(cool opening noir music)
- Hello one and all.
Welcome back to another thrilling season of "Dimension 20:
Mentopolis."
I am your humble GM, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
With me for the very first time are our Prefrontal PIs.
(group laughing) Say hi, Prefrontal PIs.
- [Everyone] Hi, Prefrontal PIs.
- Oh my gosh.
I am so excited to bring to the dome our wonderful cast
of gumshoes settled within the mind
of a scientist here
(thunder rumbles) in the rainy city.
How does it rain inside of a brain?
That's for you to decide.
(group laughing) - A brainstorm.
(all gasp)
- Goddammit, this is why Trapp is here.
(group laughing) - Coming in hot.
Coming in hot.
- Oh, a brainstorm.
I'm writing it down.
(group laughing)
With us, Alex Song-Xia
(group laughing)
Danielle Radford.
- Hi.
- [Brennan] Mike Trapp.
- Hi.
- [Brennan] Siobhan Thompson.
- Hello.
- [Brennan] Freddie Wong.
And Hank Green.
- I've been here the whole time.
(group laughing)
- Gotcha, Sam.
So without further ado, we'll dive in.
We're actually gonna be playing a different game this time.
This is my first time in the dome running a non D&D-
- Yeah, eat that tie. - A non D&D game.
(whispering) Aabria, let me know how I'm doing.
(group laughing)
We'll be running a sanctioned hack of Kids on Bikes,
our amazing system that has been noir-ified.
A couple rules, it's a very simple system.
All of our heroes have six stats that have been coded
to different noir themes.
They are sneak, snoop, sharp, sturdy, savvy, and slick,
which of course are the traits of any great noir hero.
They'll roll different dice for these different skills
and abilities they have, and if they fail on their checks,
don't worry, they will get a Moxie token.
(sounds of enthusiasm)
- Moxie tokens may be spent to trigger different abilities
and turn failures into successes,
and when you get a Moxie token,
we do something very, very fun with them,
which is we get them right into your little carriers
where you need them.
- Let me tell you, if I ever succeed,
I'm gonna be so disappointed.
- [Brennan] Oh, it jumped the track. - That's fine.
- There we go.
Remember, in this game,
if you roll the highest value on any of your dice,
the dice explodes and you get to keep that number
and roll again.
Without further ado, we welcome you
to Dimension 20: Mentopolis.
For your consideration, watching at home.
the mind of one Elias Hodge, (cool retro-futuristic music)
Junior Researcher at Gobstopper Industries,
a retro-futurist conglomerate working on all sorts
of amazing art deco technology
in a gilded, non-descript past like past.
(group laughing)
- Gah, he paints a picture with his words.
(group laughing)
(chimes ring)
- It's magic every time. (players laughing)
And what pray tell does young Elias,
fresh out of university as a mento-technological researcher,
working here at Gobstopper Industries work on?
Well, the mind of this young researcher
is as frantic and busy as a, (fingers snap)
say, as a city.
(Freddie and Siobhan laughing)
That's right,
a city with tall cerebral skyscrapers (lights pulsing quickly)
and the civic structures of Cortex City,
where the big wigs hobnob with each other night and day,
and who knows what impulses and urges might shake hands
behind closed doors with those higher cognitive functions
that would seem to speak for the citizens of Mentopolis,
and deep down in the industrial belly
of those limbic systems and temporal lobes
and the working class joes
down in the cerebellum, ah, this place stays pretty busy
with trains running in and out
of Oblongata Station night and day. (trains whooshing past)
Well, during the night it's way less,
'cause actually, melatonin, there's different,
there's stuff that goes on.
You get it.
It's a city that's a brain, folks.
(players laughing)
We (laughs) bring you to Mentopolis,
a city in a mind, a mind in a city,
the hustle and bustle of a nerve-wracked junior scientist
at a large corporation rendered in slick sidewalks
and shadowy figures doing God knows what
in the depths of the subconscious.
We begin our story as we often do in tales
of dread and mystery...
In the shadows. (hollow ringing)
A massive switchboard filled with cables, synaptic firing.
We see all of the various cables going to and fro,
the Synaptic Switchboard at the heart (static crackling)
of Cerebell Pacific, the company that runs-
(players laughing and clapping)
- Guys, this is really serious. Stop laughing.
- There's gonna be a lot of these puns.
(group laughing)
- Of Cerebell Pacific, the telecommunications company
that keeps all those telephone wires running all
throughout Mentopolis so that the people can stay
in touch going to and fro.
(tense music)
Footsteps, (footsteps click)
a swish of fabric, someone turns around.
A shadowy figure lunges from the darkness, (gasp)
a knife (huff) moving through.
We hear bang, bang, (gun fires)
shots fired, and a body (splat) falls to the ground.
A murder deep in the heart of Mentopolis,
but that's not where this story really starts.
Where it really starts,
why in the office of one Hunch Curio.
(group laughing) (smooth detective music)
I invite you now to picture an office
littered with the detritus of a hard-boiled gumshoe.
That's right, a real private eye, a brother seamus,
a real swingin' dick.
(players laughing)
Trapp, could you please describe your character for us?
- Yeah, I'm Detective Hunch Curio.
I'm covered in bruises and cuts.
(group laughing)
It seems like I'm always nursing wounds,
nursing a hangover, real lanky, rubbery kind of guy.
Doesn't look like I should be getting into as many fights
as I seem to,
and a big old nose that I keep
stickin' in where it don't belong.
- That's right, Detective Hunch Curio,
of course, Mentopolis' premiere gumshoe,
and also curiosity itself rendered in this form
here within Mentopolis.
Outside you hear the door open
and your secretary Anna looks in.
Anna is a much older woman.
She has those deep, sort of wrinkle lines in her face,
little half moon spectacles, bun of sort
of bright blue hair comes up off of her head,
and little sort of one of those like old lady sweaters
that like has a doily as the collar.
She comes in, she goes, Hunch, how you doing on coffee?
You need anything?
- Always more, always more coffee.
- All right, I'll go down to the dopamine store.
And you see she wanders off.
As she opens the door, she goes, oh, I'm sorry,
and you see, you hear her ushering someone in.
She opens the door to your sort of private office again
and says, Hunch there's somebody here to see you.
- Oh, send her in, him in, her in?
- Her.
- All right, send her in. - Good guess.
- Put away, it seems right for those situations
in the general setting,
it's probably a dame, right?
That happens a lot in this office.
(Brennan laughing)
- It sure does.
(group laughing)
- Tropes.
- Tropes!
You see that she looks over and says,
Ah, it's a real classy looking dame too,
not the normal kind of riffraff
that we exclusively work for.
(Hank laughing)
- I scrape some of the blood off my tie.
- As we look around, what do we see in Hunch's office,
and any like things of past cases you've solved?
- Yeah, yeah.
There's probably like some framed newspaper clippings
of like "Detective Solves the Case of the Missing Keys."
(players laughing) It's full of quotes like,
It's in the last place you thought of looking.
(players laughing)
The case of what's that song that goes like,
(hums jazzy tune)
(players laughing)
All these like little tiny like,
just sort of everyday mysteries that Hunch's sort
of had his hand in and cracked.
- Anna looks up at you and says,
Ah, real body of work.
(players laughing)
We did figure out what that song was, it was...
Oh god, what was that song? Ah shit. (group laughing)
- Case has gotta get reopened.
(players laughing)
Hold on a second. (Trapp hums a similar tune)
- She walks out and says,
All right, if you feel tidy enough.
- As I'm busily just scraping so many cigarette butts,
and just junk on the desk, just like putting it
into a basket that I can just sort of hide away.
- Tons and tons and tons of junk hits the floor.
As it does, you lean back in your chair,
and you see Anna and you can see
as she opens the door, we see a little thing on her desk.
She has a little name placard as well,
Ms. Anna Lysis.
It's gonna be a lot of these.
- Every single time.
- Strap in.
You see that she walks in and says,
Mr. Curio will see you now.
Siobhan, could you please describe your character for us?
- Yes, my character is an impeccably dressed,
mysterious woman in a dark velvet cloak. (smooth piano music)
She is mysterious,
but you can tell immediately she reeks of old money.
(Brennan laughing)
And that's all I'm gonna say.
(players laughing)
- Well, Mr. Curio'll see you now.
You're very fancy.
Do you need different kinds of chairs than normal people?
(players laughing) - No, I'll stand by the window.
Thank you so much.
(players laughing)
- Ooh, stand by the window, la di dah.
- I immediately go towards the window
and wipe some of the grime off of it. (window wiping sounds)
(players laughing)
- [Brennan] The door closes
and you are left alone in Hunch's office.
- Mr. Hunch, I think I need your help.
My name is... Stacy Fakename.
(players laughing)
- I would like to do a snoop check to see
if she's lying to me.
(players laughing)
- If I can get a snoop check from you,
and a slick check from... Stacy.
- Great.
(dice rolls)
- I rolled a two but I got a four.
- I rolled a three, but that's plus four.
It's a seven.
- Okay, you got a seven and you got a?
- [Siobhan] A four.
- One Moxie token for Siobhan. (ball sliding on a track)
So Hunch, something in your years of training kicks in.
(group laughing)
Years of training leads you to believe
that there is something about the name Stacy Fakename
(Alex laughing)
that feels like maybe that's not her real name.
- I play it super cool.
I just light up a cigarette and sort of stop and admire.
Oh, Stacy Fakename, huh?
You know uh,
Is that at all related to Joanna Fakename?
- So what if it is?
(Alex laughing) - Well, I'll tell you so what if it is.
There ain't no one named Joanna Fakename.
- (sigh) You got me.
(players laughing)
- Case closed.
(players laughing)
- The door cracks open and Anna goes,
No, not closed.
You have to get money. - Oh sh-
It's a business you have to get-,
and closes the door again. (door clicks shut)
- So why don't you tell me what your name really is?
- My name is Imelda Pulse.
Perhaps you've heard of my family.
- Oh yeah.
- We've been in the this town
since before the brain existed.
- Yeah, I think that's written on like the gates
of your mansion. (laughs)
You're constantly bragging about that.
- That's correct.
We do brag a lot.
- [Trapp] All right.
- I'm here because of this,
and I throw a newspaper down in front of him.
- Pick it up.
Don't tell me,
(players laughing)
this is a newspaper.
(players laughing)
- That's right.
- Case closed.
(players laughing)
- Do you wanna gimme another snoop check?
(group laughing)
(rolls dice)
- That is a nine.
- Okay, on a nine snoop check,
you are looking at this newspaper.
You notice it's from probably like yesterday
or the day before, right,
pretty recently, earlier this week,
which by the way I should mention,
days pass in Mentopolis (snapping) quite quickly.
It's not one-to-one with the days
that the big guy is feeling, right?
You see the newspaper,
and you notice that it's out of order.
You just notice that the front page is not the front page.
It's not like someone's like taken the funnies out
and like put it on front of the thing,
but you just see it's a little bit crinkled,
and the page that's on front is way, way buried in the back.
It's like a tiny little puff piece article
that basically leads this page 20B kind of thing,
and this is from The Daily Observer by the way.
Looking at this, sort of the headline
of our little article is not that it's
like a big splash page,
but just this tiny little sort of heading says,
"Packet on Desk, Ready to Go to the Big Wigs Upstairs.
Last Chance to Take a Look."
