly, yeah. Well, well, we can.

can create it like a game, just like the arcade games here. We can see if we can beat the number. And with that, Derek, would you like to come to the GMC for 13 days? Well, I mean, you know, even if we were at our limit, we're going to go to T-A-I-T-O-F later. Are we? Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's our next stop.

I love that place. We're to keep the party going. Well, have we turned our tickets in yet so we can get all of our cool prizes? I have a number of tickets here. not every game that I played to spit him out, but, you know, I still have like one or two tokens left, and we can just do ticket games, and then we can cash out, and we can go to T-A-I-T-E-F.

Was there something special you wanted from the ticket booth? Off in the prize counter? I mean, you know, I'll probably buy some cheap plastic crap that I'll forget about tomorrow. Okay. If you want to get something, we can talk, you know. It doesn't have to be me. I already got all this cool stuff.

There is that. Xyla wood pond body pillow. Well, well, in order to get that, we'd need like another 1,500 tickets. I think what we can probably do it if we only play the games that are designed, any of the redemption games over there in that quarter, that zone. You know, if we do well in humbly gifted speeder bike, then we can, uh, we get a lot of tickets from that one. Well, let's go, let's do it.

Here, take the rest of my tokens, take all my tickets to do. I got a lot from that dancing game. Y'all have fun. Hey, Picks. Yeah. gave away some of my tickets, but I saved the most for you. Okay. I'm with me tonight.

We're gonna bring Zyler home tonight. I can't wait. Did you see that they have Hello Bunny stuff? Yeah, they do. I don't need any of that stuff. Yeah. One of her eyes is down low- Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's bootleg.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's actually, How do you do tonight, Rabbit? Oh, you're right. No, they're trying to trick grandmalls

into thinking it's real actual, uh, actual howdy bunny. Yeah, so, I mean, no, no, you should get your Zyler Kras or whatever the fuck his name is. Zyler Woodpon, sorry, sorry. We're gonna bring him home. We'll get you the body pillow. We pool our tickets together to see how much more we need to get. Ziggy estimated it was about 1,500, but when everyone's tickets all together and a few tokens remaining,

does it look even possible that we might be able to win? I don't have any tickets left. I gave all my tokens to Ziggie. I'm gonna go sit in the booth with Rhett. and just wait out this ticket fiasco. Ziggy's all in on having a shared goal, and so he doesn't care about getting... You start to calculate your tickets,

and you're right in your presumption that the Zyler Body Pillow is about 1,500 tickets. And once you calculate everything altogether, a lot of you did exceptionally well at the games you were playing, locking in top high scores. You have about 890 tickets, and you're not far away. Like honestly, another couple of extremely solid games, you could possibly get there.

And it's as you're all standing up and you're heading out and formulating these plans, a new quest locked in, a new prize excited to bring home that something happens. Uh-oh. As you all enjoy the festivities in the sensory overload of the pizza arcade, there is a sudden and immediate it silencing of the bings and blips and chipper music and a dowsing of the colorful lights as the power cuts out and the entire establishment is plunged into darkness. People scream in shock from the sudden change, turning to nervous whispers wondering what possibly could have happened. You look around. You still just a bit of pouring of light coming in from Meteor Mall as the facade of the facility. you look over as customers that were they were heading to make their way out, almost mid-step is this blanket of darkness came down, go over, they reach to push on the door, they rattle against it, but it doesn't move, it doesn't open. The doors seem to have locked as all of the machinery, everything in here seems to have fallen completely silent. The only noise surrounding you now, the What's happening?

Pizza guy? Pizza! Circumstance! What the fuck's happening? This is normally happening? Y'all not have a backup generator? You hear, there's a lot of chatter going around. A lot of people, much like yourselves, start to call out, ask similar questions. You can see the staff in their get-ups, their onesies, their hats, looking around just as nervous, turning and looking for a manager,

looking for someone to take charge. I cast light. Mm-hmm. You illuminate- Without even thinking about it, just from the tip of my finger, this small vapor wave light source is emitted from the tip of my finger,

and it just kind of floats there, a little sun at the tip of my finger. Almost a burst of light chasing back to the shadow that now surrounds you in all directions. Illuminating immediately where you're at, you still see the arcade cabinet, it's completely dark, you see people hustling around you. Now outside of the darkness,

just a little bit harder to see. as a noise occurs. As nervousness increases, turning to panic. You suddenly hear a horrid grinding sound, as a strange orange glow radiates from the stage. You see that the animatronics of the band are covered in a digital grid that scans over each one as strange code fills the gaps between. A garbled glitching sound,

fills the air as the grids settle and disappear, leaving the only orange glow in the eyes of each of the animatronics that burn with an eerie intensity, shrouded in an almost an even more mysterious shadow on the edge of the light that you now cast. You see, in an attempt to take control of the situation, you see your waiter hop up on the stage, shouting, no, no, everybody, just take a second.

We're gonna have everything under control. Just hang on, we're working the figure out. As a piercing claw from behind him, shuts through his chest, covered in blood as a crocodile animatron, comes to life from behind them. Oh, boy. Three of the four of them rush forward

with horrific grinding of the internal mechanisms as they start to shake and move and look around. As they grind. to life. They tear apart your waiter in half as he attempt to restore peace into the burgeoning nervousness that surrounds you. Huge mechanical maws chomping his skull from on top. A horrific burst of blood, bone, and gourd.

Absolute pandemonium fills the darkness all around you as the patrons and other staff scream and run from the brutal murder. and then the machines all turn to you. Lurching forward erratically with their creepy orange eyes set on all of you and filled with malevolence. I need you to roll for initiative. Damn. Oh my gosh.

Okay. Rip. Alrighty. And I think it's probably a good place to take break. Yes. Good play. I'll roll when we get back. Yeah, I'll roll when we get back.

We're going to roll when we get back. I need everyone to roll for initiative. Yeah. Let's go on you. I already rolled and it's not good. What a dece I want to use. Did I bring my curse? Bro.

Too bad it's an initiative. Holy shit. Oh, dude. What's your initiative? Ow, oh, fuck. Yeah, I got fucking disillated. I got Goddied by this D4. Jesus fuck.

Got destroyed by the Dispelled D4. Ew. Damn you, Platonic. I don't think anybody's beating me, but. We'll be interested to hear. Okay, that's fair. Can we say that I got 25 because it's my birthday? No.

I got one more than me. 25. 21, 23. Oh. I don't actually know what happens on a tie. I don't know 23. You can go first because you have the god of the way. No, no, GM's loose ties.

Oh, GM's loose ties. I thought there was like a rule for it. I believe that's what I do. I don't know if there's a rule for it, but we put it in every single. I believe the rule is that GM's lose ties and if it's between players, it's whoever has the highest deck score. Pike goes first. But we go first.

But we go first. That's a good. 15 to 20. Don't know. that. Oh, that fucking hurt. Oh, sorry, 21. Oh, red. Yousa. Yeah, I missed it.

Yikes. I got all caught up. 15 to 20. 10 to 15. 13. The rest. Co. I got a 5.

I got a 7. Wow. Wow. Copics down here at the bottom, just taking out. Yep. Go on Kupex. We all have food poisoning for the pizza. Pipe.

Okay. Okay. You look towards the stage. Oh, can you even the paper towels? Yeah, my dad was... No, no, you're good, you're good. You go. You go.

You look towards the stage, and you see the animatronic... ...curing to life as you... As you see them begin to charge for you, uh, towards you. And I actually need everyone in this moment to also make a wisdom saving... Oh, no. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. I'm okay.

When it matters. I'm very upset if I blew my good roll here. I'm very bad. Natural fucking 20. Holy! God damn! I'll just tell you, I'll just tell you. You have triggered by the malevolatronic rolling initiative,

you have triggered jump scare. Everyone, so the DC is 13. If you fail, you have the frightened condition until the start of their next turn. That's not good. Okay. So anybody who rolled at 12 on your wisdom save are lower is frightened of the malevolatronics on the stage.

I'm afraid. I'm also afraid. Okay. Um... Hell yeah, hell yeah to me. Okay. Sorry. So yeah, DM decides and then players decide.

Yeah. So actually, if you did want to go before Pike, you can. No. You can decide. Yeah, so if you want to swap it, feel free. Is GM failed? No, you're good. Go ahead.

They're jumping. We all saw what you described as the grid. They're jumping, but you're on edge. You're on edge. You've been kind of like, you know, I think you'd be kind of ready. You're scared, but you had the light up. Okay. You, we, do we all see the description of that orange grid that, like, wash over these animatronics?

Yes, I would say so. Then as I begin to move, I'm going to, uh, kind of like dash over and around co. Uh, the river, can I just easily jump over it? Like, how, it's like five feet wide. Okay. So it's really not. It's T25. As I begin to make my move, which I have 50 feet of movement, which is absolutely absurd.

I'm going to shout because I think the only person of our party might have any idea what's going on here is Ziggy. I'm going to say, Ziggy, what the hell was that? And as I make my move, $2530, $35.40. I can easily get across as I'm just trying to get line of sight down this row of arcade cadets. Just give me a super low DC acrobatics check. Sure. My acrobatics is very high, thank God, I got at 13. Okay, totally cool.

And I'll say the square just to the left on the river where you're at. Yeah, right there. Well, I'll say that's what the bridge is. Oh. Because there's a bridge going across. But you jump for cool. There you go. Perfect.

For anyone else who doesn't want to jump. Didn't know that. Anyway, I jump over, and I kind of like my footfalls and I splash a little bit. And I just try to get line of sight through these arcade cats. and I am just going to level the gauntlet and take two shots with my extra attack. I'm gonna use my radiant blasts, which is 1d8 plus 5 radiant damage, a range of 60 feet, thanks to my star gauntlet. The low is a 17.

They all hit? Which one are you attacking? The one in the middle, number two. That's going to be 16 points of radiant damage over two attacks as I take two shots. And I am not going to use any of my focus points yet. Bonus action, bonus action. No, I want to save my focus points. I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on. And I want to see how these first couple of shots land and affect them

as I just kind of ready myself. And I am going to save my bonus action. But what I am going to do is use my divine resonance on the second shot, which is once per turn when I hit a creature with an arm strike or with the radiant blasts of my Star Gauntlet feature, I can mark the target. So the next attack roll that misses on the target before the end of my next turn,

they get to add a 1D4. It's basically glowing. After the second Star Gauntlet shot lands on number two, it's like glowing with this little bit of light that is the same color as the blast from my gauntlet. So if anybody on my team makes an attack on number two and misses, they can cash in on this mark to add 1D4 to their attack total, potentially turning a miss

into a hit. Hell yeah, okay. And that's my turn. You jump, you leap over the river, boom, boom, boom, from the gauntlet. You fire out these shots that rain true and easy as they slam into. And it's number two. There's a gorilla, a crocodile, and a rhino. So I hit the crocodile for number two. The croc is number two?

Yep, the gorilla's number three and the rhino's number one. According to the chokinard. And that's my whole turn. you land three big shocks onto rock and crock as it lights up in that eerie glow that mixes into almost the orange that's kind of overtaking it in the eyes it takes on this other highlighted vision from you until you hear in there in there as all three trundle and rush towards you all off the stage the cross and the gorilla will say, or two and three will charge first and one will kind of follow in their wake, presumably landing.

30 to get to me. If they've got 30. They have 30. They have 30. And that's, yeah, and that'll be 30. That'll be 30 as well. So perfect. Actually, let me do this.

Swap the crock and the gorilla. Sorry. Crohn and gorilla could still be up front, but put the gorilla near the bridge. Yeah, perfect, perfect. And they will... I can identify animals? It's fine. Um...

