Mayday Plays - Tales From The Loop Ep.4 - "Home Game Advantage"

Episode Date: April 30, 2023

The swamp kids work together to protect MORF from the agents of The Shed and learn a valuable lesson in letting go. We've got merch! https://ko-fi.com/maydayrp (t-shirts and stickers) Thanks for checking out our channel! We offer a bunch of art, music, and behind-the-screen access including Vegas By Night 1-on-1 sessions on our Patreon; https://www.patreon.com/maydayrp including access to our discord server! We started as a podcast. Listen to us @: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mayday-plays/id1537347277 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5vdTgXoqpSpMssSP9Vka3Z?si=73ec867215744a01 Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/mayday-roleplay Here are some of our other socials; Twitter: https://twitter.com/maydayroleplay Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maydayrp/ Website: https://maydayroleplay.com/ Thanks for your support! Broadcasted live on Twitch -- Watch live at https://www.twitch.tv/maydayroleplay

A gnarly good morning to you all and welcome to the finale of Mayday's bite-sized pint-sized Tales from the Loop campaign. My name is Lev and I will be your babysitter for this game. We just have a few announcements to work our way through before we get started. First off, All Tales has been recorded and this is no different for the mental and scheduling sake of everyone involved, but those of us who are available will be in chat and watching along, so thank you for joining us. Number two, if you've missed out on any chapter of Tales from the Loop, do not fear.

You can still check it out on Spotify, Twitch, VOD and our YouTube channels as of right now. If you're wondering how you can get even more Mayday in your life, you can usually catch our streams here every other Saturday for our main show. We are taking a little tiny moment of a breath between seasons right now, but I think you'll be happy to see what's coming next. You can follow us on all major platforms as well as Spotify and SoundCloud for podcasts from the recordings of all of our major shows and streams, and finally, you can donate to our Patreon and join our Patreon Discord.

The Discord is really where we've had a great chance to build a little family or on the content we put out. We have patrons who have joined each other's games and played in some hosted by ourselves. We have once again struck up the doom to repeat Deadpool now that Season 3 is deep in recording. And of course, we show off our little loves and our most chaotic means. In addition to all of that craziness, you get the opportunity to listen to exclusive Patreon content and behind-the-scenes information. We'd also like to give a little special shout-out to our handler-level Patreon subscribers.

It's because of their involvement that we can be thinking of bigger picture ideas that we have for Mayday, as well as everyone's support. It all means a whole, whole lot to us. Thank you to Ankh, Ojipun, Bimblewort, Cameron S, Eric A, Jonathan M, WTF, Ren, I know how to say your name, Ren, WTF, and Alex Johnson. Other than that, please check out our Vampire the Masquerade game, Vegas by Night, run by our resident monster boy Caleb, our Delta Green campaign, Doom to Repeat, in anticipation of Season 3 with our GM Sergio, and our fantasy campaign centered in the island world of Ashoka,

run by Eli. Also Orpheus, the Orpheus system that is run by our dear friend Vince of Black Project Gaming fame, all of which are available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube and Twitch. This is usually where the shout out to Vince would go, but he's back, so we got our lad, we are all met. So that's great. That's where we're at.

Before we get started today, I just wanted to say that Tales from the Loop is set in the 80s, but the community is pretty isolated. Triggering content warnings for this episode include mentions of hunting, people going missing, aggressive behavior towards children, and distant or negligent adult figures. It's, as a caveat explanation, the aggressive behavior is not going to be any kind of physical abuse. It's just maybe following, maybe scaring, not anything, harming them in a physical sense. So just so that's out of everyone's realm of possibility.

Okay, that's enough of my yammering. There is a morph to protect and a town to prep for winter. Let's play some Tales from the Loop. All right, before we get started, let's meet our players one last time. I of course am your GM love. I use they, them pronouns. Yeah. Next.

I am Carrie Smith. I use she, her pronouns. I'm playing Peyton the Troublemaker, and she also uses she, her pronouns. Hi, everyone. I'm Allison or Insight Chacked. I use she, her pronouns. I am playing Henry Beggs or Hamburger Boy or HB, and he uses he, him pronouns. He is a jock.

Hi, everyone. I'm Lex, also known as Titanomica RPG. I use they, them pronouns. I'm playing Chaeyoung Kim, the computer geek who uses they, she pronouns. Hello, my name is Zach. I'll be playing Khadija. We both use she, they pronouns, and Khadija is a hick. And I'm Eli.

I go by any and all pronouns. I am playing Rada that goes by they, she pronouns, and I'm the weirdo. Beautiful. So last session, we had a lot going on. Everyone woke up together in their hideout, nice and safe. You had some breakfast provided to you by Greta, and you convinced Morph to keep hanging out in the hideout while you all did your jobs. First we went with, I believe it was Rada?

Yes. My memory is a little foggy on who we went with first. Yes, I believe it was Rada. Rada went to work at their family's stall over in the SWAT meet, had a visit from Peyton at one point, and met Adelaide Drake, the older sister of the child who went missing in your town several years ago, Ash and Drake. And she traded a notebook, a few cans of food, and a couple other things for a heating coil for a toaster, as Rada looked through the notebook.

She found some doodles, some notes from Ash, and because Adelaide has been slowly sneaking some of her late brother's items out of the house. Next we went to Peyton, and Peyton took care of some deliveries for Greta, including a delivery to the mayor who was helping patch the roof on the theater. Then to the head of security, Dalton Concord's father, Mr. Concord, over at the jail cell where she saw Erica Mansfield kept in the singular jail cell and being questioned by Mr. Concord, with Ellis, the head of the cops in town, watching by in discomfort. Next she went to tell the mayor's son to go have lunch, because the mayor sent her on

a little bit of a mission, and back at the diner, when she returned, there were the two guards who had followed Khadija's distraction a few days ago, eating at the diner. But before all of that, Peyton actually went to Axel and punished them for hitting Rada. Followed by Peyton, we hung out with, was it Khadija, I think it was Khadija. Khadija went to check in with her grandfather at the school where he and Victory Moan were working on getting the freezer back in order, and then Khadija was sent home to see their father. My brain is very slow today.

Deej, can you help me remember what all you did? So sorry. Yes. No, I went to go talk to my dad, then I believe, I went to steal pants, that was the most important thing to me. So if I did other things, that's great. Number one was pants. The pants were acquired.

Next up, Che Young went home and was tasked with digging holes from at the Kimchi and spoke with Yiminta Greenlee and managed to ask her if she wanted to play video games with them at some point. They returned back to the hideout shortly after that successful question. And finally, we go to Henry, who was helping with food at the grill, or at Greta's Grub. He was the one to bring the food out to those security agents, and they talked about a radar following something. Henry wasn't entirely sure what they were talking about, but eventually he took a study

break from working and went back to hang out with Morph where they talked about souls and friendship and what they wanted out of their lives at this point. At which point the group came back together and started discussing how to get Morph outside of the hide. Pants were put on Morph, and as they were making their plan, an aggressive knock came at the door, and that is where we left off. Did I forget anything important to anyone? Please speak up now.

My recaps are a little scattered. Can you remind us what the soul looks like? I think we were trying to jimmy it loose or fix it when the knock came, and I don't know how far we got in that. So Morph's torso, for lack of a better word, has a sizable blobby red light inset into the center of it. I don't think we got as far as investigating what it looked like, but if you guys want to roll some kind of check on that right now, I can give you a little bit more of a...

If you want to roll a tinker or an investigate, you are welcome to do so, and I can give you a little bit more information about what we're looking at here. Anyone that wants to, it can. If you don't want to, that's also a little real. In my misremembering, did Cheyong roll with like, I got like a plus one? Was that the roll we did? Cheyong does have two dice that you can give them. I did spend it on last.

You did spend it? Okay. I think we might have done a tinker right at the end. I did a tinker like near the end. Oh, you did? I'm so sorry. My brain completely forgot that. I forgot.

It was like two... At least it was like multiple successes, I think. Then I will give you all the information. So as you look at Morph's body, it looks like it's made of a few plates that have been meticulously kind of molded and shaped to make this bulbous kind of form. And as you look, there is obviously one plate almost that's underneath others. So the plate over where the red light has been emanating, there's a plate and then there are overlapping plates on top of it so you can see the center of the plate, but you can't

see its edges. And they are riveted into place and then it looks like someone took like a blow torch or even like a welding rod to those bolts so that it is deep in there. So they're like almost melted on. Yeah, I think we would need like a big saw or like a big hammer or like two big hammers. Also knocking at the door, I feel like it's pretty urgent. Yeah, as you're saying needing a saw or a hammer or two big hammers, the knock comes again just a...

This is Shed Security, open up please. There is a singular window, pretty high set on the wall. It's a shallow window, Morph's torso is pretty round. You're not sure if they would be able to squeeze through there or not. Quick somebody white talk about warrants. Henry puffs up his chest and I don't know, steps forward at Cheyung's request and says in a voice that he's heard his mom use, one moment, I'm the sort of owner and we need a moment for pity's sake.

I am like immediately without even really thinking, trying to find something to put in front of the door. I was skating around previously, but now I'm like desperately looking for something to move in front of the door. Henry, roll me a charm check, Peyton, roll me a force check. There is plenty of heavy stuff in this room, I want to just move it. One success. One success.

You call out to them and for some reason you think it's the for pity's sake that gets them. You stop your voice and you yell back and at the for pity's sake, it's almost like they think it's an older person because no one young says for pity's sake. And they say, yes, sir, we understand that this is highly irregular. We have some questions, this is some serious shed business, so we need you to come out as quickly as possible. And then they seem a little like taken aback at this voice, Peyton, how'd you do?

I got one success. You got one success. I think at the sound of like maybe it's working, I pause and I look to the group to see if this is something I should do. I don't know, I feel like we should run. I feel like we should run and run to run through the door and hope for the best with more. Is there any like, I know Morphe's got his pants on and I like put my hoodie on the shoulders and do the voice.

Yeah, yeah, like we need to three orders in a trench coat this ratatouille scarf. Henry's a big boy though. How strong is Morphe? Morphe broke that dude's arm, right? That's true. I mean, Henry and I could just rush out and knock them over and let the rest of you run through. I don't, but like Morphe will have, I mean, like then they'll just know Morphe is running.

I don't know. Quick, put something, he says in a lower voice to his friends, quick, put something over Morphe, we got to disguise Morphe, no matter what. Hoodie, hoodie, I'm like taking off like my do rag. I'm putting whatever things that aren't leaving me without a shirt on Morphe immediately. Like the backpack, like the, I don't have a ghillie suit, but like a blanket. Oh, here he fishes around in his pocket, pulls out sunglasses, like big 80s sunglasses, hand.

Great. I give Morphe my tie. I'm like, here, here, put this on. This will definitely work. Yes. Good. While this dressing sequence is happening, Henry just raises his voice one more time for extra stalling and says one single word, warrants, and then just like winks at Cheyong.

Good job. Good job. I don't know, he usually stops them. I'm going to keep going on this charm check because it was great. And they say, oh, yes, sir, we, we, we don't currently have a warrant. This is a, this is a higher than a legal matter. They're, they're like, no one's ever asked them for warrants before because usually people in town just kind of let them do what they want because they're from the shed.

And they're, they're, they're a little flustered almost. Tell them that we need an order from the king. That's the only thing I don't say. Let's say why I ought to and then leave it at that. He's going to roll. See who he listens to. Yes, please. Well, good.

Take it up with the king. Guys. How's the morph thing going? I want to start counting usually that works just to be like be gone on the count of three. One, two, that always works. Yeah. Oh, I don't know if I can count that high page. Okay.

Hold on. Well, is, uh, dressing more, you can at least count to four. Oh, yeah. I'll help. Okay. Dressing more. I'm going to say all of you roll me. Fuck.