And it basically,
reading sort of deeper down into the article,
it just says like months and months of research
from the big guy's hard work now sits
in a manila envelope on the desk waiting
to go upstairs to the big wigs of Gobstopper Industries.
It's just sitting there, and it's the last chance
to look at it, or fix anything,
or do anything else before it goes away forever,
and then it goes into an interview
with a local, Anxiety Source,
that talks about the packet sitting there,
and then you see there's a quick line
from Reckless Self-Confidence
that says, it's perfect,
and a couple other sort of bits of voices
and stuff like that,
but that little tiny article just sits there
on the front page that Imelda has handed to you.
- And what does this have to do with the Pulse Family?
- Well, let me ask you this.
You heard of the nightclub Sugah?
- Oh, I know Sugah.
- I was coming outta Sugah two days ago,
and a little rascal, an urchin if you will,
handed me this newspaper,
and I couldn't help but notice this very headline
even though it was not on the front page,
it was handed to me directly.
Do you understand?
- I understand the sequence of the words that you've said.
I don't understand how it involves me just yet.
- Perhaps you don't know this about me,
Mr. Curio.
I'm reckless.
I'm impulsive.
I'm a little crazy.
I see this headline. I think,
well maybe we should do something about this.
Now, my family,
we have ways we have means of making the big guy move.
You know what I mean?
You understand my drift, Mr. Curio?
- I pick up what you're putting down.
(Trapp and Siobhan laughing)
- You eatin' what I'm serving?
- Oh yeah, I'm takin' a big old servin' of it,
gobbling it up with a spoon.
(players laughing)
- I look out the window again.
- Give me another slick roll and another snoop roll.
(rolls dice)
- That's a 16.
- Is this, well, it doesn't matter.
(Trapp laughing)
That is a three.
(ball sliding on a track)
And I will take two because I take two when I fail.
- Oh that's right, you are Determined.
There you go.
(ball sliding on a track)
- Thank you.
- So looking at Imelda's face as she looks out the window,
you see a poised and confident woman
checking the street outside the office
and cannot observe anything other than an air of mystery
and grace, quite a poker face on the lady
across from you in the office;
however, you are aware of Sugah,
and you do know that's down like near the limbic system,
and the amygdala.
There's a, it's right near The Hippo Campus,
which is Mentopolis' premier university.
- (groans) Oh yeah, I love it.
- So looking at that, you do know that area.
Give me actually a savvy check as well. - Sure.
Call it a difficulty of... four. - Okay.
- (laughing) That's a two.
- [Brennan] Okay.
- Oh wait, hold on. I've got a ton of Moxie.
I'm gonna go ahead and add two Moxie there.
- Hell yeah. - [Trapp] Why not.
You think you've seen a scrappy kid
hanging around Sugah before,
which is weird cause that's like in the red light district
for the city, a lot of like pleasures and urges
and stuff like that.
Appetites are down there all the time,
but yeah, you have a recollection of definitely there you
like one time being down in that neighborhood
and seeing a kid down there. - Mh-hm.
And I think on that,
like that's just enough of a success
that that's all you know.
- Got it, cool.
So Ms. Pulse, what exactly are you employing me for?
You want to get the big guy moving on this envelope?
'Cause I'll tell you this, as soon as I heard your name,
I said, she's got enough money,
I'll do anything she wants.
(players laughing)
- Well, let me tell you,
I have no need for your help on that
because I have already made that happen.
What I'm employing you for is...
people don't seem very happy about it.
I'm being followed, Mr. Curio.
I'm being followed by heaven knows who,
and by who knows what, and by he and her and Mr. Mischief.
You get my-
(players laughing)
- Here we go again. - I got a big old spoon of your drift.
Your drift's piling up on the side of the road
and I'm gobbling it up.
(Hank laughing)
- It's snowy and delicious out there.
- And I'm eating that snow. - [Siobhan] No doubt.
- That's right. That's for sure.
(group laughing)
- Anna opens the door a crack and goes...
What the fuck is going on in here? (players laughing)
Everything all right? - Everything's okay.
- Oh, sorry. - [Trapp] It's all good.
- Do you want me to go call Mr. Mischief?
- Mr.- What? - What?
- No, no. We're cool. We got it okay. - Okay, yeah yeah.
(door clicks shut)
So you're being followed?
- And I don't know why.
Why is this file so important?
Why is it so dangerous and why is it so bad
that I got the big man to pick it up?
- These are questions, Ms. Pulse,
and if there's one thing I love, it's questions,
and if there's two things I love, it's money.
If there's three things I love, it's coffee,
and I see a lot of those three things in my future
with this case.
(Brennan laughing)
- Anna hands you a coffee as you put your coat on
and you head out of your office.
From there,
we are actually going to move right along
to a place under very different circumstances
than we have seen before.
Lit up bright, the Synaptic Switchboard
at Cerebell Pacific is in a very different state
than that first time we saw it.
The lights are all on and bodies hustle to and fro
as some of Mentopolis' finest take impulse control red tape
and band it off, say, all right, everyone back up.
It's an active crime scene.
Everyone back up.
As a body lays on the floor, (tense noir thriller music)
a pool of blood surrounding it
and a massive switchboard shattered in a
act of some kind of (sparking)
explosion or corrosion or something of that nature.
Pushing to the front of the crowd at the edge
of the tape here at this active crime scene
at Cerebell Pacific,
Danielle, could you please describe your character for us?
- My character is a...
tough scrabble reporter.
She's trying to gain more notoriety.
She's trying to kind of break in more
to getting bigger headlines,
'cause right now she mostly does stuff like,
Breaking news, we stubbed our toe.
Ouch.
And so she's trying to get to a point
where she can become more successful (chill detective music)
and get some of the bigger stories,
so she's got a nose for the news
and her name is A. Tension
because that is the role that she plays in the brain
is that she helps with focus and attention.
- You push to the front of the crowd.
Looking around, you see that the sort of
cops are around pushing back people away.
There's some other like reporters and stuff here.
You see this guy, Officer Connell, who you know,
standing there says,
All right everyone back up, back up.
It's still a crime scene, and he sort of looks over at you.
You also notice seeing the switchboard that
all of the lights have sort of dimmed.
This is the central Synaptic Switchboard,
which could mean something sort of terrible.
It could be that- Something very bad has happened here.
This is like a central piece of machinery
within Mentopolis.
Looking around, you also see
that there are some employees of Cerebell Pacific
who have been allowed under the tape (tense inquisitive music)
to like help explain some stuff to the cops
about the switchboard
and other stuff that's happening here.
In this moment,
I think you'd be aware that you have some connections
and other people that are sort of around like
on the other side of that tape,
and you're also not too far away.
This is still in Cortex City,
so like the Daily Observer's right around the corner
from here.
What is A. Tension or Anastasia,
what are you doing as you push to the front of this crowd?
- Excuse me, pardon me, misters. Excuse me, pardon me.
Press, press. Misters, press.
- All right, oh, okay.
Miss Tension, hello, hello.
Fancy seeing you here.
Officer Connell sort of speaks up to you and says,
I'm sure the paper of record would love for us
to notice whatever this is,
but listen, the mayor's called, everything's fine.
We don't have to bring this to the attention
of the big guy, okay?
This is all gonna get sorted out in a second.
What's- What's the good in him noticing
that something's gone wrong?
- Well, I just believe that it is important
that we make sure that everybody knows
what's the news of the day.
What am I looking at exactly here?
- Well, this guy's not gonna be waking up anytime soon,
so I think that's plenty, don't you?
- (excitedly) A body?
Oh, I mean (somberly) a body.
(players laughing)
- So you're at the tape right now,
and you're talking to the officer here.
Do you want to
try to make any observations you can from a distance,
which might make it a little bit more difficult,
or do you wanna try to like push through to this other spot?
- I wanna try to push through to the other spot and so...
Hmm.
So I know Officer Connelly,
but I don't know a lot of the other people
like the scientists and stuff.
Well, thank you very much for your help Mr. Connell.
I agree, we don't necessarily need to bring this
to the attention of the big guy.
Thank you for all of your help.
I will go ahead and leave now if you wanna
attend to the body.
- Yeah, that's right. That's right.
And you see he turns around and continues
to sort of man the tape.
You walk a little bit away and do see
some of the other scientists moving around.
Gimme a snoop check.
We'll call it a difficulty of eight.
(rolls dice)
- Oh, you're joking.
(nat one sound)
A one.
- An actual, you rolled a natural one on the-.
- I rolled a natural one on my d20.
- You add some to your snoop roll, I believe, right,
or no, you don't.
- Nope, not with snoop, not with snoop.
Not with snoop. - Incredible.
I'll also remind you of the halving mechanic,
so if you want to, this is a planned action.
- Oh yes, yes yes yes.
Let's go ahead and halve that baby.
- [Brennan] We'll halve that baby,
so that is a 10- - King Solomon stat.
- [Brennan] So that is a ten automatically.
(players laughing)
You see that there is a young scientist,
or I should say there's a young sort of switchboard operator
who is seated outside of the tape,
who is kind of being comforted by a coworker,
and you can see her sort of sitting there like weeping,
so you see that she's crying and someone's sort
of being blocked off from the body,
but something in your sort of reporter sensibility
looks over at her (sniffling)
because she's just outside of that domain
of where the cops are all buzzing around.
(sniffles)
- All right, so I go ahead and I walk up to her.
(sighs)
Sounds like a bit of bad news.
- (sad, New York accent) Yeah.
(players laughing) (jazzy music)
- I take two cigarettes out, light both,
and then hand one of them over to her.
- Aw geez, that's awful nice of ya.
(sniffles and puffs on the cigarette)
Nothing's more soothing when you're crying
than a nice drag off a cool cigarette.
(players laughing)
- Some mucus, stuffy nose, yeah, yeah.
Just clears it up.
- Well it's a menthol.
(players laughing)
- Woo, fresh, that's fresh.
(players laughing)
I'm sorry (sniffles) I'm over here crying.
What's your name?
It's nice to meet you.
- Well hello it's nice to meet you as well,
my name is...
Stacy Fakename.
(players laughing)
- Oh my God, are you related to Joanne?
- I am, I am related to Joanne Fakename.
- I love Joanne.
She's one of my best friends.
- One of God's own children.
Did you happen to know,
I'm sorry, I don't mean to, but did you happen to know?
- Yeah.
(cries)
He was my brother.
He got me the job here.
He's been working here for so long.
He's older than me.
I'm the youngest and he's the oldest
and we're outta seven.
He's such a sweet guy, and now he's gone.
Why would anyone do this?
I don't understand.
- Well, would you know if your brother was working
on any special projects happening here?
- Last night he was manning the switchboard.
He was running the graveyard shift,
so normally there's a couple operators in here,
but he was just taking care of things.
Norrell was always such a sweet guy.
I can't think why anyone would ever ever wanna hoit him
(Alex stifling a laugh)
- Did Norrell happen to be working with anyone else
on usual occasions or was this a night
when he was working alone?
- Last night he was the only one on the schedule,
so he was working alone.
He said he was gonna be there and,
you know, I mean,
I know that he went down to the red light district
every once in a while,
but I don't think he would've done anything too dangerous
and made any enemies.
He's a nice guy.
- Well, would you happen to know
of any of his proclivities in the red light district?
- She looks over.
You can see that some, right at the corner of your eye,
you notice some of the evidence being gathered
around the crime scene is being sort of taken away
and put in a little baggie that is like going back
toward, there's almost like a little cart
or gurney that has bagged and tagged evidence
that you see is being moved towards the edge
of the tape area.
