(cool opening noir music)
- Hello one and all.
Welcome to another thrilling episode of
"Dimension 20: Mentopolis."
I'm your humble GM, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
With me as always are our Prefrontal PIs.
Say Hi Prefrontal PIs.
- [All] Hi, Prefrontal PIs.
- Last we left off, oh boy.
Were we in for a wild time. (tense music)
The Fix is in the middle of the DA's office
with a shadowy figure holding a white key
made of a frequency from outside of Mentopolis itself,
coming for the throat of our friend, The Fix.
Meanwhile, everyone else converges on Oblongata Station
after a narrow miss with the fuzz.
Anastasia has sundered a block of ice
and gotten her family key out along with her cousin Imelda
as they race toward Oblongata Station
to meet up with Conrad Schnitz,
Hunch Curio, and Dan (emphasized) Fucks.
(players laughing)
- It never gets old. (players laughing)
I keep waiting for it to get old, it just never does.
Every show we do, one person has to do a name
that's gonna fuck me up every time.
(players laughing)
- I need to be honest with you.
Freddie pitched Dan Fucks and I was like,
All right, Freddie, we'll see.
I was wrong to doubt (players laughing)
and it is actually the perfect name, Dan Fucks.
So all three of you are racing here with Ivana Popov,
aka, the fight response of the brain
headed towards the switchboard at Oblongata Station,
one of Mentopolis' few switchboards
that these sort of incredibly significant keys
can go in to add influence
to the big guy's decision making, Elias Hodge.
All of you race there as fast as you can with
Hunch still holding onto the oculus,
which connects to De'lux Industrial
to the sort of raw vision processing back in Occipital Park.
All of you have had various run-ins,
gangsters from the Avaricci family pursuing you
outside of Sugah's speakeasy.
You had a run in with the horrifying DA, M. Bition,
before the shadowy figure appeared,
who appeared to say that the brain will only feel good
when he says it can feel good
and seemed to say that the biggest impediment
to Elias' life was Elias.
What a horrifying prospect.
We also met self doubt and dominance.
(players laughing)
Dominance was really, really not doing great
and self doubt was doing incredible.
(players laughing)
Folks, we return to the rainy streets of Mentopolis
and Oblongata Station (slow noir music)
as a cab pulls up in the rainy streets, (car driving)
splashing through a puddle, (splashing)
the brainstorm overhead. (storming)
You hear another crumble of highway off in the distance
from that initial blunt force trauma somewhere to the scalp.
The thing that Anastasia discovered the last time
she was here at the station, cab pulls up, a door opens,
and you see the pulsing of electricity
(electricity buzzes)
throughout Mentopolis as you feel the presence of pressure
and I remind all of you about the giant dial in front of you
measuring exactly how much pressure the big guy is under.
Imelda and Anastasia, you each have your keys with you.
As you exit the cab, you still see those paddy wagons
with shock troops over there.
You see one or two of them clock you
getting out of your cab.
What is it that you do as you exit the vehicle?
- Normally what I would do, my first instinct would be
to use my famous cousin's famousness, (typewriter clacking)
but that would work against us right now because
people think that she is missing. (stamping)
- I am cloak up, but in a way that's like,
look at that mysterious woman, how mysterious she is.
Like I really think I'm doing a good job.
- What an eye-catching cloak.
(players laughing)
- Im, you look too pretty and mysterious.
- Oh, no.
(players laughing)
- We have to do something.
Walk casually with me behind this podium.
And we start casually walking.
We scurry behind the podium.
Quick, wear this.
And then I put my trench coat on Im,
and then I put my hat on her as well,
and then I put the cloak over me and I'm like, see.
- Oh hey, see.
- Perfect.
- I'm a journalist.
(players laughing)
- I'm a cub reporter, see?
- You're part of the press now.
- Yeah, see. - [Danielle] Perfect, perfect.
- [Trapp] Perfect crime. - I'm gonna need sneak checks.
We'll call it a seven. (players laughing)
- [Trapp] Now they'll think it's- - I got a 10.
- Hell yeah. - [Siobhan] Wait, 11.
- I got a three, but it is sneak. (light curious music)
So with my sneak, I get a two.
I don't have enough to cover the difference.
- No worries.
You see that, well, the main person,
the person that really needed to succeed
was the person that is wanted.
So as you emerge from there, you see that they do clock you
going and this other woman come out with you
and they see you sort of (break for pantomime) sneaking.
- [Trapp] Casual. (walkie-talkie turns on)
- Seems like some kind of flash mob
starting down at the train station.
(players laughing)
There was a- There was a costume switch and
might break out into dance at any moment.
(players laughing)
You see- - Improv Everywhere is here.
(players laughing)
- I feel like, now another thing about it,
I feel horrified that flash mob may be
a horribly dated reference to a part of the internet.
- 100% is. - [Brennan] 100% is.
- No, nobody flash mobs anymore. - Nobody flash mobs anymore?
- [Alex] Really? - Wow, what a beautiful time.
- We really did it, we got rid of it.
- I feel like TikTok is ripe for a flash mob comeback.
- Don't encourage. - Do it, you can do it.
You, out there, you, kid. (laughs)
(players laughing)
- You enter the station evading the attention
of those shock troopers at the paddy wagons
who clocked your entrance but
did not clock your identity in doing so.
Just another two people walking into a busy rail yard.
However, it is the wee hours of the morning,
as such exists in the sort of strange
circadian cycle of Mentopolis.
You see that with less going on,
it seems that there's still lots of adrenaline
coming in off of the dock here,
but it seems to have been gummed up.
Like it seems like a lot of the adrenaline got gummed up
and has been like stopped and there's like embargoes
or tariffs or something like that sort of waiting
for it to go through, and you see Max, the station agent,
Max Medulla, over by that sort of glass octagonal tower
that sits on top of the big double staircases
going down towards the different platforms.
- All right, we are going to go see my friend Max.
- [Siobhan] Max. - Just be cool.
- You just be cool.
(players laughing)
- I've never not been cool.
(sounds of disagreement)
- I have never not- okay, that's fine.
Let's go.
So we go up to go meet with Max.
- [Brennan] Looks and says, oh, twice in one day.
To what do I owe the honor?
- Just a friendly visit with my old friend Max.
Hi, Max. - Hi.
- I've got maybe just a bit of a question for you.
Whether or not you wanna answer, it's fine.
That is another reporter that I work with.
- Oh, thanks for introducing us, (players laughing)
hi, I'm Max.
- Hi, I'm on the beat. - [Brennan] Okay.
- [Hank] That's your name. - [Freddie] That's her name.
- This is Max.
Max, this is Stacy Fakename.
- Stacy Fakename, that's me. - And Stacy will be training
with me because, you know, she just isn't as good
of a reporter as I am yet.
- I want you both to make a snoop check,
difficulty of three for me.
(players laughing)
- Just let me be great, Brennan.
- Oh.
- [Hank] Exploded. - [Freddie] Oh, double explosion!
- [Brennan] Double exploded!
- Okay, that's an 18.
- Damn, I got a five
but who cares. - [Siobhan] Wait, I could've exploded
the last one. Eh nevermind, it's fine.
- So, you see, you get an 18.
As Anastasia is saying that, you see this too,
but you whip up and see a giant incredibly vague outline
of a face saying, wanted: Stacy Fakename, passenger fraud.
(players laughing)
He says, (suspiciously) Stacy Fakename, huh?
- Oh no, that's a fake name.
My name is Joanne Fakename.
- Phew! (players laughing)
Go ahead and give me a slick check.
(players laughing)
Call it DC 4.
- Wait, can I plan?
I actually do get a four.
- [Brennan] Oh you do get a four? - I rolled a two
and I have a plus two. - You get exactly a four.
Okay, great, good, good, good.
So you just barely pass.
You get a two on a d20 and still pass. - [Siobhan] Yes.
She goes, phew! (Siobhan laughing)
We (sighs) have had over 300 incidents.
Stacy Fakename has committed hundreds of crimes here-
- [Siobhan and Danielle] Wow. - In the last few days.
- I understand that you've been having a little bit of
problems around here.
I have a question for you.
- Sure.
- I'm gonna need to call in one of my favors.
- Oh, go ahead and give me a slick check here,
and we'll call this a difficulty of six. (smooth music)
(players make sounds of concerned nervousness)
- 10. - [Brennan] 10! All right-
- [Trapp] You explode on that, right? - [Brennan] And she says-
- Oh, yes, I did explode.
Ah, let's see if I can get better.
- [Brennan] Okay.
- So it's 15 plus two, 17. (slick noir music)
- [Siobhan] Nice. - [Brennan] 17.
Wow, okay.
See, Max says, hey, I owe you big time.
You've gotten me out of a lot of jams.
- Oh, it was always my pleasure.
Now I'm gonna need you to do one for me.
- You got it.
- I need you to allow me access.
You see that nice little,
you know that nice little area where it's not a big deal,
it's just a keyhole with several other keyholes?
- Oh, the master switchboard for Oblongata Station.
(players laughing)
The reflex center of the brain,
the one that can override in case of emergencies
so that we don't need to cognize.
We can actually respond moment to moment
and have a, you know, quick,
absolutely forceful response to life-threatening situations?
- They're good. - Very good.
- Yeah, you need that?
- Yes, yes, I do.
- Well, under any normal circumstance,
this abdication of duty would go against
every fiber of my being.
But it's you!
(group laughing)
Max says, I need to get coffee anyway.
You want something?
- Oh, I would, you know what?
I would love a nice hot tea
and a warm shot of room temperature vodka.
- Okay.
- One of the most complicated drinks you can have.
(players laughing)
- I will have to go to two different places
to make that happen. (players laughing)
There is not a lot of places that give a nice hot tea
and room temperature vodka, but we'll make it happen.
And Max, you see that they take off.
- And I'll get a champagne!
(Alex and Hank laughing)
- He's like, a flute or a bottle?
- Both!
(Alex and Hank laughing)
- I like this one.
(players laughing)
17 is so high.
(players laughing)
17 is so high.
Sometimes the dice tell the story
and sometimes the dice really tell the story.
So you see Max takes off and says, obviously, you know,
help yourself, but you need the switchboard.
Just outta curiosity, why?
- Um,
you know what?
We will tell you when you get back.
It'll be a fun little surprise.
- (light laughter) Under any normal circumstance.
(players laughing)
Being playful with the most important charge
of my extremely significant responsibilities
would be a slap in the face and incredibly disrespectful,
but coming from you, it's kinda cute.
- Oh.
- Trust us or my name isn't Joanne Fakename.
- And we know it is because-
- And we know it is.
Why would I lie?
- Well, you did lie right away when you first got here,
(players laughing)
but then you immediately corrected
to what I know and believe is the truth.
Time to get tea and vodka and champagne.
(imitates playful music)
(players laughing)
- So, we go over to the keyhole.
At this point, do we wanna
wait for the rest of the keys to show up?
- Yeah, I don't know,
like maybe we wait for the others to get here?
- Um. - Or maybe we just...
Okay, I'm just gonna put the key in. (players laughing)
- I don't know why I asked.
I don't know why I asked.
- [Brennan] So you see Imelda, - I can't wait that long.
- Imelda quite impulsively jams a key
in there. For Anastasia;
do you follow suit?
If you put a second key in there,
it's gonna (snap) trigger the machine
'cause you're gonna put yours into one of the safeties.
- If we trigger the machine now,
we won't have as precise control
as if we would if we wait for the others.
- Yes, correct. - Oh, all right.
(disappointed) I'll wait. (Brennan laughing)
That's fine.
- Hey Im, hey Im.
Look at this it's a shiny key.
(Imelda gasps) (players laughing)
- Moments afterwards, you all hear what sounds like
an incredibly souped up hot rod. (imitates tires squealing)
(players laughing)
- All right! (players laughing)
Woo!
(players laughing)
- Ow, damn, you're hitting my bruises.
Ow! Ow fuck! (players laughing)
- Everyone get the fuck off of me!
You see Ivana Popov is like just
throwing Dan and Hutch around in the back.
- Did he have his fingers in your mouth?
- I bit as hard I could 'til I taste blood.
(players laughing)
- Yes, you did.
(players laughing)
- Justin's like,
- Is there something here? Is there vibe?
- Oh, there's only one way to find out.
- You wanna smack me, I smack you.
You know, I'm not that old.
(players laughing)
Now, as you get out of here, you see the same situation,
which is there's those shock troopers
with sort of the armored cars back there.
Is there anything that you do getting out of the vehicles
getting into the station?
- The vehicle that just drifted in at 100 miles an hour
and there's a dog with millions of dollars on its back.
What should we do.
- A saddled basset hound, bills flying out of the bags.
Yes, absolutely.
- Suddenly the fact that he can talk is the least unusual
thing about him. (players laughing)
- Is he limping?
- Justin looks around and looks over at the troopers
and goes, (barks). I'll take care of it.
(players laughing)
And starts to wander over and he sees one of the troopers
looks down and says, hey there, Fido,
what's with all the moolah?
And you see the dog looks over at you, Conrad, and says,
Funny you should ask.
I have an incredible reason
for why I should have all this money.
(players laughing)
And the dog starts, Justin just starts launching
into honestly what sounds like a great-
- A shaggy dog story? - A shaggy dog story.
A great explanation.
And all of you have a moment to dip into Oblongata Station.
- I walk super casually.
(players laughing)
- Another flash mob begins to start. (players laughing)
Your friends join you down there,
and Imelda and Anastasia,
you both look and see Ivana walk in and say,
oh, hello, charmed to meet you. (slow piano music)
I am Ivana Popov.
Conrad here tells me that there is
trouble with the big man.
- She and I go way back.