And they will... They will... ...both of them, uh, swing on you. This is why I saved my focus point. Oh. That's got... I mean, no... no, you got it. I've got it. I've got 14. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I definitely dodge out of the first attack. Ooh! That's a natural one. I'm moving... I'm moving like solar light through space. Okay, that's a 26. Uh, yeah, it hits. Okay. Alright. I can see how much damage you do.

And what kind of damage? Oh my gosh. Jeep. This is bludgeoning. Uh, as the, I'll say the gorilla is swinging down on you. Uh, is swinging in to slam down on you. You take, or you may take. I might, yes.

Um, 17 points of bludgeoning damage. Okay. The first hit from the gorilla connects with them. I see this attack coming. in and I'm gonna attempt to use my center deflection. When an attack roll hits me and its damage includes bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing, I can take a reaction to reduce the attack total by 1D10 plus 8, so I have to roll at least to 7.

Because if I reduce it to zero, then I can attempt to deflect it with a... You have to roll a 9. Yes. Sorry, excuse me, I have to go ahead. I have to roll at least a 9. And 8. Oh, golly! You take one point. You take one point of bludgeoning game.

of bludgeoning damage as the giant muscled mechanical arm of the gorilla. You just take a glancing, a very glancing blow. However, it does bring its other fist up towards you as it comes in for a second attack. Oh, 19. That hits me, and I don't have my reaction, so I'm taking the full damage on this one. 20 points of bludgeoning damage as the other punch of the gorilla. the gorilla hits you square in the abdomen, almost winding me for a moment.

Oh, I know, I absolutely, like, get the wind knocked out of me, and it's almost like the anime, like spit flies out of my mouth as I take this attack straight to the gut. Gee. And that is their turn. As the punch lands, you see these looming,

horrible creatures, almost hunched forward now. You hear the mechanical worrying, no breath, no up and down, but this, this, eerie jittering as the machinery wars back and forth as they loom in front of you. Rhett? I am, I'm horrified of these things. And I don't have any, I don't, there's no way I have my

grab gun on me, right? So like, I would have maybe left in, like, lockers up front. Oh, shit. So if I'm able to basically spend my turn recovering my stuff and using my action to, like, gear up, Oh no. I was banking on you just dumps through these guys. It's like, you know, we're playing arcade games.

I don't have my trap on me. I'm the only one that can't be on here. Yeah, no, that's fair. You're afraid anyway? I would say, absolutely, you may spend your turn to run and go gear up, and you can end probably, like, back between those two shelves, sir, if you want to move, like, left and back three.

Everybody, get out, run, run! I'm gonna like just run back and I'm gonna like find, I'm imagining like there's the lockers like the like the bowling alleys, you know, or you're 100% rows and rows, double stacked. And I'm gonna rip out wherever we left our stuff, quickly do the lock and I'm gonna throw on my, all of my tech and grab the grab cannon and turn and return back. And that's my turn.

You find it easily, you know exactly where it is, it's easy to get back to, and you feel comfortable and confident almost running away from these things, putting your back to them, as you're breathing heavy, almost sweating, you run to the lockers to gear up to bring the fight to them. And now I'm no longer afraid at the end of my turn? At their turn, at the start of their turn. Oh, got it. So at the start of their turn, you're no longer afraid. Got it. All right, red, I mark this one.

Blast it. Where are you going? Myself! He left. He just left. Zygie. Oh shit. Okay.

I'm going to seeing the immediate threat and knowing that perhaps as a robot fueled by some form of code, I'm going to attempt to hack into them. Oh. And I'm going to pull out my grid boy. I'm going to pull it wide. And a number of screens and displays are going to all show up. Running, of course, a number of different codes and scripts on a lot. and scripts on them. However, because of the new Lisa Frank case that I have, instead of the classic green panels that you're all used to,

rainbows, stars, cats, horses, space dolphins, all of them emerge and there's a bunch of sparkling rainbows as I type in a few commands. And I'm going to cast what I'm calling signal decay. I'm going to pick a point over here just enough to keep Pike out of the 20-foot the 20-foot radius sphere that emerges. The actual spell that I'm casting is from the Crooked Moon. It's called Mists of Mourning. I need each creature in the area, and I'm just targeting the three of them, to cede or fail on a charisma saving throw.

The DC is 16. What is the intent? Is it damage or? The outcome will be on a failure, their speed will be halved, they'll have disadvantage on attack rolls, and they will subtract 1D8 from all damage rolls. Hey, all right. And it's a, sorry, charisma?

The charisma saving throw. 14. 14 fails. So I will run this script, and that orange light for a brief moment will be overtaken by green, zeros and ones and other code symbols of the language signal that I know. And their posture will weaken. They'll be a little bit slower to move around. I've effectively dampened their ability to execute commands.

Do they each make the save? Or is it a group? That's up to the GM. You can, it's each creature. Sorry, yes. All the creature. So you can roll for the group or you can do it in a case. So I'll say that one failed.

Failed. Yep. Two failed. So the crock failed. Three. Gorilla. Rock and Croc. This is definitely also a fail.

Guerrilla failed. And Rhino. That probably crushed it. That's a 20. That definitely crushed it. So one is free. I will continue to concentrate on that script and my typing away. But hearing Pike scream out, what is this?

What is this? Ziggy will respond. I have no idea. This is like a paleo playground. Everything's going crazy. That's very far. I'm also going to, I totally forgot about this. The rhino, he didn't make a move.

I never think to dash. He's gonna use his movement to dash. I'll just say that he did it there, but it's gonna be changed. Then that's why he succeeded. So he'll move. Yeah, and your reaction was gone anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not an opportunity. Okay, okay.

Where's he going? I don't know how far. He can go three more. He can go three more, five. He'll come forward, yeah, yeah, over one, up two. Or however far you can. This was, basically that's correct. This was 30, because he was one over.

You could do one and a half, two and a half, three and a half, four and a half, five and a half, six and a half, seven and a half, eight and a half. 10, 11 and a half. He could literally be right up here. Yeah, perfect. Oh, great. Excellent. That's where he wants to be. Pixel.

I'm afraid of this. So I'm going to have to use my movement to... You just can't move closer. You can't move closer and your disadvantage on the tagline. Yes. You're disadvantaged. Well, I don't want to do either one of those things. There you go.

I'm going to pull out my key tar and I'm trembling. And you hear, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, as I'm going to look towards Pike shaking, and I'm gonna say, Pike, you got this, I believe in you. I don't believe in me right now, but I believe in you. And I'm gonna cast iconic inspiration on you.

Beautiful, D8. A D8, and in doing so, next to you on the bridge, actually not, because I can put it anywhere, right behind the rhino that's in front of my face and then two, one more square, yeah, right there. A hologram of me is going to appear, and it's gonna start playing the baseline for Eye of the Tiger. As I'm just playing, as I'm just playing along.

Seeing all these animals. I love that, pixel guy. Hell yeah, yeah. As I am gonna create my backup hologram as a bonus action or part of the bonus action that I used to grant an iconic inspiration die. And so I'm creating a little me, and it's gonna persist for one minute.

And so that is what's happening there. And then I am, I'm going to, that's my bonus action. And then for my regular action, I'm gonna look toward the hologram. And it is within 60 feet. And I'm gonna cast, I'm gonna use it as the point of contact for calm emotions.

And I'm gonna cast commemotions on my hologram, which should be, it's a 20 foot radius fear, so both, Rhett and I should no longer be feared. Cause it should nullify the fear. Oh. It nullifies charms in hand. Oh, okay. In 20 foot radius.

I will say that's awesome. Basically, you will be cured just when it comes back to the start of this turn, if you want to save the spell slot. Yeah, but I don't have to use a spell slot to castling. Oh, okay. So I get one free commotion. So, and Pixel wouldn't know that, and Pixels horrified and Afraid Tourette.

So it will, it nullifies it, but it also lasts for a minute. And so we'll have advantage on all charm and fear effects. Nice. Oh, okay, okay. And because it's on my hologram, which can move, I can move it around. Oh, okay. So that's great. And you'll see this, you'll see,

charging Chuck has erupted in front of you. And you'll see, it has this terrible, like it's a lower jaw almost jutting forward. Its eyes rolled up in its head. As it has this jittery movement, as it's, as his pupils, a light, are a light, and this terrible orange,

neon orange glow. Let's play. Let's play. Let's play under him. I hate us. I hate that. As, uh, as co. Let's see you. Okay. Two still marks. I don't know if you're feared or not.

Do, does, just, you look like you just got your fucking ass kicked, right? I definitely took a big beat. You took a big beat and there's two of them. I'm not like, I'm not like fucked up, but I got You saw that I took a big blow. Because I dodged one and then I rocked. Sorry, mate. It's one more thing, actually. Oh, yeah, please.

So I could also make him indifferent to us. I'm not going to do that. I wouldn't know to do that. I wouldn't know to do that. Yeah, for sure. So I just wanted to make sure it didn't happen automatically, but it says you can choose. As a bonus action, I am going to, once again,

let out a roar. and I say, as I, the static electricity across my tattoos, you hear this crackling thunder. I will use my bonus action to activate my, unleash the storm, racial feats, speeches feed. And I'm gonna have thunder soul. So this booming thunder crashes out for me, which won't have any effect until the start of my next turn,

as I then am going to say, get to cover, Ziggy Picks, and I'm gonna go help Pryor! As I am going, take the attack action. My club is probably in the same locker. But I don't need a club as a renegade, as a renegade, a enforcer. As I smash my club, my fist together. And I reach down and I grab the probably rainforest-themed chair. Oh, absolutely.

That I was sitting on. As I grab both legs and I swing it forward. Get away, you creepy, fuck! as I am going to take the attack action. As part of the attack action, I'm expending one of my cosmic conduits to activate rage of the street, which I am able to,

that allows me to make one additional unarmed strike or one attack with an improvised weapon as part of the attack action during each of my first. So badass. And so I am going to, now that I have multi-attack, because I am level five, thank fuck. I am going to beat the shit. shit out of these guys with a chair.

As I'm going to swing around the chair, make an attack roll on so and so. So close. That was 19. Wait, which one are you attacking one? This guy. So I haven't moved yet. Okay. So one, I'm going to smash him. That is going to deal 1D6.

Oh, what was it? What was the hit? Sorry, it was 19 plus... 19 plus 8. Yep. Damn. 27. And so that is going to be, I believe, 1d6. There we go.

My quab. And so I am just going to quickly I have proficiency because I'm dirty fighting also another renegade I prevented with unimprovised weapons. What, 1D8?

Yeah, it's big. Hell yeah, bro. 1D8. Improvise these hands. Yeah, exactly. Hold on, just one sec. Intimidating defense. I didn't want to smash

with your shares in this. I'll like loud or Torback would have done the same thing. I deal 11 points of bludgeoning damage, and I activate the pushmasterate. Hell yeah. As I'm going to knock him back 10 feet. Which one? The rhino. Got it.

Okay. Charge and charge and chug. Yep. Charge this asshole, and I'm going to, unfortunately, knock him to the rabbit. He's a whole wrong. You can try to leap across. That's for the worst nightmares.

The chair splinters. The chair splinters. You grab this. front-backed chair with this piece of a leap that was connected to wooden, almost like logs coming up on either side at the top of one. A small but cute dancing frog stands there. It was almost animatronically moving back and forth. As you pick up this chair and it shatters to pieces as you crush it across this. Yeah, yeah, it's also the toad as you crushed it across the front of charging Chuck.