You see, she turns to you and says,
Well, there was one place, you know...
Norrell was a lonely guy
and it's prohibition and it's hard to come by some
of the more, those neurotransmitters and hormones
that make a lonely fella feel a little less lonely.
There was a place downtown that I heard served
some of the good stuff, not just this cortisol,
that's the only thing we seem to be able
to drink these days.
It was called Sugah's and he talked about it once or twice.
I never wanted to go,
but that's where he seemed to used to wanna go,
and hopefully that's helpful.
- Thank you very much for your help.
I apologize for the death of Norrell
and I hope that you and your seven,
I'm sorry, six
(players laughing) siblings,
we wish you all the best of luck.
- On behalf of the entire Ojiccle family,
I thank you so much. (Trapp laughing)
- Goddammit.
(players laughing)
- All right, thank you.
And so A starts going over and starts walking.
I assume there's like a cab situation
when you kinda go outside.
- For sure, and give me one last snoop check
and we'll call this a DC 11.
(nat one sound)
- You've gotta be fucking kidding me. - Is that another natural one?
- Are you kidding me?
- Throw it away. (Danielle laughing)
- I need new- Someone blow on this. - [Siobhan] New die.
(ball sliding on a track) (Danielle sighs sadly)
It brings me no joy anymore.
(players laughing)
- The sad clunk of a failure.
- The clunk means failure.
So, you see-
So I think as you're walking away
on that failed snoop check,
you see that before you can get a look at that evidence cart
'cause you can tell that they took some stuff
from the body and from the crime scene,
they sort of peel away and go, so it's like,
ah, there might have been some stuff there,
but the fuzz gets rid of it.
As you walk away,
I think the last thing you look back is the body
of Norrell on the ground.
You've spent a long time interviewing all different
stripes and shades of this city, (slow, sad piano music)
and you get a look at Norrell's face,
the body dead on the ground,
the blood pooled out away from him.
(final deathly gasp)
You look at the face of this dead man,
and you hear the words
of his sister and some reporter instinct in you goes,
This guy didn't have it coming.
You see a lot of murders in the city.
Some murders you go, oh, this guy owed money.
This guy, this was a revenge killing
'cause this guy killed someone else
on the other gang or something like that.
You look at this guy, face of a citizen,
a guy who clocked in at Cerebell Pacific
and something doesn't add up.
Why would someone kill this guy?
- I just have a hunch that something doesn't add up.
(players laughing) (slick, jaunty jazz music)
Why would someone kill this guy?
(players laughing)
Of all of the murders I've seen here,
I don't think he had it comin'.
(players laughing)
- I liked it better when she-
That was much better. (players laughing)
- All right, we'll edit my part out.
(group laughing)
As you leave, where would you like to go next,
'cause you have your newspaper nearby,
but there's also this sort of lead to go to Sugah's.
Do you think you would stop by the newspaper first,
or head straight to Sugah's?
- I'm gonna stop at the newspaper first, - [Brennan] Okay.
- Even though like my instinct says go to Sugah's
because we'll see what happened at the newspaper,
but I'm gonna go over to the newspaper first,
and see if I can talk to my editor about being able to,
because obviously when you go down
in the red light district, you wanna make sure
that folks know that you're there.
- So we see the Daily Observer,
a tall skyscraper with a huge rotating eye
up on the top of it,
(light buzzes and static crackles)
and you see tons of reporters,
(ambient office muzak, typewriters clacking)
the bullpen of reporters is so enormous.
You see one little lonely fact checker just off
in a corner like hi,
and you walk in and you hear the hustle and bustle
and sort of like massive forearm sleeves rolled up,
just huge cigar.
You see the Editor-in-Chief Freddy Focus looking around
and saying, goddammit, I want that in 24 point bold font,
top of the paper, front page.
Get it to the presses.
"Our Ass Crack is Sweaty"
That needs to be the first thing on everybody's mind.
Oh, well, well, well, Ms. Tension.
I see you're back from the beat.
What was all that ruckus?
We saw the bulls charging on down
to Cerebell Pacific.
- I think we've got ourselves a big one, Mr. Focus.
- Yeah, what do you reckon?
- We've got ourselves a dead employee.
- Dead employee, well why'd they kill him?
You got motive, you got means, you got a moidah weapon?
- I don't have motive or means or a moidah weapon yet.
- When you say "moidah weapon,"
I know that that's not how you talk.
(players laughing)
- But I believe I have a lead,
but that lead will lead me to some seedier parts of town.
I may need to go to the red light district.
- Look, the last thing the big guy wants is
to know what's going on down in the subconscious, okay?
We got things to worry about.
I got Betty over here who's got me 23 inches
on page two all about what snacks we might have later.
That's what the big guy wants.
- You know, Mr. Focus,
I have been on this beat for a very long time,
and I believe that I have covered enough stories
about stubbed toes, too much ear wax,
and being really, really annoyed at the person
who lives next door to us
because they keep letting their dogs out
and their dogs went- Anyway.
I believe I have done enough puff pieces.
- [Brennan] Puff pieces? - It's time for us to-
- That earwax story got us a Pulitzer.
(players laughing)
(Danielle sighs)
- It got you a Pulitzer.
(collective near-silence from tension)
- Go ahead and give me a slick check here.
- Well, that was a mistake, Danielle. - [Brennan] We'll call it a-
(players laughing)
- We'll call it a DC eight, difficulty eight slick check.
(rolls dice) - Be nice.
(nat one sound)
- What is happening?
- Is that your third one in a row?
I need new dice. - No way.
No way. - Oh my god.
- Okay, so (laugh-sobbing) that gives me a three.
- How much Moxie do you have?
- I know, what was the DC on that?
- [Brennan] Eight. - [Siobhan] Eight.
- Can I borrow one?
- Yes.
- Unfortunately no one else is in the scene with you.
- Oh, I can't borrow a couple Moxie.
- I'm so sorry.
(ball sliding on a track, but stalls partway through)
- It takes such a long time. (players laughing)
- [Brennan] Clunk. - [Trapp] Clunk.
You see that Freddy looks at you and says,
Anastasia, it was a joy and a privilege to be able
to hire someone who wanted to come here to
make a name for herself and forge her own way.
And it is out of respect for the people
whose name you are so graciously not you using
that I am going to afford you the ability for me
to forget that momentary lapse in judgment.
Paying attention is what we do here at this paper,
and you've done a lot of great work,
done a lot of great work.
That dog story I still think about it.
I got it framed up in the office, but I'll be honest,
if I'm gonna give you the resources to follow this lead,
it better be front page worthy,
or if it's not, we're gonna have a hard conversation
when your contract is up.
You read me?
- I believe that this is worth pursuing.
I am not afraid of hard conversations.
(deep breath)
I believe that this is a lead that is worth us going for,
and if I wind up being wrong,
then you may fire me
and I will live destitute, poor, alone, sad, lonely,
unfulfilled with nothing to look forward to the next day,
and if you would like that on your conscience, sir,
then you go right ahead.
I'm just a lonely spinster at the ripe old age of 24.
(players laughing)
- You see, he pulls a cigar out of his mouth and says,
I heard you say a lot of words there,
but deep down I really don't wanna pay attention.
And you see that he turns around and walks off.
The other reporters kind of look over.
You see he seems to have given you license
to pursue this lead, but stakes are high.
- Everything's fine, everyone.
Just go back to,
I think we need our nails clipped.
If someone wants to make sure we take care of that.
(players laughing)
- One cuticle, it's like... - Incredible.
- With that A. Tension heads out to follow this lead,
and with that we go ahead and move away
from Cortex City all the way down to the
temporal lobe of the brain. (jazzy music)
We move down to a place that we've mentioned a couple times
so far, Sugah's speakeasy, and oh, what a wild time it is,
people throwing back shots, dancing up on the stage,
deep down in a little hidden pleasure center of the brain,
and the ring master at the center
of all of this mayhem, mischief,
and just flat out good times...
is Freddie's character.
Freddie, could you please describe your character for us?
- Yeah, well, so you see,
I think in the corner booth and he's sitting there,
big fat stogie, this guy, and I want to be very clear here.
He has a shirt that's open,
like every button is open except for the very bottom one,
so it creates this like V sort of thing,
and then so you get this chest,
you get this belly button and anatomically, right,
you probably are picturing,
where the hair down there begins,
wherever you have in your head,
it's two inches higher.
(players laughing)
It starts two inches higher than you think.
Do you know what I mean?
- How'd it get above his head?
(players laughing)
- This is the proprietor of the club,
the purveyor of all pleasures, earthly and otherwise,
Dan Fucks, spelled however you want.
- I think we know how it's spelled.
(players laughing)
You see this wild unfold, this bacchanal throughout here,
a couple of patrons raise their glasses.
Thanks again.
Here's to Mr. Fucks.
- Eh, shut up.
(stammering)
I've got to deal with these bills and reports, man.
- You see that some of your employees come up,
one of your guys walks up,
big, pronounced snot running mucusy nose, bloodshot eyes.
This is Joey Sneezes who walks up and goes,
Hey there boss.
- Look up at one of those bright lights.
- What?
(making those sounds you make right before sneezing)
(sneezes)
Oh, that feels so fuckin' good.
(sniffles)
- Oh, you got another one?
We're a two sneeze man.
(sneezes)
- Oh, there it is.
(players laughing)
- Some people are like that.
- We are, that feels great.
- And I throw a handkerchief like a baseball at his face.
- Pow, sticks to the snot in his nose and he wipes it.
- You are welcome.
- You see that there's another woman who's sort of
dressed in that cocktail waitress attire.
She's got like a little pillbox hat and a big tray
full of little serotonin packets everywhere,
and she comes over, and she goes,
Mr. Fucks, I wanted to say-.
(Trapp and Brennan snickering)
- Oh yeah, I knew what I was doing.
- This is another one of your employees.
This is Libby Longshower.
(group laughing) - Great.
And she is just drenched with like steam rising up
off of her and she says, hey, the place is packed.
There's some people outside who want to get in.
Are we at capacity or can we try to stuff 'em in?
- I take a glance around
and it's probably pretty packed, right?
- Yeah, it's stuffed in here.
- (sniffles) Yeah, bring them in.
- All right, I'll go let 'em in,
and she wanders off.
As she does so, we actually zoom out
and you hear a little bit of a commotion nearby.
It looks like there's some folks that are like,
there's a little bit like of a scuffle breaking out,
and you see this big guy.
He's got a sort of dock workers',
like a leather sort of jacket on.
He's got sort of almost like naval-looking cap.
You see him just wheel out and clock somebody in the jaw,
bam, send him to the floor, and he says,
back off buddy,
You don't wanna mess with Donny Urges, okay.
You see he looks at this flattened dude on the floor,
makes eye connect with you and says,
Nice spot you got here.
You're Danny Fucks, right?
- Yes indeed, who are you?
- They call me Donny Urges, but uh.
- Donny, do you work for me?
- I don't, but maybe I could.
I'm new in town, you understand?
- Well, you've come to the right place
with fisticuffs like that.
I could use you a little muscle around here.
- (laughs) That sounds good.
Why don't you send some free drinks over to my table?
- Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Nothing comes free.
Everything's comes with a little bit of a cost.
- Hey, I thought we're all looking out
for number one around here.
You don't want to gimme a hand?