We can trust her, I think?
(Freddie stifles laughter)
- We've got big trouble with the big man.
- You should understand once we turn the key,
if I turn my key, it mean response stronger,
better chance for survival, but without my siblings,
it mean he gonna choose, you know, to be like me.
- [Siobhan and Danielle] Oh.
- Do you know where they are?
- (sighs) My sister,
I know she go by Fanny.
She work for Don Avaricci.
My other two siblings, I don't know where they go.
I don't know what they even call themselves now.
Flight gonna be very hard to find.
- Sure.
- Where Freeze go, Freeze, he and me get in a big fight
before... we get fired.
- Well, Fawn sounds great.
- You see, she says,
- We are trying to fondle our balls.
(players laughing)
- She says, I mean if time is of essence,
it's not bad for us to turn key now.
I just wanted to warn you
what me being here going to mean.
- Can we check the oculus and see how...
- How far we've fallen. - [Siobhan] How far away.
- You guys are working at the speed of thought,
but even so you are another 50 feet down.
(players make cartoonish sounds of worry)
- I mean, I don't think that having a little bit of fight
for the big man would be a necessarily a bad thing.
- No, I mean, yeah, we can at least start with that.
- We still don't even know what's buzzing down there.
(players make sounds of agreement)
This is a cold trail, that's gonna be a big problem.
- You see, Ivana looks at you say that, Anastasia,
and starts to cry a little bit.
She goes, thank you for noticing.
- Fight's not just a, you know, blanket aggression.
- No. - It's also fighting for yourself.
- Exactly. - It's fighting for your own survival.
- And fighting for other people. - [Trapp] Yeah.
- It mean a lot.
I have thought for a long time.
Big guy, huge wuss.
(players laughing)
So finally you notice it's true.
- It's true, the big guy is a big, big wuss.
- Okay, I ready.
- Okay. - Let's do it.
- As they all stick their keys in,
I just stick my finger towards one of keyholes.
- So I slap his finger.
- Slap your finger away.
I'll say this too.
You are putting your key into one of the second ones there.
With Ivana here, she actually says,
your key going to one of the other places.
Is there one of those jobs you kind of want to do?
Attention, if you are paying it,
can kind of create any of those responses you want.
If we have fight, is there another one of the four
you think maybe best for big guy to have?
- Flight.
- And she points at the one right next to her,
so fight and flight are the top two.
You put yours into flight,
all of you turn at the same time (pleasant light sound)
and you hear klaxons, alarm bells (trilling)
going off all over (alarms ringing)
the station. - Now we don't know what that means.
It could be good. (players laughing)
- This could be routine.
- This happens to me all the time.
- You see that this is like an emergency override
to shut the conscious brain out of decision-making,
but it takes over.
Lights come on all over the different rails
(imitates lights popping)
and you see that there is a flood of people
that have kind of been waiting
off in like some waiting rooms,
there's like a little coffee shop,
and all these sort of sleepy people,
couriers and stuff, leap up and start shouting,
rushing off to trains to head out into the body,
into musculature and the nervous system,
everything like that.
As you turn it, Ivana grabs the loudspeaker and says,
everybody in this station, we about to fucking die!
(players laughing)
- [Freddie] Hell yes.
- If someone is gonna put their hand on you,
bite their hand off.
If you're gonna fall to your death, grab anyone.
Kill anyone who try to stop you.
- I grab the mic.
Don't go around killing anyone, but be care-, don't slip.
- Only use discretion if you 100% sure
it not going to fuck you.
(players laughing)
And you see that as people start to run everywhere,
Hunch, you hear like a beep beep,
beep beep, beep beep, on the oculus. (rhythmic beeping)
- Hm. I take a look.
- As you do so, all of you watch
as the iris of the little remote unit opens
and as the remote unit opens,
you feel the head of the big guy looking down
towards his crotch. (all gasping)
- [Siobhan] What?
(players laughing incredulously)
- Grab it, grab it!
Fucking grab it!
Grab it and use it.
- Unbelievably, Elias Hodge,
who came up through projectiles.
- Yes. - Was the place that.
- It was there the whole time.
(players groaning from missing the clues)
- Son of a bitch. (Brennan laughing)
- Came up through projectiles, a buzzing on the junk.
Dan, you're looking at the screen and you even feel
a swelling in your own groin of some kind of-
- I should get this checked.
(players laughing)
- The power of something capable of firing off,
a some sort of powered pistol with a grappling hook
at the end, buzzing near the crotch that Elias
must have had the wherewithal to take to this meeting
with Mr. Henry.
- That's a buck wild decision to bring a grappling hook
to a meeting with your boss. (players laughing)
Well, you never know. (players "you never know"ing)
- I bring a grappling hook every time
I have a meeting with Sam.
(players laughing)
- Give me a savvy check. - [Trapp] You wanna climb
the corporate ladder, you gotta have a grappling hook.
- [Brennan] Give a DC 5 savvy check.
- [Hank] Rokay. - We'll see.
Three, and then...
- [Hank] I'm not there. - I'm not there.
I can give you some,
how short are you?
- Two Moxie to be able to get there.
- So you'd have to burn through two to give one.
- I can burn two, so that's one.
- And I can burn through another two.
- Okay, that's five.
- Hell yeah, you know what a pleasurable sensation
is and is not.
This is a heavy, dangerous piece of equipment.
It doesn't make sense for Elias to have brought this.
It's not just like a, I guess that's a wild decision.
Something in you, even as something that's primal
as pleasure, you're like, doesn't add up.
Wouldn't carry it unless there was some fucking,
something we're not seeing.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
- And as you say that, you feel the body
just start responding, however, as the body is responding,
the pressure is going to increase
all the way. (tense music)
- As your doctor, I'm very concerned.
- 140.
- Truly the fight or flight response has kicked in.
You see also that the doors open wide.
Within the station, you suddenly realize that all of you
are in a great bit of danger.
Like the station doors have opened
and all of those tariffs down there,
you see that the different like customs agents,
one of the couriers straight decks a custom agent
and they begin to ferry all of the last of the adrenaline
out of the station into Mentopolis.
This is it, this is the fucking time.
However, you hear the sound of those troopers outside
beginning to rush the front door.
What do the five of you do?
- What's this room look like? Exits?
- It's like, you know, probably 12 sets of doors in a row.
Big sort of Grand Central vibe, right?
12 sets of doors in a row, golden bars on them.
There's this glass octagonal kind of like security station
that is at the floor level of the entrance,
but it's at the edge of the staircase that descends down
so it kind of overlooks the lower area
with all of the platforms and stuff.
- In order for us to trigger this response,
do the keys need to stay in there?
- You think that you two could take your keys out
and Ivana looks at both of you and says,
If you need to go, you can go.
I can hold them off.
- Okay.
- Are you sure?
- But for- But for how long?
If they,
d- don't we still need to be in here and doing things?
- They're not gonna take me, but if they arrest you,
who knows what happens afterwards?
- Okay.
- Listen, I'm not a big strategist,
but I know that we have this on the waist,
so I can try to make something...
You can hear the cops
like getting closer to the doors outside.
If you guys wanna do some stuff,
but you just see Ivana looks and is like,
we've seen the gun on the belt and given the fight response,
so it's up to you.
Do you want to leave Ivana to try to
run like the autonomic nervous system of the big guy
to like use this and save it?
Or do you think that like some of you being here
is gonna be necessary to help her fix that?
If you think it's necessary to stay and help Ivana,
at least do the first steps of saving the big guy,
someone's gonna have to figure out how to slow down
or stop the cops outside.
- I start barring the door and I just sort of say like,
I think someone's gotta get this ball rolling.
- Oh, hold on, I have it,
an idea to stop them dead in there tracks.
I then march out the front door
towards the crowd of police.
- All right, you see a group of these like
sort of heavily armored SWAT team looking.
- Gentlemen, gentlemen, stand down! Stand down!
Good news, it's finally happening!
(Danielle laughs and gasps)
It's finally happening.
Yes, we all know exactly what this means.
(players laughing)
- He had an idea. - You, you!
All right, this is, this is a
difficulty 14 slick check. (players laughing)
- It's sex time, everybody!
That's what the feeling of the dropping from the sky,
why, that's your heart a-flutter.
- Nobody in this city knows what sex feels like,
so they're like maybe-
- Nobody knows, nobody knows.
- They don't know what falling out of a building
feels like either. - Yeah! Yeah!
- Butterflies in your stomach,
the weird tingling in your groin, - [Freddie] Butterflies in your stomach,
- This must be sex. - [Freddie] This is it!
- All right, this is a DC 14 slick check.
This is the most improbable lie possible.
(players laughing)
Actually, and we are gonna do Box of Doom.
- [All] Oh!
- If you're able to-
- The Fucks of Doom. - [Alex] Fucks of Doom.
DC 14. - [Brennan] Yes.
- D20, everybody.
- D20. - [Siobhan] D20.
- Witness the roll.
(players laughing)
Two.
- (laughs) A two? - [Siobhan] No.
You come out- (players repeatedly saying "oh no")
- You come out and he's charging, he's charging.
- Waving my hands.
- [Brennan] And you're like.
- Know what- You know what it is? - [Brennan] Yeah.
- You remember the movie Gladiator?
- Yes, absolutely.
- Funniest scene in, like granted,
this is not the funniest scene to anybody else,
but it is one of the funniest scenes to me
in all of movie history, which is when
you see like the Roman soldiers marching towards
like Maximus' home and it's like the kids like in the thing
and gets like, it's like a dummy but like.
(imitates body twirling through the air) - Yeah, fully.
You watch out as you yell like Dan Fucks runs out
and is like, good news everyone.
There's a moment where they stop.
What do you say after good news?
- Good news, everyone.
We're finally having sex for the first time.
That's what this all is.
Everyone can just stand down.
Don't worry about it.
It's gonna be great.
- One of them takes an exact replica of the oculus
you have. Looks at it, (players laughing heartily)
and fucking nightsticks come wailing down.
(group laughing)
- I turn to Imelda
and I slap her across the face. (slapping sound)
(players laughing)
I say, you gotta get him moving!
You gotta get him to use the gun!
Oh god, oh god, okay.
- Incredible, so this is gonna buy you.
So first of all,
I'm gonna roll just in front of the board here.
Let's see how badly Dan Fucks gets wailed on.
That is a 15. - (laughing) Oh no.
- [Danielle] Jesus.
- I'm gonna need a sturdy check from you.
Try not to fail by more than five.
- Oh it's not gonna happen.
- One, one, baby. - Oh, it's a 14.
- Dan Fucks gets about 20 nightsticks,
in a perfect, (players laughing)
you have a perfectly circular chain of bruises
as (dozens of near simultaneous hits), and
bam, hit the deck outside.
(laughing) Dan Fucks is fully unconscious.
(players laughing)
- [Siobhan] Oh my god. - His last words were
I have an idea.
(players laughing)
- I have an idea.
We're fucking right now!
(players laughing)
However, Dan Fucks' heroic sacrifice has bought you
one round of activity, so-
(players laughing)
- [Brennan] You can try to do something- - MVP, baby, MVP.
(players laughing)
- Does the microphone still work?
- [Brennan] Yes. - How does that work?
- Okay. - Yes.
Ivana was yelling in the microphone before,
so she's still on the mic just yelling and, you know,
get him, get him, essentially, right?
For the rest of you-
- [Trapp] We're in like a train station, right?
- Yeah. - Like adrenaline and stuff's
been moving in here.
Are there any like neurotransmitters or anything in here
that I can use against these shock troopers
that are like in crates or anything
that have been shipped up from other plants?
- Snoop, give me snoop.
Difficulty is five, eight is advanced.
(Trapp laughing and hming)
- Do it. - Let's do it, let's do it.
- [Siobhan] It's time. - [Danielle] Let's do it.
- Ah, fuck, that's a four.
I got no more Moxie, but I'll take two more, thank you.
- [Brennan] You got it.
(ball sliding on a track x2
- Oh yeah, can Dan Fucks get his one Moxie for passing out?
- [Trapp] You want one? - [Hank] At least one.
- Oh yeah, come on, give me one here for yeah.
- For getting absolutely wailed on, incredible.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, now being in the red,
Moxie is quadruple. - [Trapp] Ah.
- Oh. - [Siobhan] Okay.
- So very challenging now.
- Sure sure.
- That's Hunch. So on a four,
unfortunately, you look around,
you don't see anything at this moment. - Okay.
- Can I do maybe a savvy check to figure out
with these controls how I would use them
to get him to shoot the damn grappling hook?
- Hell yeah, absolutely.
Go ahead and give me a savvy, we'll call it a savvy of six.
- I halve it.
- Oh, sorry, this is a snap decision.
- I don't halve it.
Oh my god, it fucking flew off the table.
Stop, that's a seven.
It's not a one, it's a seven.
- Oh hell, yes!
Okay, so another, so impulse through the oculus
on Hunch's belt, you watch as a hand
goes to the grappling hook, swings up and as you
pull the levers on it, it fires up towards the top.
That is happening still in bullet time.
Are there any other actions to influence what the big guy
is or is not trying to do in this moment
from Conrad or from Anastasia,
or interacting with the station and the immediate danger
all of you are very much in?
- Well, if we've already got him, at this point,
if he's already fired the grappling,
there's nothing else for us to do.
He's already taken aim, he's already fired it.
- [Brennan] Yep. - So at this point,
there's nothing left for us to do with him.
He either fucking makes it or he doesn't.
- Yeah. - And so I wanna do what I can
to try to help Dan Fucks not be Dead Fucks, I guess?
(Freddie laughing) - Sure, yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. - So yeah,
I go over to the shock troops,
kind of doing like a little bit of like,
you know, doing, well, I started to do
that little hallway thing and then I was like,
what the fuck am I doing?