There's no disguise in this. All of you roll me. 2d6. Can I, can I. Ooh. Can I lead? Can I roll lead? Yes, you can actually go.

You can roll lead first. Go ahead. Roll lead first. Roll. No successes. I'm not helpful. You got one success. Okay, you can give two more, two more dice to either you can give one to each of them.

You can give two. We both failed. I will give one to each of you. I still failed with the one. That's on the floor. I also rolled a one. More failures. So no successes on any of this.

Incredible. Good. Can you push? You can push or you can use luck. That's an option. Can we push for all three? You can push. You can push until all of your, all of your conditions are happening.

And then if you're broken, you have to go like, I want to push. Can I push with all three dice? Oh yeah. No, pushing. Pushing you just take, you just do want like you roll everything that isn't a six. Gotcha. So first off, pick upset, scared, exhausted or injured as the potential condition that you think will be most applicable, applicable should you fail.

List those one more time. Upset, scared, exhausted or injured. I think scared. Okay. Go ahead and roll me all three of your dice again. That's one success. Amazing. You are not scared.

So the three of you are like fumbling with Khadija's durag and sweater and the sunglasses and your tie and the first time you take a step back and you look at it and it looks insane, the, the, the sweater is too short. So it looks like Morph has a crop top and you can just see like the round part of their stomach. Though their arms are, are like the retractable, Cheyong fixed the retractableness of their arms. They're still like hanging out of the sleeves.

The sunglasses are tilted that like the durag isn't covering much. So you, you stand on like a, you put a crate down and you stand on the crate and you fix the durag and you pull it lower and you fix the new straight in the sunglasses. You pull the pants up so it looks like they've got like high waters on. You have Morph suck their arms back in a little bit. So it looks like they have sweater paws and it looks almost, if you guys hurry, it looks kind of like a kid. Like if no one was looking at, like let them too closely, you'd be like, oh, that's just

a big kid. I need Henry to roll me another charm check after mentions of the king. Oh boy. I can see a sarcastic old man saying that though. Uh, that's no, no, no successes or you can use luck if you want to, or you can just take the failure. It does luck reset at the beginning of each session, every session. Yes.

I think, I think thematically it would make sense to use luck cause that's a ridiculous thing for Henry to say. Um, do I re-roll all? Is that right? Everything that's not a six. Sorry, Alex. What were you going to say? Um, can I, is there, I forget what the help, uh, mechanic is.

Is there a help? Yeah. If you assist, I think you, you can either give one extra dice or two and I'm gonna look really quick. And if I can't find it best, I'm just going to make a ruling cause I was thinking like me feeding Henry lines is sort of like my helping cause I didn't roll for the, the fashion one. So, uh, I mean, I also don't have great charms.

I'm not like actually talking to them. So like you should say this, um, you get one extra die to roll. So add another die to your pool, Henry, because Cheyung has been helping you. What do you say Cheyung? Uh, this time, I guess, uh, I'm going to, I think I'm going to insist on why I ought to. I think it's a great idea. I think it's going to work.

I think there's no way an adult knows what to say to that. Okay. Uh, he again puffs up his chest to get the deeper voice and one success. One success. He breathily says why I ought to, you, you follow the comment about the King up immediately with why I ought to, um, and where there was whispering about King, is there another Britain town that we didn't know about what's going on? And then you say why I ought to, and they're, they're taken aback again and they're, sir,

sir, are you in trouble in there? What's going on? You, this is a matter of safety. Please come out and they're, they're, they're concerned about your wellbeing, but they're not, they're pulled back enough that they're not going to bust in like you thought they were going to. And this has given just enough time for Greta to come out of the kitchen after hearing all the ruckus of the pounding and you hear from across the restaurant, excuse me, what the

hell do you think you're doing? And there, there's a, a, a moment of silence as you imagine the men turning away from the door to see this like five foot tall woman with like red hair down to her shoulders, a spatula in one hand or a knife in the other, just staring them down. I'm sorry, can I help you? And they say, ma'am, we are, we're, we're shed, we're security agents from the shed. We are looking to, and she cuts them off and she says, I don't care what you're doing. That is, this is private property.

You are not allowed to accost anyone in my establishment without my express permission. And they, it becomes this back and forth, this very tense back and forth. And slowly you start to hear the men backing away from the door and going toward Greta's voice. And she's, and the last thing you hear before you hear the swinging of the kitchen door is this is an establishment for families. I have children in and out of here. Who the hell do you think you are coming in here with guns and weapons and, and then they,

and then they, the, the swing of the, of the kitchen door goes three times as you hear three people pass through and these men are quickly cowed by a very protective mother. And you have a brief window where no one is in the diner that you know of. Henry turns to the group and says, okay, she's going to probably yell at them for like five to seven, sometimes nine minutes, depending on how bad they've been. So we should probably get out of here. This is our time. We got it.

We got a jet. We should go. We just going back to the woods or, and where do we go? Yeah, I guess we got to go. Let's go back to the swamp. Yeah. Find a cave. We can make it nice and comfy for the winter.

Does that sound nice, Morph? Cave. I want to go on a walk, please. Those men. Those men. Did you recognize their voices? Yes. Yeah.

Yes, I do not want to go with them. Did they hurt you? I don't know if I feel pain anymore. Anymore? We should go now and talk about this later. I open the door and peek out just to make sure it's actually empty. You peek out, the sound of Greta aggressively yelling at these men gets louder. They're trying to get a word in.

They cannot. She is in full mom diatribe and you guys have a brief window. She's pacing and you could like, there's a kind of pass through window to the kitchen and Peyton, if you crane your neck enough, you can see that the men are kind of, you know, diagonal to the door. So they have like peripheral kind of vision on where you'd be. Greta's kind of pacing back and forth in front of them. So potentially she could see you all, but she's, she is more focused on the dudes than

you guys. Yeah. I just, I just step out and do like the hand motion of like, come on, come on, come on. Let's go. Now's the time. All right. Are we going to move quickly or are we trying to move quickly? Sneakily.

The children understand the concept of stealth. I mean, maybe in the Scooby-Doo sense of just like very tiptoeing. Yeah. I'm going to have everyone roll me a group stealth check. I'll say majority mean success. So yeah, everyone roll, go ahead and roll sneak. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 16, 17, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 28, 29, 30, 31, 31, 32, 32, 32, 33,

33, 34, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 42, 43, 42, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 44, 44 and you slowly, slowly kind of blow the level of the tables, creep your way outside, morphs little legs are almost touching their torso again as they move forward behind you, their arms no longer dragging. They do look like a kid now though. So that's something. And you make it out the door and around the front window, you're pretty sure with no one the wiser.

Where are you heading? Back to the swamp. Back to the swamp. Yeah. Is there, there's a good chance that like, Khadija knows that there is a cave out there, or are they like, can I roll for cave? I think you'd know where a cave was.

You guys, you guys spend a lot of time out, out in the woods, out in nature, climbing, exploring, hunting, finding, gathering things that will be helpful to the town. Let me pull up my map really quickly. You know, there is a cave a little bit south of town, kind of into the mountain. You haven't been there by yourself before.

It's usually been with Grandpa Zelmer. He's usually the one leading the way. There's also another one kind of right toward the top of the mountain, but it is much closer to the shed. But it's bigger and a little bit deeper. Khadija relays that as they're like, footnets, is, I don't really care which one we go to,

but the other one would be bigger. We could all stay there a little longer, but the southern one is gonna be, I mean, chances are we won't run into them. Any preference? We should go to the southern one. They're not gonna find us. Okay.

We don't need room for us. We need morph to be hidden. Sweet, south it is. So, you all start heading south out of town. People are still going about their kind of daily jobs, which feels a little strange to you because something completely out of the ordinary is happening to you.

There are waves from folks around town. They're not real, they take another like a second glance at you guys because there's another kid with you, but it doesn't seem like they're suspicious of anything so far. You ride down the main drag, past Red Star, as you kind of, or I'm sorry, not Red Star, Home Kitchen.

And as you pass Home Kitchen, you can see the group of drumline kids who are usually hanging out inside, sitting outside. Yaminta, Frank, Luna, and Axel. Axel's face is, it's mostly clean. You can kind of see a little bit of like sticky gunk

and maybe part of a shell stuck under their jaw. And they're aggressively like gesturing and talking to Luna, Frank, and Yaminta about what happened to them earlier. You see them before they see you, which is the lucky thing. But if you want to move the fastest route through town, you're going to have to pass them.

You can try to sneak or you can find a different way around them. Or you can just try and move fast and hope that they don't catch up with you. I vote just go straight through. Yeah, just run them down. They should be afraid of us. Amazing.

Morph, don't stop for anything. Yeah, yeah, I think it would be nice to preface, like, hey, if stuff starts getting bad right here, just go, just keep going. Just run. Why are they your friends? No. Oh, why not?

I have a set of friends. Can't I have more friends? Can't they be my friends? Yaminta can probably, because we're going to hang out. Okay. But like, no, not, not the one with egg on, literal egg on their face.

Egg on their face? Who puts eggs on their face? I don't know. I don't know how that happened. It's so weird that a rotting piece of egg would be on that person's face. I, I mean, I don't know. I definitely can't draw the line

between what I saw earlier and what's happening here. It's not easy at all to piece the story together. So I guess it's just someone has nasty egg on their face and you don't want to be friends with someone like that. That's nasty egg. Brad is just trying to be small. Slowly. They're just mean people, more.

Slowly hiding behind everybody, yeah. I don't like mean people. No, I should stop them from being mean. No. No, that's okay. You're not that mean. We just need to, we don't want them to recognize you. Recognize me?

Who am I? I'm Morph. I'm your friend. Yeah. I'm just looking to the group like help. I don't, uh. They might tell on you to the bad men. And, and it's like we, they're,

these kids are not like evil, but they're, we also don't like them and they can maybe be a little hard to reason with sometimes. And, uh, I don't, I don't know. I mean, snitches are not friends. Rotten eggs. Snitches get rotten eggs. Snitches get eggs.

Yep. Snitches get rotten eggs. Snitches get rotten eggs. They're like the other team, Morph. Like the opposing team. The opposing team. It's like football. We got to go through them.

Like a football. Just put your shoulder down Morph and run. As you say through them, Morph, Morph starts taking off. Everyone roll me and move checks. This will be good. This will be good. And he's just like, yep.

That sounds about right. No. I'm scared. Their legs in their sweatpants get longer and they grow a little bit taller. Oh wow. Khadija has one success. Two successes for Arata.

One success. Arata, one for Cheyong. One for Peyton. How about you, Henry? Two from Henry. Peyton, Khadija and Cheyong, you start tearing past them on your various wheeled apparatus.

But you're super fast and you kind of get ahead of Morph and don't see that Morph's running directly towards the drumline kids. Arata and Henry, you guys kind of at the back, Henry watching your friends go and Arata trying to hide,

you see Morph kind of altering course toward the drumline kids. But you are able to kind of corral them almost into following Cheyong, Peyton and Khadija. Just like that. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This way.