- I have to keep things under control, my man.
I can't just be handing out free drinks.
Why, if people start seeing that,
I'll be run out of town.
- All right, fine.
Keep the drinks for yourself, nogoodnik.
- Hey, what the hell?
(players laughing)
- I'll buy 'em myself. He turns around.
Give me a snoop check difficulty of five.
- Snoop check difficulty of five.
That is a natural exploding ten.
(Brennan cheers)
- [Brennan] 10.
- We're gonna keep going, 17.
- Urges is a very, like, that's a common last name.
You see a little shimmer across his eyes.
There's something almost like a, (whoosh) a sheen.
You've seen this before.
This guy seems like he might be something a little bit
more dangerous.
- Destructive.
- A little more destructive,
something you've seen before a couple times.
You think he might be an intrusive thought.
- Oh,
so do I have like muscle in the club?
Do I have, 'cause I feel like, as the proprietor I have,
like a bouncer of some kind.
Do I have anyone like that?
- You look at the door
and you see there's an enormous bouncer
at the door who's really a really sweet, good natured guy.
You hired him a while ago.
His name is is Hans Schadenfreude.
(players laughing)
Hello there, Mr. Fucks.
- Oh Hans.
- Thank you again for the job.
I hope that I can be of service.
I love to hurt the people who are here
that are doing no good, you know.
- Maybe a little bit too much.
- I delight in seeing their torment.
(players laughing)
- That's why we keep you around to keep balance.
- Very good.
We love it.
- Hey, so this Danny guy over there,
you see him at the bar?
- Oh yes, Mr. Donald Urges.
Yes, I see him.
- I'm getting a little bit of a,
what we may call in the future, a bad vibe from this dude.
- Oh yes, a bad vibe from the dude.
Would you like me to go over and ruin his day?
- Maybe not, don't cause a scene, man,
but dispose of him discreetly and pleasurably
as you may wish.
- Very well, Mr. Fucks.
Humiliation is part of it though.
(group laughing)
- Weird thing to say, but you know what, go for it.
- I am technically a pleasure too.
(group laughing) And you see,
(laughing) Hans gets up and begins to walk away.
You see, as he gets up to walk away though,
we're actually going to pull out towards the
other side of the club where Donny has returned to,
and we see him sit down with some other riffraff
and low lives here in this
hot and steamy pleasure center of the brain.
- Oh really quick though. - [Brennan] Yeah.
The person who got knocked down. - [Brennan] Yeah.
- I feel like I gotta go up to them and be like,
Here have a little bit of a strange new pleasure on me,
and this one is, and I pull from like,
I think Libby has like the tray and stuff, I pull one.
It's like, we've just discovered this one.
This one is that one time a barber whispered in our ear
during a haircut and it made us feel really strange,
and there's not a word for it yet.
- You see this just like a small memory here
who goes like, oh, thanks Mr for the, oh, ooh, oh, oh.
- Listen to me, it's not sexual. But it's also-
- No it's not. But it's
- Not not sexual.
- (being satisfied) That's exactly right.
Wow, it's so deep in there.
(group laughing)
Gets up, and as lascivious as this place is,
you see that people are having a great time,
and you see the guy does take that little look,
and you see there's a couple other people
that are getting these like weird little physical pleasures,
these scratches.
There's a whole wall of little like,
sort of almost like pachinko or ski ball things
of like ASMR kind of like places,
but you also see that there's a place in the back
where a lot of very lonel-
there's like a lot of people that you know work
in the different like motor function centers
that are different motorists and machinists
who just coming and taking a little secret drink
of something like oxytocin,
and you see these little cups of like a thick hot chocolate
that go in and little hearts kind of pop out of their thing.
It's an illegal drug in the city
because the big guy has not had
any affection or physical contact in a long, long time,
so the big wigs and muckety mucks have outlawed it.
We zoom across the nightclub to see the table
with Donny Urges at it with a couple of riffraff
and real sort of up-to-no-good types seated around a table.
You see Donny sits down and says,
(sly, mischievous jazz music)
So here's the plan fellas,
it's the heist of the century.
We're supposed to be uh working all afternoon,
but here's the thing,
the big guy saw a birthday cake in the staff break room,
(players laughing softly)
and we're not invited to that department's birthday parties.
How easy would it be to jump in there and cut a little slice
for ourself or even just stick a finger into the icing?
We don't need to spend all day working
when there's such a lovely score to be had.
And as we zoom out,
there is a figure at a nearby table
listening to this entire conversation.
Hank, could you go ahead and describe your character?
- Yes, I am The Fix,
and I'm like a manifestation of the system
that allows for hyperfixation,
so anything that might distract you in a moment
when you're focused on something that's very important
or not important at all, it's like a jackhammer outside.
If it's the hungry belly,
I'm just letting you do your thing.
Don't let anything arrive,
and I do that by...
silencing anything that's coming in to distract,
and I silence with my arms.
(players laughing)
So I'm very big, but my arms are like stupid,
like they're bigger than my legs,
even though my legs are very big.
- You're like real like a Dick Tracy villain.
- Like a trapezoid.
- And I do it also with my gun if necessary,
but I had to have a special gun designed
that would fit my finger in under the trigger guard
without me pulling the trigger,
so I can't easily use other people's guns.
I have a special gun.
In exchange for not being able to use other people's guns,
I'd like something.
(players laughing)
- Yes, the barter system.
- Yeah, it was gonna be a huge impediment
to not be able to use other people's guns.
(group laughing)
So this enormous figure of The Fix over in the corner,
you hear this conversation had at the table next to you
by this guy, Donny.
He says, so, meet me down
at Oblongata Station later tonight.
We'll all get together and make history.
We're gonna ruin this workday.
It is at this exact moment that
there is a crash at the door (door crashing, patrons gasping)
and you see a bunch of cops (police chatter, ruckus)
pour into the club. (whistles blowing)
As they all begin to pour in altogether, (glass shattering)
you see the chief of police.
You recognize this guy.
Huge bristly mustache.
He's got one of those long, there's a million buttons on it,
old timey, police officer uniforms,
and you see him raise his badge up.
This is Chief Tightass who walks in and says,
All right everybody.
This joint is busted up.
All of you, I want hands against the wall.
And just cops sort of rush in.
You see that Donny and this other table
far away from the entrance begin to break up
and sort of like run out the back sort of exit of the place.
Dan, in this moment, what do you do
as you see the cops begin to pour in?
- So I'm gonna put my hands up oh no, oh no,
(sarcastically) we're being raided, oh no. (players laughing)
You'll have to arrest me, Chief.
- Chief Tightass walks up to you and says,
Well, ol' Danny Fucks.
- Yeah, Chief Tightass,
your horrifying visage graces my club once again.
- He's gonna go around to like handcuff you.
- Oh, not too tight, or maybe.
- Ah, I hate when you like it.
(players laughing)
You see he walks over to the bar,
sort of marching you over there,
scoops a finger up along it. (slurping sound)
Oh. Well, well, well,
if that isn't a trace element of oxytocin.
You haven't been having people feel loved in here,
have you Dan?
- My God, love?
I would not, waste my time on such foolish delights
when you have all these other great ones I've got.
- You see next to you, the guy still going like,
(in ecstasy) Oh, it's still doing it.
- I wanna be clear, that one's something else.
(group laughing)
- You see, the chief of police says,
Well, I understand that you maybe don't have a control
over every single thing that goes on in here,
but if I start to check behind that bar,
am I gonna find anything I shouldn't find, Daniel?
- There's no reason for you to check behind there.
Why don't you sit down, take a load off, you and your boys,
all of 'em. You hear that?
I'm speaking loud enough so that
him and the boys can all hear I say,
Hmm, you know, you hard working individuals here.
Could use a break.
- This is gonna be a difficulty 11 slick check.
- You fool, (laughing victoriously) you fool.
(Brennan laughing lightly)
That's an 11 on the nose.
- Wow, okay.
You see that there's like a couple like racks
of different neurotransmitters up there
of- that like "award won for doing one's job."
- Civic duty.
- Yeah, civic duty,
and he says, look here Danny.
Your job here,
it's not like the bigwigs don't know about it,
but the profile's getting a little high, wouldn't you say?
- No.
(group laughing)
- Yes, good one. - I disagree with you.
I think in fact we could be expanding.
I'm thinking about tearing down that wall,
opening up a wing,
maybe taking over a little bit more
of the red light district.
What do you think about that?
I don't know why I'm telling you this, chief of police.
- He begins to undo the handcuffs and says,-
- No, don't. (laughing)
- You are a freaky guy.
(Freddie laughing)
He takes the key out and says,
Fellas, let's get the contraband outta here,
and the cops just start cleaning you out,
just everything's moving off the shelves.
- This is bullshit.
- And he undoes the handcuffs and says on that success,
on an exactly an 11.
You see, he says,
You're a free man for now, Daniel,
but you need to understand,
the people who run this city,
they set the rules.
The big guy doesn't deserve pleasure. (smooth trumpet lick playing)
- Oh, but he likes it.
(saying "yeah" back and forth, in increasingly horny ways)
(Hank trying to contain his laughter and himself)
- Is this about you and me right now, or is this-
- Could be, could be, my man.
(weirdly tense mouth sounds)
- All right, well, - That's what I thought.
- Nah, I'm working, I'm working. I'm working, I'm working.
(laughing) He looks around and says-
- While you're clearing this place out,
you might as well get rid of that trumpet player over there.
He's been playing one lick just over and over again.
It's been really driving me crazy.
It was cool at first. (trumpet music stops abruptly)
- You said you liked it.
- I did! 20 minutes ago I did,
but you're still here.
- If I learn a second lick, can I come back?
- Yes, sure, fine, but get him out of here.
I don't know how to get rid of him.
(Trapp hums the same tune from earlier) (group laughing)
- So you see the cops begin to leave
and like the night's been ruined.
You've probably lost a ton of money here tonight.
As you look around,
you see Joey Sneezes and Libby looks over.
Hans looks over and says, I'm very sorry, sir,
that in all the chaos,
I wasn't sure if you wanted me to
grapple and hit and destroy the police officers
that wandered in here,
but it seemed like you were having a flirtatious encounter
with the chief of police. (players laughing)
- Oh, shut up, Hans.
I know you got quite a bit of pleasure out
of watching this place get torn apart.
- (cheekily) You did not want it to happen.
- I see right through you, man.
(group laughing)
Get this pervert outta here.
Hans, go home.
- Oh, go home.
This is terrible. (squeal of delight)
And you see he, (group laughing)
he walks off and you look around at this place,
and I think there is that moment of
looking at your speakeasy that's been busted up again.
There were so many clients in here,
like you could expand.
You could have a street of venues with all the people
that want to come down here,
but the ordinances that city council, the mayor,
the DA have passed,
have basically all been about the fact
that like until this project
that Elias is working on that like, he, y'know,
that Elias Hodge has not gotten the praise
from the bosses yet.
The project's not completed yet,
and until that happens,
City Hall has said nobody's allowed to feel good.
But I think, I wanna go back to The Fix for a second.
When all that chaos breaks out,
you see various people sort of leaving and absconding.
You see that guy at that other table sort of
head off into the darkness.
What does The Fix do when the cops show up?
- Well, he's been paying attention to those guys
at that table.
He doesn't like it.
He knows this area well.
They don't. - [Brennan] Mh-hm.