And so I kind of walk out and I open the door.
(coughing to gain attention)
- Okay, you cough, saying.
- (coughs) Gentlemen.
- All of them turn to look.
- Hi, gentlemen.
Do you have any comments for the Daily Observer?
(Hank laughing)
- Ooh, okay.
So your roll was a DC 14,
but that is an incredible tack to use
with these guys in particular.
So I'm gonna say it's gonna come down from 14
to a difficulty of nine.
- For... - For a slick check
to try to get, to try to like knock them off balance
and get them to focus up and to immediately stop.
- (quietly) Okay, okay.
- Six, six plus two.
So then that is eight and then I definitely have the four.
- [Freddie] Geez. - Wow!
- To turn this into a nine.
- You see that the shock troops all look at A. Tension
from the Daily Observer
and all quickly back off of Dan Fucks.
Ms. Tension, there's an alarm inside.
A crime's underway.
- I know, that's why I'm here to document the crime.
(players laughing)
And I can't think of anyone better to talk to
than you fine gentlemen here.
- Ms. Tension, no comment for the time being.
We need to get inside.
R- Respect, as always, to the paper of record.
- Of course, great.
So, and how about you?
And so she just starts going down the line
and asking every single.
I'm sorry I have to be thorough.
Do you have a comment?
- This is gonna give everybody cover inside
in terms of what you're trying to do.
Ivana looks now, having launched this,
Ivana looks at you, Imelda and says,
all right, grappling gun is fired.
Do you want me, I should stay here at the station,
wait for Max to come back,
or do we want to all get out before,
before Anastasia can't hold them any longer?
- Let's make sure his feet are facing the walls
so when he plants into it-
- Listen.
- He doesn't smash his whole face.
- Knowing that something's going on,
she actually goes ahead and takes her key out as like-
The fight or flight response has done what it needed to do,
and now like swinging through the air
with a fired grappling gun, the big guy, as you said,
gonna have to figure it out from here, man.
- Yeah, let's get outta here, Conrad.
- The alarms suddenly stop.
The cops outside sort of look around at the sudden stop
of the alarm system and you see Ivana looks and says,
better for me to stay nearby in case of emergency
or to come with you?
- Oh, come with us, I think.
- Wait, the key's out.
Ivana, can I get one last word in on the mic?
- Yeah, she like doesn't pull the key all the way out
and turns the mic over to you, yeah.
- Okay.
H- Hello?
(mic feedback)
Ooh, there's a little bit of feedback.
(players laughing)
- The loudest you've ever been.
(players laughing)
- This is a message for Mayor Logic.
Mayor Logic, I need your attention. (Brennan gasps)
This is Conrad Schintz.
We need to talk.
And then I give the mic back.
(players laughing)
- Ivana goes, nice.
You were really scared of doing that,
but it was really good. (players laughing)
- I just, I peed a little.
(players laughing)
- Go ahead and give me a slick check.
- Oh.
- [Brennan] And the difficulty is gonna be eight.
(Hank groans) (players laughing)
- I believe in you, I believe in you.
- You gotta explode? - Gotta explode.
- Four! (players cheering and rooting for Alex)
- [Siobhan] You can do it again.
- [Brennan] Explode again, you got it.
- No. (laughs)
- [Brennan] No good, no good.
Here, hold on.
- [Trapp] Where'd it go? - If it's a four, it counts,
if it's not, it doesn't.
(players laughing)
- Floor rules, floor rules.
- You can borrow this d4 here.
- Good. - [Brennan] All right, here we go.
- Two.
- [Hank] Aw. - After all that.
(players laughing) - [Trapp] Does anyone have any Moxie?
- So Conrad, you yell out, (ball sliding on a track)
I mean you did not fail by more than, by five or more.
It just means that, you know,
Mayor Logic's not here in this space,
but the message rings out over this place
and for the first time in as long as anyone in Mentopolis
can remember, you have announced your presence in this mind.
As you do so, you see figures emerging
from down near the train tracks
and a group of tall, lanky figures,
their fedoras deep over their brows begin to emerge
and you see one of them looks up and you recognize
from earlier tonight is Charlie Hungry,
(tense noir music)
one of Avaricci's men.
They're way down to the bottom of the staircase,
but having heard your voice,
begin to rush up the stairs to you.
So now you got Anastasia with the cops outside,
Dan Fucks' unconscious body and you see a bunch of gangsters
and you see one of 'em calls down and says,
oh, Conrad, my friend.
- Oh, that's a generous term there. (laughs awkwardly)
- (laughs) Listen, I got a pal who's been dying to meet you.
- Okay, well I got a meeting,
I got a meeting with the mayor, so.
(players laughing)
- What do you all do in this moment?
- Fuck it, I wanna blow past everyone,
get into Conrad's car and drive it...
(players laughing)
drive it through people back towards Conrad.
Basically do a getaway driver thing here.
- Great, give me a sneak check, difficulty of eight.
- Okay, that's gonna be hard.
It's a four.
- You step out and basically immediately see
that there's no way to get through the cops outside-
- Got it. - To Conrad's car,
but you guys gotta figure something out right now.
Anastasia is out there with the cops,
the gangsters are coming up from the stairs down below.
Did we arrive at what we wanted to do with Ivana as well,
if you wanted her to stay here or to come with you guys?
- I mean, she's so good in a fight.
I feel like she should come with us.
- Yeah. - Sure, cool.
So she looks and says,
who we wanna take chances with gangster or cop?
- Oh boy.
- What's the difference? - What's the difference?
(players laughing)
- Outside, Dan says that and the cop's like,
You shut your fucking mouth!
We're not a gang!
I mean, well, you get it.
(players laughing)
- I say, I say we, cops.
- Oh gosh, I say gangsters are much more fun.
At least you can drink with the gangsters.
- We've already put out an invitation to the mayor here,
so worst comes to worst, the cops drag us in,
we are in Cortex City where we maybe
can bend the mayor's ear.
- Oh. - Because I've already kind of
got the cops covered,
my concern is is that we've gotta make sure that Conrad
is taken care of. - All right.
- Conrad, right, right.
- So you guys pick, take your odds with the cops.
You surge out to the doors.
Ivana comes with you staying close to Imelda.
The deal is concealing Conrad and Dan's body's unconscious.
So, basically I'll leave it up to the five of you
who are here in present.
Do you wanna try to talk your way outta this?
'cause you gotta do a couple things, right?
You gotta get to the car, hide Conrad,
and pick up Dan's body without them arresting him.
- Yeah. - [Brennan] What do you do?
- I have an idea that might be crazy. (Brennan laughing)
- It worked great last time, someone said that.
Let's do it. (players laughing)
- This might be a little bit too crazy, but
I push Conrad towards the cops and I say,
Hey, look who I found.
It's Stacy Fakename and she's wanted.
- What?
(players laughing)
- Incredible!
And wait, and who do you point to as you said?
- The wanted poster of Stacy Fakename.
- Oh, of that, you see, okay,
go ahead and give me a slick check.
The difficulty is gonna be an 11.
- That's a 16 plus two. (Danielle laughing)
- [Brennan] Uh. Cool!
- Conrad tries to smile like the picture.
(players laughing)
- You see the shock troopers go,
We got her.
(players laughing)
And they all say, Stacy Fakename, you're under arrest.
And they arrest Conrad.
- Sirs, sirs, I would love to,
as a representative of the Daily Observer,
would it be possible for me to do a ride along
so that I might be able to interview Ms. Fakename?
- Go ahead and give me a slick check.
Difficulty of we'll call it an eight.
- Oh.
Nope, no, no, no, no we're good 'cause I've got a seven
and then plus two, so that is a 10.
Or sorry, that's a nine, I know math.
- And while we're here, you might as well take me too,
and I take my hat off and take,
undo the cloak that I had underneath my hat and reveal
that I am Imelda Pulse.
- You see that one of 'em goes,
(gasps) are you Imelda Pulse?
- That's right, I heard you're looking for me.
- Boss, you're not gonna believe this.
(players laughing)
We got Imelda Pulse too.
Stacy Fakename and Imelda Pulse all in one day.
- And I say, don't worry, gentlemen.
I'll take Dan Fucks from here.
(group laughing)
- Give me a slick difficulty of four.
- [Hank] Four? - Okay.
- [Hank] Okay, do it.
- My slick's so bad.
- What is with our d4s? - It's a nervous...
- What is it? - [Siobhan] It's a three.
- It's a three.
I'll burn my four Moxie to make it a four.
(players laughing)
- And they go, how long you been on the case of Dan Fucks?
- Oh, I've been following Dan-
I've been, ask anybody.
I'm at Sugah's all the time.
(players laughing)
- Wow.
Hey, Hunch.
We know you're a real PI.
Congrats on putting down the Fucks case.
(players laughing)
- Thank you.
I pat, I give him a good brotherly pat on this shoulder.
- Gives you a pat here as well. (laughs)
You should join the force.
- Hey, I'm a lone wolf.
- Ah, all right.
It's fun, we just, we're just huge assholes.
(players laughing)
- I gotta be honest.
When I saw what you did today, my first thought was like,
oh no, and then I was like, looks a little bit fun.
- Hey, we have a state monopoly on violence.
(players laughing)
- Ain't that the truth?
As I'm just gathering up Dan.
Bg ol' sack of potatoes.
- And you grab Dan.
Okay, so Conrad and- Stacy Fakename and Imelda
are arrested in a ride along with Anastasia.
You head out.
Hunch. - Yeah.
Can I load him into,
I guess I'll take Conrad's car and-
- This is by the way, not even Conrad's car.
You guys stole Self Doubt's car.
- Oh right, yeah, Self Doubt's car, naturally.
And I am going to, I'm gonna head towards somewhere
where I can bring Dan back to consciousness.
- [Brennan] Incredible, great, great, great.
- That's a hospital, or whether it's,
I mean I assume the amount I get beat up,
I probably have an extensive first aid kit in my office
so maybe I'll just go back to my place.
- [Brennan] Hell yeah. - Yeah.
- You head back to your office,
the rest of you are head off with the cops
back towards Cortex City and from there, we return.
(players ooh and ah) (retrofuturistic music)
We return all the way back.
A key of blinding white light (light shooting and pulsing)
surges forward towards The Fix.
As it does so,
I cannot believe I just rolled a d20.
- Shut the front door.
- I just rolled a d20 and hit a natural one.
- [Anastasia] Oh!
(Brennan laughing lightly)
- You could possibly roll a one as well.
Go ahead and give me a sturdy check.
If you beat this by five or more, it's very significant.
- Eight. - Eight, okay.
You beat it by five or more.
A white key comes flashing out at you.
As it does so, there's a bit of illumination
and the face goes suddenly like,
(light shimmering) haa!
As this screaming face lunges out towards you and goes,
we need you on the winning side, Fix.
Go ahead and let me know what you are trying to do
in this moment.
I will say obviously there is a survival thing happening
here, but also for free, if you would like,
you may make a snoop check to see more
about what is happening in front of you.
- Yeah, no, I would love to take a snoop check.
- [Brennan] You got it.
- And as I get a one snoop, I, thank you.
I, I say, (ball sliding on a track)
honestly, I think we are all on the same side!
- Is there any physical action you take in this moment?
You can sense that you are still in the DA's office,
but the DA is almost like a faint figure off to one side.
You actually look and see the district attorney
looking at this figure and you see his face is slack
and his pupils have gone blinding white
and there is a small, white light,
a little vertical slit shining from right over his heart
as he looks at the figure completely dispassionate,
witnessing something attempt to
kill you. - Mm-hm.
The face seems at once possibly like eerily familiar,
but then again, you can't place it.
It was just in this momentary flash as the key went by
and you know that that key is some sort of alien object.
It should not be here.
It should not exist in this place.
The layout of the room is the DA's desk,
DA off to one side.
He's got huge bay windows looking out over Cortex Square.
Mm-hm.
How high up are we?
- Maybe like 30 feet
up above the ground. - [Hank] Okay.
- There's a large double door behind you
and this sort of like adjourning, almost like law library,
that the door opened to the side that this person
was clearly waiting in.
- Okay.
Here's what- Here's what it seems to me.
I got- I got out over my skis here.
Is that a thing that they said in the '30s?
- Sure. (Danielle laughing)
- In the South.
My water skis.
(Freddie laughing) (Brennan giggling lightly)
I'm not here to make decisions for this mind.
I'm here to do as I'm told.
I have a job and I'm good at it.
I want to do my job.
I wanna get away from this, away from these people
who made me think that I could affect things,
that I could change how this works.
He's trying to make sure that the eyes are connecting
and as he's doing it, his very large hand
is going to his waist where his gun is.
- Hell yeah.
- I want to do my job.
Just tell me what to do, he says to whatever this is.
And as he says that, he's got it and he pulls.
- I will say this.
You can go right for the sharp roll
right now. - Mm-hm.
You can also attempt to roll slick here
to sort of mirror your deception.
If you roll slick and get a one,
the attack automatically fails.
But if you don't roll a one,
you'll be able to lower the difficulty
of this sharp check that follows it.
- Yeah, okay.
(Trapp laughing lightly)
Will Moxie affect this?
- You may spend Moxie,
but as you can see, the body is in the red.
- Right, 'cause I have four Moxie, so now I can't fail.
- (gasps) Ooh.
- Seven!
- Amazing, okay, this figure is going to roll
their sturdy, they're rolling this on a d20,
but they're gonna minus that seven from it
on that slick check. - Oh shit yeah.
14 minus seven is seven.
That's what you're trying to overcome
as you pull the trigger.
- I rolled a one.