There's Kurt. I'm gonna go for it, Tix. Their metal feet pound on the ground as they try to keep up with your wheels, vehicles, or vehicles, your wheeled transportation. The drumline kids only see flashes of six people going by them

as you run by and you hear Axelielle, there's Peyton before you're too far gone for them to even consider giving chase. You make your way through town. People are starting to take a little bit nor notice because, you know, Morph is completely made of metal and there are clanging feet,

footsteps every time they take a running step. And every few steps, there looks like there's a, like not a full indentation, but it looks like there is a little bit of rock or asphalt breaking off from the road as you run through town. But for the most part,

you make it through without incident. Some people kind of give a second look. And you make it out of town. Down toward the south, it pretty quickly turns into a dirt road south and then Khadija jumps off the road and into the undergrowth of the forest. There's not very much,

there's, I mean, there's a bit of tree cover, but all of the coniferous trees have their needles a little bit higher up in the branches. So you don't have a ton of cover visually, but you are deep in the trees. It's harder to ride here. So you may have to leave your bikes

and skateboards and roller skates and all of that as you traverse deeper into the woods. Just carry my little shoot, my little roller skates on my bike with me as we trundle through the woods. And you can like loop them over Samus's back as well. He, I'm actually, I'm curious. I don't have a, maybe we went over this when I forgot,

but what does everybody's like preferred mode of transportation? Like what is everybody like on bikes or skateboards? Skateboard, I think, I think Rada has a bike, like a very junky bike. I think Khadija has a mountain bike. Yeah, same with Henry, probably. He's a little bulky on it,

so he prefers to just take it short distances. He doesn't enjoy riding it. I think, I feel like bike is usually like the core groove that, and then we got some cool, we got like some other stuff on it. Yeah, I think my bag has like the strap to put the skateboard into. So I'm carrying that with me as well.

The bikes, you can kind of roll along with you. It'll slow you down a little bit, but, or you can just kind of leave them by the road, chain them to a tree, hide them under some pine needles, whatever makes you feel good. Khadija's gonna hide and like suggest that we all hide our bikes off the side of the road, but then turn to the group and ask,

so we're going to this cave. What is there, do we have anything to work with other than they're coming and they can't get them? So my idea is that we do the whole cave up like, cause so the problem was Morph is very conspicuous, can't stay in the restaurant forever. Morph also can't be outside forever cause the winter's coming in, might freeze,

but we, if we have a small cave and like our collective survival skills, maybe we can like make a shelter for a Morph that is both hidden and if not like actually warm, at least warm enough that Morph doesn't freeze over. And we can always like come back and maybe like keep a little like coal pit going or something, I don't know, like it's,

they're gonna be looking for him for probably a while, right? Like I don't, is there a permanent solution to this? Maybe blue sky thinking, but maybe he stays with one of us or I don't know, I don't think this is just for now. And if it, if we can't think of anything else, we just keep this up until we get another idea. But I think this is with them snooping around and it being gonna get really, really cold soon.

Like I, we just gotta make a little hideout for Morph and maybe, maybe Henry'll have another brilliant idea and we can get Morph out of here. Oh gosh, Cheyong, it was your idea. All the yelling. No, you did it, you did, you just, you just needed the words, but you did a great job yelling and you know, you have good ideas,

even when they sometimes don't make sense to other people, but it's like usually a good idea. Well, thanks. I think my only idea right now is how'd they find our hideout? Why were they there? Makes me wonder if the radar was like picking anything up being so close.

Maybe. Or maybe we activated something and we were, and there's kind of motion to Morph's torso. Yeah, Morph, is your soul working again? Does it stop working? It's right here. Does your soul stop working ever?

That's a good question. I don't think they put that on any of my tests. I don't know. But you said that if we were to fix it, it would make you feel better. Do you feel better? I feel happy. I have friends.

I feel happy. I have friends, ah! It's good to be part of a team. Yeah. Are you OK with staying in this cave? Do you want to be more free than that? Do you have any friends from before us? Before, do you remember anything?

I don't know. Were you made in the shed? What I made in the shed. I, I, I. And one of their eyes gets smaller. The other one blows wide. I don't. I had people who loved me.

No, yes. Probably. I, I, I remember, I remember. And they've stopped in the middle of the forest, kind of wobbly almost. And their head is kind of going from side to side as they try to find something they can't quite grasp. Well, maybe we should sit down for a second.

I know we're running, but. Yeah. Careful, Morph. Henry will help guide them, you know, on one side if there's any instability or just brace them as they're kind of moving around. Morph's legs retract back into their body a little bit. And their head like swivels and almost lands

on your shoulder, Henry. Sorry, buddy. Oh, man, I can relate. When I think about things too hard, it really hurts. You're hurt. I don't want you to be hurt. Oh, no, no, not now. Like on a test or something.

Don't hurt yourself thinking about this stuff, Morph. I want to know. I don't know. And there's a shift. And they kind of roll themselves to the side, not even using their limbs and slam all four limbs down onto the ground. And they embed deep in the dirt.

And they just start like flailing. And what seems like anguish, just unable to grasp something just beyond their reach. And there is some kind of like high-pitched whine coming out of them as they flail. And it goes on for a minute, two minutes. And it doesn't seem like stopping. Can I just start naming names of people, like of adults

that I know that work at the shed? Can I just start naming names as this is happening to see if any of them start to jog any sort of memory? Yeah, easy enough. You know of enough people in town between people's parents and just folks you know. And as you name them, they start to calm down

because they know these names. And then it kind of registers that there are names that they aren't the names that they are looking for, the names that they want. The information is still out of their grasp. And they start to still in a very... Morph hasn't seemed like a thing very often. Morph has always seemed like a who.

And as they still from all these names, it's almost like they're a what now. Would it be within the realm of possibility for Peyton to think, to say the names of Ashton's parents? Roll me a contact. I failed. I think I'm going to push it, though. Go for it, yeah.

I will choose maybe exhausted for the condition, if I fail. Go for it. Well, you are naming all of these names and it's becoming just so evident that these names aren't working, but you can't think of anything else to say. And you know you're forgetting people in town because it's getting scary now.

And eventually you just kind of drop off and Morph is frozen on the ground a couple inches deep in the mud. While this is happening, just because Henry, I think in his scene before, got a lot of information and Henry's not the best person to have information. So he will show the scrap of paper that he wrote all of those numbers on

that he saw with the logo of the shed and the doctor with the scratched off name and all the numbers. And he wrote them on paper. I don't know if we did this already, but just to cover my bases, he would show it to Rada and Chaeyoung and just kind of like offer it like,

oh, it was on the soul. So that we all have that kind of collectively. And he's like, is that a name? I don't know, is it a code? I think Rada is going to pull out the journal that they just got so that they can copy the name, this all these letters and stuff into it so that they can kind of maybe see

if it is a name by like rearranging stuff. Yeah, you roll me a investigator comprehend or honestly any of the mind skills that you want to roll? I will roll investigate because I will make it my highest pool. Okay, go ahead and roll investigate. I am going to use my luck because God only knows why I'm rolling solo today. Thank you.

Three successes. You pull out the notebook and you compare it to the paper with the numbers that Henry has. And you're trying to find some kind of connection, A, S would be the first two letters of Ashton's name, D, R, the first two letters of Ashton's last name, 12. They were 12 when they meant missing or something like that, maybe.

And then you look at the dates, the second string numbers and you put them together as dates. The last part, the last entry in Ashton's journal was from December 12th, 1976 and there is a 13, 12, 76, which would have been the next day. Yeah, I think Rada's just like mulling that over, connecting the dots and when they finally realize that this is like shorthand for Ashton, I think Rada might just like look over two more

whose I assume is still tantruming on the ground. They are incredibly still. The eyes, the eye lights are almost out. The only thing left is the bright red at the center of their chest, which hasn't changed throughout all of this. I think that Rada is going to like awkwardly like crouch down towards Morph who's just kind of standing there and I think they might put out like a hand to them

and just like whisper Ashton. The eyes grow a little wider and slowly shift toward you. What did you say? Ashton Drake? And I'll like hold up the journal. I have your book. My book, Ashton, Ashton, Ashton, Ashton. And it like from all of the stillness that had come over Morph

rolls to its feet and the legs extend the highest you've seen them. The arms throw out further than you've known them to go and they are spinning now. A high above your head, you can see their arms whipping through the trees and breaking branches. Ashton, Ashton, Ashton, Ashton. Oh. It's the closest to a human noise you've heard out of Morph

and they slowly kind of sink back down to your height. There's a rain of twigs and branches falling down. Nothing big enough to hurt you really but enough to kind of scatter in your hair and they look at you with the same eyes that you've seen, the same form. But it's almost held differently. Ashton, my name is Ashton. That's right. How, how did you know?

And they reach a little three-pronged handout and so, so gently take your hand, Radda. Well, it was more about like HB, like the code and like, I remember how like serial numbers and stuff like that, they don't put dashes for dates and so, I don't know, I just figured it out. But your sister gave me this book. So that's, I guess another, yeah, Adelaide, Adelaide. Adelaide. My sister.

I want my sister. And they, they kind of repeat, I want my sister a couple times and are looking between the five of you. I mean, and Khadija says this sort of in a way that maybe Ashton won't hear. Do you think if we ask her to come out here that she'll understand? Because we can't bring him back into town. I mean, maybe it's worth a shot that they, they definitely miss Ashton. So I don't know if that's, wouldn't they want to be reunited?

I don't know, how does this work? Is Ashton inside Morph? Like a, like a suit, like at a football game, like a mascot? I think they're the same thing. I think Morph is Ashton before Ashton remembered who he was. Oh. We have to tell somebody, right? Just his sister.

No, no, I, I mean, the shed made Morph out of a, out of a kid, right? I, right, I guess that sounds so like not, like I don't even, I know we talk a lot about souls. I don't like, I don't even believe in that. Like I don't know what, what is, how could that, doesn't make any sense. I don't know, but if we're looking at the dates, there's a start date and an end date and that, maybe it's just like a memorial, but that's Ashton and I don't think Ashton wanted that.

Well, I, this is like extremely complicated, like all this like philosophical, like I don't know what, because if we tell somebody, like who do we tell, right? Well, not, not the parents, that would make them so sad. If my mom found out that I turned into a can opener or something, she would be devastated. I mean, I guess if the can opener could talk, she might be like more happy. I don't know. What's the stop them from taking more kids? Well, do we think they killed them to do this?

Should we ask? That seems really rude. I mean, I mean, there was a body and now we don't think there isn't, at least there isn't out here. Who's going to believe us? Only the people who are going to want to take more are Ashton back. Do you think, Cheyong, you know a lot about computers. Do you think that Ashton is like alive somewhere as a human still and like connected to Morph?

Or is this just Ashton now? I think this is, if all the variables put together of data, it seems like this is Ashton and like not, he's not like alive somewhere controlling the robot. It's like this is him and it's like someone, I guess if you do believe in souls, it is like someone grabbed your soul and put it in a can opener. It's very much like that. So but like a can opener that can like walk and talk and do cool stuff. I mean, way cooler than a can opener.

Yeah. I do because like to me, this feels like a very sad, like grieving family type of thing to do. But if we think that like they're like actively taking kids and putting the stuffing them in robots and yeah, we have to, we have to like, the parents don't know, right? We had the missing persons poster up. It's still up in places. True.

So they took. Love. Would we be somewhat aware that people, children go missing often in our town, at least on maybe on like the outskirts of it, because I mean, we're young enough to maybe not understand the full gravity of it. The only reason that the Ashton Drake posters have been up around town is because this was an anomalous event. It rocked your town.

You guys, the four of you weren't old enough to really remember it. Peyton, you just barely do. You were, I think, five-ish when it happened. And you remember, even as kind of distant as your parents were, they were a little closer. They didn't let you go as far. They were watching a little bit more for months and months and months and months and months after Ashton went missing. Your community is close-knit.

This is, it was an outlier of an event that hadn't happened before and hasn't happened to your knowledge since. Is there a way to look and see, I'm like looking directly at Cheyong, is there a way to look and see what Morphe was made for? What purpose? What? I mean, if I can maybe try to hook him up to a computer or something and maybe look around from out here, it's all welded, shut, and I don't know.