So hopefully I'm gonna,
I'd like to try to intercept them, not follow,
but anticipate where they're going to go
and be there when they walk down that alley.
- Hell yes.
I would say, go ahead and give me,
knowing the neighborhood as well as you do,
this is just a difficulty four sneak check.
- Can it be a savvy?
(group laughing)
- Fuck what I said.
This is a difficulty four savvy check.
- This seems like a savvy check to me.
- [Brennan] Yeah, for sure.
- That's a nine.
- Oh, I also could have just halved it.
- You can just halve it as well as planned action.
Moving from Sugah's
out to the streets out near Temporal Square,
deep down here in the midbrain.
We journey through Mentopolis where Donny Urges
and the various riffraff that he's collected
for his criminal scheme run off
(pants)
on the streets.
Dutch angle, dutch angle.
High contrast, high contrast.
- Huge shadows. - Huge shadows, big shadows.
- Tropes, tropes.
- Tropes, tropes, tropes.
Donny stops near a massive brick wall.
The rain of the brainstorm overhead.
(raining pouring down)
(pants)
All right, that was close.
Bulls almost came down on us like a ton of bricks,
but lemme tell you this right now.
And in this little circle of criminals,
from whence does The Fix emerge having spotted this,
or you've been here from the moment they arrived?
- Right, I sort of loom out and I say,
Have we met?
- You see all of them turn around
and look at your basically sternum,
(players laughing) (zoot)
and then you see Donny goes,
(twinkling noir music)
Who's asking Bub?
- So I have a job.
It's a weird job.
I get in strange situations in my job.
I get exposed to things.
I'm often there when the big guy's
up to something ridiculous.
Like for example,
did you know that for every
snake on earth there is one snake dick,
and at first ya might think,
well yeah, that makes sense,
but actually, only half of snakes have dicks,
and that means (Danielle lets out a laugh)
that every snake that has a dick has two dicks,
and that's a true fact about our world.
That's the kind of information I run across
as I'm doing my job,
and that job is to eliminate distraction,
and you seem like distractions,
(tense music begins building)
so would you like to turn around and go the other way,
or would you like to see if I can keep myself
from punching you too hard?
(Brennan silently laughing in of terror and awe)
- I'm gonna say, I'm gonna need a slick check here.
- Yeah, I can use sharp instead of slick
'cause I'm Menacing.
(Brennan laughing)
- (Breathlessly) That's true.
- And that does carry out here.
I'm going to, the-
With how truly terrifying that was,
I'll have Donny make a sturdy check,
and so I'll roll it
and I'll roll it in front of the board actually.
He's got a d12 for sturdy.
He's a sturdy guy.
(dice rolls)
And he rolls a six, the difficulty is six.
This is not a planned action.
This is a snap decision,
so go ahead and roll sharp for me.
- That's gonna be a 11.
- Beating a difficulty by five is a,
means an extraordinary success,
so trying to resist as best as possible,
but looking up, Donny looks and goes,
Hey, (laughing in fear) I don't have two dicks,
so if that's what, (players laughing)
I'm not a snake, but, and guys, what?
He turns around, everyone's gone.
Everyone else in the middle of the speech
already has left and turned.
There might even be different thoughts now.
They're so terrified and he looks and says,
I just thought this, you know
there's a birthday cake in the fridge, and-
- I know, I know, man.
I understand, I understand.
We all sometimes want to put our finger
in the birthday cake, but you're never gonna do that.
(Brennan laughing in shock and awe)
- He goes, that's right.
I'm never gonna do that.
I'm never,
and I think you literally watch this guy fully,
like as an intrusive thought,
the shimmer goes across his face and he goes,
I'm- I'm never gonna do that.
And he straight up turns into mist.
(group laughing)
He just turns into fog.
- There was like two murders this episode.
(group laughing)
- There's some other part of him
that just floats off and will come back
in some other part of the brain as just
a more normal desire to get some cake sometime
(group laughing)
when it's reasonable to just go get a cake for yourself,
and this distraction has been neutralized.
Standing over here in this area as well,
you hear a noise not too far away of a car idling,
which, this is mostly like a pedestrian neighborhood.
It's like a downtown area,
but you do hear a car idling around the corner from here
and it sounds like a sort of pretty souped-up engine.
You kind of even recognize the sound of it
as being probably a nice town car from Cortex City.
In this moment, does The Fix do anything here in this place?
- Do you think he might recognize that sound specifically?
- Yeah, I think so.
I think that hearing the noise,
you recognize it as probably like
one of the DA's cars, right?
- Yeah, that's what I was guessing. - [Brennan] Mh-hm.
- [Hank] I don't think that he thinks it's there for him,
- Yeah.
- And so I think that he does not interface with it.
- You hold on for a moment
as you are standing around the corner from the car.
The car idles for a while longer,
and then you hear a click of the door,
and walking around the corner, you see two figures,
long coats, fedoras, and you see the beautiful face,
and even under the brim of the hat sort of coiffed hair of
Mark Bition, which is the District Attorney.
(Trapp chuckling lightly)
- M. Bition?
(Brennan laughing)
- Dashingly handsome figure, walks around with an assistant,
looks up and says, Sorry to interrupt, Fix.
I uh...
I was lucky enough to hear some of your work at a distance.
I do depend on it so much of the time.
We're just posted up here waiting for the chief of police
to finish up at Sugah's.
There's a squad of criminals that I'm looking forward to
locking away.
These pleasures do tend to...
get in the way of the plans that we have for the big guy.
Thank you again for all your hard work.
I take it to this guy, I don't see a body.
I hope you didn't eat him. (laughs boisterously)
- It depends on what you mean.
- All right.
- He's gone and I enjoyed it.
(stifled laughter)
I have a job and I do like doing it
and I like doing it for you, Mr. Bition.
- We know we can rely on you,
and you're a huge part of why the big guy's
been able to achieve so much.
Without you looking out for the interest of this city
and obviously, we rely on the chief of police.
It's wonderful those impulses to be controlled
and emotions to be regulated,
but sometimes you need to work
outside the bounds of the law,
so it's very nice to have your help.
- Your hair looks very nice today, sir.
- Gimme a slick check.
- He's wearing a hat so it might not go well.
(players laughing)
- (shakily) Ah, it's a two.
(players laughing)
- He goes, There's the part you can see
from under the hat?
- I just wanted to be nice.
- Oh, that's very honest.
(players laughing)
Well, you know, you're a swell guy The Fix,
but I know you're a busy, busy man.
You have lots of people to go see.
I'm sure you have a very busy social calendar.
- Did you know that every snake has-
- Okay well you know-
(group laughing)
The important, yeah, I did,
and thank you.
You see, he says, but while I have you here,
and you see, he clicks over,
and you see there's a sort of stocky guy
that you actually recognize as the deputy chief of staff
for the mayor.
He's sort of like very scowly looking dude.
They call him Mr. Lance.
And you see that he reaches over.
(laugh) Trapp's looking at me like-
- Well just, any time you say a name now it's like,
All right, what's this gonna become now?
It's not ambulance, but it's gonna be something.
(group laughing)
- You do see him kind of looking around very nervously,
and you see that he reaches in and pulls out a small file
and you see that Mark looks at you and says,
While we have you, if you've finished your business here,
we need you to take care of... this.
This is a top priority for the time being,
and I think the faster we can eliminate this threat
to the mayor's agenda and the council's ambitious plans
for the big guy, this would be our number one priority.
This has become the largest distraction on our list
of distractions,
and hands a small file to you,
a little manila folder, tips his hat,
and he and the deputy chief of staff walk away.
Do you take a look inside of the file?
- Yeah.
- Alex, could you please describe your character?
- Yes, this is a small boy, kind of too small.
(group laughing)
- Huge judgment right out of the gate.
Too small.
- Too small,
and has a look in his eyes that he's seen too much.
He's wearing a newsie cap,
a dirty brown jacket, and has dirty brown pants on.
That's- That's him.
(Brennan laughing)
- And you see in that sort of like stenotype font, it says.
- Conrad Schintz.
- You see the name Conrad Schintz.
I will say this is the first time
that the District Attorney has ever given you a file
with a child in it.
What does The Fix do in this-
- Do I know who this child is?
Have we met? Are we...
- Give me snoop difficulty eight,
or actually, sorry, gimme savvy difficulty eight.
- Nine.
(Brennan gasps) - [Alex] Mmm.
- You have seen this kid around,
and I think you actually know a way towards like,
this kid is like not too far from this specific neighborhood
as well.
I think you could definitely go looking.
You also know a place you could go in general that kids
come to and fro from that you could go check.
- Well I think that the first thing is
that The Fix feels a feeling that he does not know
and is not comfortable with.
(Brennan and Alex laughing lightly)
He's very used to doing the job,
- [Brennan] Yeah.
and he just does the job,
- [Brennan] Yeah. - And he always likes doing the job.
(gritty noir music)
But he's not having that sensation right now.
- A strange feeling overtakes you.
Do you think you stay here for a while in that feeling,
or do you think you head out?
- I think I might head out
and go and see if I know where this kid is.
- You wander off in search of this child.
As you do so, we're actually gonna move over
to our friend Conrad,
moving throughout the city throughout space,
we see the hustle and bustle
of the late afternoon people sort of
like leaving from work out in the city center.
We see young Conrad plying his trade.
As people walk to and fro,
you've got a bag of newspapers by your side and we also see
by your side something else,
which is a big old basset hound that sort of sleeps
wrapped around a little lamp post on a street corner
as people hustle to and fro
coming up and buying newspapers from you.
What is Conrad doing in this moment?
- Conrad's saying, papers, get your papers,
but it's like a little too quiet.
(players laughing)
- You hear a guy, a sort of older man walking by go, what?
(players laughing)
- Papers.
- What kind of papers?
- Newspaper, sir.
- Ah, good.
(players laughing)
See he comes over hands you a couple coins takes it.
- Oh, it's the wrong amount.
- Hmm?
- Sir you gave me the wrong amount.
- Oh.
- It's okay, nevermind.
- I didn't pay enough or I overpaid?
- You paid half what it cost,
but that's okay.
Forget I said anything.
- No, you wanna hold me accountable
(Alex laughing)
'cause I did something wrong.
- That's not what I said, sir.
It's-
- No, I think it was implied.
You told me I'm a piece of shit,
(Hank laughing)
and I'm not a piece of shit.
I'm a good guy.
Would a good guy do a bad thing?
- No.
- Then how could what I have done be bad?
- Okay.
(group laughing)
And you see he walks off and you see your dog Justin
looks up and goes,
Woof, you could have gotten that extra money from him.
Now you're gonna be short at the end of the day.
- That's okay. I have a stash for just this occasion.
(players laughing)
- You're gonna cover the cost of his paper?
- Yeah, I gave him all the facts and he made a choice
so that's okay.
(group laughing)
- Justin goes, oh, Conrad, I'm so sorry.
- Justin, you're my best friend.
(group laughing)
- I know it's true.
You're my best friend too,
but we just tend to say it
after something real sad's happened.
(group laughing)
- I never thought of it like that before.
- You're my best friend.
(group laughing)
You see that you sell all your papers,
you see another person comes up
and buys a paper off you and goes,
Oh little boy. I'm so sorry,
but I believe the the paper is sorted the wrong way.
(stammering)
The pages are out of order.
- Oh, sorry.
No one's ever called me out on that, but I did that.
Here, I can put them back in the order.