I'm going to attempt to leap over and I'm going to attempt to grab onto one of the very clue of like fiberglass trees, grab onto it and swing over. And as I land, I want to rip it off and swing around with the fake tree branch on number two with another improvised weapon. Oh my God. And remember, if you miss, it's at 1D4.

I might have missed. 16. Give me a little acrobatics or athletics check on that. Athletics? Natural 20. Oh, you do. You leap over you. 28.

28. Jumped, you whipfrog off the shoulder of charging Chuck as you knock him back and you, with the chair, and you kick up to one of the fiberglass trees and you, and you've rid of loose swinging across the water as you crash down on top of, on top of the rock and crock. Or which one is that? That's a rock and crock. I got a 16 to hit. 16 hits? Okay. I, um...

I'm sorry. How much? did you do to charge and chuck? Oh, sorry. He hasn't done rolled damage yet. Oh, no, I did. I must have rolled, I rolled the six. Oh, to charge and check. Eleven. I think it was 11. Yeah. Okay, sorry. Eleven points of damage to charge and chuck,

I believe. I then am going to splinter this and deal nine points of damage to, um, you call him Rock, Rock Rock Rock Rock. Yeah, the Rock crock, yeah. The Rock crock. Smash him back. As then, I believe I was here. One, two, three, four, five. I can easily get there. And then, uh, with that, I'm just going to go in and, uh, do kind of a leap,

the branch smashes. Yeah. As I am then going to go in and try to, um, uh, wind up a big punch and try to punch the big monkey as, uh, that is going to be my, um, you stormed, right? Bonus action. Yep. The bonus action, that's at the beginning of my next turn, is when that will affect them. That's gonna be a 23 to hit. That definitely hits. Your fist comes down towards this neon color gorilla in kind of like tight go-go shorts

as you crush your fist into go-go-rilla and that you see the neon orange of the eyes as you deal- Gogo-Gri-la. As you deal-old. And I'm going to punch dealing nine points of bludgeoning damage and knocking him back 10 feet this one.

Oh my gosh. You're just running through the field of battle. Yeah. These malevolatron are tossed in all directions as though they're these hulking, lurking brutes. You're tossing them around, like, play things as you move with ease through the field of battle pike. I watch as as Coe comes up to my shoulder to shoulder.

Got you, buddy. And just absolutely knocks these guys away. As soon as I kind of recover to see where I'm at, I look at her, I say, you take the gorilla, I got the crock, and I'm gonna run behind her and vault over this arcade cabinet to land between the aisle

and I am just going to go absolutely bananas on the sky. I was hoping you were gonna say that. I'm gonna use both my attacks and a key point for Florea blows to make four attacks against the crook. Ironically, it's Terminal Coral 3 that you jump over and you hear the voice,

enter my melee range, just as you cross-off. The first one is going to be a 15 to hit. 15 hits, and that is the AC. Okay, he's now marked with the divine radiance. I'll roll all the damage, but I wanted to make sure that I did this

in the right order. Oh, that's one less. That's 14 to hit. 14 misses. So then I'll cash in on the divine radiance by rolling an extra 1D4, adding four to make it a hit. Hell, you do was one. That is the beacon triad. Then it's going to be

a 20-something to hit. And the last one is going to be, oh man, one off. I roll a natural 19. So I'm gonna roll all this damage. All four hit. And this is on the crock, rock and crock. Yeah, I'm just absolutely peppering this guy with hits in an absolute flash of damage. Wow, that was garbage. That's seven. Plus five more is 12 plus 20 is 32 points of damage over four attacks. But it's all bludgeoning.

It's not reading this time. As I am just laying into this guy, like with martial arts combos, and, you know, he blows on a cache in. It's like flashing. I'm just going to... You twist over the arcade cabinet easily. You swing down with a kick as you land on the ground. You rise up with three devastating blows to the body.

As it's now looking mechanically bloodied, as it were, when its body cage almost cracked and split open. Its moves get mechanically jerky, even more so as it starts to spark. Yeah, that's my sure. It's now to them. You've pushed it into its damage state, which means that at the beginning of the malevolatronics turn,

the two of you are going to take lightning damage. It starts sparking? It starts sparking as almost like arcs of sparking lightning are bursting out of this thing as it is maxed 10 damage of lightning. Okay. 10 damage? I'll take 5. 10 lightning damage.

Ooh, wee. Ah, shit! Is that a damage roll? I know I'm getting into the weeds, but does that count as a roll or does that just the amount that happens? Oh, it's just the amount. It's like an R. Anybody, yeah, anybody who starts their turn within five feet just takes the damage. Thank you. If they're, uh, of their spark. Of their turn. On their turn, if they're in that state. Got it. Uh, the other two are not. Um, you'll see, uh, rock and crock, uh, let's see. Pike will turn to you, uh, and will. Disadvantage on attack rolls.

Oh, that's huge. That's absolutely massive. That's pretty good. Okay. Uh, so I rolled a 19 and a 20. So I'll take the 19. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. But with 26, the Rock and Croc is gonna almost like jerkly, uh, lunge forward at you and clasp its jaws around you. Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

And it's animatronic grasp as you are now grappled. You will take-grapel arinoed. 11 points of... Uh-oh. Alleghenyness. Subtract 1d8 from that damage roll, please. As the code continues, to stubbornly.

I can still defrax. You roll it. You roll it on the 8. Oh, happily. Um, while we're doing this, what are the other, like, civilians doing? Are they, like, running? Oh, they're screaming. There's a roar of, especially as for one side of this battle

has spilled into the restaurant section. It's almost hard to maintain concentration and focus in the battle. While you hear just, as the animatrons have come to life, this all. started with the brutal death of your waiter that just brought you celebratory dessert pizza so everyone is an absolute state of mad panic what was the total damage 11 11 you reduced it by 2 which is 9 I can still attempt to use my deflection which is 1d10 plus 8 so I can't fail I can reduce the 9 to 0 by using my reaction

so it still has me but I'm flavored it as like I'm trying to hold it to John yeah you've got it's like it's almost like against the gauntling And I can't go anywhere. I'm wedged in there. You still in there, but it didn't hit body. Also, do you have resistance of lightning because something, something. Radiant.

That one will run at Co. And bring it out a monkey. I don't think I would pass that one. No, no. No shot. It's locked up in the Rhaps. 16. 16 hit? No.

No. 18. 18 doesn't. Okay. Um, I am going to, you're going to see the hologram. You begin to, begin to perform even more. It's within 30 feet for showstopper. When a creature you can see within 30 feet of the hologram succeeds on or fails on a D20 trust.

I can use my reaction, which I'm going to do to subtract one B4 from its role. As it begins to let off all of these holographic lights and the mech turns and is just dazed and confused by it for a moment. What's your AC? 17. Oh, yeah, Bix! That's insane, I'm doubt. The star subclass, folks.

The first punch, it runs at you, the first punch swings wide, and then it brings down the other one. There's a sparkle in its eyes reflecting off Bigel as it quite thought it was locking onto you, but they can't quite see, and the other one misses easily you're able to deflect it. The charging chuck will move up one. Up one, away from Rhett. And down the line and straight at Ziggy.

Oh. Redd. I don't have a reaction, so. I don't have Malele Wobin. Oh. I can say in the... Oh, that's only for Mali Wap. Oh, okay, okay.

I don't carry those. 16. Just hits. Really? Oh, no, no. 16 hits. My 18 is 50. Okay.

With a 16. Charging Chuck rushes at you and reaches around and grabs your full body as he takes you up into both arms as he, you are now grappled by him, and you take nine points of damage. Ah! Okay. He will then move back one square with Zinvi. Back this way? Like almost towards Pixel. Oh. Can he... Or, yeah, I mean, like, towards the river. I was just thinking of a round pixel, but like, towards the river. Oh, got a good, guys. He's the idea.

He just pushes. He pushes for me. He pushes three. Well, you're a grab-up. He's got you in his big rhino arms. Yeah. You're like tied up in his rhino arms and he moves you back. Just like put the rhino on top of Ziggy.

Oh yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. That's great. Yep, that's perfect. Yep. Right there. And in the same way, uh, he's got his face right in front of you. You see the giant horn splitting between the two

neon orange eyes. His teeth pulled back and jutting out over lips that are shredding away to see the metal mechanisms in his mouth. As you hear, let's play, let's play, let's play,

okay. And that happens. Right. Oh, God. Obviously, through the events of pixel, you're no longer feared. I would have made sure that, like, as many people that were still in the area where, like, ran back or behind the front desk or whatever in hiding.

If the doors are still locked, I have my cannon. And does it look like this ride that was, like, totally turned away from pixel and just, like, running away? Like, is it, like, he, give me a perception check. Oh, shit.

Come on. Pretty good. Pretty good. Uh, 19. 19. Yes. And I'll say with a 19. Hmm.

I'll leave it at yes. Oh my god. It's got Ziggy! What the fuck? I'm going to... I probably want to... That's what I said! I don't want to... I don't want to shoot this thing if he's holding Ziggy. Like that's too risky. I... Crack shot, man. And I'll say... You'll get him!

And I'm gonna just instead of focus on this gorilla here, and I'm going to use my grab cannon to shoot at him. That is a 15 plus a whole bunch. So I'm guessing that hits. That hit. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 14 misses, we know. 15 hits. The AC is 15.

Okay, cool. Good to know. So he is going to take... The gorilla is going to take 12 force damage. And with my level 5 feature experimental gunnery, once per turn I can actually. one of the following mastery properties, Gray's push or vex.

I'm going to shoving around. I am going to Seeky gets fried. I am going to vex him. Oh. So I believe he is disadvantaged, or am I advantaged? Actually, what does vex do? I always forget what vex does. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

It's quite vexing. I do say so. Vex weapon mastery. You get advantage. Dan Dillon says will we see another Derek character get pulled apart like a Jagfruit?

Tune in next week. Jackfruit He gets hit with this blast of just like pure gravitons and gravity energy and it like weighs him down and he's moving slowly and there's almost like a gravity field that's

attracting my next shot and because my special in my invention specialty is Armory. I was able to take a new hypertech schematic at fifth level. Hell yeah. Level five, which is cutting edge armor.

I can activate this weapon's mastery property. And I gained the extra attack feature for the enchanted weapon only. So I get two attacks now. Hell yeah. And I'm advantaged. That's a twist. That's this thing.

I'd say you see this hulking thing as you hit it You hit it with the first shot and you apply this gravitational pull. You see it like almost an inch. You can hear audibly the ground crack almost as it gets heavier and it cracks beneath the weight of it. And this second blast, it's almost bigger. It just like it almost gets redirected and it smashes right into his form. Dealing 18 points of force damage. Massive.

Hold on. 10. Let's go. Yeah. 18 points of force damage. And then I'm going to start running, one, two, one and a half, three, four, five and a half. I can't get quite there. But I'm going to like try to run and maybe on my next turn help Ziggy in some point.

That's my turn. You see as this other blast arcs around and almost swirls around it before it swings in and crashes into the go-go-go-rilla. it lands and once more begins to crack open its mechanical carapist as it starts to shoot out sparks and tendrils of arcing energy. And Ziggy. Pixel, what's your weapon?

Well, it's a keytarm. The answer is she doesn't happen. Yeah. If I were to use function patch to give your DT20 tests adding 1D4 to the total. Would that include stuff like spell attacks and stuff like that from the Kitar?