I think I've learned everything I can with the tools that we have now. And I'm thinking, was their family part of, did they work closely with the shed? Or were they just people that got rocked by this? I think in the notebook, I think it said that their parents worked at the shed a lot. So I think maybe Adelaide has a really nice computer, like a good computer, and maybe that's where we can, because I'm not going to take Morphe, we're not going to take Ashton to the library, we can't do that. And I assume that they live farther out, like they probably have their own land and all

that stuff. So maybe if we go see Adelaide, maybe even if she doesn't believe us, maybe we can use her computer. Do you think that the people that were chasing us will go there too? I mean, they could go anywhere, I think. I guess we got to be really careful as we get Morphe to Adelaide. Yeah, yeah, because if they found me, and I don't have anything to do with Ashton, I mean, they might be watching his sister.

I mean, I guess we were all hiding in the, but we make a lot of noise, right? I think this will be different, probably. Okay. Anyway, to Adelaide, to Adelaide. I need everyone to roll me investigation checks. Boy, that, my little song was for all the over the garden wall. Two successes for the Rada, two, one, one, one, success, one, and Cheyong, one, you all hear it just down the hill, a car door slams shut, fuck, and the crackle of a walkie talkie.

There's some kind of muffled voice, but you can't really understand what it's saying. There's another slam of another car door, and another walkie talkie crackle. Who rolled the, Rada, you got two successes? I did. You just barely make out the words, team split up, we've got three going down towards the Drake house, and there's a few more going down. And then they kind of like peters out as your heartbeat kind of pounds in your ears. There are, from the doors that you heard slam, you think maybe there are two or three people

down the hill. They're not close yet, but they are present, and they are looking. They were very observant when there were loud footsteps through the middle of town. Okay, I think it would slow them down if they caught someone, but we can't go to the Drake house now. Are we going to the cave? Yeah. I'm bad at sneaking, so I think me and Samus can probably make a big diversion, and what

are they going to do? Like, they're not going to hurt me. I'm a little Asian person, girl. I look like a girl, a little Asian girl, what are they going to do with me? I think you guys sneak one loud distraction and then all sprint in the opposite direction. The more we can split them up, the better, right? Good idea. But what if you get caught?

I don't want you guys to be a robot! And Henry's getting really upset. Don't let him catch you. Look, I would love to be a robot, it's fine. And they can't turn... They wouldn't be able to turn Peyton into a robot. I don't think there's any metal in the world that could contain Peyton's soul. We'll be okay, HB.

Just get more... Get Ashton to safety. Are you leaving? Just for a minute. But the people, they're here, aren't they? They're here for you. They want you. They don't care about us, but we're going to cause some trouble.

I care about you. Yeah, we care about you too. That's why we're doing this. That's what friends do. Look, if someone was hunting me, I know that you would try to get me to safety and do whatever you could. I would throw them off the cliff. That's true.

I can't do that. That's the next best thing that I know how, which is be loud and annoying and loud. We won't get caught, Morphe, but you gotta go now. Do you want to be called Morphe or Ashton? I like both, both are good. Okay. Okay. Cool.

But if you get caught and I am alone again. So Greta, Dijon, and HB are going with you. Yeah. Yeah. And they can't get all of us. We're too loud and fight too much. And they're on our turf. That's the home game advantage, Morphe.

Hell yeah. Home game advantage. Okay. Peace, mate. And they reach out a big hand and so, so carefully lower them down onto Cheyong and Peyton's head. They're very heavy hands. Even being gentle, they're very heavy.

Very heavy handed. Goodbye. All right. It sounds like Cheyong and Peyton are going down the hill to try to intercept these agents. I think we're going in different directions as well. Like, yeah. And then Dij, Radda, and Henry, you're going up the hill with Morphe, yes? Yeah.

Okay. Um, I'm going to have Cheyong and Peyton roll their checks first. I'm going to let you guys choose the way that you are trying to distract and let me know what you're rolling. So my idea is I want to find, like, so like, I can't, I can't chop down the tree. That's not going to happen. If I find a big rock that's high up somewhere and just have Samus and me both push it and just have it like roll into a bunch of trees and make loud tree noises as like, you know,

cracking and trees and like, you know, maybe some like, maybe younger trees that are just like a little easier to break, but I want to make it a lot loud noise that way. So I'm thinking, like, calculate. That's what I was thinking, or maybe even like, maybe just like a mind roll or something like that. Yeah. I'll say if you want to take calculate, you can try, there are a bunch of rocks around. So I'm going to say your calculate roll isn't to find a rock.

It is to find a rock that you think you and Samus could physically either use a lever to push or physically with your body's push. Uh, so go ahead and roll me that while Peyton, you tell me what you're doing. Yeah, I would like to take off in the opposite direction. I just want to be moving like as fast as I can, but I also want to be yelling random things like, hurry, we have to get away. We have to go this way. Um, just making it sound like we are running in the direction that I am heading.

Amazing. Um, you can either roll a, uh, what, what, what, what, what feels like what you want to roll from this. I don't know. Going quickly. Would that be like move? Maybe. Going quickly would be move.

Um, yeah, go ahead and roll and move. Okay. Okay. How did you, how did yours, how did yours go? So I got one success, but I also rolled four fives and like I'm good. I'm going to use, uh, a luck to re-roll some of these and get like a really fab. Try to get something really big. Let's go.

That is two more successes. So three successes. Successes. Amazing. Peyton, what about you? So if I already succeed, but I want to push for more, does that mean I automatically won't get a condition? Uh, yes.

Yeah. So if you've already succeeded and you're rolling for more, as I understand it, uh, you can, I think you can just try to push without a condition. I'm saying that's what the rule is right now. Um, I would like to do that. I got two successes, but I want to see if I can get any more. Go for it. One more.

So three, three successes. Um, I'm actually going to let you guys narrate what happens, uh, with your individual plans. Um, you have succeeded well enough that these go off without a hitch and there is a chance you can make it back to the group potentially. Um, so go ahead and tell me what you or narrate what happens. Um, and then we'll, we'll talk about the rest of the group and if you guys can find your way back to each other. So go ahead.

You can go first. Um, I think there's, I find, I first find like a pretty good rock and then I'm like, we can do better. And so I find, I go and kind of like walk up the trail some more and find like a bit of a ledge and then like remember a pretty good rock I found like in the area and then we'd like push it, um, not too far and then just like yeet it off the side and it like rolls down, uh, and like hits a bunch of like, you know, underbrush and like dry material that's just like making these loud cracking noises, you know, it, uh, knocks like lands into a

tree that's already like mostly gone and it falls over and hits other trees that are making more cracking noises and all the branches are just like just making so much sound. And really I, in my, what I think it sounds like is like a giant robot crashing through the trees, uh, cause like I literally, I've been on the trail at night, um, and we, I heard the sound in Miami and I was like, holy shit. And it sounded like bigfoot, like charging through the woods and my partner was like, oh, it's just the, the black vultures or like the turkey vultures, like roosting in the trees.

They're just so loud and like they're just so big and like crashing through all the branches. It sounds terrifying. So I think I'm trying to replicate that. I have a question for you. You are high enough up on the mountain that you can kind of see these little moving figures of these agents, um, and one of them is kind of strafing towards your area. Are you trying to hit them with a tree or the rock or are you just trying to draw noise? Oh, I just try to make as much noise as possible.

I know. Okay. Like I didn't calculate that much. If, I mean, you rolled three successes on that calculate. So if you want that, you can make it happen. But if you are, if you're not trying to hurt anyone, you can leave it. I want all that success to go towards how loud and scary this noise is. It's massive.

It is a crashing echoing. It's like, I don't know if y'all, I don't know if y'all ever been in a holler when someone shoots off a gun. Um, it echoes for a long, loud amount of time. Um, and this is a constant cacophony, uh, Henry, Radda, and Deej, you hear just what sounds like a tree exploded, basically, uh, over and over and over again as the, as the boulder rolls down the hill, and at the same time, Peyton, yeah, Peyton is screaming louder than she has ever screamed in her entire life, um, shouting, uh, we have to run this way.

We have to just, it, some of it doesn't even make sense towards the end because we're just screaming random words to try to bring all the attention and, um, I run towards them as comfortable of a distance as I feel that I could get away from them, uh, and then just veer off and run in the opposite direction of, uh, all of my friends to try to get the majority of them to follow me deeper into the woods because we know this area pretty well, and I know where I can hide, I know where it's easier to get lost, and I'm trying to get them lost in the woods. I'm going to offer you a similar thing that I just offered Cheyong, you have three successes.

Um, the cacophony of trees falling has begun, and they're hearing you run, but they're a little bit more distracted by the trees, and one of them has their back turned to you. You have your skateboard. If you want to try and hit them, you're welcome to, or you can just get close and turn and run. This is, again, your choice. So I don't know if any of you have ever ran with a skateboard on the backpack because it's not, it's not comfortable.

It's really not. So I've probably been running with it in tucked under my arm, and I think if I get close enough to one of them, yeah, I'm just going to grab it and baseball swing in that direction, um, and then continue. Yes. Great. Um, roll me a force check. Great.

I would love to paint with the chair from the top rope. Oh, that's. I am pleased to announce that that is four successes. I don't, I don't want to kill him. Say goodbye to your skateboard. No, you, uh, signature items can't break actually. Hell yeah. Time together and there would be none trucks, the immortal skateboard.

Let's go. So you are charging down and you hear Cheyong's mess going on behind you and you full swing at the back of this man's skull. He doesn't even have time to turn. You drop him like a fucking rock. He hits the ground far enough away from his friends. Maybe they don't even know he's down yet, uh, and you take off sprinting in the other direction.

Um, Henry, Rada and Deej, you hear just absolute chaos and carnage going on and you take that as a symbol. I was going to have you guys roll sneak. Those successes were so incredible. There is no need to roll sneak. You guys have full coverage to haul ass up the side of the mountain. And toward a cave that Deej knows, uh, Morph tromping along behind you. It's clear that Ashton is doing his best not to make noise, um, but the agitation of the

day and these new revelations and all of this noise is clearly getting to them. And their feet are kind of slipping and sliding through the needles as you guys claw your way up towards, uh, towards the side of the mountain where the cave is. If we have time and it makes sense, HB would see Ashton kind of slipping and ask, Hey, remember you were kind of the size of a football before I can carry you under my arm. I do it all the time at practice. If it's okay, you want to carry me. Yeah.

If you need help. Oh, I mean, I'm usually defense. I know, but I've been practicing with the ball. And they have the notebook that Rada gave them clutch to their chest and their arms kind of shoot back in and curl in close and the legs suck up back against the pants are kind of like awkwardly caught in some of the gears and you can see like a little bit of grease is like leaking from the from the gears and the the overlap where where all of their like retractable joints kind of go and they suck them back in morphs pretty big and fully

made of metal. Roll me a force check their HB just to just to see if you can you can pick them up. All right, that is my biggest thing. So let's hope only one success, but one success is enough is you pick up more. You're going to be a little slower to carry for carrying more. But right now, the people who are following you are aggressively distracted. So the three of the four of you keep climbing up the side of the mountain. And Deej, I want just in a quick investigate check just to make sure you remember where

this cave is. Yeah, for sure. I'm going to use my nature die. Let's go. No, wait, I will push. You can take upset scared exhausted or injured as a condition after we're climbing a mountain. Let's do injured because I don't think I'm going to have to break somebody's skull with skateboard.

That's one success. That is one success. Your leg slides down into what was probably like the route the space where roots were in a tree that had been that had been felt long ago. And there is a moment of fear in your soul where you're like, I could have broken my ankle. That could have been so incredibly bad. But just as you kind of dip down into that and turn your head, you see the very faintest

outline of the of the cave and you lead the way quickly and safely and unharmed into the mouth of the cave. It is not as deep as the northern cave, as I mentioned, but it's a sizable cave. It kind of goes back sloping down a little bit until probably 100, 150 feet from the entrance. There is a couple off. There are a couple of offshoots that are probably six to 12 inches in height in diameter that kind of snake off into different parts of the mountain.