- Oh thank you. - [Alex] Yeah, no problem.
- And you sort of shuffle them back in order.
As it does so you see there's like a hustle and bustle
nearby you.
There's some people that seem to be
sort of like arguing or there's a phone booth.
Then you see there's a guy kind of like fiddling
with the dial on the phone booth and pointing at it
and sort of shrugging.
There's like a couple phone booths in this
big plaza that you're in.
You see like a huge dome of City Hall
that has like the wrinkles of a brain around it.
There's like a bunch of overpass highways
with synaptic cars that light up the highway
as they travel along them.
You see that the highways sort of like come into and
out of the mouths of like giant statues in the sort of image
of Elias Hodge or the self-image moving in
and throughout you see the people sort of looking worried
and you see a sort of image pop up
and a bullhorn as the balcony at the
sort of City Hall banners unfurl,
and you see Mayor Leon Logic step up
with a big old bullhorn surrounded by people,
sort of people in the square turn.
A sort of older man, big handlebar mustache.
He's got a top hat, very mayoral.
And he goes, Citizens of Mentopolis, (old timey speech music)
it is I, your mayor,
Leon Logic.
As always, it is a pleasure and an honor to serve.
I am sure you are well aware
that our telecommunications infrastructure is
momentarily disabled.
Fear not, this routine upgrade has been planned
for a long time,
obviously because why else would it happen in a brain
as well ordered and functional and happy and fulfilled
and content and we're doing great as this brain.
(players laughing)
And you see, he says,
So never fear the phones should be back working again.
In the meantime,
feel free to use our fair city's incredible
public transportation to deliver messages by hand,
which you will have to do for the time being,
and one and all, remember very soon
all of your hard labor will have been completed
and we can expect a raise and maybe even
a pat on the back for the big guy,
at which point many of the city's ordinances will be
repealed and celebration will commence
and festivities, et cetera.
This has been Mayor Leon Logic and all of this makes sense.
(players laughing) You see his campaign button,
it just says, "Vote for Leon, it makes sense"
on it as he turns around and walks back
into City Hall,
and you see a bunch of the angry looking people
like, freaking phones.
This city's going to the dogs.
Justin goes (gasps).
- Wait, what do you want me to do about it, Justin?
There's a lot of stuff wrong with the city.
- Woof, but we know what the cost of that's gonna be.
- I know well, we'll keep doing what we're doing
and it's just switching what we think
is the most important part of the newspaper that day
onto the front page and hoping that makes a difference.
(players laughing) - We could go like one notch higher.
That's such a subtle, non-intrusive way to try
to make a difference.
- What is one notch higher, Justin?
- Telling someone with your mouth, with words.
(players laughing)
- Man, what if they're upset about that?
- Well, I mean some,
I guess that if the center of your moral compass is
never upsetting people,
I guess it's better to not upset people then it is
to upset people.
- Okay fine, I'll tell one person if you're gonna dare me,
I'll tell one person.
- Yeah, I'll dare you tell one person.
- Okay, well what about this guy?
Conrad just goes up to the next guy that walks by.
- The very next guy that walks up is you see
just an organ grinder.
He's got an accordion and there's a monkey next to him
and he goes,
(accordion music plays)
this big accordion noise.
Hello? (accordion music playing)
- Hello? Conrad's trying to speak under the volume.
(imitates accordion music) - He walked by and Justin says,
You're not being loud on purpose.
- Okay, fine, fine.
(clears throat)
Excuse me sir.
- Oh, bonjour, hello?
- Oh well I don't speak that.
(group laughing)
- He leaves and Justin says, He said hello after it.
- What are you calling me xenophobic?
- No, he clearly spoke the language.
- All right, okay, I should try to talk to him.
(Brennan and Alex stammering)
- But I also don't think you should talk
to that guy 'cause I don't think he's pulling
a lot of levers around here.
- All right, I'll go learn French
and then we'll circle back. - No! That's not what I-
(group laughing)
So after you sell your last paper,
what's Conrad's routine at the end of the day?
- At the end of the day,
he probably goes around the city like making sure there's no
like discarded information anywhere,
- [Brennan] Yeah.
like little trinkets or whatever to take back
to his little home pad.
- I think that probably it's hard
to find the really good trinkets these days.
It's just that you found a lot of the ones already,
so we'll call it a difficulty nine snoop check.
- Okay, snoop...
That's a three.
(ball sliding on a track then clunks)
(players laughing)
That feels right.
(group laughing)
- You scrounge around and head back.
You don't find any trinkets or treasures,
nothing that would be really significant (smooth noir jazz)
to you on the way.
You do notice as you head back to your neighborhood,
however, that like you start getting
out of the sort of Cortex City and you start noticing a lot
of coffee joints and diners and places like that
with chalkboards outside that appear
to have things scratched out,
and you see there's like a two for one...
cortisol special.
You see there's one of the diners has a big sign
that just got put up in chalkboard
that says like adrenaline floats for everyone.
It says like four for a quarter,
like there's just a bunch of things all over
that you see like a couple different coffee places
that have had the regular like dopamine espresso crossed out
and had like quadruple shot macchiato
adrenaline specialty drink,
and there's a bunch of those places
throughout the brain as you head back,
or there's a bunch of those places throughout Mentopolis
as you head back to one of your like safe houses.
- Conrad's just mumbling, this city.
(players laughing)
- As you begin mumbling this city,
you head back towards the area that you are from.
As you do so,
are you then making any attempt to be stealthy as you do so?
- Sure, I think Conrad also
part of his nightly routine is
leaving a little handwritten note on Sugah's saying,
"Please reconsider."
(group laughing)
- Incredible.
With that, as you go to write your handwritten note there,
I think that we're actually going to come back to Sugah's.
As we do so, all of you see the exterior of this place.
It has just sort of been freshly raided,
so it's quite empty, like the chairs are up.
Hans is like sweeping in a corner.
You see Joey and Libby kind of counting out the money.
It's like basically the one thing
that the fuzz didn't take when they came in
was like the actual just like cash in the drawer.
Dan, you're in there
and let's go ahead actually and have all three
of you just roll a sneak check
just so we can see who arrives first.
- I'm gonna roll in this box cause I don't trust Danielle's.
(Hank laughing)
That is a five.
- I got a nine. - [Brennan] Nine.
- Seven.
- Oh, okay.
- So nine.
So the first people to arrive here-
- Does it make sense that I'm sort of,
if I'm hired to find who's following Imelda,
if I'm arriving later,
if I'm sort of tailing behind looking
for people who might be behind her?
- Yes, absolutely.
I love that,
and go ahead and give me actually a
snoop check in that case.
We'll call that a difficulty of six.
- Okay.
You know what? I might just do a planned action with that.
- Hell yes.
You tail around with a six,
and you can see sure enough that as you get here,
you just notice two gentlemen, hats low over their head
in a parked car that you see has this
like big filagree around it of gold with
a bunch of the little hood ornament is a dollar sign and-
- Subtle.
(Trapp laughing)
- You see this little dollar sign ornament
with a couple of people that seem
to be posted up watching Sugah's,
so by the time Imelda gets to the front door,
but you do know that Imelda left Sugah's
so it's possible that someone might know to be here for her
or they could be here on some other business.
- Okay.
- But you do notice them on that check.
Uh so Imelda, you walk in the door first seeing Dan here.
You see a very large bouncer look over, broad shoulders,
got like a little apron on.
Hello and welcome to Sugah's.
- Hello, the name is Fakename, Stacy Fakename.
I have a table in the back.
- Ah, Miss Fakename of course,
right this way, and sort of leads you over.
We have been raided by the police,
so we have no more goods to sell, (players laughing)
but if you are looking to be in an indoor area,
then we can accommodate you.
- That's perfectly all right.
Thank you so much Han- - Very well.
Mr. Fucks?
- Yes, what is it?
- A Miss Fakename is at her table.
- Woah! Which one. Joanna or Stacy?
(players laughing)
- Joanne said she was never coming back again.
(players laughing) - I expected not after last time.
It must be Stacy then.
Yes, well. I suppose we could scrounge up something here.
Fix her up her usual.
- Oh, everything has been stolen
by the police. - Ah, shit.
I suppose I could go in the back and get some
of the bar peanuts.
- Ah, (stammering) it'll do.
And perhaps you can get on stage
and do a little song and dance.
- Oh, I have a tight five.
- Oh good lord no.
- You sure? You don't want-
- You know what, let's hear it. (funky comedy club music)
- Hi, good evening ladies and gentlemen. (players laughing)
My name is Hans Schadenfreude.
The other day something bad happened to a person I dislike.
- Oh, this shit again. Booo. Boooooo. (crickets, players laughing)
You need to update your shit, Hans.
- Ah, he's enjoying how much you're disliking it.
(group laughing)
He's just sitting there he's like, yes.
This was your plan the whole time, wasn't it?
- I have deceived you.
- Ah, lovable rapscallion.
That's why I keep you around.
- Yes, I love you too.
You see Stacy Fakename over at a corner booth.
- Sta- wait a minute, Hans, this is not Stacy Fakename.
- It's not?
- This is Imelda Pulse!
(gasps)
- Oh. - She has lied to you,
and now I derive pleasure from your being lied to.
(Brennan gags)
Very strange. - Just Hans vomits.
(retching) (players laughing)
I have become ill.
Wanders away.
- Oh Imelda, I must apologize
for the sorry state of my club.
- Oh, I apologize.
- The fuzz has come in and raided the shit out of it.
Can I get you anything?
- So there's no shit around.
- There's absolutely none to be had.
- I'll just take some peanuts, please.
I'll throw them at whoever's on the stage.
- Oh yes.
Looking around there's like, I guess-
Libby, Libby! - Libby's like,
I'll go get some peanuts.
- Yes, the peanuts.
- You see she wanders off again,
just like little wet footprints behind her.
- Mr. Fucks, I don't suppose you've seen a young urchin
hanging around here, have you?
I saw him.
- Oh, who Conrad? That little shit?
- Conrad, sure, that's probably- (Alex laughing)
- My mortal enemy. (Brennan laughing)
How dare you invoke his little shitty name in my club?
- Your mortal enemy is a child?
- Yes.
- That tracks actually. - You got a problem with that?
- No, I don't have a problem with it.
- Children can be mortal enemies,
rambunctious rapscallions, all of them.
- I have a nephew who I deeply dislike.
- Well, you know exactly where I'm coming from.
- At this moment A. Tension walks in through the door.
- A. Tension walks in. (smooth, serious jazz music)
A. Tension's got her trilby down a little low
and is wearing the trench coat of a flasher
trying to look fully like Girl Reporter'd out,
but like trying to like put her head down
just like no one sees me, I'm assuming.
- Well, well, well if it isn't Stacy Fakename.
- She told me her name was Fakename.
- Well, well, well, if it isn't Joanna Fakename.
- Wait, no, hold on, Joanna Fakename.
Wait which-
- Yes, there's two you see
The parents decided to name them both Joanna.
- But who was the one that said she was never coming back?
Because that did that happen to me.
- Joanna with an A.
- Okay, I'm gonna go lie down.
(group laughing)
- I make some space on in the booth and I say,
So what's a good girl like you doing in a place like this?
- I kind of like slide in,
still kind of like slinking trying to look like mysterious,
but I couldn't look more like,
I'm like someone who's trying to look mysterious.
Well, Miss Pulse, what a sight for sore eyes.