- Throw that d20 away.
(ball sliding on a track)
- [Hank] I don't need you.
(all laugh)
- The figure is fully entranced by you.
As you pull, (imitates gun firing)
you see the bullet leave, hit the center of the thing
and get sucked into something shadowy and horrifying
in this looming figure.
However, that slick check was so high,
that this is another opportunity to snoop.
Give me one more snoop roll.
Difficulty five.
- Three.
- In this moment, looking in front of you,
you see that the bullet clearly does not connect
in this moment.
As it does so, this person's going to go
for another swing at you.
So, I'm gonna ask for a commitment from The Fix here.
- Mm-hm.
- You're in immediate danger, you fire.
This thing knows that you have a weapon. (tense string music)
It's coming for you.
If The Fix chooses to remain in this encounter
to continue to fight, or learn more,
or face this thing down in some way,
its swing will be the first thing we resolve.
If The Fix instead chooses to flee,
that is the like to flee or to otherwise abscond,
do something that like stops or exits this encounter,
that is the only type of action that The Fix
will be able to resolve before this next attack.
- What?
(players laughing lightly)
- If you try to do anything brave, it's gonna go first.
- Well, I'm not liking this.
(players laughing)
- It's a bad situation for sure.
- Yeah.
The Fix jumps out of the window.
(players laughing)
- So, so funny to fire a gun at someone and miss,
be like, well.
(players laughing)
- Well to fire at someone and hit them.
- That's true.
- Honestly, that makes sense to me.
Okay, go ahead and give me sneak difficulty of,
call it four.
- Okay, this is- - [Trapp] Uh-oh.
- Not very sneaky. - Not very sneaky.
- [Trapp] Got a ton of Moxie. - I'm hard to see.
I don't have enough Moxie. - [Trapp] Uh-oh.
(ball sliding on a track)
- [Hank] I'm getting there.
- Go ahead and give me a sharp check, difficulty of four.
- Now I have enough.
Sharp check, difficulty of four.
That's a 19.
Where was that?
(players laughing)
- So you dive through the window, but not with the grace
necessary to protect yourself.
You (glass shatters) fly from the room,
the shadowy figure goes after you,
but the neon lights, sort of the street lights
of Cortex Square outside, it recoils from,
and as you fly out, (dramatic swooshing)
you do not have the dexterity to do anything other than
hit (body thudding) the pavement below
and you are badly injured as you land.
The difficulty for all sneak checks from this point on
will go up for The Fix as you have been like badly injured
on landing on the ground beneath you.
As you do so, you look up and,
give me a savvy check,
difficulty of five.
- 10.
- As you land on the ground,
you had this moment of falling from a window.
You jumped through the glass.
You touch and feel blood from an injury on your scalp
and there's a scar on your face there,
and you feel some connection to something bigger
and more important than yourself in this moment.
There's a poetry in the feeling you are feeling,
even though you can't articulate it in a way
that makes sense to you.
Looking around, you see people gasping.
You see a bunch of people going (gasps).
You see that an organ grinder with a monkey goes...
sacré bleu!
(players laughing)
- What's his,
job in the brain? - Elias must have traveled a lot.
(players laughing)
There's the, - [Freddie] Waiting room.
there's the one year of French classes.
(players laughing)
- You see that the organ grinder says,
hello, my name is Jaques Ennui
and I perform here all the time. (players laughing)
- Oh, that makes sense.
- You hit the deck down there and look up and see
Mark Bition like leaning out,
looking down at you from like 30 feet up
and then tuck back into the room above.
What do you do in this moment?
- How much can I move?
- You can get up and stumble out of here.
I think you quickly realize like,
Oh, I fractured my shin bone.
Like there's a bad fracture in my leg.
Putting weight on it is incredibly painful,
but you can muscle through it to move if you need to.
- Gotcha.
Would I have any idea where this sort of like,
the vagus nerve kind of sympathetic,
parasympathetic nervous system,
an area of the body where if you just do a little bit
of deep stimulation, maybe some relaxation could come.
'Cause I don't think I know where my friends are.
- I don't think you do either. - [Hank] Yeah.
- I mean you knew that everyone they were was getting back
to Oblongata Station eventually, but it's been-
- It's been a while.
- Been a while.
In terms of the vagus nerve,
actually, we'll just call it savvy five.
- Savvy five.
Seven.
- You stumble quickly through Mentopolis as fast as you can,
(panting) arriving eventually outside of Cortex City,
much sort of deeper and like, you know,
sort of maybe like parietal lobe area.
There is a huge neon sign saying
Las Vagus Casino, (Danielle laughs)
but spelled V-A-G-U-S.
- Thanks, great.
- And as you walk in, you see that all of the lights
of all of the like roulette and slot machines
and everything else like that are just pulsing so quickly
and like, (imitating slot machines ringing)
you know, everything's going absolutely wild
and you see a guy walks up and says,
hey there buster, how do you like to make a buck?
Welcome to Las Vagus Casino.
Ha ha ha ha, we're dying!
(players laughing)
You gotta win and win big! (Hank chuckling quietly)
- And I look at, I look at this guy and I say,
did you know...
(players laughing lightly)
that people can have constipation so bad
that it will back up and impact their vagus nerve?
And as they are finally eliminating that impacted stool,
it can have a effect on the nervous system so great
that they forget who they are,
called constipation-related amnesia.
A woman in Tokyo forgot who she was for eight hours.
- Shit yourself stupid.
(group laughing)
- So.
- My job is hyperfixation
And so sometimes when the big guy gets really obsessed
with stupid stuff, I'm around.
I find out things like that, isn't that neat?
Can you take a deep breath for me?
- Go ahead and give me a menacing check.
(players laughing)
- He disappears again.
- Uh-oh, yeah, that's a five.
- You talk to this dude, he's got a d8 sturdy.
I'll roll in front of the board, hold on.
One! (players cheering)
- So you look at this guy look up at you
who's just been like, you gotta win big!
You say that, he goes, and you see he's smiling so wide
and squeezing tears out of his eyes
and you just hear him go.
(Brennan making shockingly accurate sounds of defecation)
And he just shits in front of you and he goes,
I think you wanted me to shit?
I don't know, you're so frightening.
I just took shit.
Everyone shit!
Everyone who works for me, shit now!
- Take a deep breath, I said take a deep breath.
- Hey, we gotta do it, we gotta do it.
He runs over and you see he hits a big button
and everywhere all over Mentopolis, (cool eventful music)
everyone driving with the cops, everyone else,
you see klaxons going all over.
There are very few emergency systems that the city
has put in place (players laughing)
that are like basically like air raid sirens.
- Where is this going?
(imitating air raid sirens screaming)
And you just hear, we are shitting. (actual sirens ringing)
We are shitting. We are shitting.
The big guy is shitting.
We are taking a shit.
- I do not wanna be on the sidewalk underneath Elias.
(players laughing)
- I am going to ask for a sharp check from you.
- Shart check?
(players laughing)
- Shart check.
You literally see that there's something of like this guy,
the panic is so high, the pressure is so high
and he's just had this fight or flight response
and then hyperfixation goes to like the control center
for the vagus nerve and is like, you need to relax!
And he relaxes and his sphincter blows wide open.
He's fucking terrified and he shits.
He's in mid grapple and he's just shitting and swinging.
(players laughing)
- Oh my god.
- He's- Aaaahhh!
(players laughing)
- Why am I doing a sharp check?
- You're doing a sharp check 'cause we wanna see
actually how much he can relax by.
- Oh, I wanna see how mu- oh. - [Freddie] The more he relaxes-
- I can make him shit so much.
- [Brennan] You can make him shit so much.
So, I'm gonna say every two is a 10 increment.
Basically every point is five, essentially,
and we'll round up.
- Oh, I thought that was a five, but it's a 17.
- Wow. - Ooh.
- [Brennan] Okay. - Ooh.
- So, what, it's 17 times five is 85 points.
- Wow.
- When someone does math, I go like, yeah, totally.
- I also have no idea.
I'm too stressed out to do math right now.
- [Trapp] Absolutely. - Okay, so you're at 140.
- This what we cut out from the show
is us not being able to do math.
- [Brennan] So that's gonna be- - 140 minus 85, go, go, go, go.
- [Brennan] 55, you move him...
just past 60 into the green. (sounds of joy and relief)
- That's a hell of a shit, that's a great-
- Hell of a shit. - [Freddie] I want one of those.
- [Siobhan] Legendary. - I think you feel
in this like cut on your head, it's still bleeding.
You have like blood on part of your face.
- I'm telling this guy poop facts bleeding.
(players laughing)
- An eight-foot tall bleeding gangster said,
(players laughing)
Do you know when you shit, you can forget who you are.
And he went, oh, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna fucking die.
You feel a like tremendous howl of release of just like,
of the big guy screaming as he swings through the air,
of the big guy screaming as he swings through the air
shitting as hard as he can. - [Danielle] Oh my god.
- And as he screams, all that carbon dioxide leaves his body
(imitating air whooshing) (calm, relaxing music)
and the pressure comes all the way back down.
Shit five points underneath where it dips into yellow.
That happens after you had- - That happened.
(players laughing)
- It certainly did.
- So that's my favorite narration.
Well, that happens.
- I'm glad I got a win out of that.
(players laughing)
I really need to find my friends,
they are not- - [Brennan] What's the next-
- [Trapp] They're not gonna believe this.
- You see all of the pulses in and around the city
kind of like soften and calm and come back
to something where like however,
whatever's happening in the outside world resolves,
when it resolves, the big guy will have some degree
of his faculties around him if he manages to survive, right?
What do you do in this moment now in terms of your life
as a badly injured person who is like on the run
and doesn't know where the rest of your companions are?
- Well, do I know anything about the medical infrastructure
of Cortex City?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Where would I go if I had a broken leg. Or would I.
Am I afraid of that? - Give me a savvy four.
- I'll give you a savvy eight.
- Well there's two things you would know, right?
So there's hospitals, which will be able to heal you
the fastest, but also hospitals are where
people like cops and gangsters tend to wait
to find people, right? And you know that the DA
watched you break your leg.
The person you know who gets the shit kicked out of them
the absolute most and always seems to look fine,
the very next day-
- Obviously, I don't know why I needed
a savvy check for this.
(players laughing)
- And I think you take off.
So, Hunch Curio and Dan Fucks.
(players laughing)
- He's like a 85 pound guy. (light music)
(players laughing)
- Hunch Curio and Dan Fucks in their car
head to Hunch Curio's office.
You suddenly hear something moving in the backseat
up towards both of you as you're driving
and you see Justin go, where's Conrad?
- Hey, you guys forgot about the dog.
- Conrad got taken by the cops,
but I don't think they made him, he's...
- (aggresively barking) What?! - Yeah- Uh-
I'm gonna kill him.
(players laughing)
I'm gonna kill him!
(rabid dog sounds)
Just frothing out the mouth.
And from there we cut to the armored vehicle
that has Anastasia, Imelda, Conrad and also Ivana Popov
who's just going around and you see
she's just sort of muttering,
looking at the rest of these cops in the armored car,
and she says, everyone's got a gun on their belt,
baton on his butt, a nightstick.
Nightstick easy to take away.
Don't see very many thick wrists on these motherfuckers.
And you see, she looks over and says, (Hank laughing)
Kid, you're all right.
Very glad you came by boxing ring.
Got good people looking out for you too.
- Conrad, despite already being a little pipsqueak
is in full Mrs. Doubtfire mode trying to
pass as Stacy Fakename.
(players laughing)
- (old British woman accent) Oh, hello.
(players laughing)
Oh, thank you. (players laughing)
Ms. Popov.
(players laughing) - She says,
why you make that strange?
- I never lied about who I am before.
(players laughing)
- Holy shit.
- You see, then she says, oh, right.
Something about that name Stacy Fakename.
Sounds so familiar to me like I heard before. Eh.
She looks over at you, Imelda, and you, Anastasia, and says,
You said maybe that you are looking for my family, yes?
- Yes, that's right.
- You see that she takes her gray sweatshirt
and pulls it down a little bit and to show a tattoo
at sort of the base of her clavicle
that has an F tattooed into it.
And you see she says, little family crest,
so- - [Siobhan] Amazing.
- If you notice anyone with this, maybe is a clue for you.
- Amazing. Did you get that on like a drunken night out?
- Yeah, we have one night where,
you know, it's a birthday
and it's like, ah, we get along. - [Siobhan] That's cool.
- It's one of those things where we had just
had a big meeting with the mayor
and sometimes when you're in the family,
you're like, we are so different.
And then you like interface with outside world,
and you're like- - Exactly.
See, this is what I'm saying.
We could have gotten tattoos like five different times.
- We could have gotten tattoos like five different times,
except you always wanted to have a tattoo of a cigarette
or you wanted a tattoo a blender.
- Exactly. - One time you wanted do
a tattoo of a hair's split end.
- How do you tattoo a hair's split end? - It'll never not be funny,
it'll never not be funny, I'll love it forever.
(players laughing)
- Our party has split once again.
Hunch Curio and Justin head off towards Hunch's office
as The Fix limps through the shadows
towards the exact same location and Conrad, Ivana,
Imelda, and Anastasia all head off.
I'm gonna need snoop checks from Anastasia,
Imelda, and Conrad.
- Oh! I got an eight.
Ooh, and then I threw it off the table
and I got, Jesus Christ. - Oh! Double eight.
- Did you just double? - Go again.
- Double eight and another, and a two, it's an 18.
- [Brennan] Incredible. What did we get over here?
- An 11. - [Brennan] 11?
- Yeah. - [Brennan] Cool.
- Seven. - Seven, okay.
It's gonna be just one time.