I don't believe so. So it has to be a weapon weapon? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Seeing Rhett is trying to help me. I'm going to type a quick command and hit enter. And I'm going to, because you're within 30 feet,

I'm going to do a function patch on your grab gun. You can add 1D4 to your attack roll. forward. All right. You just, there's a brief green flare, and you've seen this done before. You know that I've optimized some code, I've refactored some things,

and that just helps it with a little more accuracy, a little more oomph. And I am going to continue to scream. I can barely type, my arms are so tightly wrapped around me, and I am almost out of breath from the squeezing, crushing power of this nightmare robot that's dragging me away. Guys, help, help. And I'm going to hit an emergency button

and that is going to be a dexterity saving throw for, oh shit, all creatures within five feet. Do it. Do it. It's an emergency button. Do it. I'm coming, Ziggy. Oh, you ready.

You're waiting. Just to make sure I didn't shoot you in the face. No. That's horse shit. I can't do that. I have to put a localized dark hole. It's the emergency button. It's the first thing I saw it on.

Everyone's going to have to make a... Pigsville and Brett is going to... You're going to have to make a DC-16 dexterity saving for... What could possibly go wrong? But so does charging Chuck. Oh, nothing. Perfect. I fail. 23.

I fail miserably. All right. You both take six points of force damage. What's the flavor of this? Yeah. Oh, my apologies. What would I look like? When I press the command button, lights shimmer out,

and what appear to be those same panels, start to spin around me back and forth and back and forth, turning into like razor edge cutting. They eventually swing back into place, but by the merit of flashing through, they do a significant amount of cutting forth damage in the immediate vicinity as I freak the thought. What color are those?

It's a combination of green and Lisa Frank, Mike. Oh, wonderful. Wonderful. At the charge of the screens, there's a neon green of emergency Ziggy, and they're still joined my birthday presence. At the front of the screens, they're led by a swimming time dolphin as it swirls all around you through the air.

As they're running through a horse gallops, followed by a rainbow. In between each screen, a different, extremely, very sticker. character, pixel. Oh. As my bonus action, I'm going to move my hologram basically right up next to Co.

Well, even, because it can go 30 feet, I think. Yeah, it could go 30 feet. Like right here? Yeah, because I want to be able to get Pike too. That's everybody, right? One more over. I think closer to Rhett.

And that should be. Always, I want to be with you. Yeah, that should be in. And so I'm going to do that as my bonus action. And then I actually didn't plan for this. Because you guys are doing so much damage, I forgot that I'm real. I'm actually going to...

How are you looking, Ziggy? I would say that I am hurt, but I'm not in any immediate danger. The fact that I'm grappled makes me very afraid. But in terms of physical damage, you've seen me way more beat up than this. All right, so what I'll do then is, because Pike does look pretty bad.

Yeah, I'm gonna beat up. I am, I am a not. Orange robot. He's in the jaws of the rock rock rock. He's Captain Hooking right now. I'm still are a farming, though. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I took no day.

Yeah, yeah. Curse you pan, curse you pan. No biggie. No biggie. Well, but I can't get to him, unfortunately. Uh-oh. Now, I don't want to art. You could literally do that.

But I don't think I had the movement. It's only 30 feet. Wasn't it right here? You are lined up at the bridge, but either way. Oh. 5, 10, 15. Am I missed that? I mean, it should be able to go through things.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you can get them. Was the range of them? 30 feet. For sure. You can put it there. Is that in range?

I need to be in touch. Touch. Can you get to the with diagos? One and a half. Two, an hour, four, five, six? Yeah. Perfect. Nice. You're going to watch as, you're going to watch

as the hologram is just playing and playing and playing away, this little mini pixel. And she kind of leans down Naurotu style and puts her arms behind her and runs to Pipe. All the while still somehow playing her key Tart. She runs to Pike and then puts her hands. out, grabs his hand and looks up and you hear Pixel actually say,

but the holograph's mouth moves, don't worry, I got you, buddy! And then you're gonna fill with this holographic light. It's all around you is this huge holographic star that just kind of like pulses and throbs as these little plus signs appear. And I'm gonna cast Cure Wounds at a second level. Oh, yeah, hologram coming in clutch already. HoloStar, holo star icon.

You're pretty bad, right? I'm gonna do it at a third level. Yay! I can see. This is, where is it? This is a D8. I rolled like shit. 14.

No, no, no, no, roll three more. No, it was, it's 3D8. No, it's 68. I believe it's 2D8 plus your... Plus 2D8 each spell level. So, oh my gosh. So it's four more. It's three, you roll three.

You roll three. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. So then another two. So what was I at?

You said 14, so now 16? 13, 19. 2021. What? Wow. These were higher than, do you want to borrow some? No, no, no, no, no. These are a fixed-o-dye.

No, these are my quibs. No, no, no, no. Okay, okay. They decide. That's so huge. That's a massive swing. That gives me a lot of more time. Co.

Cool. Unless you have anything else. Oh, no. That was my bonus action to move it, and that was my action. to cast through my hologram, so I'm good. Badass. Cool. I say,

Okay, fucking Pete, let's do this. And I'm pounding my chest as I then extend my fist, and there's a huge cacophonous thunder clap that radiates from me as both Rocking Croc and Go Go Gorilla. Rock and Go Go Gorilla need to make a, hold on. A strength saving. throw. Oh. I think they're pretty good at that.

Ooh, okay. That was, uh, whichever one's right on your left. The gorilla. That was a 25. That'll, he'll succeed. And then the, uh, the crock. Oh, this one actually, a seven. Oh, a seven. Oh, we're down. How would have been. Yeah, whatever? Um, he is knocked back, I believe. 10 feet. And he's prone because he failed by more than five. This guy is on. Oh, shit. That's awesome. Well, he would take bike. Oh, does he drop? Oh, no, he drops Pike.

It breaks the grapple. If I knock that. Well, but it's a strain. It's not a grapple. Oh. Is it? He said grapple. But if he meant restrained, then that's...

Oh, I thought you said Pike was restrained, not grappled. I can be wrong. He said... He has the restrained condition until the grapple ends. Okay. Then it probably breaks the grapple, I believe. I don't know if Dan is here to make... He's laid out.

If it's restrained wild grapple. It is. You're right that. I'm restrained. It does, brace it. So it- Got you, this guy's math. Man, one time, say no. And so I'm imagining he like stumbles back,

he hits, uh, he hits like one of the, the K-R-K-R-K-DA. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And you do the elephant noise. You hear that as he goes, flying back pike aura-farming splits free of the jaws as the crock, as rock-rock,

uh, is thrust backwards into an elephant, uh, shattering the fiberglass elephant destroying it. How dare you fucking do this? There are children present and single moms. Fuck you! As I- How much damage is that?

I'm sorry. No damage, it's just my time. It's just knocking them back. And so the monkey, he's like, okay, let's do this. That's definitely gonna hit. That's gonna be 12 points of bludgeoning damage. As I'm going to once again go in, do a wind-up, a DK punch and try to

knock them back into the river. Into the river. As I'm going to follow up as I am going to reach towards one of the gift shops and grab one of the big smiling toad mugs that is on the shelves. And it says like Triffony, Jmerald and all of like the names. I'm just going to grab the first. Gerbert. There's always a Gerbert.

There's always a Gerbert. as I'm going to swing the mug down on GoGo Gorilla. But you just did 12 to the crock, right? 12 to the romew of gorilla. Oh, the 12th gorilla. Oh, the 12th gorilla. Number three. I almost certainly miss with this.

That is a 13. 15. So, oh. 13, so I miss. I miss. Unless. Oh. Can you have a reaction?

I just got just got. my reaction back. And I think, am I too far for Ziggy? I need two more. Okay, I'm gonna do it. I'm trusting that Rhett has Ziggy. As B, the hologram,

the hologram looks towards you and lets out this a power cord, but, you know, like a powerful holographic cord. Yeah, yeah. Of poppy music. A key tar cord. in an attempt to alter this state and rile up

Oh, you want me to do that? Yeah, roll for it. That's a hologram. Which I can't remember what the, it's a D4 isn't that? I need it too. Yeah, but you know how bad my rolls are. Oh, this is really terrible. It's almost guaranteed. Holy smokes. The chlorine stench is getting to me a little bit. As I slip,

I'm a super slick, of the super slick, horribly blue-painted Neverblank. As I, as I, And then suddenly I am a bathe in this bright rainbow light as my frog mug strikes true with, um, what was it? Sherbert? What was this thing? Gerbert. Jerbert!

As the Jerbert-tone mug smashes down on top of the gorilla's head. Oh, sorry, salsa. As, um, that is going to be 12 points of bludgeoning damage. I'm going to activate the Topolmastery. Now that it's in this river, I believe it needs to make a con saving throw. Let me just double check about that. Well, I'll tell you, regardless of the save, I just rolled a six. So, at absolute max I'm at 11, no matter what the save is.

Okay, so I believe you fail. Oh, my God. It's topple. I have topple, I think. Hold on, let me double check. Sorry. No, no, you know. And he's Doc Pro, right?

Oh, no, it's only sap. Never mind, I don't have tappel. Top is with, I believe, one of my weapons. So I'm not tappling, topping him, toppling him. I'm just gonna push this guy back. We all heard it. You wish! As I jump into the river

as coded in the horrible dye like at the mini golf court. And I have one more. Roll the G-R-R-D. You have another hit? I have one more, as I am going to reach down and grab a chunk of like plaster rock, and I'm going to try to smash his head in. Absolutely. You find it easily. With that.

Natural's funny. Damn. Send him to hell. This guy doesn't work. So, fuck. Sent an antipotronic hell. Yes. Okay. That was a seven. That was seven. I saw it. I mean, this is kind of angled. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of angled. You have to be careful. Nine. Fourteen points of bludgeoning damage.

14 points of bludgeoning damage. And what do you know? Oh, the rock, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. You rush forward and you smash the rock on top of its head. And she's going, as it collapses into the... Yeah. Killed it. I'm just crazy smashing his skull and his animatronic skull.

And that is my turn. Well done. Completely rejuvenated from this rush of magic that Pixel has given to me. and then this animatronic getting bashed away as soon as I hit my feet I am out from behind this cabinet to be on this guy like Andy Funno

on an Italian hoagy and I jump through the air that is such a Chad move to use yourself as the analogy I jump on this guy and I just I lay into him and I'm going to hit him with everything I've got

he's prone so all four of my attacks and be at advantage as I use another one of my focus points to Flore your blows Attack number one is a 19 natural 19 to hit So that's gonna hit attack number two is gonna be 20 to hit Attack number three is gonna be another natural 19 to hit

Come on let me get these cards We're rolling we're rolling and then the last attack is going to be Oh a 16 to hit so all four hit I don't hit I don't hit You spent roughly like most of your movement to get there No, not even close. Oh shit. 12. What'd I say? It was... it was... Shit. It was 11, 12, 13, 14.

34 points of bludgeoning damage as I am just raining blows down on this thing to the best of my ability. And if it's still alive, there's something I'd like to do. He's still marked. Yes, he's still marked. I haven't missed. He's definitely marked, but if he's alive, there's one last thing I want to do. He is on by an absolute thread. as you're just raining these blows into them.

You're tearing through metal. It's blasting apart to shreds. You can see the jaw of the crock is locked open as its mouth doesn't move, and yet you still hear, then the last attack that I, um, lay on him is actually not a fist attack, but it's a,

I kind of come out of with it like a carot. body chop, like to the neck, and I'm going to spend an extra focus point to use energy disruption, which is once per turn when I hit with an unarmed strike or a disciple weapon, I can expend an essence point to make you make a DC-16 con saving throw, or this thing will have the stunned condition to the start of my next turn. Nice. 14. What was it? 14. Yeah, it has to get a 16. So the last attack, I'm trying to basically disrupt whatever flow of energy, electricity that's and a power source to essentially stun it until it start of my next turn?