How have you been?
- Anastasia, I've been so well, and your parents,
they're worried about you.
- We don't need to bring up my parents.
- Oh, but I love bringing up your parents.
- You also love occasionally pretending
that you might fling yourself off of a bridge
if you get too close to it,
so we're not gonna pretend like we know.
- You know, a little spice up the day.
Give it a little zing.
Everybody loves to think that they might jump in front
of a train when it's coming right towards them, don't they?
- No, not everyone loves that.
- I throw her hat off.
- My trilby!
- At this moment,
I think this is when Hunch Curio comes in through the door
as well, having been shadowing behind Imelda.
- Right, I come, I immediately see A. Tension.
Christ. (Brennan laughing)
How is it you are everywhere
I don't want you to be?
- How is it you're everywhere I want to be?
- How is it that you want
to be where I don't want you to be?
- How is it that where you don't want me to be I be
and then you don't want me to be,
and then I be, and then you be,
and then we be in the same space at the same time?
- How indeed?
(Brennan laughing)
- So you two know each other?
- She's always at all the crime scenes
that I'm trying to get to, right,
and she's blabbing about all the facts before I got 'em,
and, all her stories very unflattering to me in particular.
I really feel like she has something out for me.
- Well, if you weren't such a flatfooted dummy,
then we wouldn't have to worry about this.
- If you weren't lettin' out all the clues
before I finish the case.
- Well, if you wouldn't find the clues
before you allowed someone to punch you
in the face several times.
(Danielle and Trapp arguing) - Are you sure you don't have a drink?
Just one will do.
I'll take the bad stuff. - Just wait, I have something for this,
Detective, Detective. - Dan!
- Check out this special from the back room for you,
a shiny rock that we remember.
(Trapp laughs heartily)
It's notably slightly shinier than most rocks.
- This is, you've got the best stuff, man.
(Brennan laughing)
- Hunch, look over there.
It's a clue.
- Huh?
- And she grabs the shiny rock.
- Goddammit.
(players laughing)
- Incredible.
Yes. A. Tension and Hunch Curio, curiosity and attention
right parallel to each other.
I'm gonna need a sneak check from Conrad,
and I wanna snoop check from The Fix.
- That's 19 plus two, 21.
- [Brennan] Wow.
- That's a two plus zero.
(players laughing)
- Incredible.
I actually owe you a Moxie token from before,
so there's,
(ball sliding on a track)
so we see in this moment that,
as you were all discussing here,
you see that Joey Sneezes goes out and begins
to bring some more like cases,
has basically gone to your supplier, and it's like,
all right, we gotta re-up, like get ready to open up again.
Conrad, you arrive at the door with a little note saying,
"Please reconsider",
and I think all of you hear a little
like bang, bang, bang on the front door of the speakeasy.
- Conrad in that moment is like thinking,
Oh, I should probably elaborate what I mean,
and just starts adding to the note.
Not all pleasure is bad,
but to be purely motivated by it is not great.
Just trying to fit it all in.
- Justin goes, yeah, put more asterisks,
really add nuance.
Get into what you really, really mean.
- I think life is nuanced, you know?
- Oh for sure,
and that's a great thing to think about
because the more nuance there is,
the more things there are to consider.
And the more things there are to consider,
the more right you can be.
- I feel like Dan has heard this and like is expecting it
because every morning he comes in,
there's another note,
So he like busts the door down and grabs Conrad
by like the scruff and the dog as well
and like throws him in there.
Conrad, you churlish cur,
What are you doing out here?
Explain yourself.
- I'm here like I always am every night, Mr....
(Hank laughing) (Freddie stammering)
Mr. F...
(group laughing)
Mister.
(group laughing)
- All of you see this- (players laughing)
- Dan, what are you doing, he's a kid.
What are you doing?
- Eh, responsible for their own actions.
You're telling me a child can't be responsible
for their own actions?
- What was he doing?
- He was vandalizing
like Martin Luther nailing the indictments
against the Catholic Church on my door,
my door, my establishment.
- No, I was using a, a very removable adhesive.
(players laughing)
- And we are going to cut away from here
to a nearby location
that The Fix has traveled to.
So, having beaten the,
or, the sneak roll having beaten that,
you do a little bit of snooping around the neighborhood,
sort of staying close to Sugah's, which you know, is like
where you've seen the kid before,
but like looking for anything about Conrad Schintz.
And you walk by a very familiar building to you.
Deep in the heart of Mentopolis
with two overpasses from the synaptic highways overhead
that leave just this thin crevice open
to the terra-cephalon sky overhead
with rain pouring down to the tall spires is...
Madam Loathing's Home for Wayward Interests,
(Alex chuckling lightly)
And you see the sort of wrought iron gates around it
in a cold, strange sort of manor house in front of you.
The door opens and Madame Loathing appears,
stern matron of this boarding school and refuge.
She goes, ah, Mr. The Fix,
always a pleasure for you to drop in,
our beloved benefactor.
Is there anything I can help you with?
I hope your visit will be short as I know
that you are a busy man.
- I like it here very much
And I never quite understood
why you're always so mean to me.
You seem like a lovely woman.
- Don't refer to me with any superlatives
if you'd be so kind.
- I'm not sure that's what a superlative is.
(group laughing)
- She like opens the door and says,
Do you mean adverbs?
- Adjectives?
- An adverb is a kind of adjective.
- Is that true?
- [Hank] I think so.
- Wow.
- She turns around and goes,
Well I guess that I am terrible,
(slurps) (weird eldritch reverberation)
and she walks, says right this way.
It's like, she lets you step outta the rain into the foyer,
but like stops you there,
just to like get you just in and you hear a thumping run
and a tiny little kid runs up
and you see it's a little kid with a snake's head
and a turtle shell,
and he's got little clawed feet and he walks up
and you realize this is one of the wayward interests here,
which is reptiles.
It's little Ronnie Reptile, and he goes,
Mr. The Fix, look what I drew.
- Hey kiddo, that's great. (Brennan laughing)
I don't know what that is.
- (laughs) And he says,
It's a diagram of the indentations
on a snake's lip that lets it detect heat signatures.
- I know a couple things about snakes myself.
(Brennan laughing)
- He says, really, I'm interested in everything
about snakes and turtles and lizards
and every sort of reptile there is.
Did you know that komodo dragons are actually not poisonous,
but that the bacteria in their mouth is so powerful
that it acts like a toxic venom?
- That is awesome, Ronnie. (Brennan laughing)
- He smiles.
- I give him the little rumple of the head.
- He like hugs your leg and hands the thing up to you
and you see Madame Loathing's hand like cover the kid's head
and pull the little reptilian head. (players laughing)
That's enough, Ronald, sort of shoves him away and says,
Your presence here...
can be disconcerting
for the children.
- Does it encourage them?
- It encourages them in the sense
that it gives them false hope, Mr. Fix.
- None of us know what this man is gonna become.
There's a lot of life left.
Any one of these kids could be rediscovered at any moment.
- I'm sure I'll tell them that Mr. The Fix
is going to come along any day now and adopt all of them,
but for the time being, that would be a little hurtful,
don't you think?
(somber, serious music)
- It's nice to be nice sometimes.
- What do you want, Fix?
- I was wondering since you interact with children,
if you know anything about Conrad Schintz?
- Oh, Conrad blew through here a while ago,
but managed to sneak out, very dexterous little child.
(players laughing quietly)
But the children can't leave.
(stammering)
Let's be very clear about what my whole deal is.
(players laughing)
I've captured these children, all right,
I'm bad and I'm very bad, all right.
I am bad,
but Conrad was in here a while ago,
but managed to breeze out.
When's the last time we saw Conrad?
Oh, Conrad was staying here,
and then I threw out a pair of ice skates,
and there was a whole thing about a pair of ice,
and Conrad blew up and ended up,
there was a dog that was sort of
scrounging around in the alley
and Conrad adopted that dog and...
got the ice skates outta the dumpster
and ran out a long time ago.
- So I'm looking for a little kid with some ice skates
and a dog.
- You're not the first person
to come by here asking about Conrad.
- That is excellent information for you
to have volunteered.
(players laughing)
- She says, there's two others
that have come by here looking.
- I don't even roll for any of this.
(Brennan and Freddie laughing)
Tell me about those two people, or else?
(group laughing)
- As you say, or else even jokingly,
she looks at you and she begins to grow taller.
And she goes, Mr. The Fix, let me be the first
to inform you, focusing on me
is not going to do anything but make me stronger.
And she starts to like rise up.
She sort of smiles and says,
Roscoe Hungry came by here,
one of Don Avaricci's enforcers.
You see that (laughs) she,
Trapp likes that one. - It's great.
(Trapp laughing lightly)
She says, came by here asking
where the child could be found.
I said he hadn't been here in a long time,
but the first person to come
looking after Conrad was...
(sighs out of annoyance) Daniel Fucks.
(players laughing)
He said that the child had been pinning notices
to the door of Sugah's for some time with some regularity.
You see, she looks up at the sort of
this menacing grandfather clock
up on the wall says, usually around the end of the workday,
the child works.
You know, we have child labor here in Mentopolis?
(players laughing)
- [Brennan] Yes of course. - That seems fine to me.
I've never lived anywhere else.
- Of course, exactly. And you know,
it's like the brain has childhood is in there.
It's like a layer that you layer.
Anyway, the point is Daniel Fucks came in here asking
if I could capture the child.
I think he was somewhat annoyed
that the child was vandalizing the front door of Sugah's
with some sort of moralizing,
maybe some reference to Martin Luther.
I don't know. But, (players laughing)
point being the person who this child most accosts
seems to be Daniel Fucks.
- That is useful,
and I am thankful for you for taking care of these children,
regardless of how much you seem to hate it.
- Well, I do hate these children,
and I hate taking care of them,
but if it makes you feel better,
I also hate everything else. (players laughing)
- Snakes have two dicks.
(group laughing)
- Gleam in Ronnie's eyes.
- Yeah, Ronnie's like, That's incredible!
That's incredible!
And runs off and joins a group of other children.
You see there's a little kid with like a choo choo train
for a head, and there's a another kid
with just a list of lists,
like a Wikipedia article of like a taxonomy of taxonomies.
(players laughing)
- I actually didn't get to meet my favorite little kid,
which is magic, he does magic.
- Oh yeah, there's like a sweet little kid
that their head is.
You see like there's a little girl that has a deck of cards
for a head,
and the front is the queen of hearts
that has a little talking like the face on the card talks,
and you see as you're walking out,
she like waves at you from the window
as you're walking away.
- [Alex] Aww.
And you head on out of there.
We cut back to Sugah's, where...
- I'm holding back Dan from beating the crap outta Conrad.
- No, he's like, he's a kid. Come on.
- Give me one good reason I shouldn't beat this kid up
right now.
- Gimme one reason you should!
- And I think at this moment, The Fix
you can hear the commotion inside.
You can hear the voice of a child from inside,
and I'll leave it up to all of you
what happens next,
if you would enter the space or listen,
but all of you are here at Sugah's now
and Conrad is still, I think, yeah.
- Being held back. Hold me back!
- Don't worry.
I always let him get one punch in
and then I make a dash for it.
- Jesus Christ.
(group laughing)
- Okay, everybody stop it.
- Was that as far as you'd gotten? (players laughing)
- That's it. That-
I thought that would stop everybody.
Yes I did.
- And everybody stops for like one moment.