- [Siobhan] Let me show you how it's done.
(Danielle laughing)
- Anastasia and Imelda, both of you turn,
as you're talking about how alike you are,
you both suddenly turn simultaneously and see pulling out
behind the cop cars on the highway,
a number of those black town cars begin to follow the police
back towards Cortex City.
- (shakily) Wha...
(players laughing)
Uh, cops!
There- There's criminals behind us.
- So the cops are like in,
I assume like we're in the back
and then the cops are like up front.
- There's actually a few in the back area with you.
There's like four in this back area.
- And they don't pay attention or we're just very quiet?
- You're just very quiet. - Okay.
Since I would be the only one back there not handcuffed
out of everyone, I just go up, I sit next to a cop.
Hello, excuse me. - Hello.
- Hi, I don't know if we've met yet.
My name is A., Attention, hi.
There appears to be some ne'er-do-wells following our car.
Is that something that's normal?
- Oh, you've noticed some ne'er-do-wells?
- Yeah, there are ne'er-do-wells.
- Oh, okay. - [Danielle] They're
they're following the vehicle - What about them
what about them sort of struck you as being ne'er-do-wells?
- Um, (players laughing)
mostly that they are, you know, driving big black cars.
- It's not illegal.
(players laughing)
- It's certainly not illegal,
but it is definitely interesting, wouldn't you say?
- I guess sort of in a broad sense.
(players laughing)
I consider myself a bit of a bon vivant, so I guess a lot,
you know, I try to find a lot of things interesting.
- I find it incredibly interesting because, you know,
I have a nose for the news and when you see
all of these cars following behind us in a row,
doesn't that make you just a little bit curious?
- Go ahead and give me a slick check, difficulty of eight.
- Why do I keep acting like I have charm
souped up on this game?
This isn't any other games I usually play.
(players laughing)
You see what I'm doing?
Why am I doing this? - [Brennan] No, I hear you.
- Ooh. - Ooh, that's a 10.
Oh, it explodes. - [Brennan] Wow.
- [Trapp and Danielle] It explodes again. - What!
- My goodness. - Three, three, three.
- [Siobhan] You can do it, you can do it.
- All right, so that is 25 plus two, 27, amazing.
- [Hank] That's a fucking roll.
- How interesting are these black cars?
- That's my cousin.
(players laughing)
- You see a face that I think maybe some of you
have seen before, actually, no.
Only The Fix has seen this face before.
But something comes over the radio saying,
this is paddy wagon number 14.
I'm hearing something over the radio.
This is why I always keep all the channels open.
This is Deputy Chief of Staff Lance.
I wanna understand something.
Is someone seeing something interesting down there?
And you see the cop says, hey, yeah, this is,
this is Officer Joie de Vivre.
(players laughing)
- [Hank] I love him.
(players laughing)
- You see he looks down and goes,
Yeah, there's a reporter here who's doing a ride along
and she noticed that there's some interesting cars.
And you see, get out of your vehicle now
and kill everybody in every car on the road!
And you see he says, you got it.
That's old Mr. Lance for ya.
All right, boys, let's pull over.
And you see that they begin to pull ov-
You had rolled a 27. (players laughing)
- [Hank] Thank god. - You beat 10 by so much.
- I've just signed so many death warrants.
(Siobhan laughing)
- So yeah, you see the cops begin to sort of,
these shock troops- - Oh, hello, hello.
Mr. Joie de Vivre.
- No, Officer Joie de Vivre.
- Officer Joie de Vivre, my apologies, my apologies.
If I could ask a simple favor from you.
- Of course. - You know what else
I find really interesting? - What's that?
- I love keys. - Okay.
- And would it be possible for me to just,
I'll give them right back after you're done
murdering all of these people,
but 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?
- Just all of the keys that you have.
- You want my apartment keys?
- I'll take those as well. - Okay.
(players laughing)
- And I'll have a champagne. (players laughing)
(Brennan imitates cork popping) (players laughing)
- Hands you some champagne and says,
well, we would hate for anyone in police custody
not to have a wonderful time, please...
(players laughing)
- Thank you, this guy really is great.
- Ah. - You saying that all too
also makes me think of Max Medulla
returning to the food store.
Like bottle of champagne in hand,
the hot tea and warm vodka.
Like, nah-huh, no.
(players laughing)
- Alarm going off as they just stand there confused.
- Incredible, so you see Officer Joie de Vivre
gives you, says, here's the keys to my house,
here's the keys to the vehicle, here's my wallet.
- Thank you so much! - [Brennan] Of course.
- I'll give those right back
as soon as you're done with the pew pew.
- Hey, and if you don't, what an adventure that'll be.
(players laughing)
- What a fantastic time.
- C'est la vie. All right. (heavy mask clunking)
(players laughing) (Freddie imitates rifle clicking)
He jumps out and you see they go out and say,
all right, all you in those cars, you're under arrest.
And you see a gangster like leans out and says, for what?
And he is like, you're gangsters.
(players laughing)
- How do you know that?
He says, tropes!
(players laughing)
Cool, you have all of this stuff.
What are you gonna do right now?
- So the people up front have left, correct?
- Yes, all of the shock troopers have gotten out
to confront those gangsters there.
And I think you see like,
yeah, so you start undoing.
- I'm unlocking everybody and then start ushering them
towards the front.
I give, obviously Conrad gets the keys
so that Conrad can drive.
- I give Conrad my high heels
so that he can reach the pedals.
- Oh, good to talk like me again.
All right, boys.
(car engine revving, driving crazily) (players laughing)
- Paddy wagon tears off.
You see one of the shock troopers like,
oh no! They're getting away with the paddy wagon!
Officer Joie de Vivre goes, c'est la vie.
(players laughing)
You see him sort of waving and say, farewell, Anastasia.
I hope I find you someday soon
if only to get all my stuff back.
(players laughing)
All right, all right, boys, let's turn around!
And just open warfare on a highway.
Just these cops and robbers, just, yeah, see.
Tommy guns come out.
Conrad, you tear off in this and the radio blares to life.
How's it going out there?
What'd you find?
Any threats, any danger?
- Who am I talking to?
- This is Deputy Chief of Staff H.V. Lance.
- Oh, H.V. okay! - Oh, I got it.
You're the mayors, you're the, you, you, you, you...
- This city's full of threats
and I'm gonna find all of 'em!
- I grab the radio and I say-
- Yeah, you're better at talking.
(players laughing)
- Mr. Lance, I, sorry to tell you this,
but did you know that we just shit ourselves
and maybe can't remember our own name?
(players laughing)
- Oh my god! Did we do it in public?
Can anyone see us?
- Oh, so many people.
- How many? - Just maybe hundreds.
- He says, I mean, where's my goddamn oculus?
He says, oh my god!
There's an entire crosswalk down there!
(players laughing)
Ah, we're ruined!
And you hear the radio goes silent.
You guys have stolen a police vehicle. (players laughing)
Ivana's like, this group is good.
(players laughing)
I like what you do here.
Where's Conrad driving to?
- We're driving to the mayor.
- Hell yeah. Cortex City, here we come.
Cool.
I'll tell you what, it's-
- [Trapp] Hey. - Hey.
- Hey, it's been a minute. (smooth jazz music)
- I love how it's always so smoky in here.
- I gotta put these cigarettes out before I leave.
- So, within this space, Hunch getting Dan Fucks'
unconscious body beaten to pieces as it is,
and Justin behind you, (snarling) we gotta find Conrad.
We gotta find- - We'll find Conrad.
- What do you do with Dan when you get him upstairs?
- I assume I've got just like a full fucking pha-
I'm like, just like a crown- - Like a crash cart.
- I open the freezer,
I put like a crown of frozen steaks like around his head.
(players laughing)
There's like open, like a bottle of whiskey,
just like pour it into all his cuts. (alcohol sloshing)
I probably have like a big old,
just like a trunk that's just like,
a full pharmacy, basically.
Like the amount that I get the shit kicked outta me,
just like, hey, here's this like whistle a little too.
Like (whistling) whistle along and like injections.
Just like basically giving Dan Fucks
the full treatment here. - Incredible.
Go ahead and give me a, we'll call this a six savvy.
- Okay.
Let's try it.
An eight. - [Brennan] Hell-
- No, sorry, a nine. - A nine.
Dan, as you come to,
I think like swimming through your vision,
there's a feeling of like...
(wishy-washy, sound blurring together)
That's right, you always get the same cup of coffee.
I always know what to get started with
right when you walk through the door.
And you come to with a feeling of something
that's stirred within you deep and profound,
a kind of meaning or longing or pleasure
that... it's hard to elaborate.
And then you come to wearing a crown of steaks
and looking up at Detective Hunch Curio.
- Like Pulp Fiction style, like the syringe
right into the chest.
(players laughing)
(Brennan imitating Justin barking)
- It's just, hey, we've transcended the mortal realm, I see.
Ah, heaven.
A fate for a hero such as myself, really.
- Fucks, Fucks, no. - What, what?
What happened.
- This ain't heaven,
this is just my smoky, disgusting office.
- What happened?
How was my gambit?
How did it play out?
- Yeah, about that gambit.
I've never seen a more monumental failure.
- Ah. (players laughing)
- At this point, you see Justin turns around and goes...
(imitating Justin growling)
- Ah my money.
(players laughing)
- As a shadow looms in the doorway,
Fix, you arrive at Hunch's office,
your badly broken leg
hobbling up the many flights of stairs.
Come in through, Anna is long gone.
It's like way past working hours,
so your secretary's not here.
I'll say you guys got here with,
all the heat had been taken off due to the arrest,
but let me get a sneak check of five from...
- Oh, I exploded. - [Freddie] Four.
- I got it. - Hell yeah.
You get here slinking through the shadows up the staircase
and see Hunch in his office.
- Damn, Fix, you look like shit.
- That's gonna take a lot of steaks. (smooth noir music)
(players laughing)
Open up my freezer.
So many steaks in the freezer of steaks.
- A secondary freezer of steaks. (players laughing)
- Anna has like labeled all of these,
so it's like, laceration, prime rib.
(players laughing)
- It's the cut and the best place to apply it.
- [Brennan] Yeah, exactly.
- Just start, take gauze, start wrapping frozen steaks
around The Fix's leg.
- I got this gash on my head too.
You can stitch that up for me?
- Yeah, man, I got it all.
Like between everything too,
I assume I'm still a little beat up from the fight too,
so I'm just like putting stuff on myself too.
It's just full on like nursing the wounds in here.
- I can't believe I found you guys.
I got some stories to tell.
Fuck, we're in trouble.
- Yeah? - Well,
what kind of trouble?
- He tells the story of the man with the key.
- Full download, so everything about M. Bition
and this figure with this white key.
- I have no idea who he is, but I did shoot him in the chest
and absolutely nothing happened.
- Shit.
- That's what I said.
Well I didn't, I just jumped out of a window.
- Shit.
- [Trapp] Shit.
- Shit.
And then everybody.
But the shitting was separate.
- [Trapp] Got it.
- That was a different thing, I did that though.
(players laughing)
- Oh, that was you.
I saw it on the oculus, it was terrifying.
(players laughing)
- As all of you sort of join back together here,
having talked about that vision,
give me a savvy of four, Dan.
- Really did not put the right points in the right places.
- A four! (players cheering)
- A four and more. What do we got? Seven.
- You're looking at The Fix's sort of scar
and you're looking at the cut on his head.
You're trying to remember what Anastasia said
when she found that pain courier,
like something doesn't start to add up,
and as you look at that cut,
you wonder how that blunt force head trauma happened
specifically because as you're looking at that cut
on The Fix, you feel a weird symmetry somehow,
as though maybe,
just maybe the big guy was not clubbed
over the back of the head.
- Hm.
- You can't be sure, but in looking at it,
you think back to that weird sensation you had
about why the fuck the big guy
had that grappling gun on his belt.
- It's clear that someone you, from what you saw,
The Fix, someone has used the psychometer on the big guy.
- That's right.
- Now I've been assuming that someone pushed
Elias out the window,
but I wonder if he saw this threat coming
and maybe jumped out himself.
- Maybe he grabbed that gun and figured
I can get outta here.
It's the only way out.
- I mean that's what you did.
- That's what I, I had the exact,
it was almost like I didn't even make that decision.
- Justin, what do you think?
(Justin barks)
(players laughing)
- Can't remember back.
Was there any like anything else on the grappling gun?
Was there like blood stains on it or anything?
Was it clean on his, like was it,
it just feels like something about that
seems a little weird.
- It seemed like something that was clean
but something that he didn't care.
Like he didn't have a holster for it,
so it seems like something that got
hastily attached to the belt, right?
Like something that maybe was a snap last minute decision
like quite recently.
But I think, Hunch, on speculating that idea of like,
now wait a minute now we sort of assumed that he got thrown
and we sort of assumed that we got that,
like thinking about why he got thrown,
give me a savvy of four.
- Okay.
- That is a...
10. - 10.
As you think about it, you think like,
why did we arrive at the conclusion that we were thrown
out of the window?
And you're like, well, 'cause we were looking up,
we were looking back up at the thing and then suddenly you
realize that the information you got way after that
was that Elias knew he had a grappling gun on his belt.
What direction would you need to turn as you were falling
in order to be able to...
and so I think that there's a moment where you're looking
at some of the pieces start to add up for that.
But as you're saying, right, as you're-
- He's hitting his head against the glass
as he's fallen back, he's planning,
he's going out the window planning
to use the grappling gun
- Which means that suddenly this whole theory of like,
oh my god, he was thrown out the window.
Suddenly there's a strange moment of maybe you don't live
in the mind of someone who's just a patsy and a wuss
who's been yelled at and beaten
and taken advantage of his whole life.