You do so. You find almost what feels like it's electrical conduit components. And for one moment for a turn, as your blows rain in, you feel like you've shut it down. It's still crackling. The amount of electricity

that's pouring out of this thing now is immense. I used, at best, seven and a half, I used one and a half squares of movement to get to him. I am going to, I still have eight and a half movement squares. I'm just going to back up. Three, four, so I've used five and a half squares of movement. A good spot.

He's stunned. I don't know if he can do anything about that as I run away from him, but that's my whole turn. And he's stunned until your turn, right? Okay, no, save or anything? No, it just says on a success, the targets, he would be halved, but no, he's just stunned. He just has the stunt condition to start of my next turn.

Stunning strike is kind of nasty. Well, he'll stay there. The charge and chuck won't run. Oh my God. Right there. So I looked this up, and apparently you can do this. Even though I don't have a melee weapon, my grab gun is gigantic and massive.

So I believe, technically, I can basically improvised weapon, opportunity attack as a reaction. Okay, absolutely. Hell, yeah, I believe it. No, Zingy, I'm like kind of desperate. Seeing this guy spread away. I'm just going to try to like swing my gun at him.

And see if it hits. Oh, no, no way. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. 13 just misses. Don't worry, you guys, like you said, you try to swing it around. But it almost surprises you. the absolute speed,

in which he kind of hunched forward and sprinted back towards the stage. Just behind all the instruments that they have laid out there, you see what looks like almost curtains as he sprits towards it.

And Ziggy, as he stops, as he gets close, he raises you up, and you're almost horn to horn now. As he looks, as you think that He looks directly into your goggles as he goes, let's play, let's play, let's play a game. We can get them. I get to him. We just got to kill this. Seeing this guy sprinting, I'm going to turn a knob on my grav cannon,

and it's going to basically spin the aperture is going to kind of like, narrow halfway, and it's going to shoot this kind of ring of gravitons out at it as I'm going to cast a first-level spell called Gravity Shackle. It is a... He's going nowhere. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. It's getting barely within range, sixty feet.

Yeah, you can't. I bind a creature I can see within range with crushing bands of gravity. The target makes a strength-saving throw. How wounded is this guy? I think he's taking a Rhino is taking almost I punched him once. I punched him once. The

16. Oh shit. Is that exactly my 8? 9, 10, 11, 12, 35, 45. 16. No. He barely passes. But he's still going to take half of...

Oh, wait, didn't he Hot fix you? It's for attack. It's for attack. No, it's like D20 tests? It's for weapons. It's for weapons. Oh, oh, oh. Yeah, so this is a spell. You still think half of 10 damage.

So you take five force damage. Um, but his speed is not reduced by half and takes force damage at the beginning of each of his turns. Or at the end of each of his turns. I guess he'll catch him. This is a very determined. And so basically, these bands of gravity that I'm trying to basically get to slow him down in his sprint, just he shrugs them off. takes a little bit of damage and keep sprinting. Damn it!

I'm going to try to leap over this. I'm just going to stop through it. Like, it can't be that deep, right? I'm going to stop through the river. A difficult terrain. Yeah. One, two, three, four, five, six. And then for my bonus action,

sorry. Oh, baby. Okay. What? Wait, let's make sure that out of the range. 30-foot cone. One, next one and a half. Yeah, hell yeah.

Okay. So I'm going to pull a lever and the aperture will open up wide as this almost like not quite invisible, but you see like the light waves get bent through this like shimmering like a heat shimmer. Like a cone of graviton shoot out. It needs to make a strength saving throw again. He'll fail this time. Oh, true. presumably, 12. He fails. Oh, yeah. So this is my secondary fire. As a bonus action, I can do it five times,

so let me mark that down. Gathering rings surround the singularity chamber of your grab gun. You can unleash a wave of gravity in a 30-foot cone. Each larger, smaller creature in that area must succeed on a DC-16 strength-saving throw and we pushed up to 30 feet straight toward or away from you. Tractor beam!

I am going to literally tractor beam him in as he gets lifted off the speed and sucks straight towards me. This guy's fucked. We got him. We got him now, bro. What's fucking. This guy, Ziggi! This eruption and this eruption goes out as it is lifted off the ground. And this metallic creature zooms towards you, stopping right at the barrel of your ether cannon as it arrives directly in front of you. Zigi presumably screaming as he's thrust in the air as well.

And Ziggy, it is now your turn. I am going to look at this creature in the eyes and basically be like, Sorry, that's not the kind of game I want to play. And I'm going to type, now that I've seen that these things can be destroyed and watch my companions doing so well against them, and I am getting my senses back, Derek is also remembering that he took Spell Sniper

and that he doesn't impose disadvantage on range spell attacks. So he's going to, at a third level, tap a few commands, and cast... You are still restrained, though. So you'll be a disadvantage from that, right? Oh. It's a spell attack? In the attack roll, I believe.

Does he have the restraint condition or no? He does have the... It is a grapple... It has the grappled condition, and it has the restrained condition until the grapple lands. So it's both. I have nothing else to do here. I just need to blow him. Yeah, I mean, you're just

just a disadvantage. I'll just do it at disadvantage. I'm going to cast multi-thread. You can attempt to break his grapple. With what muscle? Just with your action. Oh. If you want a different option. Or you can just blast. Or you can just blast. It's totally up to you.

I just want to acknowledge that that is an option for you. I'm going to, I I'm just going to rely on my my grid boy and what tech I know. Ziggy wouldn't think I'm going to try to break free and like Hulk out here. So I will cast multi-thread. I get four of these, so maybe one of them will hit.

Disadvantage. So that's going to be a 12 to hit. What is VASC? 15. 15. That's going to be a 14 to hit. Oh. Yeah, just misses. Well, he's got a hit.

That's going to be an 18 to hit. That is. This one. And that's absolutely going to miss. Okay. I will do six points of fire damage as an array of green bolts flash out from my grid boy. They all go wide. Almost like Skyrocket, like, skyrocket

shooting off the ground. As they're flying, uh, as they're flying, uh, Did he constricting grip damage at the start of his turn? Roll a perception check for anyone who would think to ask that question, which is none of you because you're not Dan Dillon. No, I didn't even know as a thing. I did pretty well. 17.

I will say in addition to your 19 from previously, you would recognize that watching these malevolvella electronics strike, they often strike multiple times and a brutal flurry of blows in fact that you may have seen Pike get constricted and hit a second time

once it constricted Ziggi it did not hit him again and he did not take that damage so I'm seeing stuff that they're doing to these guys that they are not doing Zinghi alive that's not good this is fucked Pike doesn't know that

but Annie knows no yeah Co is I would say Wrette maybe be able to draw that conclusion. Oh, no. They're taking my son. Like green, sparkling sky rockets flying around.

The neon green of the hybrid grid mixing with the Lisa Frank of it all as one arcs up and falls directly down and hits him and you deal that damage. I don't have use right now for my bonus action and I don't have a use for my reaction, so I'm going to I'd say if you want to sacrifice both, I'll give you the option for the escape.

I mean, if you'll give it to me. If you want to use both as a combined, I'll give you the option to the escape. Four deaths. I believe. Acrobatics are athletics. Yeah, acrobatics are athletics. Your choice. I believe in you, Derek.

I will choose acrobatics. 16. 16 beats it. 15. 15 is the DC. You're covered in pizza grease. You're really hard to hold on. Your sneakers are.

There's extra If I'm free, then I would land, I would land in the adjacent square. Probably up here, yeah. Or to the side or something. So he doesn't move back. Yeah, yeah. I don't want to like Rob Rhett of him being right right in front of Rhett. That's on the arcade. All six hundred pounds of- All six hundred pounds of Sorian man just slowly the arcade cabinet.

Six hundred pounds is probably correct. Let's you're a giant dinosaur. I'm gonna risk it. I'm gonna go three movements to get around Rhett and potentially invoke the attack of opportunity. You'll take an attack of opportunity. Well, let's see, because he'll probably grab up. You get at the end. Yeah.

Which are you going? Oh, sweet. Lord. Oh, I was thinking that, yeah, sorry. You can't go this way. I want to get, oh, behind you. And then we'll see. But we'll see if I can. If he connects, he'll just grabble.

With a 25. It reaches out, and it reaches out and it just jittery, and grabs you by the hood of your hoodie, and reels you back in. I'm not going to feel so on. As it wraps its other, around you. I'm not gonna use this bell slot, but I'm prepared for this and I hit shield and this big deflector shield shows up in front of me and immediately pulls back into the grapple.

Brutal. As it pulls you back in. That's very fun. Incredible. Do I take damage? Not from a grapple. Oh, sorry. Yes, for the initial hit, you will have to take damage. Okay, that's important and I'll roll a concentration check. I'm golden. I'm goal. I love this campaign for. I I'm just barely golden. You're gonna take 17 points of bludgeoning damage. As it slams at your back, you take almost this hit at the nape of your neck, and then it pulls hard on your hoodie to get you back into its grasp and the other arm. It almost chokes you against the throat as you take 17 points of bludgeoning damage.

Now I'm bloodied. Oh, God. I am going to use my bonus action to move my hologram up to Ziggy. Yeah, easy. Well, first I'm gonna use it to, it's gonna call out, you've got this, Ziggy, I believe in you!

And you're gonna get some inspiration. I see three of them. For your boness action. And along with that bonus action, I can also move this guy, I believe. So that guy moves. And then through the hologram, I'm going to reach up and cast Cure Wins

at a second level. Huge. Damn, nice. I got you. I'm not gonna I'm gonna let anything happen to you, most likely. And that's my, that's my old turn. It's the high of the dulc. So 4D8, right?

Man, cure Williams is great. It's so good. I love, I fucking adore it. I'm glad that they made it stronger because He was fucking, eight, oh, hold on. And then a one. That's good.

And then a two. Oh, that's okay. Oh, that's okay, okay, okay. One more, right, or is that it? That's a four. 13 plus five. 18. 18.

18 points? Oh, you basically negated that entire tag. Hell yeah. That's huge. I shouldn't have gotten so excited about that. This guy still marked. The dye did not like my hubris. And that's my whole turn. Thank you, tiny floating pixel.

Anything for you, Ziggy? I am covered in sparking parts. And maybe, I don't know if there's a hydraulic fluid or anything like that. Oh, do I see the neon orange that kind of came over them dull and dissipate from this as I smash? I know that it's off working. Good question. But does the neon orange glow go away? That is a great question. I have a question for you, actually, Michael. I think this is kind of important. Yes. Speaking of neon orange. for this because I switch to orange,

does that mean my 10 feet always, or is it only for this one minute in here? For the one minute in there. So otherwise the orange doesn't do anything. Correct, correct, correct. Yeah, it's when you activate, you can activate it and stay orange. Okay, so I am going to,

I have some species traits, I forgot about that. I do this one, sorry, what is it, seven and a half? right? This is what? What's your total movement? 30. So you have six. So you can just count out. Yeah. Okay. I can get there. And I'll say...

You're covered in like a mixture of like a grease. And you can almost like... Like blood splatter as you hit the spray rack when you split this thing open and you see the light fade from his eyes as it crumpled and fell trying to beat his chest into the river, and it's blowback, the electricity, maybe even burn spots around you as you're covered in grease as you head towards this other creature.