It's a cave. It's dirty. I mean, all caves are dirty, which is fine. There's kind of like water condensing on the on the walls. And it looks like it's starting to freeze over a little bit. It's not it's not like icy, but it's just like slower flowing water kind of seeping through the ground. How drafty isn't it?

How drafty is it? Is it cold in here? It's I mean, it's it's cold outside in general. The wind isn't hitting you in here, so it's not as bad. And it's it's a pretty overcast day. So you guys are a little bundled up even after after climbing up the side of the mountain. You can hear the wind kind of whistling past the entrance of the cave. You don't feel it.

You do feel a little bit of a draft coming from the little offshoots. But if you're you know, if you're more than 20 feet away from them, you don't feel it. The front of the cave is probably I'm closing my eyes like I'm imagining spatial awareness that I don't have. How many people can fit through it at the same time? Let me see. Probably five or six people can fit through it comfortably. Like if they were holding hands, it could walk through at the same time.

So like 1520 feet across, I don't know. It's you know, there aren't any like stalactites or stalagmites, because it's not like a deep deep cave, but there are a couple little like recesses of water. It's about to be some stalagmites, if you know what I mean, why are you on it? Fuck. All right, good session. The shed turns into dust and we go home. Cheyenne turns into Thanos and says perfectly balanced is all things could be.

Yeah, you kind of make it up there, Henry, you can set Morph down in this cave. Henry almost goes to spike Morph just out of habit and then remembers it's Morph and just totally stops. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Here. And gently puts them down on the ground. Thank you.

And they kind of sit. It's a pretty subdued version of Morph Ashton and their legs get long enough that they can curl them back against their body and they're still holding the notebook and so carefully trying to turn the pages and look at all of the little cryptid drawings that they've done and read their own words. You're not even sure if Morph, Ashton as Morph can read, but they're kind of deep in the book and a little bit checked out from what all is going on. Should we try to build a fire?

It's kind of cold in here and drafty, can't leave Morph like this, right? Yeah, I think Khadija will start building a low one and specifically try to source things that won't burn like dark smoke or something too horrible, but she starts one like halfway towards the mouth of the cave and maybe if there's any, I think some of the blankets that have been around Morph, she starts laying them out because you'll need a dry place. That's going to be the number one important thing once it starts getting cold and starts fixing stuff by people to help her. Yeah, the three of you start setting things up and it's quiet.

You can hear a couple of birds hopping around, but there are a few and far between. It is not the kind of quiet in a forest, it is a calm kind of quiet in the forest rather than just quiet. You guys have put enough distance between you that you can no longer hear the agents and that Cheyong's chaos has faded away and you continue to kind of build out this little camp for Ashton as he sits at the mouth of the cave, quiet. So what are we going to do, are we going to bring Adelaide out here? Once we get rid of the other agents, we've got to get Ashton back to his family, right?

Yeah, but when you introduce something back into the wild, you've got to give it a friend first, right? And Adelaide is going to be his friend. Once we tell the parents, I mean I don't know how they'll feel about it, but it'll be nice to have somebody that they know knows that he's okay. Okay, so should we go get her and bring her back here because like is Cheyong and Peyton coming back? Like I don't, what are we, of course they're coming back.

He says very quickly to the question. Yeah, I'm not saying that they're not, but we have no idea when and stuff like that. It's just, you know, how long before it gets dark or before people start wondering where we are, you know? Well my family's going to be out here for a hunt anyway. I can just go and say that's why I'm out here if I get caught and go check on him if we need to. Morph, can you like shoot up a flare or anything?

Flare. I can do bright eyes, I have big bright eyes, I can make my arms long or short. I don't think I can do a flare. What do you think, Indige? Well, we don't have a flare gun, but this is extremely irresponsible. We could lack something on fire and have more throw it into the air. If we need people to know where we are, we could also, I don't know, maybe if they have really bright eyes we could just use like shadows or something, but then I need to talk to my

family too. Never mind, I might just need to go. You're leaving too. Just for a little bit. Just to make sure that everyone knows where to come back to. What do I do? Well your job right now is to be safe. Stay here and make sure that, you know, HB and Rada don't get in trouble, try to make

sure you have fun. We could decorate the cave a little bit, make it a little bit more homely. I don't want to be far away. Neither do we, but we gotta make sure the coast is clear first. Just for a little bit. Why do I have to stay here? Because the adults are after you, and if they find you first, then we can't guarantee that you'll see your sister or anybody else that you like again.

I don't want to make sister. We're working on it, we'll get her here. Marv goes back to flipping through the pages of the books. We're going to cut over to Che Young now. So you've caused this absolute mayhem in the forest. What? What's your plan now? What are you doing, bud?

I don't have a plan. I rolled a rock down a hill. I guess, I mean, if we, I'll just like walk back up, you know, we'll do a Sisyphus reference here. Um, no, I think having caused the chaos that I plan to, I'm going to do my best to try to find everyone and try to get back there, um, that's, and if I can't figure it out from there. Great.

Um, go ahead and roll me, uh, roll me an investigate check. This probably isn't the first time D.H. has mentioned this cave. Yeah, that's two successes. Two successes. Uh, D.H. has talked about this cave before and while you don't have like coordinates or really any landmarks, you do kind of halfway remember that they said, you know, go southeast, day going southeast until you see, you know, a specific kind of tree that maybe they, their family like carved like a marker in or something.

And you wander around the woods for a little bit, uh, but you eventually find that marker and just, just over the next kind of crest, you can see a little bit of smoke wafting through the air. And if you hadn't known to be looking for it, you maybe wouldn't have even noticed it, but you know your friends, uh, and you, you can start making your way in that direction. Cool, cool, cool. Is there anything you and Samus want to be doing? I mean, I'm not good at sneaking, so it's, I just made a loud noise.

I'm trying to get going fast and yeah, because I think I would, I like Chaeyoung thought the cave was the, the, the most viable idea for a while. So she probably would have held on to that information. Great. So this makes sense. Uh, so you start making your way back up towards where you were pretty sure the cave is. Um, Peyton, what are you doing?

Do I think, because I heard them say they want to go to the Drake residence, do I think I could beat them there? It would be questionable. You know this town better than they do. You can get through this town with more efficiency than they can, but they have a head start in the way that you are on a mountain and in the middle of a forest and they just have to take some roads to get there. So you weren't sure where the other, the other agents were going or when they left or anything

like that. Yeah. Cause that was over walkie. Wasn't it? It was. There's a chance. I'm, I'm just going to say that rat, I kind of mentioned that to everyone. Um, there's, there's, I mean, there's a chance you could make it there, but they also might

already be there. Yeah. I think not knowing, and if I'm not being actively pursued, I will try to loop around and see if I can find the cave as well. Okay. Um, you can also go ahead and roll me an investigate check. One success. Um, yeah, you, uh, with a little bit less specificity from than Cheyong, you kind of

start just like tromping up the, up the side of the mountain, leaving a grown man's unconscious body, breathing in decaying leaves, uh, you kind of push your way up the mountain in the direction you saw your friends going earlier. Um, wait, does that body have a walkie on, on him? Make an investigation check. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Okay. That's one success as well.

That's one success as well. Yeah. You find a walkie talkie. You find a pair of handcuffs. You find, um, a gun. And you find, um, a kind of a small handheld. It's like a, it's like a square screen on a, on a flat, like a, it's like if you turn to joystick upside down, there's, there's a handhold on the bottom and a flat screen

on the top. Uh, the screen's dark right now, but there is a switch on it. Great. I'm contemplating whether or not to handcuff him, but I think he's unconscious. I'm good. I'm just going to take all of it. Great. So you now have, I'm going to regret giving you guys a gun, you have a gun.

Uh, it's, it's just like a, like a shitty little handgun. Um, you've got. I do a really stupid thing and tuck it like in my pants, uh, cause, you know, movies, you know, yeah. So you, you tuck the gun in the back of your pants. Uh, you've got this weird kind of technology thing, uh, and you've got handcuffs and you've got the walkie, which is kind of crackling and buzzing. Um, and you kind of halfway here, uh, one of the other agents saying, this is Diaz,

everyone report in, what the hell was that? And it kind of clicks off. Cool. Yeah. I just keep listening to that and make my way to the cave. Uh, you're making your way up the cave. Another person checks in, uh, you, I'm, I'm assuming you've turned the volume down a little bit.

Yeah. I'm probably like just enough to hold it to my ear to listen. Yeah. You've got it up against your ear and, uh, and the next, the next thing you hear is, uh, a more feminine voice saying, this is Richardson, I'm good to, I guess I'll rock wall pass me. What kind of landslide is that Edwards, you good? And I just mumbled to myself, Edwards is not good.

Uh, you keep climbing and you hear Edwards. Come on, man. Answer back. I know the rock didn't hit you, well, fuck are you? Still nothing. Uh, you can see the lip of the cave. Um, and as you're, as you're making it back up there, um, Diaz says, fuck. All right.

Uh, let's circle back. Let's circle back and try to regroup. I don't know where the fuck Edwards is, but we clearly need more reinforcements. Come on. Uh, and the, uh, the walkie kind of fizzles out as, uh, the other, what did I name them? Diaz and, then remember what I, Richardson, Richardson, as Richardson says copy, heading back to the cars now, um, and that's the last thing you hear for now. Uh, Cheyung and Peyton, you rejoin your friends in the cave.

There's a little bit of a fire going and some blankets set out. How are we doing? At the sound of Peyton's voice, Henry leaps to his feet. You're back. Are you a robot? Are you okay? I'm great and I have like this joystick thing in my hands and as soon as I see Cheyung, I just hold it out.

Okay. Let's see what this does. Easily enough, you find a switch on the bottom of the little platform that the screen is on and you flick it and a little green circle appears in the middle with other concentric green circles going out from it. There is a, uh, a little bar circling around and around and around and right near the center of the green dot is a red dot and you, you know enough to know that this is a radar and that you have found, you have, you have their radar and that Morphe is in fact being tracked.

All right, I'm going to kind of toss it to whoever. I don't care if this thing pulls on the ground, I'm like, all right, we got to get to work. Uh, I want to try to like disable whatever signal, uh, is it like, is it tracking a signal or is it just like, am I able to disable the thing that's, that they're tracking? Roll me, you can choose what kind of tech check you want to roll. You can roll Tinker program or calculate, um, calculate is going to give you more information about, um, how it works. Program is going to kind of show you or is going to give you some more information about

what they're tracking and Tinker is going to give you information about where that might be. I'm interested in the program. In the program. Because then I, that's probably, that to me seems like the way, the closest, the fastest way to disable it. If I can figure this out. Great.

Uh, go ahead and roll me a programming check. What's the point of rolling eight dice if we need to look again? Go for it. It's my last look. Go for it. Burn them. We burn them now, friends. Two successes, two successes, amazing.

You are looking over this break on a stick, essentially, um, and you're kind of turning it over and over and you look over at Morph, Ashton, your new friend. And it strikes you as a little bit odd that so much effort has gone into keeping the central soul thing safe if it's also visible. It seems weird to have it easily seen, but also completely secured. This opening is so that they can track them, but if we put a big piece of metal over it, I have a feeling maybe we can, maybe a bit of a cloaking effect, maybe not totally, at least maybe it'll like reduce the range of how they can track them and then that makes

it harder for them or something like that. So I guess you would also on that, on that knowledge have the information that short of having led to put over it, it's covering it is going to be, it's not going to be the best way, the best way you can figure is finding whatever it is in Morph that is being tracked and either removing it or disabling it or destroying it. I guess we remove it and then put it in a lead box, but then Morph can't move. If we take it out of the body, right, that's like, I don't know what to do, I've relayed all the information I have to everyone.