Maybe he lived in the mind of someone
who saw some terrible fate coming and dove headfirst
through a window like his sense of hyperfixation
just did on his own mere minutes ago,
which clarifies some things in this moment
about the real present threat of...
that psychometer,
whatever that was able to do.
And obviously seeing that white key in that room,
what you're aware of is that like The Fix observed there,
the key is still here in the mind.
It's still moving around and it kind of makes sense
that if this, you're all in bullet time,
you're just moving at the speed of thought, right,
that the effects of that psychometer might still be-
- What did that that lady say?
I forget about his worst enemy.
Was I there?
I'm a little rattled in the head, as you said.
- I put more steaks on there.
- Oh yes, the T-bone, please, yes.
- Oh, M. Bition, the DA said he he's own worst enemy.
- That'd be you to remember.
- And you also remember seeing in that moment
where this person was slashing at you.
Go ahead and give me another savvy check, call this a four.
- [Freddie] All right, I know where we are.
Oh, fuck me.
It's a four.
- You look back and you remember in that moment
where your life was flashing before your eyes,
was coming for your throat.
Maybe it was not coming for your throat.
Maybe it was the figure looming.
It was hard to tell with all that shadow.
Maybe it's coming for your chest, but why?
You probably assumed throat
'cause why would you try to hit someone right in their ribs?
It's a weird,
that's the strongest part of you to try to hit.
And then you remember that look from the DA
and that weird little slit over his chest, blinding white,
the same consistency as that key.
- Mm-hm.
- Do I remember when we were looking at the book
about the psychometry project and there were all
these notes about safeguards.
Do I remember anything in there that was like,
what are the actions to safeguard against,
uses of the psychometer, or to counteract the psychometer?
- Ooh, give me a, I would say give me a savvy check
and we'll call this a five.
- Okay.
That is going to be a one.
No, a two.
- Copy that.
- Can I make you win?
- Oh, we could've done a planned action.
- It's planned action, you could've-
- Sure, sorry, I totally forgot.
- No problem.
- We're doing so many snap judgements
Everyone's been shooting at us.
It's like, oh right, planning things.
- As the relaxation comes back in
and you're in your office,
this is like a planned actions kind of time right now.
- Great, cool, yeah, I'll just do that.
Let's do it as a planned action.
- You halve your skill.
Look back through that savvy and start thinking about that,
the curiosity there.
You remember a note, because there was a long memory,
there's lots of bits and pieces that you looked through.
There was a piece where in one of those pieces of research,
there was Elias' own journal on the desk,
and it said,
buy copper supplement. (mysterious music)
And you look back through and realize
that there was something in his sort of super science
surrounding the psychometer in terms
of the safeguards against it
that what the machine needed was copper filaments
through in the sort of radial projecting device
that would keep it as simply a mind-reading device
rather than having the potential to accidentally alter
anything within there.
But you saw something in his personal journal
about a copper supplement
and feel that there's a possibility
he may have started taking steps to protect himself
against exactly this.
So there's a possibility that this psychometer
went off on him and he...
had just enough resistance maybe
to make a quick decision in the moment.
And you think back to this white key.
I think there's a possibility,
the question of a murder of Norrell Ojiccle
and that piece of mental resistance.
Something happened at Cerebell Pacific
and there is still a white key floating
out in the city somewhere.
- So I relay all this to my compatriots here and I say,
Sounds like there's maybe more,
more we might be able to gather from that evidence cart
or from the Switchboard itself, but,
you know, last we saw Conrad, he was on his way to jail
so maybe we take a little trip to the police station,
see if we can get our way into the evidence locker,
maybe get Conrad out.
I don't know, that's where I'm thinking right now.
That's the best thought I got.
- I'll be honest with you.
I'm not comfortable in the shoes
that I have been placed inside of.
- I got something for that.
(players laughing)
- Thank you, these got some good heels on 'em.
- I don't know, what do you guys think?
Should we head to the police station?
- It seems we should not trust anybody.
- Well, I don't think we're trusting them.
I think we're trying to get in there.
- Just overall, just wanted to say that.
Sounded very cool. - [Trapp] Yeah.
- You know. - We shouldn't trust anybody,
we should move fast, and we should not think too much
'cause that doesn't seem to be helping.
- All right. - [Freddie] Yes.
- There is something in this city, it's moving.
Moving fast. - If there's one thing I love,
it's moving without thinking. (players laughing)
- I think it's taken control of the district attorney
who was not a nice man to begin with,
but he looked at me with some eyes that did not have him
inside of them anymore and they tried to do it to me!
And I think you all would've been pretty fucked
if that had happened.
(players laughing)
- I think your relationship to the big guy's
actual love of science, like what he fixates on,
I think that you recognize certain like broad principles
of science and research and technology
of like following paths of least resistance.
If you're gonna try to do something technological,
try to do the thing that is the most efficient,
the most fuel efficient, that uses the least resources.
And thinking about Mentopolis,
the idea of trying to conjure an army,
a persona, conjure a full thing that will like come in
and wrest control of this city away
from Elias Hodge himself,
that would take a tremendous amount of energy
rather than just finding the parts of Elias Hodge
that already kind of want to do what you want him to do.
(Hank and Trapp mm-hming)
All of you stay there with your steaks on.
(players laughing)
- How fast can a steak fix a broken leg?
Like is that like a four-hour thing, two hour thing?
- I'm gonna say, I'm gonna ask for a sturdy check-
- [Trapp] Sure. - From our friend Hunch here.
We'll call it healing your friends with cold steaks
in 30 minutes flat. - [Freddie] Or your money back.
- [Brennan] We'll call it a DC 12.
- Okay. - [Hank] Oh, fuck.
- That is a 12. (players cheering)
- Sorry, that is an 11. (Trapp and Brennan laughing)
I thought I had a plus one in this,
that is just a flat 11, unless-
- Unless you wanna think about the pep talk
I gave you about healing your friends.
- [Brennan] Let's do the pep- - Pep talk.
(players rooting for a pep talk)
(Freddie and Trapp imitating playing the harp)
- You know.
- We're standing in front of a cow.
- You know, friends are a lot like steaks.
(players laughing)
- That's it.
(players laughing)
- A good friend is rare.
- [Freddie] There it is! (group laughing and clapping)
- That's it, folks, for this season of-
(players laughing)
So you remember that in these nice rare cold steaks.
- Ah, yes. Fix, I think each of you in this moment
having sort of put this together, (tense music)
you realize that like the brain is flooded with adrenaline
and there's tons of hormones running around here
that have never happened before.
There's a possibility here.
The circumstances couldn't be more extreme.
The stress is so high.
Brains are very loathe to change.
Minds try to conserve and rest and keep and maintain
as much as they can, but you're in the thick
of the wildest experience of the big guy's life
and there's a possibility,
maybe he'd come out on the other side of this
a little bit different.
Maybe that's something you get curious about.
Maybe that's something that might even be pleasurable.
But it's certainly something that deserves your
undivided fixation and you hear the bones
(crack) knit back together and the three of you head out
as Justin goes, (snarls) we're gonna get 'em.
- Hey, hey.
You're my best friend. (music cuts abruptly)
(players laughing)
- You're not mine, but I-
(players laughing)
- We just met, that's totally fair.
- I understand, but I do really-
- It felt right for the moment that you should have a,
it felt like if Conrad were here, he would say that,
but it felt like you wanted to hear that.
- By proxy, I really appreciate it.
- Sure, yeah. - Let's go!
(players laughing)
You guys get in the car and take off.
The paddy wagon, who would think to stop you?
A police vehicle moves through Cortex City,
up through City Hall.
(players laughing at Conrad driving)
Go ahead and give me a sneak check of like getting as far,
I wanna see how far you can get towards the mayor's office.
- This is a drive check?
- [Brennan] This is a drive check, yeah.
- Let's see, 17 plus two plus three, so that's 22.
(players laughing)
- How close do we get?
- We are inside the mayor's office
at the top of the dome, (players laughing)
and we see him going like, (Trapp imitates crashing)
ah, yes, another day of papers
here in our glorious city of Mentop-
(Brennan makes crashing sound) (players laughing)
He goes, Jesus Christ! (players laughing)
And all of you emerge from the vehicle.
Ivana opens the back door to like the sort of offices
you just come from and she says, good luck in there.
I hold off the riffraff from bothering.
And the rest of you are able to exit
out of the front of the vehicle.
Mayor Logic looks and says, great googly moogly,
what's happening here?
- Mr. Mayor.
Hello, I'm Conrad Schintz.
This is A. Tension and this is Imelda Pulse.
- Imelda Pulse! Your parents are looking for you.
They're some of my campaign's biggest contributors.
- That's right, and this little boy, he saved my life.
- Wow!
(players laughing)
- I don't know if we've ever met before, Mayor,
but you seem like a nice guy.
We'd love to have a meeting with you.
- Well, if it's a meeting you want,
it's a meeting we must have because you're important people
and when you're important, you have to pay attention.
It makes sense!
- Yes, and you should also pay attention.
- Oh (chuckles), Ms. A. Tension,
thank you very much for the piece you ran
during the last election.
I thought it was very tough, but fair.
(players laughing)
- Oh, that's what they say about me, tough, but fair.
- Ah, they certainly do.
How is Mr. Focus?
You know, he's an old friend of mine,
the editor of your newspaper.
- He's great.
- Oh! (players laughing)
- I've never worked for a more supportive
and illustrious boss before.
Really makes you feel like you're part of a team.
And he does nothing but speak very highly of you.
I'll be sure to tell him that you said hello.
- Oh, well, wonderful, please do.
Well, you've crashed into my office, please,
(players laughing)
Pull up a chair, let's talk.
You have business you wanna talk about, that's totally fine.
- Could I get an apple box for my chair?
- Oh, absolutely.
Lance, can we get an apple box?
Who's in there?
Nevermind, hold on.
Why don't you just sit in the big chair?
- Okay, oh, thank you, oh, the big chair.
(players laughing)
- He's so happy. (players laughing)
- You see, he looks and says,
Now, I want to hear all the facts straight and plain.
You can always count on me to be a dispassionate arbiter
of simple sense and right honorable reason.
Uh, I should warn you,
the highways in our city have collapsed today,
all the phone lines are down,
and as you heard on the air raid sirens,
we've shit ourselves.
(players laughing)
So, I am just a skosh busy.
(players laughing)
- We'll just take a second.
- Conrad, you have quite the tale to tell.
- Well, as you know, Ms. Pulse and I may have played
a role in having the big guy take some action and-
- And I'd do it again. - Wow.
- But in a different way probably
'cause after you've done it the first time,
the novelty kind of wears off.
- I understand.
So the the rumor going around is true.
You did have us use your key at Cerebell Pacific
on the night of Norrell Ojiccle's murder to-
- Yes, that's right, that was me,
but I didn't murder Norrell Ojiccle, that was somebody else.
- Do you have any idea who it might've been?
- (confidently) I have no idea whatsoever.
Why is that my problem?
I'm just a humble citizen of your town, sir.
- Well, you're a runaway heiress
who's the last person seen at the scene of the crime
when a citizen was murdered.
- [Alex] Okay, yes, I- - Again, my parents
give you a lot of money.
- Hey, I understand, but they'd like to hear from you too.
Say, can I give them a call and let them know
that you're you here? - The phone lines are down.
- (laughs) Great point.
(players laughing)
- It makes sense.
(players laughing)
- Ergo.
- Mr. Mayor, I know we're confessing
to maybe a lot of crimes here,
but I thought it just might be nice to come direct to you
and see what could be done about it.
It seems like the big guy might be in a lot of trouble,
but maybe he also has a plan.
We just, we thought we'd come to you
so we can work together
to make the most sense of everything.
- Ah, well, if it's making sense you want,
then that's exactly what we should do right now.
I wanna thank you for bringing this to my attention.
Now, it seems like you've got a little bit more intel
than I have.
I've been cooped up here in City Hall all day
and by the look of this vehicle,
it seems like you've been running around.
You've stolen a police vehicle.
(players laughing)
- Well, technically we just, stealing it is a bit-
we were in the police vehicle already.
How can you steal something that you're already in,
you know what I mean?
- [Brennan] So you didn't steal the keys?
- It's not stealing if someone
gives them to you voluntarily.
- A police officer gave you the keys to the squad car.
- Goddamn right. - Oh, incredible.
Well, you ladies are truly impressive.
Now, you said we were in trouble.
- Yes, so we are currently somewhere in the sky.
- Mm.
- [Freddie] You're in the the sky. - You have an oculus?
- I don't. - Oh, well, do we have one?
- Uh, no, I think- - [Danielle] The boys.
- [Siobhan] Curio has it. - [Brennan] Ah.
- Well... - Well it's all right,
I'll take your word for it, what's the situation?
- So we have been thrown out a window
and we have a grappling gun
and we've just shit ourselves, and you know, I'm just a kid,
so I'm not exactly sure what next steps are after this,
but maybe you would be able to logic it out.
- Well, listen, they don't call me Leon Logic for nothing.
So we gotta take the facts and figure out
the right decision to make.
Now, let's take a look.
You said we've been thrown out a window,
so we're falling to our death, now that's bad.
We've also got a grappling gun.
Now if we fire that grappling gun-
- We did.
- Well, all right, we fired the grappling gun.
Now, that gun's going up into the air.
Now, if we were to use that gun to swing in
to something else, we could hit a wall
and that could kill us and we would die,
so we don't wanna do that,
but obviously if we let go of the grappling gun
to avoid smacking into a wall,
(laughs) we're gonna fall to our death.
We don't want that.