Stiggy, did you see that? It was just like Primeval Fury! I realized that I can't get to charging chock, but I see that rock rock is still alive. He's prone and stunned and marked. As I see that there is the elephant. I look around, I've smashed my rock into the skull of Go-Go-Gorilla. And I see that the orange light is gone

And I'm gonna I see that there's an elephant decoration Like you know with this like plaster thing with like wire I reach up and I grab its trunk And I rip off the trunk Yeah And I say okay I'm coming As I just leave out And when you just swing down with a mighty

With a mighty call of the wild elephant Smashing down Advantage Or did you just auto-crit Or what happens now? No no no He's not prone. He's stung.

He's, Oh, he's prone. Great. Yeah. I stunned him while he's prone. I'm advantaged. He just did do it. Yeah, he's like mega screwed.

Okay. He's advantage, yeah. Okay, that will hit. I'm going to deal, um, the first attack is eight points of bludging damage. He's got to be run out of the edge here. He's like, you crash down with the mighty elephant trunk.

And once more, you see the, the, the rock and crock, the rock crock, as the jaw, as you strike in on its top, you snap the jaw close with such fury. It actually unhinges the bottom portion as it clatters to the ground,

and it slumps over forward, and his body clatters as it wildly gyrates on the ground for a moment, and you see the flickering orange in its eyes as it once more goes dim as well. That was my action. I am not close enough. I'm all out of movement, as I am going to,

I'm all out of movement. I'm all out of movement. I'm so lost without diggy. As I am going to say, hey you, don't fucking move. As you'll kind of see this almost arcing static electricity that connects me to this rhinoceros. As I am going to use compelled

Duel as a bonus action, cast compelled duel. You need to make a wisdom saving throw. Oh. Don't I fuck that up if I hit him? I don't know. Go for it. I don't want to mess up your shit. Wisdom save is a three. It is, I believe.

On a fail, the target is disadvantaged on attack rolls against any creature other than me, and it can't willingly move to a space that's more than 30 feet away from me. The spell ends up to make an attack roll against a creature other than the target. if I cast a spell on an enemy other than the target. If an ally of yours damage to the target

or if you end your turn more than 30 feet away from the target. That's fine. I use a spell slot. Go do what you want. But basically, I'm sighing and so there's almost as kind of like electricity magnetism. It's kind of like connecting it as I am an electrical resonance between the two of you.

It's almost like the hair on the back of your neck starts to stand up as the air lights with this charge between these two warriors. That is my turn. Blake? I can easily use all 50 of my movement to run around to get behind this guy,

but what I would like to do is basically flavor it that I run up behind Rhett and I yell, brace yourself as I like won it off your back and you like an awesome flip to get behind. And I think 100% Rett would bend at the knees a little bit and as he feels your feet land on his shoulders and he would, yeah, you know what I mean?

You would leap through the air. Are you wearing moon shoes? A hundred percent. Yeah, that was like that was. the prize you choose. Absolutely. You flip over this animatron get behind him, leaping off Rett's back, a maneuver you've pulled off multiple times before. And I am going to use the last two focus points that I have to do bonus action, Floria blows and also energy disruption on this guy. Please, Mike, kill him. I don't want to die before I watch. Oh, the first one is absolutely

going to be an initial miss because it's 8 plus 3, which is 11. I'm going to cash in on pixels inspiration. Iconic inspiration. That makes it a 16 to hit, so the first one will hit and also mark him. Thank you, Pixel. Anytime. The second.

He makes the save. The con safe, right? Oh, it doesn't make a con save? It'll be advantage. We could just do it at the start. Yeah. Because if you stun it and then the rest of the attacks are advanced. That's a really good point.

I did it backwards last time I did that, but I was trying to be flavorful. So yeah, okay, so he's smart. Yes, I'm going to use. my last focus point with on this first strike to also use my energy disruption. So DC 16 con saving thrower, he's stunned again. 15. So he's stunned until the start of my next turn. And I have no more focus points, but now all of my attacks are advantage. Correct. So the first roll on the second attack was 11. The next was a 9. That hits. So I've got two attacks to roll

damage for another natural 19, man. That's... God, they've got a ton of those. Another, no, that's a 12. I was going to lose my mind as another natural. All four attacks will hit. Okay. None of them are crates. Geez.

12. 13, 14. This 34, man. I'm just like consistently rolling. 34 points of bludgeoning damage. And he stunned until the start of my next turn as I have used every little piece of my kit possible. And I have nothing left. But I'm there to support rent and save.

Ziggy. You have laid in with this absolute pepper pot of blows. You've cracked its carepus. You can see that now the arcing lightning is coming from charging Chuck, wrapped up in his arms still Ziggy. As it moves to his turn stunned, however, everyone around him will now take... Oh shit. Unavoidable. Ten points of lightning damage. Okay. As it arcs out. Huh? Oh yeah. Also, it's a good. me? Yes. Everyone within five feet of him. So I don't know, I assume the hologram doesn't have HP. Yeah. Everybody else. So not code, not pixel. Everybody else, I think, is there. The

calm emotions goes away as I lose comps. Okay. So everyone ride the motion. Uh, yes, all your emotions everyone takes as it's, we all get a ring as it's glitching out, just completely stunned, its arms wrapped around Ziggy, pinged to its chest. The lightning arcs out as everyone takes 10 points of damage. Rhett, back to you. I am going to, I can squeeze through here because your hologram, is it obviously a hologram, not you?

Yes, obviously, a hologram. I'm going to go one and a half, two and a half. And in the canon of the world, she's always had this future. Yes. In the canon of the world, she's not really. 100%. 100%. This is not new to you. It's definitely not new to me, so it's not new to you.

Alright, Biggie. Better duck! You're crushed like a soda cam. And you're at a advantage. Yeah. Hit. Hit, natural 19. We've rolled like 18.

Sorry, everybody. Sorry. Yeah. Just can't get it across the finish line. Right now. 24 points of force damage. damage, and... Gray's, Slow, or Vex?

Slow's probably... I'm going to apply the slow weapon yesterday. And so on the second hit, you will see the gravity just like start weighing him down and pressing on him, and his joints kind of like to sag towards the floor. You're the bending of metal as this hits. And how do you want to do this?

Oh, yes. Yes! Basically, I want the... The shots will hit him, but that's not what brings him down. It's the stun and everything else. And the gravity finally, like, crushes him to the ground and releasing Ziggy from his clutches

and hopefully he falls away as the Amazon comes from, he crumbles almost into like a heat on the ground. I'd like catch him and pull him out. I would say, you don't. It has him grappled, and as the gravity begins to crush him, He releases Ziggy as you fall on your back looking straight up at him, as it begins to crash towards you, looking like it's going to pin you. And as it crushes to its knees, it puts its hands out.

And it almost tables over top of you as it stares into your eyes. And it says, let's play. And then that neon orange light fades. As you feel also that gravity pulling you towards the back. But in its final moments, it stops there and die. before crushing him. Oh, damn. Guys, what the fuck?

Thanks for saving me, Pixel. Oh, yeah. Come on, get out from under there. I'm okay. I want to run over to the dude. The nematone. Oh. Yeah, he's dead.

And see if there's any, like, it was probably obvious that he was killed. But the truck, in fact, bit his head off. So he's just totally... He was like... Did all of his arms get, like, gripped apart? It pierced through him, grabbed him by an arm, bit onto his head, and jackfruited him apart.

Uh, as to, to start the, to them to come along. Jackfruit is actually pretty good frozen. I like that one. They would know. They would know now. Stay away, get away from here. It's exploded into blood. Um, I am going to use my manufacture action.

If I give initiative is over. Um, what is, what is that look? And it's not over, then, it's not my term. Did someone say polisa? As soon as the final animatronic is destroyed, you hear a glitching sound from the direction of the stage and see a bright orange glow radiating from the eyes of the last remaining creature.

Hungry H. Hippo himself. The machine remains motionless, but a panel opens in its chest and something emerges from it bouncing out on a spring from the mechanical hippos what looks like a wrapped present with an oversized tag

that reads, Happy Birthday, Dino Bite. Then, suddenly, the orange glow leaves the animatronic and power returns to, did someone say pizza? The lights clack back on in the bright colors of the arcade words to life with binging and bleeping the terrified patrons of the pizza arcade let out sighs of

relief, whimpers of fear, and mumblings questioning if it's all really over. You see much of the mass, especially those that have clattered near the door, begin to check it as the lights come back on, the locks undone. The second someone starts to make it out, many of them begin to scatter. Very few remain in the arena as they are figuring out what's going on, what's happened. I'll reach up and grab Red's arms and he can slide me out from underneath the... You all right? What the hell? Destroyed, um, animatronic and I'll look up.

Whoa, whoa, what was that? The lights came back on? I haven't noticed that the... Yeah? Yeah. Look. I'll look to where Pigsler's pointing. Isn't DinoBite?

Doesn't that mean? Well, yeah, that's my Hypercoder name. That's my handle. How would they know that? I mean, people know that Dinovite exists. I... But how would they know it's you

and it's your birthday? Oh, no. Did you go into another chat room again? I go into a lot of chat rooms, Bixel. Fuck! I don't know. Someone must know my identity. He's supposed to lie when they say ASL.

I look around and I, I'm not sure if like as soon as the doors I'm not, are people like fleeing, but I'm gonna look around and say, is anybody hurt? Does anybody need help? And I am going to attempt, if there's anyone that's been hurt in any of the shrapnel or falling over themselves, I would like to try to go help. Yeah, absolutely. I'd say that as the doors opened, every able-bodied person that could that wasn't with somebody else has sprinted out of, did someone say pizza? What's left are people who were injured in the scuffle, the charging of the malevolatronics, the bursting, the crackling of electricity, even just the lights going out as people were starting to charge and clutter and rush out in moments knocking people around into tables. some people stepped on.

They're definitely people who are bruised, battered, bloodied, and you can absolutely make your way around the restaurant, finding several of them and beginning to work to stabilize them as you do. I'll expend all 25 points of my invigorate or lay on hands. That's the enforcer version of that. And kind of helping patch people up, helping get people cluttered. I'll say, the circumstance, are you still alive? Sorry about your mentor.

That guy's fucked. And I'm going to basically just do the best I can. Oh, holy fuck. What was that? Oh, man, the second that shit started happening, I just dope behind the bar. This isn't my first time. Yeah, well, good thing you survived.

I'll look. I'm like, the circumstance, I hate to say it. I think the single moms ran out of here. Oh, man, they did. They did. The second those doors opened, they got the kids out. out of here I saw you work in an angle yeah I don't think there's gonna be any

thank Agathos it's the equivalent of Friday T-A-I-T-E-F I'm always saying it's we pick up the babes best spot to take them for for startini but now I think I think I think we're out of luck on that one I assumed that was coming and I'll finish helping people while this is going on I'll turn and try and like pick up stuff and also like like bring a little bit piece back you'll notice is you start to maneuver through the crowd. There are a lot of people, broken arms, blooding, stabilized as you can.

There are a couple of additional people who actually died in the event of this happening. The malevolatronics killing the waiter in the beginning of it, but the sheer panic that it threw throughout the crowd, there are several adults who were just knocked into things or kind of trampled over in the mass hysteria.

as this event occurred. And you come across about, we'll say, three or four, just people who have passed. But as you move through, you're able to kind of help and assist with other people who are doing so as well to kind of stabilize the crowd, or stabilize the people who remain. That's everybody else doing?

I'm just going to move over close to Ziggy and just kind of stay near him. Stay back. Everyone stay back. We gotta do something about that thing, though, and we can't just, like, Sigi, go up and take you. No.

What if it's a, what if it's a bomb? I'll get it. No, you can't go get it. What if you, what if you don't get guarded? It could be, it could be a bomb. It could be some, some sort of weird trick. I think we, we need to take it, but I, can I, can I, can I ask Silica to take it?