- Hey Ms. Pulse, here's a rock.
It's shiny.
- Don't give her my rock.
- I smash the rock. (stone breaking)
(group laughing) - You're going need to pay for that, madam.
- You see Hans looks and goes,
Wow, she smashed the rock.
That was really unexpected.
It's a very strange thing to do out of nowhere.
(group laughing)
So Imelda, you look and see the kid in front of you
who gave you that newspaper.
- Come here kid.
- Well, I'm kind of being held right now.
Okay, yeah.
- Imelda, will you do this dirty task for me then?
Kick him.
(Brennan laughing)
- I'm not going, I'm thinking about kicking.
Okay, now I'm really thinking about kicking.
- Why don't we go- - Just do it.
Why don't you tell me everything this kid has done?
- Oh wait 'til you- I'll talk your ear off. We go off.
- Well, is somebody gonna kick me or what?
(players laughing)
- Justin goes, don't ask, don't remind him.
(group laughing)
- Sit down kid.
Have a bowl of peanuts.
- Oh, okay.
- You don't have to eat them if you don't want them.
- I'm deathly allergic.
(group laughing)
- I pull the peanut out and wipe his hand.
- Okay, thank you.
- You wanna tell me about this newspaper, kid?
- Wait, did you, you read it, you read what I?
You read the front page?
- Are you so shocked?
That's your job, right, to give out newspapers.
- Yeah, but nobody ever, for some reason,
my plan of putting what I think is the most important
on the front page has never resulted in,
I guess people just throw out the front.
I don't know what happens.
(players laughing)
- Honestly,
I think a lot of people don't read the newspaper.
I think it just feels nice to hold.
- I'm standing right here.
(players laughing)
- Yeah, I mean, none of the reporters have gotten mad
at me for doing what I do either.
Nobody follows up.
- I pulled Dan aside in, in such a way where
I'm still like, I'm sitting with my back to this.
I can like still listen to what's going on
while I'm like giving polite nods to this.
And when A. Tension's like, I'm standing right here,
I give like a really loud, like, ha.
(players laughing)
- Don't make me find another rock.
- Well, as you can see it, this was our last chance
to take that packet on the desk
and make sure the big wigs don't get to it.
- Well, it happened.
- What happened?
- He took the packet.
- The big guy took the packet?
- Mm hmm, and I'd really like to know why.
- So I'm trying to snoop on this,
but I'm terrible at that, so I'm gonna get caught.
- Hell yeah.
- Ooh, four.
- I think if anyone wants to roll a snoop check
to notice the looming figure of-
- I'm like at the door with my like giant shoulder.
- I got an eight which means I roll again,
and I got a one on that one. (Brennan laughing)
- I got a 15. - [Brennan] Okay.
- And a six for me.
- Anybody not beating a four?
- So I think all of you notice a huge, looming, menacing
figure in the doorframe,
and The Fix, you are spotted as you enter
Sugah's once again.
- I lean back and go,
for all my years detective work,
I've noticed a little something here and it's the giant man
in the doorway.
(players laughing)
- The Fix, as you look over, you see Justin, the dog
sort of looks up and goes,
wait, what do you-
You mean the...
the big guy took the packet off the desk?
How do you know that?
- I may have a little in with a big man,
and I pull from under my shirt a very shiny gold key
on a chain.
- I'm gonna need Anastasia to give a snoop check here,
and as you pull the gold chain out, I think...
Dan, you would definitely recognize these keys.
These keys are incredibly significant because,
and the difficulty I think of this snoop check is an eight.
- Oh, then I'm gonna halve it.
- Okay, you halve it, bam.
Dan, these keys, members of the Pulse Family,
you didn't know that there were like
more than one necessarily, but you know that your
mother and father have these as well,
but these keys allow members of the Pulse Family
to speak directly to the big guy,
to be that voice of temptation or impulse or reflex
that says something that bypasses
all of the frenzied bureaucracy
of the conscious mind to make snap decisions
for the big guy himself,
and you're looking at something that is
like an incredibly powerful object
held in the hands of Imelda.
On halving that snoop check,
you remember something.
There was a ruined part of the switchboard back
at Cerebell Pacific.
The ruined part of the switchboard that you saw,
the center of the like corrosive blast of this,
almost like buckshot
that had torn apart had shattered glass around it,
and you realize the shattered glass that was
on the console was one of those glass encasings
that covers a keyhole
that stands in a switchboard.
and that that had been at the center of that blast.
Conrad, you see this key here and,
up to you whether Conrad,
I think actually gimme a savvy check.
Call it DC five.
- Five.
- You have no idea, when you sold the paper to Imelda,
you didn't know who she was.
You realize that your your little plan
of just like trying to bring focus to a little thing
that people would know that something was going on.
You put a paper into the hands of one of the
handful of people in Mentopolis
who can unilaterally make calls
for the big guy to do something,
and that means you didn't just like raise awareness.
The big guy, as Imelda said,
grabbed that packet off the desk and now none of you know
what the big guy's doing with it.
- Oh, you're someone important.
- Some might say that, yes.
- Some, some might say that.
- Some people choose not to be as an important
as say maybe were born to be.
- That sounds crazy.
Who would do a thing?
- I don't know.
- I don't know either.
Why are you wearing the keys?
- I just felt like it.
Why aren't you?
- I don't know what you're talking about.
- There's some sort of relationship here.
(Hank laughing)
- She's my cousin.
- [Brennan] Oh.
- She doesn't like to admit it.
She likes to think she's a self-made woman, but, well...
- I am a self-made woman.
I am a self-made woman.
You don't see me carrying those keys around my neck.
Mostly because I keep them in the freezer at home,
but you don't see me wearing them around my neck.
- (softly) That's a good thing to know.
- Conrad, you see, she's actually very important,
both of them.
- In the middle of this argument.
Conrad has tried to make an escape.
(group laughing) - Hell, yeah.
Incredible, go ahead and give me a sneak roll.
A snap decision sneak roll.
- Can I see if I notice it?
- I think that this is going to be,
you can oppose this either with snoop,
or if you're keeping focus on the kid,
then you can use sturdy instead of snoop.
- All right, so that's a six plus two
and then escape artist plus three.
- [Brennan] Ooh, hell yeah.
- [Freddie] Ooh the bonuses.
- So you get the bonus. That's an 11.
So we need to beat an 11 on
sturdy if you were paying attention
and snoop if you were not.
- Definitely wasn't paying attention. - My sturdy is better,
but I feel like my attention was pretty split here.
- That is just a six.
- And what did The Fix get? - Two.
(ball sliding on a track)
(ball sliding on a track x2)
So as you all begin to argue,
you suddenly notice that Conrad is gone.
Conrad, where do you head off to?
- There's a car parked outside and I get in the car.
I uh...
hot wire the car (laughing).
- Okay, so you go to the car parked outside.
Are you going to the car that has...
that has the gilding
on it with like the dollar sign hood ornament?
- Yeah, let's go for it.
I don't think I was paying attention (action music)
and so I go right for that car.
- Great.
I'm gonna ask for a snoop check difficulty
'cause you're rushing, difficulty of nine.
(cool heisty music)
- That's a six.
- So that is a failure.
(ball sliding on a track)
You open the door to jump in and as you open the door
to jump in and hot wire the car,
you feel a hand clap onto your shoulder as the person seated
in darkness in the driver's seat grabs the top
of your shoulder and says, hey there kid.
Mr. Avaricci wants to meet with you.
I'm gonna need you to roll a sturdy check
as this guy tries to grapple you into the car.
You are trying to, only rolled a three,
but plus two is a five,
trying to beat a five on a sturdy check.
- Three.
- [Trapp] A Moxie?
- Oh yeah, I'll use... I would use two Moxie for that?
- You use two Moxie, you can-
- Okay, so I'll burn these two.
- Cool, you burn two, so he grabs you,
you pull back and you see both of them go
for guns in their belt.
There's a guy in the shotgun seat as well.
What do you do in this moment?
- I have a, a strength that's, stealthy,
spend one Moxie to not be seen within reason.
GM's discretion. (laughing)
- I will go ahead here and say,
because they're both focusing on you,
you can spend a Moxie here,
but I also think that there is a chance that
spending that Moxie, only one of them will still see you.
- Oh, okay.
I think Conrad just flying off the cuff goes,
okay, just do it.
Just do it, just do it.
- You see that one of the guys,
one of the gangsters in the car goes, Jesus Christ.
And all of you inside hear that loud Jesus Christ
from the gangster out there.
- I know that saying!
(group laughing)
- I know that saying!
I'm gonna say, so you say that, just do it.
One of them is going to take out a pistol
and go for the kid.
Go for Conrad.
- I didn't think you would,
I didn't think you were gonna do it. (laughing awkwardly)
Can we burst out of the the club?
- I feel like if I clocked those shadowy figures,
I'd be like listening for something suspicious
going on out there.
I'm gonna go ahead and ask for one more sturdy roll from...
ask for one more sturdy roll from Conrad.
- Gonna kill a child in episode one.
- Episode one.
- It's a five.
- You rolled a five on your sturdy.
- Everyone else bursts out of Sugah's.
Conrad's gone.
Justin, the dog, (barks).
Rushing out, as you all charge out of the doors
of Sugah's speakeasy, all of you see time slow,
the rain falling. (tense music)
You see the small shape of Conrad Schintz,
a little newsy reeling back from an open door
as two goons in the front seats reach for their heaters.
The guns come up and you hear...
Bang! (gun firing)
(crashing)
Up above, a synaptic highway, you hear crashing vehicles,
and as the gun goes off,
cocked at an angle far away from Conrad
due to the falling highway, a giant overpass collapses.
Boom, all of you hit the deck.
The feeling of an earthquake rumbling.
(crash)
The highway collapses overhead,
smashing into the car and killing the two goons instantly.
Conrad, you are inches away from the collapsed highway.
All throughout the city you hear it,
(crashing)
and the rain falls.
Something horrifying unfolds throughout Mentopolis
and we'll resolve that roll at the top of next episode
here in "Dimension 20: Mentopolis."
See you then.
- I think that car was following you.
(players laughing)
- This is a message for Mayor Logic.
Mayor Logic, I need your attention.
(Brennan gasps)
- Would it be possible for me to just take a look at your keys?
I just find them so fascinating.
- The keys to the vehicle?
- I'm interested in all of the keys that you have.
- You want my apartment keys?
- I'll take those as well. - Okay.
- Oh, you frozen motherfucker.
- (clenched teeth) Don't. Do. Anything.
- I think it's time to "take you into the police station"
and maybe process some of the
"contraband" on you for "evidence,"
so we can go to the "evidence" locker.
- And I suppose it's normal for you
to have a dog and a very large
bodyguard with you.
- Listen...
I'm curious!
- (gasps) Are you Imelda Pulse?
- That's right. I heard you're looking for me.
- (walkie talkie feedback) Boss, you're not gonna believe this.
(Everyone laughs)
- There's some salamanders that feed
their babies their own skin.
Uh, I got to go.
- Oh. Goodbye.
All of you turn at the same time.
(big boom) And you hear clacks and alarm bells
(Brennan imitates alarms ringing)
going off all over the station. - Well we don't know
what that means.
(Brennan laughs) That could be good.
- (Russian accent) Why you make that strange-
- I never lied about who I am before.
(Everyone laughs)
- Everybody in this station!
We're about to fucking die!
(lively instrumental music)