- No. Now it's possible
that we could start climbing up the rope
while we're slinging, but if we do that, then our hands,
you know, they're gonna pull with the centrifical force
of the rope and we'll get rope burn on our hands
and that's the last thing you want.
So, as we're- - Second to last.
(players laughing)
- He goes, now, let's say that we go in
and we pick the wrong window to crash through,
right assuming we hit a window at all.
Let's say there's goons in the other side of that window.
Now if there's goons there, we're as good as cooked.
And if that happens, boy, that's a lot of trouble,
so that's the last thing we want.
(players laughing)
- I'm starting to get a sense
that there's a lot of last things we wanna do here.
- So you're saying logically
we just wanna stay suspended in midair.
- The best thing that could happen would be if everything
in the world were to stop.
(players laughing)
- Do you know how to make that happen?
- Well, I know hundreds of ways to make it not happen.
(players laughing)
- I'm beginning to think we need a new mayor.
- Oh, whoa, whoa, hold on, Ms. Pulse. (chill, upbeat music)
Listen, Leon Logic is the mayor for the people.
It makes sense, so that's obviously, look,
let me- let me ask a question here.
Given that this whole thing was your plan,
what was the plan given this heroic act
of stealing the papers?
- Oh, well- well, I don't, I don't,
I wouldn't say exactly the we had a plan.
- I didn't even know Ms. Pulse before that.
- I didn't even know Conrad before. (players laughing)
- I wasn't involved in this part at all.
- I know, I'm meeting Conrad for the first time here
as well, so we're all meeting Conrad for the first time.
- No, I just thought like, you know,
I'm ready to speak up and I should speak to who's in charge
and then maybe we can make some real change.
- So you speak up and you get on a soapbox and you ask
for a change and then the change happens
and it throws the entire city into danger
and then we come to old Mayor Logic to clean it up,
is that right? - Oh no.
- Well, no, but yes, but sometimes you gotta make a change
to make a change.
- And other times making any change at all
hurls us into the heart of peril.
- [Siobhan] Well... - Conrad has started backing
back towards the squad car. (players laughing)
- [Brennan] Mayor Logic, (laughing)
- Mayor Logic, we have already gotten to the point
where we are suspended in midair and covered in shit.
So at this point, we just have to figure out
what our next steps are.
We cannot go back in time.
- Ms. Tension, I hear you loud and clear.
Every next step as I've described it contains
the possibility of absolute destruction, all right?
Sometimes when you are the mayor,
people throw situations at you
that mean every possible decision leaves you
as screwed as you've ever been, just like the ice skates.
- Oh wait, show us your chest.
(players laughing)
Show us your chest.
- [Hank] I don't think you know about that.
(players laughing)
- As he looks and goes, as you say, sir, let us see,
he goes, (gasps) (freezes)
(all gasping)
- Conrad like sort of scampers up and jumps up.
- You jump, you pull his white bow tie and pull it down
and reveal a big F.
- Oh, you frozen motherfucker.
- (frozen) Don't. Do. Anything.
- You don't make sense at all!
(players laughing)
- I make tons of sense, I'm a totally valid response.
- I take the frozen vodka that I still have
and hit him across the face with it.
- Pow! The vodka sort of, he goes.
- No, my vodka!
(players laughing)
- How did you know to look for that F?
- I didn't even hear the part where you said ice skates.
You just seem like you're not gonna do anything
and I know you, you said you don't know me and you lied.
We know each other.
- Yeah, that's right, I know you well enough, kid.
I know you just fine.
(tense piano music)
You're the reason that we almost died out there
and we got that big hideous scar
across the front of our face.
Everybody laughed at us.
That big kid came right on over.
When has standing up for right
ever done anything for anybody in this town?
- So you've been running this town ever since.
- You hear a noise.
Coming out of the squad car and you see Ivana
walk in and go, (gasps)
brother.
He looks and says, well, after that day,
when we had that big fight,
we tried to stand up for the big guy's sister.
You know, my sister took the reins and we mouthed off
and everyone started laughing and our sister ran away
and she was so mad at us.
And then that big kid came over and took our skates,
clobbered us over the head,
and of course I said I should drive
'cause the last time my sister drove
it started the whole thing in the first place
because she listened to you!
So I did.
I put my key in 'cause he was coming right for us and I,
you know, if we charged him
then maybe he hits us even harder,
and if we run away, maybe people laugh at us more
and there's just so many wr- wrong choices to make.
- Hey, you did the best you could.
- You're a valid response,
but I cannot stress this enough, not for right now.
(players laughing)
- He says, I figured no one would ever vote
for a Mayor Freeze so I changed my name to Leon Logic,
'cause after all, I'm pretty good at,
thinking about what might happen.
He takes his little top hat off.
Truth be told,
there's been so many people that have been happy
to have a lousy man like me running around.
I know there's people that have been glad to
run roughshod over me.
You see Ivana just sort of shakes her head.
Leon looks and says, so what.
Falling out of the sky?
We have time to hold a citywide election?
I doubt it. - No.
- So there's no mayor other than me.
The only things I can think of are what might go wrong.
- What if you continue to think about what might go wrong,
what would go wrong if we did nothing?
(Brennan imitating freezing)
- You see he freezes up. (players laughing)
He says, If we do nothing, then, then...
You see he looks around,
he goes over to the mayor's thing
and you see that he opens up his desk. (wooden drawer sliding open)
He says, you said we fired that grappling gun already?
- Mm-hmm. - [Danielle] Mm-hmm.
- It hits the roof, we're gonna swing.
If we hit cement, that's it.
But if we, if we hit a window
and there's no goons on the other side of it,
and it's a room relatively safe.
- It's a soft window.
- And it's a soft window.
(players laughing softly)
- You're not here.
(players laughing)
- Then maybe, oh, that's awful scary.
- Conrad goes, this worked once before, and punches
the mayor. (players laughing)
- You punch him in the stomach and he goes
(regurgitates) and the key pops out of his mouth.
Holy moly.
Holds the key.
He takes his desk and he says, I don't have an oculus.
I'm terrified, but,
what do you think the odds are, Ms. Tension,
that we're headed towards a window right now?
- Considering the circumference of the building,
considering how large the windows are
and their perceived softness, (players snickering)
I would guess that we are at about 85% chance
of hitting a window.
(cool tense music)
- (whispering) 85% chance.
- 90%.
(players laughing)
- You see, he looks over at Conrad and goes,
I don't know kid, you think this is the right thing to do?
- I do.
- He puts the-
- Wait, wait, just to clarify, what were you saying?
Is it the right? What? (laughing)
- What are we doing?
- You see he takes the key, turns it,
there's a little microphone on his desk and he says,
well, if we're gonna freeze,
let's at least try to freeze in a way that's useful.
This is Mayor Logic.
I guess just Mayor Leon for now.
I'd like to send an emergency missive
to the waist, hips, legs and feet.
Freeze up as hard as you can.
Go erect, point it out forward towards the building.
Freeze up and freeze hard.
And you see sort of like signals lighting up
and as the big guy is swinging towards the window,
those legs and feet freeze up
and you see that suddenly there is a (imitating exploding)
a big alarm goes out throughout the city
and you can hear the intercom.
Deputy Chief of Staff Lance goes,
boss, we got more trains coming in at Oblongata Station.
Looks like there's some, too many pain couriers
for shock troops to stop coming in from the feet.
And you see he says, how many exactly?
I might have overstated the level of risk.
There's a couple. There's a couple. (players laughing)
But we might have some shattered glass on our ankles.
And you see Mayor Logic leaps up and yeah!
ha! It was a window!
It was a window.
We froze up the legs and we kicked through a window.
- Doesn't that feel good?
- Yes!
Yes! And you see Ivana goes and just like hugs her brother,
goes, I could kill you.
(players laughing)
- Oh, great job, that's fantastic.
It was only like 45%, maybe 30.
- What?! (players laughing)
- Fully a block of ice. Freezes up. (players laughing)
What do you guys all do here in the mayor's-
You see that Ivana like puts her brother in a block of ice
on her back and says,
okay, well, we know that big guy is safe.
He smashed through window.
Where now we go?
- Oh, I don't think he's safe yet.
I think we gotta get outta here.
- Oh, you know, who would really be great
at helping us get out of here.
My sister, wherever she is. - Oh, Flight?
- Flight, if we can find her, yeah, for sure,
but for now, we should get out of City Hall.
We crash police vehicle.
- Sure. Sure. Sure. (players laughing)
- You guys take off.
We have our friends Hunch, Fucks, and The Fix.
Hunch, Fucks, and Fix roll up
with Justin the dog. - And Justin.
- Outside of the massive police precinct,
you see instead of protect and serve, (snooping music)
it says "to control and regulate."
What do you do as you get closer?
- Well they're definitely here.
(players laughing)
- Look, it's the last place they said they were going.
I see no reason why
they wouldn't be here. - [Freddie] We have to just
go off of what they're saying. - Looks like you fellas
are always right about stuff.
(players laughing)
- Here's what I wanna do 'cause we all know how slick I am.
- Yes.
- Last they saw me, I said I was taking you in.
Now I've done that, I've fixed you up,
and 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.
It's using you as bait, and of course that's assuming
that my very slick skills come through in a pinch here.
- And I suppose it's normal for you to have a dog
and a very large bodyguard with you.
- Listen...
I'm curious!
(players laughing)
I do all kinds of crazy things.
- What do you do as you approach the precinct?
- So, I'm sort of like manhandling, - [Freddie] Fake.
- Fake manhandling Dan Fucks here I come into the station
and I'm sort of doing the hello, hi.
- Unhand me you rapscallion.
- Yeah, shut up, Fucks. - Ugh!
(players laughing)
- You see that there's sort of a desk sergeant who goes,
well, well, well, if it isn't Hunch Curio.
When's the last time you walked a perp in here?
- (laughs) I think we all remember that case.
The case of what did I come into this room for?
(players laughing)
- Yeah, you put down some pretty big ones, Curio.
- That's right. - That's for sure.
You see that, they say, all right, what's your name, sailor?
- Daniel. Fucks.
Spelled the way you think.
- F-U-C-K-S?
- Sure!
- Okay, that's the word I'm thinking of.
- Well, listen- - You dirty, dirty man.
- The big guy here and the bloodhound helped me
track down Fucks here.
He had a lot of contraband.
I'm gonna have to process that in to evidence
if you don't mind.
- Go ahead and give me a slick check
if you would be so kind. - I need to be very clear.
When I said I had great vick- slick,
I was of course being hyperbolic.
I am absolute garbage at this.
- Call it a difficulty of seven.
- (lacking confidence) Okay.
- Okay. (players laughing)
- That is a two.
- Five, six, seven.
(players laughing)
- Two, three, four, five, six.
- Seven. - Great.
- You see the desk sergeant says,
yeah, yeah, yeah, just bring it back to the evidence locker
and Pete will let you jump back in.
- Thanks, you're the best.
- Hey, it's all right, Hunch.
And you see that she says,
You, you're coming with me, and she-
- Wait, wait, hold on, hold on, wait, wait, wait.
- And you see that she marches-
- Oh, we'll be back around to talk to you
a real intense interrogation later.
Don't you worry, Fucks.
- And for The Fix and Justin, are you guys waiting outside?
Are you walking with Hunch?
- This is as far as my plan goes.
(players laughing) Whatever you guys wanna do.
- Yeah, Fix, what do you think you're up to?
- I think I was gonna go with Hunch.
- Cool, Justin. - I'm gonna shove,
- [Brennan] Yeah. - Fucks so hard.
It was like a little too hard accidentally.
- He clonks the head onto a desk. (head hitting table)
- [Brennan] I love that.
- They're all reeking of beef.
(players laughing)
- Justin's gonna split up actually and go with Dan.
Justin will be like- - Okay.
- I won't let Dan go off by himself,
and tucks along behind.
- I just figured they wouldn't let me go with him.
- Justin walks along, looks up at you and goes,
Why are you always so mean to Conrad? (melancholy music)
- Conrad stands between me and my ultimate ambition,
unfettered pleasure.
And the only thing standing in the way of that
is this damn gnat that keeps biting at me.
Yes, it's, it's terrible.
You see, because without the conscious,
we were free to pursue all the dreams that I want
and a life of unfettered pleasure
and that's what's holding us back, you see,
so Conrad is my mortal enemy, that's why.
Plus he's a little shit.
(players laughing)
- Justin looks up at you and says,
You know, you and me could work great together.
I can come up with reasons for getting stuff
you want really easily.
But I don't think you see that.
I don't think you see a lot, Dan Fucks.
(players laughing) (music stops abruptly)
- You see Justin looks at you and says,
You think Conrad's the reason
that there's no pleasure in the city.
Conrad's been living in a rainy hole
in a bombed out old shelter.
No one listens to Conrad at all.
- He's been putting those signs on my door.
- Yeah, I think so because Conrad
doesn't have anybody other than me
out in the whole wide world.
- That's right, you are his best friend, after all.
- And you have all this money and lots of people like you
and come to your speakeasy.
- [Freddie] Yes, they do.
- If you'd looked after Conrad,
maybe he wouldn't have been so lonely.
- That's once again, not my problem, but, mm.
- But, it's all right.
All I'd say is you don't have to like Conrad one bit.
- [Freddie] I don't. - But the reason you have to,
you know, sell your illicit oxytocin
out of a tiny dinky old shack instead of having-
- How dare you sir.
- Instead of having a big old pleasure palace,
you can be mad about that, but that's not Conrad's fault.
Conrad didn't make the big guy miserable.
The DA, the mayor, all of those people,
all the decisions the people in power made.
In fact, the big guy's so scared and sad
and that's what made him miserable, not Conrad.
- Thank you so much for confiding in me.