You're not sure if the thing that they're tracking is the soul specifically or if it's something near the soul. Yeah. How specific is the radar? Because can we like walk to the back of the cave and see like a difference between the spaces or is it just kind of like? Yeah, you take this brick on a stick, that's what I'm calling it from now on, you walk the 150 feet back into the cave and where the dot was pretty much at the center, the red

dot was pretty much at the center, it's, excuse me, it has gained a little bit of distance. You get the feeling that this isn't like, this isn't like you're like, if you were in a house and you looked at it, it'd be like, ah, yes, I know the trackers in the bathroom. It's more of like a general area kind of thing and banking on being able to actively like notice what it is and where it is. You, Che Young and Diage, between the two of you, with Diage's knowledge of the outdoors and Che Young's knowledge of technology, you get the idea that Morph has made it this long by staying out of sight in the sense of being up high, to quote the famous internet saying

gamers don't look up. Hide Morph in the rafters of the mountain, whatever that is, tree house. I turn the walkie up a little bit just so everyone can listen and I just have it like sitting in the cave so that if it sounds like anybody is approaching, we're all aware. Yeah, there hasn't been any activity since Richardson and Diaz said that they were heading back to the cars. You get, you can see that there's like a dial on the side of it. So there's a chance that there are other channels that are being used for communication.

You don't know which is which, but as for the people who were imminently close by, they're unaccounted for at the moment, especially with Edwards being down because you have his walkie now. HB will recognize the look in Che Young's face when they were about to like dismantle a computer or something, just that gleeful look, and he will lean down to Ashton and say, okay, have you ever had like a broken bone and gone to the doctor and it hurts for a little bit, but then you start to feel better? I think that might be what's going to happen here.

I don't remember having a broken bone, but I think I understand what are you trying to do? I think Che Young is going to be a doctor for a second with that box and your soul so that we can fix you and so that people can't find you anymore. I would like to be fixed, I don't want to be like this anymore. Do we need to put your soul in a different body? I don't know, I don't want to be scared anymore. If I can find something that's like, if I can take a look and be like, all right, this

is the thing that they're tracking, let me scoop it out, I'll do that, but if not, then tell me a tinker check again as you're kind of looking in close contact to Morph's soul and the welded edges around it, one success. You peer into the depths of their torso at this glowing red light and nothing looks different, it looks the same, it looks the same, it looks the, oh. In the top right corner of this blob of red, you can see a very slowly growing red light probably about the size of a quarter and then it slowly turns to black and then it slowly lights up again and slowly turns to black and it's not, if you hadn't been looking for

it, you wouldn't have noticed, it would have just completely blended in with the rest of their central light. Could I like unscrew it or? So what's been going on, what's been your kind of your biggest issue with it is that it is covered by all of their chest plates basically and then the bolts have been welded on top so that they can't be removed. There's a chance you can, if you have a tool back home or here, you could try to blow torch it, if you had a blow torch, you can ask Morph if they know how, you can find.

There are options that you can think of to get it open. You don't know how necessarily, specifically, but there are ways, as a tinkerer and a person who knows about computers, you know that there are ways to get into things. That's never stopped you before. It's not like, so like the viewing port is like some sort of like strong, clear material. It's not, it's kind of opaque, it's like, I never described this super well. So it's kind of like, like the appearance of frosted glass, but it feels like metal, like almost like a translucent opaque metal.

It's not something you've really encountered before because like the rest of it has been like, you know, like steel or iron or whatever strong. And this, it's kind of covered to look like it's the same thing, but there is something different about it. Again, which you wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't been staring deeply into it and investigating about it. I think we, does anybody have access to a blow torch? I think we could, like, just like focus into this.

There's this little port, I think, that we could like disable the light and they need to, they, they've been needing visual confirmation. So the light is just cosmetic. And so if you just disable the light, it'll be a lot easier for more to hide because even though they'll have radar, there's just no way that they'll be able to find them because these already been doing okay without our help so far. So if we just give them extra help, I think then it'll just be hopeless for them to find them.

This is a huge forest, but I can't really get through this like plate right here. So if we blast through it, but I don't want to like hurt Morph. So we just like do a very focused blow torch right inside and it'll be like surgery just like HB said. I mean, okay. If I have, if I have a magnifying glass, can we use Morph's bright, bright eyes to like, can he look inward? That's what you do with souls, you have to look inside.

Yes, look inside yourself, Morph, and blast a hold through your protective walls that is keeping the thing that's holding you back sequestered inside. We got to let it let it out. Let your light shine, Morph. That's the coolest shit I've ever fucking heard. Absolutely. Wait, who said the eyes thing because that it was so brilliant. The eyes.

The eyes, yeah. I do want to, I mean, I have a Leatherman, maybe there's like a magnifying glass in there. Are you kidding me? You look at plants all the time. Sweet. Good. Then I give it to Jae Young because I feel like they, I have explained it. You have a better sense of what is safely hot.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna try to get it in there and sort of just like, all right, Morph. Maybe HB is the best person to coach you through this because I feel like, I don't know, I'm doing coming up this from like a scientific way, but it doesn't seem like Morph responds the best to that sort of explanation. So HB, I'm going to get in here, but you got to talk Morph through the surgery. Okay, I got you.

I'm going to hold the magnifying glass in the right spot for where like, I'll take care of all the math, but you got to take care of Morph. Okay. I've been listening to coach and I know some pretty good pep talks. So Morph, it's going to get tough. I'm not going to lie to you, but we're your friends. We're the swamp kids. We're here.

We're together. You can get through this buddy. You just have to think about what you want and go for it and we'll do it as a team. Okay. And he just like starts like punching his fist into his hand. Morph sees you making this movement and tries to do it a couple of times, but with the notebook and their, their little hands, they kind of stop. Um, all right.

This is how this is going to resolve. Deej, you can give an extra die for helping Cheyung. Uh, Cheyung are going to be rolling a tinker track, but first Henry, I want you to make a lead role. Okay, that's four. One success. One success. That means Cheyung, you have two additional die for your pool.

Uh, before you roll this, Radda and Peyton, what are you two doing? Getting in the bag. Actually yeah. Um, if Peyton still has the walkie, then I think Radda would like to start scanning the channels to see if we can pick up any additional conversations because I feel like Radda would understand walkies a lot better. Um, so yeah, I'll go over to Peyton. Um, while everybody else is, um, working with Morph, um, and start, um, twisting the dials

on the walkie and hopefully something will come of it. Yeah, see if we can find what's, what channel they're using now, or, uh, yeah, go ahead and roll. Uh, you can either roll program or contact. Program. Or if you want to, if you want to make a bid for a different thing, you can. I don't know if investigate would be appropriate. I will, I was going to pander my investigation pool, um, but I can do program.

Okay, go for program. That is not happening. Hell yeah, three successes. You guys are rolling so well. Uh, so you take the, take the walkie and you hold it between you and Peyton and you start clicking through channels and clicking through channels and clicking through channels and you find, um, one channel and it sounds like, uh, this is Culver. I'm at the back of the Drake household.

There's nothing here. Uh, I need a look up front and, uh, there's another and you can hear on this second, uh, transmission, I guess you can hear kind of some background noise and you recognize Adelaide's voice that you can't understand anything she's saying and there's a secondary voice that you don't know at another, and the other voice comes through Everett here, uh, she don't know nothing. She's got, she's got some of the kids stuff, but she hadn't seen anything. She's getting agitated.

We're going to, we're going to have to leave seeing if we don't want her calling down some shit. Uh, and the other person calls back affirmative. And you, as, uh, as Everett comes back over the call, you can hear Adelaide's voice getting higher and louder and you can hear her saying, and, uh, and you can hear a lower voice trying to, kind of trying to have a placating tone. She goes, no, don't tell me that shit. Get off our property before I shoot you.

And, uh, and Everett comes back over and says, yes, it's going bad, we need to get out of here. Uh, we'll regroup with the others. Anyone hurt from Edwards yet? Uh, and there's a, there's a negative from, from Culver and you switch to another channel and you hear, uh, for the first time you hear Carlson say, all right, well, clearly something's going on in those words, I don't know if, I don't know if the robot is smart enough to send a rock down after us, but maybe it is.

I don't know. They won't tell us what this thing's doing. Uh, and you hear, uh, another voice say, well, we're, we're still in town, we're still looking, the, the grub is, the grub's empty, so is the, so is the other fucking food place. What else do you want me to do? And Diaz comes back on, I want you guys to get your asses out here. We don't have enough manpower to cover this whole fucking forest before night falls. This is the closest we've been, you really want to deal with, and someone else kind of

cuts in. All right. That's enough of this. And it's Diaz, uh, I'm bad at thinking of names on the fly, um, masters, get your team out here. We have about four hours to sundown, we need to get this done with, leave the channel open until we're all here. And it clicks off.

Uh, well they're not at the Drake house anymore. What did Adelaide mean by what more do you want from us? Well, I mean, she lost her brother, so I mean, that's, but she doesn't know that had anything to do with, with them, right? I don't know. I mean, yeah, they wouldn't know why would she suspect that the shed that was involved will, unless they did know why he went missing, didn't Ashton's parents work at the shed? Yeah, and I think, I think those journal entries said that they were there, like, more and

more often, they were distant. Maybe Ashton's parents know more about this than they think, than we think they do. I don't know. But we only have a couple of hours before they're actually going to start looking for us again, maybe, um, they're trying to get this done by the end of the night. I don't know if we can keep Morph out here for this long. And then what though? What about tomorrow?

I don't know. Maybe if we get Ashton to Adelaide, at least Adelaide can keep Ashton safe and then we can go from there. If we can get the town to rally behind keeping Ashton safe, maybe, maybe, um, we can tell the shed to fuck off. Yeah. Does Rada usually curse? No, I don't think Rada curses at all.

I think this is the first time Rada's said it. So there's this, like, weird, it shouldn't be a proud moment, but it's like a proud moment of like, you said fuck. And then just kind of nodding. Like it's too serious of a situation right now, but, um, just nodding, agreeing, we need a plan. I go and like, I rummage and find my other notebook so that I can open up a notebook so that we can go back to the everybody else and start forging a plan of attack.

The two of you rejoin, uh, the surgery party, as I'm taking to calling them in my head. Um, go ahead and band name, call it, what new band name, call it, I call it tips on that as a band name surgery party. Uh, go ahead and roll me that tinker check. You have three extra dice in your pool, J.M. Whoo. Okay. So that's five for normal and then three extra.

Yep. So a nice total. This is what I roll my other ones. I don't have tinker, uh, proficiency. I have programming and calculating, which I'm very glad I did because rolling down that rock is so worth taking calculate six, six, six, baby. That's three successes. In Henry talking through, uh, through all of Morph's kind of fears and Morph, Ashton,

you don't know if they were an athlete before they were robotized or if they had many friends, but there's something about your voice that kind of settles them and they've got one hand that's kind of out next to your leg, um, Cheyong, you pull their head as you've come to think of it down toward their body and they light their eyes up and you catch it in the, uh, in the magnifying glass, wait, wait, and wait. And it feels like so long. Nothing's happening. And then there's a different kind of red appearing on Morph's torso as the metal finally, finally,

finally begins to heat and start to drip down. It is slow going. It is difficult. You have to work your way around the entire perimeter of where all of the rivets are. And as you do, you see that the original, the single plate at the center is a bit bigger than you thought it was, but you are cutting through enough of the, of the metal around the sides that you can start, and Deej, you can see this too. You can start kind of fitting probably not fingers because it's red hot metal, but you

can start fitting kind of implements in there and start trying to pry up the sides of this metal. And in working together, you begin to lift it ever so slightly. Morph looks like he's starting to get a little agitated by this sudden heat and sensation. But every time his anxiety seems like it's building, Henry is right next to him, speaking calmly and kindly. And you don't know how much time passes. The sun moves behind the clouds.