She, she, she should be able to lift it out. Can she open it? I can certainly ask the GM that, but it's the equivalent of Magehand. I can snatch it with a few commands. Before anyone gets close, I'm going to walk around the stage, and basically, like, as I've done before in my past,

when someone is, like, dismembered like this, basically collect them and try to sort of put them back together somewhat, like, on the ground, and I pull one of my tools that's attached to the ether tanks on my pack, and I'm going to use the manufacture action to almost like 3D print with the magical physics of ether a thermal blanket

and just to kind of cover the gore so that people don't have to see it you bring the body forward and he was almost torn clean in half but his left side splits diagonally and hangs on just barely at the hip as you kind of drag him forward the two halves almost just from tension start to move towards each other.

You find the head still in the vicinity of the rock and crock where it lies now around the stage as it was ripped and cast off and you grimly bring it all together and attempt to lay it in a way that replicates how he was known. Eerily, he still wears the hungry age hippo hat atop his head, but his face almost chewed, gnawed, uh, clean off as you move it to the top of the body and you cover the grizzly scene with the thermal blanket. Um, all like, as I'm like kind of close to this hippo animatronic, I'm gonna keep an eye on it just to make sure it's not coming to life as I do this and then I'll step back. You're comfortable with her doing it, man. Go ahead. Seeing the absolute disgusting mess that's there, the state that the rest of

restaurant is in and then also the fact that we might get blown up by whatever's in this bomb, I light up a cigarette. That's fucking great. The flambango poster. Yeah, right in front of the flambango poster even. You do so, absolutely. Let me just do a quick search here. I have to get about 30 feet away. I type a few commands.

And if the package can be removed with 10 pounds of force and if it could be lifted, if it's 10 pounds or greater than I won't be able to actually manipulate it. But if you think it's less than that, then the projected a Dallophosaurus hand of silica will appear in an array of lights, green lights that emerge from the top of my grid boy, and reach out and almost like hard light, be able to physically grab the package and perhaps yank it free from the present.

presentation. As it removes from the spring, nothing occurs as it does, but the orange light from Hungry-Each hippo's eyes fades as you remove the gift from its chest. All right, well, it didn't go off right away. Should I open it here or should we get out of here and take it back to the Rhapsody? No, you should definitely open it here because at least if it's going to explode, it blows up the pizza place and not the Rhapsody. We can't stay here even a minute longer. I'm sure the authorities are on their way and we do not want to get caught here.

I'll open up real quick. All right? Three people are dead. Don't get any more of us killed. I'll stay back then. I'm too curious. I race forward and hold the package from Silica's hand and I will...

Is it wrapped? It's got this. It is wrapped. It looks like almost... a traditional birthday present with that happy birthday dino bite tag hanging off of it and there's a bright ribbon that wraps and ties around and cleanly tied in a bow. I'll pull that free, loosen it up, pull the tear the paper off. You grab the ends, you pull off the bright ribbon and rip the colorful wrapping paper

and open the simple metallic box. You're not sure what to expect. a bomb, poison gas, some horrible deformed body part. Your imagination runs wild as you think of everything that could be contained within this. But you cannot have guessed what you find. A chunky and bulky game system. The plastic case of it, a deep gray. And the screen, a dull orange matching the buttons that emerge from the device. The name is printed beneath the screen and you immediately recognize this as an Astrovox Grid Boy 3200 one of the first models of Grid Boys ever made only you

know how truly retro and rare this gift is it's it's one of the original Grid Boys it's a 3200 yeah I I've only ever seen pictures of these this is this is a gift. Why, and who would have sent you something like that? I'm assuming that thing's expensive. I have no idea. I have no clue. Who went through all this trouble?

They tried to kill you, and they give me this? Could it have been your parents? Do you think that they're mad that would spend in time with you? If my parents were mad at me, then Sorok forces would show up, and they would have ganged me. I don't think they even know how to... Whoever gave me this knows where I am. And they know who I am.

And they know what you am. You know what I am. Let's get out of here. I'll look at this. Look, if everyone's okay, you check on everybody. I agree. I don't think we should stick around. We don't want this heat. Circumstance.

I know you don't get paid enough for this. Can you call you? Can you cover for us? Oh, cover for who? I didn't see a thing, eh? Cover for us. What do you mean you didn't see a thing? No, no, no, no, no, go, go, go.

What? Cover for us. Yeah, what do you mean? What do you say? Of course I'm covering for you. Oh, okay, sorry. Yeah, I got it, I got it. I think I got it kind of into that.

Not a peep, not a peep out of me, eh. Big Monkey Strong mode, so I'm in the... It's all good, it's all good, eh? Not a peepie. Not a peep. As long as we're not peeping. I'm not even going to say anymore. I'm going to hop the counter over into the prize floor and I'm going to grab the Nilari body pillow.

I love that. You do so easily. He wouldn't begin to stop you. There's barely anyone left in. Did someone say pizza? I mean, even the people that go has stabilized. The second they can move, they get the hell out of here. out of here. I throw the tickets down, like that's some form of payment and, uh, come on, let's go.

Dude, if I'm the circus thing he's losing his opportunity night. I'm never going back to work there again. I'm going to find another new job. Oh, yeah. He pounds the, he pounds the register and just, it just takes all the notes that are in it. Uh, absolutely slips him into his pockets. Uh, never saw the thing. Here, here, Bix. Thanks. It says, uh, xilar made with real mylar. Ziler. A ziler? Yeah. Oh, well, then my rhyme doesn't work. Oh, no, do it anyway. Zyler made with Real Myler? It doesn't fly. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. Thanks.

I love this. Did you know he's my favorite of the Nilari Knights? I did not know that, but we still need to catch up. He's the one with the curly hair. Does he do this? Yeah. Oh, God.

He's got a bust. No, no, it's a sword thing. I don't know what it is really. Gun blade? Yeah, that one. No, it's the other one. the bust disorder. Well, let's watch it when we get back to the Rhapsody.

I still have some birthday to enjoy, I think. Yeah. Let's get the fuck out of here. Thanks to circumstance. You're a real one. We owe you. Yeah, thanks. Oh, don't worry about it.

Don't mention that. I know I won't. And you all leave, did someone say pizza? You make your way out of this now broken and shattered mixture of animals and trees and shattered chairs and salsa the toad, everything still littering the ground as you put this place to your back and you limp out of here a little bit. A surprisingly brutal battle on Ziggy's birthday. You maneuver out of Meteor Mall.

The lights almost blinding to you as you walk out of what was previously this dark area. though, it had begun to light back up. And you make your way back to the Rhapsody and you find it. You've been to meet your mall many times. You get back aboard and you maneuver to, or you do whatever you'd like to as you kind of put that as you put that event behind you and you move back towards perhaps the captain's chair or the lounge or wherever you would go in this moment. Happy birthday, I had a, I mean, all things considered us. I had to, I mean, all things considered us. I from the threat on your lives and the fact that I was almost, you know, taken away by force into some mysterious location. I, it was really fun up until that point. Are they going to take you out the back? I don't know.

Maybe he was just going to take me to give me my present, you know? If we hadn't prevented that and that presentation had happened, would they have even continued fighting? I'm just glad everyone else is okay. I'm sorry that I put you all at risk. I, you know, I, I hack and I hypercode and I do stuff online like that, but it's not, I don't do anything real mean, super mean. For what it's worth, I don't think this is your fault at all. So don't take any blame, but we do need to get back to the task at hand.

You mean our bounty? Yeah. I agree. I can we just enjoy the rest of of today and then

and then tomorrow we can jet off yeah there's really not much more we can do about this anyway until we have more information

so we might as well go look for that that bounty thing I want to check out this grid boy and I have to enjoy my own present I spent

some money buying myself upgrade parts for Silica she's gonna be way smarter I'm sorry your birthday's ruined

Ziggie It's not ruined. I told you. I got to spend the whole day, nearly the whole day with you guys, and you guys got me these awesome presents. I got a processing upgrade, parallel threads. I got ram sticks, mem chips, fractal generator, feedback implants. Did you get her the fat cladierin 9,000 that you were looking at in that magazine?

The what? The fat claderen. No. 9,000. No, I got a coherence drive instead. a little expensive. Next bounty, as soon as we get our next target,

no, no worries. We'll be able to I'll be able to afford the next tier. You don't have to put on a brave face for us, Ziggy. I understand. You must be bummed. About your birthday turning out this way. I mean, I really tried to

make it a good one. It was a really good one. Red, I'm not being disingenuous. I'm being serious. Yeah, it was awesome. Awesome! Red! Are you- We had so much fun.

Yeah, come on. We're gonna make everybody's birthday special, you know what I mean? And I just... It was special. I mean, like, it wasn't... It wasn't your fault. It was... I mean, I don't know what the fuck happened to those animatronics. I don't know. How the hell did they do that?

It's like, I don't think that, I mean... I think that the one that was on stage could just like rock back and forth and like pretend to play the bass. I don't think it could have done that normally. It was like, it would have done that normally. wasn't manufactured like that? Don't be down on yourself. If we hadn't had literally the best day ever right now because of all the death and stuff that we saw. But the fact that we're like enjoying each other's company and talking about our next bounty and we're not like super miserable and everything's horrible is because we're having such a good time before all the bad stuff happened.

You know you're right. I guess what we witnessed today probably top some of the worst gore and violence, even the most griseled. soldiers and mercenaries see. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate it, everyone. We can't not think about the implications. What this means, though.

I mean... How do they know that you're dying by... Not only how they did this, but why. That's what I'm saying. I told you. No more mics chat.com. I'm... I'm very careful.

It's true in me. I put up the... Firewalls, water walls, earth walls, Earth walls and air walls. I have it all. There are no way. There's no way someone could figure out who I am. It's impossible.

Well, look, before you turn that thing on, will you let me look at it? I have a few thoughts before I turn it on as well, but yes, here. I'm sorry the skin I got you won't work on that thing. They're not the same size. No, but mine's the newer model. I'm very happy with my...

This thing, it's slow. It's a relic. That's what makes it special. is its rarity, not because I'm gonna use it. You're not gonna use it at all? Oh no, I'm keeping, no, look at this fucking thing and there's like a cute little kitten that looks like. Given that this is kind of a relic,

and it's like old tech, it's sort of cassette-esque. I'm hoping to, I wanted to do two things, I'm gonna sit down at my desk with it and just inspect it using my tools. I don't wanna take it apart in case it has some sort of like triggered thing if you try to mess with it or like, you know, break the warranty, whatever, you know. But I want to at least look at it to see if it seems dangerous. And as I do that, my eye will sort of glow and I want to do a scan on it as I'll cast Detect Magic as well on it.

As long as we're doing Detect Magic, can I flavor it that like I'm sending some code to Red's eyes and also throw in an identify in there? Hell yeah. Yeah. What does it identify do? If it is a magic item or some other magical object, I learn as properties and how to use them, whether it requires attunement, how many charges it has, and if any, an ongoing spells are affecting the item, what those are. I do not learn if it's cursed, if we're doing that.

What's that gonna cost me, though? It's just for me a level first, first level. No, but using it, I think, costs like 500 notes. Yeah. Yeah, it does. It does. No, no, no, I'm casting it as a ritual. Does that still mean it fucking... Yeah. Okay, well... All right, and what are... And you're doing detect magic?