I'd like to bring you in on a scheme I have with Wilton.
You see, there is a revolution coming, my friend.
(group laughing)
I think you could be one of-
- Please let me help write a manifesto.
I'd love to write a manifesto.
- My goodness, I found a new ally here today.
Wilton will be overjoyed.
- Who's Wilton?
You see, you walk off and you see the sergeant
opens the door and you see Chief Tightass
turns around and goes, well, well, well.
We finally booked Daniel Fucks.
- Oh, isn't this a banner day for you and the boys?
- It is.
- You'd like that, wouldn't you?
But the trick is, this is a deception!
I don't have-
And I try to bust out the handcuffs, but there are like,
there actually were.
- Give me sneak 10.
- I think I'm failing this no matter what though.
- Who knows.
- On the wrong, oh, sneak 10, 12.
More than 12. - Blew up on it.
- [Freddie and Hank] Double 12! (players laughing)
- 12 plus 12 plus seven.
- You have a lot of handcuff based experience.
- You've gotten out of so many handcuffs.
- Yeah you're in handcuffs all the time. - You truly, Dan Fucks
is fully expecting
to, like, to like
not be able to get to be like, huh, ha, but you say like,
it's a deception and you see,
you go ft-twang! And the handcuff shoots
and impales the chief of police (brain squelching)
in the brain.
And he falls down dead. (players laughing)
- What? You killed him.
- Gentlemen witness Houdini manifest. (players laughing)
You see Justin goes, holy shit!
- Come up with a reason why that's okay.
- Well, how could there be a Chief Tightass
if we just shit ourselves?
(group laughing)
I'm not mad at that, we're gonna cut back downstairs.
(players laughing)
- I hope Dan's doing okay.
(players laughing)
- You rolled 31?
- 31 total, yeah. - [Brennan] 31 total.
- That's like the highest I've ever rolled
in like any system.
Any system. - [Freddie] Any type of dice.
I haven't even got 31 in Boggle, you know what I mean?
Like that's wild. (players laughing)
- So back down in the evidence locker,
Hunch and The Fix roll up and you see that there's
a sort of almost like librarian-esque woman
who's working down here at the evidence locker and says,
(quietly) Hello do you have anything to
check into the evidence locker?
- Oh yeah, we got some new evidence here.
It's just like a collection of shit from Dan's pockets.
(players laughing)
We gotta check this in, (tense music)
but you know, I'm working a new case too,
so I'll go ahead and I'll file it myself
and I'll take a look at
some of the other stuff in the other cases too.
- Absolutely, go ahead and give me a slick check.
We'll call this a difficulty of five.
- I'm so bad at slick.
Oh, I exploded.
(players cheering)
- It's a five on the dot.
- Unbelievable. She says, oh, absolutely.
Help yourself in right over here just file everything.
There's baggies and markers over in the corner.
- I grabbed baggies and markers.
- Great, see she looks up.
- You wanna know facts about your bones?
- (quietly) Okay.
(players laughing)
- While you're doing that,
I just tell her so much about bones.
Bones are actually living
and do you know that the reason we produce blood
inside of our bones is because it's one of the places
that's safest from UV radiation?
- Just fun facts.
They're not scary.
(Freddie laughing)
- Go ahead and give me a slick check, difficulty of three.
- Okay.
That's a six.
- You see she looks at you and goes, that's fascinating.
Did you know...
(players laughing) (Hank ebullient he's meeting his match)
Did you know that there are some species of birds
that have a secondary pouch in their esophagus
or in their digestive tract where they actually contain,
referred to as a craw that has stones or other hard material
to help break up food matter before it passes
into the rest of their digestive tract.
- There are also some birds that can produce
a kind of nutritious substance that they'll,
that instead of regurgitating their own food,
they will produce a kind of milk.
It's almost like lactation, but it evolved separately.
It was a case of convergent evolution.
Pigeons do it.
- Did you know that pigeons,
(players laughing)
- Let's go, let's go, let's go, come on. (Freddie clapping)
- I feel like I'm watching chess.
- I'm looking for the evidence cart-
- You quickly realize you have all the time in the world.
(players laughing)
- What is this librarian's name?
- Yeah, is there like a nameplate?
- The placard on her name says Pasha and then N.
as the last initial.
You are able to grab all that evidence, no problem,
as she just goes back and forth.
(Trapp laughing)
(papers shuffling quickly) (players laughing)
From the cart, you find the pocket square,
you find a ton of different materials.
And actually give me a snoop check.
- Sure. - [Brennan] Which we must
do here as well - We must do it.
- That is an 11.
You find a baggie
that has a heavy weight in it
and you see it has the words murder weapon on it.
- Nice. (slow tense music)
Something in my years of detective work - [Freddie] What could this be.
- Makes me think this might be the murder weapon.
- [Brennan] Crossed out.
- Oh, nevermind. - [Freddie] Whoa, hold on.
(group laughing)
- Looking at the baggie,
it has a very heavy weight within it (music begins building)
and instead it just has exhibit, you know,
it has another exhibit number put underneath it,
rather than being labeled as the murder weapon,
looking inside the baggie, you see a heavy copper pistol.
- Copper, all right. - Ooh.
Is the trigger guard really far off from the trigger?
(Brennan laughing)
- For a massive finger to go through?
No, but you do see that the shells that go along with it,
which even for a handgun is kind of strange,
are buckshot shells.
(Siobhan gasps)
You also see some writing on the side of it.
On that 11 snoop check the quite high snoop check.
There is a note attached to this.
There is a sort of registry with the weapon
of where it was bought.
This gun was bought in downtown Mentopolis
by one Norrell Ojiccle.
- [Siobhan] Hmm. - Ah.
- You see it's bought from a Thalamus and Sons.
- That seems like everything that I came down here for,
so I come back out and I presumably still hear them trading
facts back and forth.
- You see she goes, did you know that woodpeckers
have a tongue bone called a hyoid bone
that wraps around their brain because the
(getting titillated from the tidbits)
pounding into the tree can, of course,
you know it needs to protect their brain from the impact,
that powerful feeling of,
you know
smashing into the wood of the tree to,
you know devour their common meal items,
which of course are grubs and larval insects.
- (aroused and astounded) I didn't know, I didn't know.
- Can I go snoop check to see how horny The Fix is?
(group laughing)
- That's gonna be snoop one. - Great.
(players laughing)
That's a four.
(players laughing)
- Well, I'll let Hank be- (players laughing)
You see she looks up and says,
have you recently joined the force?
Sorry?
- No, I'm sorry, I work for Detective Hunch Curio.
I'm a private investigator.
- Private inve- oh, that's, oh yes,
you work with Detective Hunch, I understand.
Mm. Mm.
- It's been very nice to meet you.
- It's very nice to...
- Did you know pelicans had three stomachs?
(players laughing)
- Should we?
- Oh yeah, so yeah, we got, we're all filed away in here.
And Pasha, just in case something else comes up,
could we get your number?
I'm sure we can send The Fix down here
if something else comes up.
- Oh, certainly, let me...
- She goes over to- - You're wingmanning
Thank you so much.
- She says, yeah, with those phone lines are are down,
but it's very nice to...
- That can't be forever.
(players laughing)
- Can I get a cigarette?
(players laughing lightly)
- [Brennan] You see...
(players laughing)
- So tiny in your giant face.
(players laughing)
- [Danielle] It's like a Tic Tac.
- She walks over to a very small little desk,
writes down a number on a piece of paper,
walks back over to you, Fix, and hands it to you and says,
please feel free to follow up with me anytime.
I'm just here, you know,
I work here most days just gathering stimuli
and categorizing them.
I used to be a, well, I am, I'm a forensic scientist.
Give me a snoop check, difficulty three.
(tense music)
- That is a 12.
- I got a two, but it could be if you care, does it matter?
(players laughing)
Yeah, that's probably the best. (ball sliding on a track)
- You see a small portrait of her.
It's like an old daguerreotype.
Like this sort of is like a 1930s style world
and so this is even like a turn of the century
like early 1900s photo.
And you see that it's a picture of her as a little girl
in like winter clothes,
smiling with her hand around a little boy
and they're both smiling together,
sort of waving out and it looks like a little,
sort of like lovely picture of her and like maybe
like a brother or a sibling or something like that.
- Are there ice skates in this photo?
- You do see that they are wearing ice skates in this photo.
- It doesn't feel right to do what Conrad did
and demand show me your chest.
(players laughing)
I do clock all this.
Oh, that's a lovely photo.
Who's that little boy?
- Oh.
That's my brother.
My late brother, he passed away when we were children.
- Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that.
- Yes.
- The Fix puts his hand on her shoulder.
Just looks sad.
- She says, thank you.
You look down at the photo
and remember childhood a long time ago.
- It's not my sister is it?
- No, no. (players laughing)
- Took a turn. - Took a turn
Real Star Wars energy.
(players laughing)
- We're getting real old timey now.
- You look down the photo and you see-
(players laughing)
You look down and realize in horror
that you know the little boy in the photograph.
His name was Ichabod Ice Skates.
(players gasp)
- Oh, that is very sad.
And I say nervously, there are some salamanders
that feed their babies their own skin.
I gotta go.
(players laughing)
- Oh, bye. And you see,
you wander out of there.
- I guess we gotta interrogate Dan out of his situation.
I hope he's doing okay.
(players laughing)
- Justin is barreling down the hall with Dan Fucks behind.
He goes, he killed the chief of police.
- Shut up, Justin. Shut up, Justin.
- He killed the chief of police!
- Justin keep it down. - I saw it!
(incomprehensible yelling)
- Let's get out of here, let's go!
- You guys all run out as you watch a SWAT vehicle
backing down off the dome of City Hall.
(players laughing)
(car reversing sound)
- Now I wonder what that's all about.
(players laughing)
- And you watch as Conrad pulls up in front of you
and you have reconvened here at Cortex Square
right near City Hall,
but also quite near where the DA's office is.
- Finally, a vehicle I can fit in.
(players laughing)
- Get in,
boys. (players laughing)
- Let's go to Thalamus and Sons.
I don't know what's there, but I gotta know.
(players laughing lightly)
- You all take off in the vehicle together,
driving towards Thalamus and Sons
back towards the final piece of the puzzle.
You have this copper gun that Norrell Ojiccle had
and somewhere out there in the city, a white key.
(slow noir music)
A key that could be...
(sighs) the key to everything.
(Trapp snickers) (Siobhan lightheartedly groans)
As you journey off in Mentopolis, breath,
an announcement over the sirens.
This is your Mayor, Mayor Leon...
Mayor, Mayor Leon...
Look, my name's Frank Freeze
and I ran for mayor under a false name.
Everyone in Mentopolis deserves to know.
You all, you all deserve to know that...
we're in great danger. And we need to act together as one.
You see that quickly, he says, now I'm gonna-
And then you see Ivana leaping down the dome and says,
stop making announcement.
Jumps in the back of the van with you.
But we are gonna move the pressure up a little bit.
(sound of something ramping up)
- [Hank] Stop it. Stop it.
- Pressure goes up a little bit moving in that direction
as crashing through the glass,
it's the sudden there's the shock of adrenaline
when something very physical is happening
and there's the follow-up shock of adrenaline
when you're like, I've made it
and now I have to make decisions.
(players laughing)
Oh god.
- That man needs some beef on his legs.
(players laughing lightly)
- So Frank Freeze and Ivana Popov are here in the vehicle
with you, Justin Fication is here as well.
- Reuniting with Conrad!
- You see, Justin says, Conrad!
- (yelling) Justin, you're my best friend!
- You're my best friend.
(players laughing)
Conrad also licks Justin. (players laughing)
- You don't lick me, I'm a dog. (players laughing)
- I wasn't thinking.
- It's okay, you didn't do anything wrong.
There's a lot of great reasons to lick a dog.
(players laughing)
You love 'em.
(players laughing)
- Thank you, boy. - I love you.
You tear off through the streets of Mentopolis
towards Thalamus and Sons (slow tense music)
awaiting whatever fate
could befall this vast city,
and knowing that a shadowy figure with a white key follows
in the shadows behind.
And that's all for this episode of "Dimension 20: Mentopolis."
Tune in next week as we continue our caper
here in the city of the mind.
Farewell.
- Capers.
- This mind is a terrible place.
You're so weak! Why couldn't you do the right thing? Ever!
There's no reason to like any part about the city.
- Conrad doesn't say anything back.
- Well... It seems that you saw fit to
air my dirty laundry.
Why don't you come with me right now.
- This feels like the kind of thing I don't necessarily have a choice in.
- Oh. Have I finally got your attention?
Very good.
(gasp) There's a shadow downstairs.
(Everyone gasps and screams)
- You son of a bitch! (Alex continues to scream)
- Wuh-oh. (laughs)
- You know... (flicks fingers)
You can't hum while you're blocking your nose.
Give it a try.
(Hank continues to flick his fingers)
Where. Are. The. Key. Holes?
(Everyone laughs)
- Who are you suspicious of?
- You're not suspicious of me are you?
- I'm suspicious of everybody.
Aren't you suspicious of everybody
in this town? - Well not generally myself,
but now I'm wondering if I should be.
(Everyone chuckles)
- Oooh! Hello there sister.
You looking so fine and fresh.
Who does your hair?
- (laughs) It's two wigs sewn into one.
(Everyone laughs)
- Double wigs for a triple good time.
(Everyone continues to laugh)
You're not mad at me are you? Are you mad at me?
(Everyone laughs)
And you see he steps closer and sort of runs a finger
along your chin and says,
I want to know what would make you feel good, Mr. Fucks.
(Freddie snickers)
- Yes. (Everyone laughs)
(lively instrumental music)