The fire begins to burn out. Satan and Rata plan off to the side, but slowly, slowly, slowly, you manage to get probably this kind of a like a 45 degree angle of the metal up off of Morph's chest. And you look down. And for being such like a bulbous shape, it seems wildly empty in there. There are from from where the head is, there's kind of like a shifting plate or like retracting and contracting plates that kind of move with the head as it kind of rolls around. And you see a column of wires and cords wrapping down from wherever the head is down through

what looks like a central pole, almost like a spinal column. And wrapping up around this baseball sized, you don't even know what it is. You've never seen any kind of texture like this. It looks hardy and strong, but also delicate and membranous almost. It almost looks like there's a central, a hard central point surrounded by some kind of gelatinous something. And off to the side, clamped around one of the like reddish orange wires is a disc, as I said, quarter sized that begins to light and then goes out and lights and then goes

out. And Morph, whose head is still tilted down, says, I have never seen the inside of myself. Same. So it's probably weird. I don't think I like it. You don't have to look. We're trying to get rid of this light. Is this light thing have, like if I tap this, or I guess I don't know if, yeah, we're like

kind of tapping it with like an implement very lightly. Can you feel that? Which thing are you tapping the glow? The one that's just the light part that the so are you touching like the baseball sized one or the quarter sized one? You describe there's a quarter sized one that was just like giving off some light, right? It was like going light and then getting dim. So the red, the big central, sorry, I'll clarify here.

So the big central red one is still glowing. That is the big red light that you've seen in Morph's test. That's the soul. That's the soul. That's what Henry calls the soul. Yes. There was a secondary light of the same color off in a corner that would slowly bloom to light.

Yeah. That's what I'm looking. I'm tapping that. So that the smaller one. Okay. You tap that. No. I cannot feel that.

Okay. Good. Maybe we, I don't know how to remove this, but maybe we just smash it and that'll help with stealth. Yeah. It's like sometimes I pop a pimple on my face, Morph. It's not going to hurt too bad and it'll make you feel better when it's done. Anyone who's looking into Morph's, Ashton's chest cavity can roll me an investigate check.

No. Two. One success. One. Nothing. Radit, did you roll or are you doing something else? Sure, I might put them over there as well. One success.

One success. Cheyung and Rada, you think it looks like it'd be fairly easy to crush and it's pretty delicate and it's close enough to the central part that you think that that was the intention was putting it close to the center would keep it safe. But Peyton. Oh no, I was going to tell Cheyung that it looks like it's like an insert dial. You could probably yank it and then crush it and it should be fine. As they're saying this though, Peyton, you come at it from a different angle and you

can see two wires spreading deep into the cords that keep it connected and as you trace them, one goes straight to the sole as we're calling it and one kind of continues up the central pole spinal column like thing towards wherever Morph's head is. You know enough about circuits from very basic science classes that it is pretty evidently like a kill switch if the tracker is destroyed, so is Morph's connection to their head at least. I think Cheyung and Rata's hands were like up kind of like pointing and just showing where they could pull and I immediately just grab both of their hands and pull them back

and I don't even say anything out loud because I'm just like and nothing's coming out but I point to the wires. Do you see that? Rata's like looking at your hands, touching my hands, I'm just like back and forth. That's all I'm looking at. Henry's kind of in the far background like trying to pop one of his pimples in demonstration and he's just like really fussing at his face. Ashen's eyes are fixed on you as you pop a pimple.

There's goo in there, I want goo, I want to be able to pop goo from my face. I don't think that's not going to be what you think it is buddy, I'm so sorry. Hot goo from your face. So we can't is what you're saying, I think Khadijah puts all of these reactions together in like a slow like crawl. Yeah I think Peyton finally gets out the word like kill switch. I mean we gotta get something through. Hey everybody, sometimes you gotta go defense but sometimes you gotta go offense and if

the kill switch was our defense it's not gonna work. What if we went offense? What if we just go for Adelaide, go for the shed, go for it. Okay when you say go for it you mean like eternally go for it? We never really follow up with coach when he says that to us so I'd have to think about it. I think though if we can get to Adelaide, Adelaide seems to know more about the situation than we even know about especially with Ashton so maybe Adelaide can be the person that like

can advocate for the rest of the town because like if everybody brings the same level of energy that HV's mom brings to the table then we can tell the shed to fuck off. Hell yeah. I think when Rada starts talking Peyton realizes she's still holding on to the hand and is just like. So we all leave in the cave to go get Adelaide because if we're just going for it we ran through them once. And we have the walkie now, we'll know where they are kind of or at least what they're

doing. Yeah they're regrouping right now so if we run maybe before they realize, before they're the wiser we'll already be there. What do you think Ashton? Morph is still staring down at their open chest and looks up at you guys. I'm very tired. I want, I want you to be safe. I think I am the problem.

No, no, not at all. The shed's the problem. I mean if they weren't here we would be eating burgers at my mom's place right now. Hanging out with you Morph. You wanted to see your sister we're going to go see her right now. You just got to hang on just a little bit more for us. A little bit more. Just a little bit more.

Let's be at least get to Adelaide. Adelaide, I want my sister, yeah, we're going to go. We'll get her, we'll go, we'll go, let's go. Exactly, so we're going? Peyton stiffens like she just remembered something and is like, Deej I think I need to talk to you alone for a second. Oh, okay. As you say that Peyton, Henry was about to go, swap kids on three and then two of you

peel away and he's like, okay, just put this hand behind his back. I just very awkwardly and as discreetly as possible just lift up my shirt to show Deej the gun. I forgot that I have this and Peyton, that is a gun, what do we do with it? I mean, keep it in case we need it. Take the bullets out. I don't know how and I just kind of like grab it and I'm like, you take it. Deej, I think at this point is like trying to keep a confident face but is literally

crying and she's like, of course I can take the bullets and she does know how but this is a real gun and it's different. So she's going to take the bullets out. You remove the bullets, you stick them somewhere safe. I think she puts them in the pocket and then gives the gun back to Peyton. I like this version much better. Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. And then we don't need to talk about this ever ever again. Great. Great. Good. Okay. Great.

Good. Good. Back to the team. Yep. I think we were going to we were going to cheer or something. Swim kids on three as soon as they approach. One, two, Morph, get in here. I'm here.

Three. Swim kids. Swim kids. Swim kids. Swim kids. The best team, the best team. You guys make your way out of the cave. The sun is starting to get low in the sky.

It took a really long time to get into Morph's chest and it is still open. You've covered it with the sweater, but you can kind of see the bit of metal sticking out. And as you kind of crash down the hill through the undergrowth, back toward your bikes, Morph Ashton is right behind you and they keep, they keep time better down hill and with the promise of seeing their sister. You avoid where Edwards may or may not still lay. And as you go, everyone just throw me an investigator, yeah, who's up front, who's leading the way

down the hill actually. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah. Can I roll lead instead? Absolutely. Yeah. Go for it.

You can for sure roll lead. That's the stuff I like. I should probably luck. Go for it. A lucky thing I can use, that's where I re-roll everything, right? Yeah. Have you used this last one you have? I haven't used luck.

I forgot that I had it, but I think this might be the last one, okay. You can push if you want to. Yeah. Okay. Okay, I'll use both hands, come on, come on. One success. One success. You kind of crash down and shoulder, you're like shoulder check a tree and it hurts for

a second and you realize that you're down close to the road, close to where you kept your bikes and you're so thankful. You told everyone to hide them because there are three cars, blacked out windows, parked about a football field's length away. You can't see anyone around them, you guess everyone's in them. Payton, as you turn the radio up a little bit, you can hear, all right, we're just waiting on one more team in the mall, we'll spread out in a grid, have everyone keep your eyes peeled.

It sounds like they're all still in the cars waiting for one more team. I'm not even going to make you roll because they're a football field away and they're not looking, they don't know that they're looking for you guys specifically. You get on your bikes and you make your way through the trees past them. Back to the main road. You guys know that the Drake's live just to the west of town and you can go through town if you want to, there is everything in town. There are also a few fields that you can cut through, though they'll take a little bit

longer. We should go through town. Yeah, go for speed here. Okay, everyone make me move rolls. I'm going to push it, I'm exhausted. One success. You lag behind for a couple minutes trying to take a deep breath and morph Ashton, lags back with you and doesn't say anything and it's just kind of a presence at your side.

They've grown distant and a little sad, but they're sticking by your side and you keep pushing forward. You guys burst through town in a flurry of movement. The mayor has come down off of the roof of the theater and she's out front of the soda fountain with a root beer float in an unnecessarily fancy glass. Her son Colin is next to her and we send a kind of wave to her and it goes, hey kids, it's good to see you. Who's your new friend?

I don't think I know that. You blow past her before she can even get the full question out and you circle back around behind Greta's grub and you can see your mom Henry through the window cooking, serving a couple folks and she sees you and sees a sixth person with you and she looks a little confused and a little concerned, but she raises a hand and waves and goes back to what she was doing. You make your way through the three side streets that the town has and find the cul-de-sac with one house left on the actual cul-de-sac part of it, everything else, all the other

houses in the circular part of the cul-de-sac are either, they've either fallen in or they're just used as storehouses, but out front there is a decrepit old pickup truck. The garage door isn't all the way down, it looks like there's enough space for like a cat to skid her under. The front yard is overgrown but dead now, brown plants hang from the porch and the screen door screen is ripped and the door itself is half hanging off of its hinges, but this is the Drake house. You ride up easily, dismount your bikes and roller skates and skateboards, it looks like

none of the lights, at least on the front of the house are on, a backlight is though. I think Radda, since I was the one who had talked to Adelaide recently, I think Radda is going to be the one that goes up to the porch door and like knock on it, or if there's a doorbell I'll punch the doorbell. The doorbell's button is cracked and falling apart as you go to touch it and it doesn't look like there's a light on it so you knock. The four of you back with Ashton notice that he has stopped in the center of the cul-de-sac and is just staring at the house.

Come on buddy, we can't stay in the open, do you not want to go to the house? I want my sister. Yeah, let's go, she's going to be right here. Morph takes your hand and starts toddling towards the front. Radda you knock up the door and there's no response, you knock again and finally you hear some kind of movement behind the door. I'm coming, jeez, if it's shed agents one more time, I swear. And the door swings open, Adelaide has a bat in one hand and the door in the other and

just a storm cloud expression that clears a little bit when she sees you. Radda, what are you doing here, did you? Uh, hi. I've already taken the toaster apart if you want the pieces, or took the toaster apart. Yeah, the toaster, remember you gave me a toaster earlier, I can give you like the cord and stuff back if you want that, I really only needed the heating coil, what are you doing here? Um, it's a, it's a, uh, yeah, kind of, um, do you want to come in, do you need to come

inside or are you? That would probably be great, but I'm waiting for everybody else to come, um, we want you to meet somebody. Adelaide looks over your shoulder at, uh, your four friends and the robot who has frozen halfway up the walk and is staring and staring and staring, um, she kind of looks at it and looks at you, what's that thing, why did, what, where the hell did you get something like that? Um, well, we, we found it in the woods in the swamp, um, and, uh, you found a fully functional

bipedal robot in the woods? Yeah, um, but, what, what are you telling me, um, well, we need to go inside. Yeah, maybe we could talk about this inside so that like our outdoor voices will be inside voices. Um, I don't know. You might want to sit down. I don't know. I don't, that's what the adults say when things happen.

Um, okay. You have to keep it down, my mom and dad are asleep already, so just be quiet, okay? And she pushes the door open and you walk through, Peyton, you follow, Khadija, Henry, Cheyenne, and the last to come is the robot, Morph, Ashton, and he freezes and he looks at Adelaide. Adelaide, sister, and Adelaide is looking back at you and looking at the robot. What the hell is going on? What are you, what are, what's your, what's going on?