I'm just doing detect magic, but I'll get it back to Ziggy. I don't know how much money we have and Ziggy doesn't care. So he cast identified. This is important. And Detect magic does... Oh. You learn a couple things, you learn. Basically, I just can tell if there's like a spell affecting. it or if it's like a magical thing. You, I got it. What else did you say you get? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, I got it.

Here's what. You, with your, as you start to investigate this, Rhett, you're not, you're moving it over, your eyes zooms in, you give it a whole look over. You get a couple slips of different vision types as you go through it to try and detect what it is. You notice two things. You notice two things.

there does seem to be almost a light emanation of what I'll say looks like evocation magic, as well as it's been opened before. Ziggy, there's definitely some... Faint. Faint. Okay. There's definitely some sort of touch of something magical on here. All right. Just be careful with that.

Thank you. I'm going to turn it on. I slide the Slid the switch on the top Slides right to the side I slide it from from I take a few steps back for my friends And I switch it from off to on

You step back And it does If I'm going to interface with this thing You flip on the switch I jump in front of code of protection Of the retro grid boy And it's orange light flicker on with a glow. A musical tone plays as the name Astrovox appears on the screen. Then,

garish orange ones and zeros filled the screen as the code shifts and there's a blinking message. Let's play. Look, it says let's play. That's what those fucking things were saying. Over and over and over and over and over and over again. Yeah, they were saying that. Yeah, but that's also like a gaming thing, right? So maybe that's just what that thing says when it turns on. Whoever's doing this lacks games. Yeah, and they want to play a game with me. This is some hybrid code or shit. You do, in fact, get a sense as you look at it, that after the let's play message comes up, as you hold this retro grid boy, the cursor drops as there's a blinking. No game

that activates per se. But it looks as if it wants you to interact with code. I will immediately start to try some of the baseline commands that I would know. Different things that I would type into the operating system to see if I can... It's the equivalent of that moment in the Matrix when Neo tries like control, out-delete, and then he tries like control shift tab. And he like tries a bunch of different things. to just sort of see what kinds of reactions

and responses he's getting. I go immediately into scientific method mode and I am just attacking it from different vectors, seeing what happens when I try different things. Roll a computer check. Oh. Grid spiking. Roll a grid spiking check.

Oh. That's going to be a 23. With a 23, as you begin to attempt to grid spike this, you see a couple of things. You start to fire in the lines of code. You understand immediately that this device has been heavily encrypted.

And to break the encryption is a sort of a game. And as you begin, the screen splits, code entering on the bottom half, as you race through exploring this encryption, attempting to crack it. Above, you see a figure, a little Sorian that runs across the ground, runs across the ground and begins to jump to dodge obstacles coming into the way. You jump, you dodge something skittering across the ground as it comes past you. You jump, you input lines of code to crack the next level of encryption. It fails. Your character falls into a pit.

You're back to the start. You begin again. And this will carry on as you attempt to crack the encryption of this gridboy through Oh, the commands are the moves and then and my character is the the the algorithm. Okay, okay, hold on, hold on. This is a game. Hold on, hold on. This is real. I think you're enjoying this a little too much, Ziggs.

I know it's your birthday. I guess you should be enjoying yourself, but this person tried to kill all of us. You're right. You're right. You're right. It doesn't matter how neat the puzzle is. This is danger. This is a threat.

Just keep in mind that this was a targeted threat, okay? Yeah, yeah, I'll be safe. Should I only play it like when you guys are around or should I... You know more about this than any of us, and we trust your judgment, but just keep in mind that this is not just a game. No, it's not. No, that was really serious. I mean, this person ended someone's life. So I'll be careful. Thank you. And thank you again for the card.

It's the least I could have done. All right, I'm going to enter sleep mode and just sort of set the grid boy aside. I sort of like bite my tongue a little bit and you can tell that I'm eyeing it. But with as much restraint as I can muster, even though it's obvious that I want to just dive into it and pour myself into a mystery, I would use this moment to feel caution given how, how recent the events of the violence was. You do so. Your curiosity at its peak still,

you exercise caution, you close it, you put it to the side, and it's in the mix of these moments as you're exploring this, as you're deciding whether or not to delve deeper in this moment, that Hank also yips out. Wop-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w.

You recognize the tones of his yips as he calls to you. You understand that an incoming communication is coming in, an incoming call. You even know the name, Graff. That's Graff. About damn time. Man, I've been waiting on him for ages.

That's a good sign. I'm going to run to my desk and hit the button that sort of opens the call up. Graff, you son of the bitch, how you been? Rett, hanging in there. How about you? I mean, we've been on Portia Bella's tale for damn near three months now.

he got anything for me. Anything. Yeah, yeah. I have something. Listen, you remember when I first set you up with the job with Quibbley and Gluck? You remember that? Yeah, how could I forget that? And they ended up double-crossing us and almost killing us.

Yeah, that's right. I recall that, Graf. I feel badly about that. And as you started to explore, you know, Portia, you took this one on, I, well, I got to thinking. I mean, heck, you know, I got bad information. I know who I got it from. And, listen, I heard from him recently. Filled by the name of Scudder, Balf Scudder.

And, well, I mean, heck, I didn't like the sound of it when he called me, man. He said he had information, information to give, that he was going to go dark, cut comms. He sounded a little weird, man. He sounded panicked. And, well, I think if anyone might have a lead on Porsche, I'm worried it might be him. And I got, he reached out, I got his current coordinates, man. He's held up in a penthouse. Wait, this is the guy that hooked you up with guns.

Yeah, listen, at the time, I didn't think anything out. I thought he got bad intel from who gave it to him. But it doesn't seem like that's the case. Yeah, he passed it along to me to set them up with you. And you're saying this guy, he wants to meet? Well, he's going dark, he's cutting comms. I think, listen, he told me where he's at. I have his location.

I think you can get there. I'm guessing if you want to do a call. And I'll look up. Remembering what happened back then with them going after Ziggy and then today with the happenings. And thinking to myself, it's called connective. Oh, shit. By the gods. Call.

Send me where he's at. Listen, you just got to, you got to tread lightly when you get. get there, all right. He was panicked. He was paranoid, man. He was sure somebody was trying to kill him. All right. So, so Rhett, when you get there, all right, he's hold up. It's on RZL. He's got to, he's in a penthouse, okay? But he thinks someone's trying to come kill him. I don't know if he's paranoid or what, but you got to keep your feet on the ground and your head on a swivel, all right? And knock light. Don't freak him out. Graff, I owe you a bottle of something. This is the first solid.

believe we've had in fucking months. All right, we'll head right there. I'll let you know how it goes. I set you boys up. I set you fellas up with some bad intel, all right? As far as I'm concerned. Ah, that's old. That's ancient history, grap.

Don't worry about that. I trust you. I know it wasn't you. But this son of a bitch, you better have some fucking answers. Yeah. Well, here's hoping, man. Here's hoping.

That's not another trap. But like I said, two eyes forward, two eyes back, huh? we'll be careful you always are all right happy hunting stay safe

um I'll hang up you gotta leave nice good news yeah hon cones on goats

well I don't know but this is all weirdly connected and I I'm almost hoping it as nothing to do with what happened today, but

seems awfully fucking coincidental. I'm gonna go to the bridge. I'm gonna walk up the stairs. And I'm going to join Hank in his seat and I'm going to punch in the coordinates that it gave me. And I'm going to... Definitely sent you a packet of information along with that.

I'll print it, I'll print out a piece of paper, my MacQuest. You should be print Galaxy Quest. I'll put it in front of Hank, all right. Set our course, Hank. And, uh, the dude seems scared, all right? Look, I trust Graf, and I don't think he had any clue

what was going on with Quibbley and Glob, but those are those two fucking weirdos that had our rooms that you told us about? Yeah, they were the... I mean, Zicki told us that they tried to kill him, and... They were members of our crew, but it turns out that they were actually, like, Black Market Assassins trying to kill because of, you know, as important.

parents and whatnot trying to start war and and a graph got tipped off by this guy, this one Balfa Scudder. And so I, look, apparently he's scared. It seems like some sort of dark and shady dealings, but look, I'm going to make him fucking give us answers. What the hell happened? How we got that bad info? What the fuck he knows about all this?

because not only will it maybe lead us to to Gones but it might save Ziggy's life so we gotta fucking be quick man what the fuck

do you do Ziggs I didn't do anything all I do is play games and hack and follow you guys and follow the bounty hunting code right I mean my kill count is is really really high but it could be some vengeance path

I don't know Body count. Oh, sorry, my body count is really, really high. No. It's kill count. Oh, damn it. Got it wrong again. So are we going to go help this guy?

Like, right away then? It just sounds like all these assholes who try to deal with mercenaries and cut throats. It always, they get their money, but it always ends up cutting their own fucking throat. Look, let's hope this guy's desperate. And that he's willing to talk. Alright, that's the best case scenario. And yeah, we can't delay. If this guy's looking to cut and run,

we might miss our chance. We got to go now. We don't know how deep and dark this goes, right? It makes sense that, you know, we won't communicate on any kind of official channels, but... Do we know how long it's going to take the get there? Yeah, Hank says it'll take about...

Insert time, it'll take... As luck would have it, you're an adjacent sector. So though time is a... of the absolute essence. You think this will be one of your quicker trips, still at somewhere around five to six days. Okay. Well, good, because then we have time to rest and relax,

because we got the ship be out of us tonight. Take it easy, it'll take a couple days, and I'll let you know when we're close. Okay, perfect. And I'll go back up and I'll help Hank and just get us going. And I'll do some active piloting just to kind of get us on our course and probably won't take any of the rings.

We'll just take the ether currents there if it's one sector over. Yep. And you feel that as you sit down, hands on controls, you all motion towards wherever you would normally settle in as the journey towards the next destination begins. You feel the throne of the Rhapsody take off and start moving there.

You make your journey to the world of Rziel. Following the coordinates and information that Graf sent you. You arrive after several days of travel descending upon a glittering metropolis with its brilliant gold and pristine marble and enormous statues and monuments that are hallmarks of Solar Federation territory. You make your docking at the spaceport and a quick taxi ride gets you all to the luxury apartment building where both scumns. Butter lives. You make your way up the elevator and arrive at the right door. This place is nice. I'm not above torturing this guy. Can I get the okay? No, no, no, he's scared. What do you mean? We're just going to ask questions.

He's flighty. Talk to him first. I'm gonna be cool. Do you want to do the honors of me? I've learned my lesson. It's more important that he doesn't get away. He's gonna be, he's gonna be skittish. It seems like a pike job. All right. Scudder.

Scotter. up in the door. You knock on the door twice. You call out twice. You wait for a moment or two. You hear no response. It's graphs, friends. And pixel.

And Vigy. I'm going to try the handle. And I'd like to see if the door is locked. I'm presuming it is, but I'm going to give it a try. Be careful, Ziggy. All right? You don't know who's after you. When you try the handle, you find that the door is unlocked.

As you enter, all is quiet. Your calls for Scudder are not answered. But as soon as you walk down the hallway into the living room, the smell of iron hits you. As you see a huge pool of crimson on the floor, an untouched whiskey glass sits on a glass table in front of a couch. All of it splattered with blood, as are the walls, floors, and everything else in this room. Sitting on the couch you see what once may have been a middle-aged etheron in an expensive suit, but where a head would be is a pulpy mess, and his body is filled with needle-like shrapnel as if a scatterblast went point blank against his skull. His gore-strain shirt has been ripped open, and you see a tattoo over his violet skin, the image of a serpent eating its tail.

Portia Bella Goans has already been here. She has done her job, and she is gone. And that's where we'll end the session. Oh, thanks for running session one. We're not done yet, though. Season two, folks. Season two, we're back! Oh my god.