Well, well, we found, we found Morph, and after some time of like getting to know Morph, we found out that Morph's not actually his name, Morph is actually, um, she freezes. I don't know what the hell kind of joke you kids are playing, but it is. No, it's not a joke, it's not a joke, it's not a joke, I swear. Rada's telling the truth. Just talk to him. She slowly kind of turns and looks up at the, at the hunking metal thing in the living room, uh, and it, and Morph's Ashton's legs retract slowly back into its body until he reaches

the size of a 12-year-old and looks up at Adelaide, I missed you, and Adelaide's eyes fill with tears, Cheyong, if you programmed this robot to fuck with me, I swear. Even if I'm not this good, it's, he's real. I don't even believe in souls that I believe that this is real. Adelaide, there's a soul, ask, ask, ask Ashton anything from, that only Ashton would know. Well, it's memory, his memory is not that great, so I don't know if that's a great, I mean maybe, let us try it. Some stuff is coming back.

Yeah, that's true. You recognize the book you gave me, yeah. The book. The journal. The notebook. Uh, hold on, hold on. Uh, she looks at the robot one more time and like reaches out like she's gonna touch it and then pulls her hand back at the last second.

I'll be right back. And she disappears into the house and you guys are kind of left in this living room with Morph as he looks around. It looks the same. Oh, why does it look the same? Purniture doesn't grow up like kids do, Morph. I know that, Henry. Oh.

You're silly. Okay. I would like to note that I am not leaving the front door, like I am staring out the front door to keep an eye on anyone approaching. Absolutely. I thought she'd take this better. Yeah, I don't know, maybe me too. I don't know how much she knows about the shed.

Probably not as much as they do. There's a clattering from the back of the house. And Adelaide appears again kind of breathless wiping her face. Uh, here, here, um, just take this and she holds out another notebook to Ashton and as he opens it, he flips to more intricate larger drawings of the, the, the classic like big foot look back walk and there's like a beautiful lake scene that looks completely serene and normal except for one little like serpentine head peeking out of the water. And then on the next page, it's a family portrait, um, and more stops there and kind of traces

the features of both of the adults mom and dad mom and dad and Adelaide sits down heavily on the ground, I didn't think this would, um, I guess you want an explanation or something. You know, what's going on? Do you have an explanation? There's an explanation. We weren't expecting an explanation down to get down if my parents wake up, it, you were sick. She turns to Ashton.

You were sick and mom and dad never told you, um, they didn't want to scare you. But they worked at the shed and the shed, they had medicine. We thought something to help, I don't know, they didn't say much about it and they didn't want mom and dad to know what it was, but they said they could fix it. And then they said it didn't work after the fact. And now I guess I know why, what did they do to you? And she kind of leans forward and like touches the side of its head and Morph's eyes go down to almost single pixels like he's closing his eyes.

I don't, I don't like running away, I want to stay with you. And Adelaide kind of drops her head forward. I don't know how to stop him kid, I wish I did, they're, they're bigger than me in this town and I'm, I don't want you to have to run anymore either. Uh, Peyton, you're still looking out the window, yeah. No one's coming down this way and you get the feeling that Edwards probably had the only, not the only, but one of the only trackers. And if they all thought that, you know, there was some one place, they're gonna work that

until they have to check the tracker again, but time's running short. Uh, and Adelaide kind of turns and looks at you all, her hand hasn't left kind of the metallic face. What do you, what do you know, what do you want to, I don't know what you guys can do, I don't, it's not your responsibility, your kids, your kids, what the hell are you doing? Um, and Morph leans their head against Adelaide's hand, uh, and says, I think I'm done running, I'll stay with you. And she says, no, they'll take you back, they'll take you back, and Morph says, not if they

can't find me. Um, and they kind of carefully remove the sweater and turn to you, Chaeyoung, can you unplug it? What happens to you? What happens to any soul? I'm not the best person to ask that, maybe Henry knows. Henry has a stricken look of someone who didn't study for the test and breathes in really deeply.

And you hear the faintest wake, wins, wins, and he breathes out and looks squarely at Morph and says, I don't know. But, I think that's the point. Interesting, I thought I wanted to be a monster, I don't think I'd like it anymore though, I want to stay home. Yeah, you're not a very good monster, but you are a very good friend, Morph. You are a very good friend, Chaeyoung. Well, I don't know if this is permanent, I know that it will disconnect you from this

body, and I look over at Adelaide and be like, if maybe there's a way to connect you to something else, but the only way that we can stop you from being found is, I mean, you know. And, I mean, I'll do it if everybody's, this is what we, I mean, it's Morph's choice, but also Adelaide and we all kind of did this together, so look, I know how to do it, and I don't know if I have a dog in this fight philosophically, I just want Morph to be okay. It kind of looks at Morph at Ashton, it's your choice kid, oh, you didn't get one the first time, I guess, so it's all on you.

And Morph kind of turns and looks at you each. I mean, friends, I would love kid. You are, everybody get a hand in here, I grab the tool and then everybody, I wait till for everybody and including Morph, I don't know how far inside himself it can reach, but. Morph's, Morph stretches their arm out as long as it'll go and puts it on top of Adelaide's covering all of your hands. And I just say, Swamp Kid's on three, one, two, three, Swamp Kid's, and I yank the tool and pull out the little signal, transmitter the sole piece, and watch the glow just die

down and I'll kind of hold it very delicately, and like this is the only sole, I guess this is the only sole that Chaeyoung believes in is like, clearly this is proof, and just like gently hold it in front of Adelaide and let her like, I'm just gonna hold it very, very lightly like this. Yeah, you disconnect the tracker, and as you do, something releases around the like red memberness center, and the rest of the like clamps and wires and cords fall away, and you scoop your hand under it, and it's kind of the kind of soft that feels like it's not even anything, you're like, it's so soft, you're not touching anything, and you hold

it out in your hand, and Chaeyoung Adelaide reaches out, and takes it, and holds it, and looks you all in the eye, thank you. I didn't know what they were doing as a kid, I only really found out because it got to be too much for them, they just kind of cracked, I don't think they'll ever be the same, and I don't blame them for what they did, I really don't, because I think I would have done the same thing if it was my kid, but it's good to have him back, thank you. You're good kids, swamp kids, and she kind of cradles it close to her body, and there is a big robotic shell left in the center of this house, you easily crush and disintegrate

the disc that held the tracker, and patent over the walkie you hear, the signal's gone, where's the signal, does anyone have an eye on the signal? And there's like chaos breaks out on this walkie system, and you can hear just like mayhem and anxiety from these agents who have completely lost something, that they were very explicitly instructed to bring back in one piece, Adelaide kind of looks at the walkie and says, that's pretty awesome kids, good job. You should get home, I'll see you around, I guess I'm in your jet, so whatever you need, thank you.

And she nods and is still cradling the heart, the soul, whatever this is close, and she kind of literally wanders back deeper into the house, and you guys are alone with this robot body in a house that isn't yours, as the sun is just disappearing behind the mountains. What do you want to do as we close out our game? Group hug morphe real quick, group hug morphe real quick, yeah that feels right. And I want to yell after her and be like, if anyone asks Greta's grub is the best diner in town, don't I know it, actually can I borrow your phone, your, your, your landline really quickly.

Yeah sure it's over there, go for it Kat. Just really quick I'm gonna call my mom and tell her that there are three out of towners in the woods that are just breaking permits. You call your mom and she, she picks up on the first ring and you tell her about these, these out of towners breaking, breaking permits in the woods and you hear a shotgun rack before she says a single word. And one of them, one of them gave Peyton a gun, one of them gave Peyton a gun. It was loaded, a loaded gun.

Like you're holding the phone away from your ear and uh, and Makita shouts to your father and also to Zimmer and goes, gear up boys. And then the phone hangs up. We're hunting hogs tonight. We're hunting pigs tonight. Good, that's it. You guys, I'm gonna say with the five of you, it would be extremely easy to take this, this robot form anywhere you wanted to take it.

It can be a part of your clubhouse. It can be a part of your, uh, one, like you can put it with your family's stuff, deej or rat. We can put it in the cave as like a new hideout, like outside of, I don't know if we ever need to hide out in the woods. We could like go to Morph's place and have it all set up. We could camp here. Yes, I love that.

I think we also keep whatever clothing items we gave him on him. Yes. Uh, it takes a couple of days to get him there. You have to bounce more from the Drake household to Greta's Grub and then from Greta's Grub to the cave, um, but schools out and you guys only have a little bit of work to do around town. You drag the torso up the hill. You can kind of reach through and pull the arms and legs back in so it's easier to, to

get up the hill and you all work together and set it up in the cave. And it's slowly over the course of the week becomes your new hideout. Uh, and it's harder to get to in winter obviously because of the snow and the cold, but sometimes it's worth it to make the trek up there and start a fire and have a nice little sleep over in the woods. We would definitely store the, the from there too. Oh, absolutely. The from.

It'll stay nice and frozen there. Um. So we're just going to run up that hill to the hideout and make a deal with God. Uh, I knew it. The from is built, uh, and I'll say one spring day at Wakewind Secondary School. One is mysteriously evacuated for an explosion of frogs leaping from the ceilings, crawling out of drains. I heard God was mad about something and the plagues could have been anything.

And that is where we're going to close out this wonderful little game of friendship and robots and dinosaurs. Oh my goodness. Oh, that was excellent. We really did hit all like all those like juicy tropes that you want. Even the plan of like the way the plans came up so good. Everybody is such a good bitch. Oh, that was beautiful and wonderful.

Thank you so, so, so much for thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much. Silly little game. Um, we'll go around one more time, let everyone kind of drop where we can find you, what projects you're working on, all the wonderful things because you these, you saw how talented these motherfuckers are. Go see more things that they do. Let's go in the same order as before.

Uh, yeah, I'm Carrie Smith, Carrie Smith 2012 on most platforms. You can find me at Crossroads Games. We premiere new things all the time. We show off various different systems and we have a lot of these awesome folks on there all the time. So, yeah. I'm emotional. Um, hi, I'm Allison or Insight Checked.

I delight in playing with all the people at this table. So thank you all for being amazing. Really enjoy playing with you all and love. Thank you for running a great game. You can find me at Insight Checked on the internet. I run TTRPG stuff, narrative video game stuff and just general nerdiness and chaos. So check it out. We'd love to see you all in the community and thank you again for this opportunity.

Hey, I'm Lex. You can find all my stuff at titanrpg.com, T-I-T-A-N-R-P-G.com. All my games are there. I'm an indie game designer. I also have three and change systems you can use to make your own game. You can become a game designer for free before you go to bed tonight. So go and check that out. All the links are at that URL.

You can also find me on Twitter at titanrpg.com and I also am part of an actual play podcast called The Etherlog where I play Dashi Shija, a gremliny grief domain cleric. So go check that out. We have also wacky times. Zach and Eli, is there any made stuff I'm forgetting or anything you guys are working on separately that you want to shout out? Definitely be sure to check out all the awesome other content that we have. We just completed our run through of our first season of our Vampire the Masquerade campaign,

Vegas by Night. So we have 16 wonderful episodes of shenanigans for you to check out. We'll be doing a lot of new stuff coming into the coming spring and summer. One including the Lost Divinity game. We'll be been graciously sponsored by Red Moon Row playing to run through the atrocity exhibition, which I will be the storyteller of with a wonderful squad of Mayday. So be sure to check our socials when we start releasing those dates, but it will be sometime in the summer.

But yeah, but we got tons of stuff for you guys to check out. Wholesome, scary, thrilling, whatever you need. We have it. Oh yeah. Zach, anything on your end? That was it. Right? Yeah, that was everything.

We do so much and this is great and I'm having a good time. Amazing. Well, thank you friends for watching, thanks for going on this silly little 80s ride with us. I know it wasn't deep 80s lore, but the vibe I think was definitely there. And we'll see you, we'll see you next time. Take care of yourselves. Bye.