Twilight Mirage 42: Look the Other Way

Transcribed by Meko

AUSTIN: Okay, so, let’s get on the same page real quick. Last time, a man who runs a transport business named Alabaster Went [The Notion begins playing] got in touch with Grand Magnificent and said, “Yo, my niece is missing; in fact, I think a lot of kids have gone missing, a lot of teenagers, and I think that it’s an NEH plot to brainwash them because I have evidence of them being with some Torch units,” which are those, like, big robots. You were welcomed to the Ark-en-Ciel Amovement Park, which is a moving giant amusement park which travels around Gift-3, that has been turned into a sort of anarchist commune by a group of teens that is unofficially led by a 19-year-old woman named Vanya, who kind of explained the situation to you. And that was basically, “Hey, what we really need is the ability to protect ourselves with this giant shield.” This machine has some sort of weird shield that protects them—that could protect them but they don’t have a power source for it, and they told you, “Hey, if you go to Big Garage you can get the power supply that we need,” which is this kind of perpetual motion engine.

        AUSTIN (as Waltz Tango Cache): God damn, I didn’t expect to see you here.

        JACK (as Fourteen Fifteen): I didn’t expect to see you here.

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): What’re you doing?

JACK (as Fourteen): Well...there’s, there’s multiple steps [Ali laughs]. There’s multiple steps… involved. [Keith laughs]

AUSTIN (as Waltz): I’m workin’ security.

AUSTIN: —he says [chuckles]

[Keith and Ali laugh wildly].

        JACK (as Fourteen): Great! Great!

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): Special project.

        JACK (as Fourteen): Great.

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): Big deal.

AUSTIN: As he says that, behind him, you see strange figures moving. That are like—they’re like big metal spiders. And they’re just, like, swimming their heads around back and forth and are investigating the various crates in the room.  

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): Fourteen. Not today. We got big things coming up today.

        JACK (as Fourteen): I’m, I’m sure you—

AUSTIN: A second after that, the knuckle of a giant robotic hand—like, finger—pops up from this tube. And then another one. And then like half of a palm. And it is the other side of Gumption’s old arm being transported. They found it in the Crash Yards, and today is the day that they’re transporting it. So there’s extra security.

JACK: Fucking hell, we picked a bad day here. Okay, a baton appears in my hand—

AUSTIN: Uh-huh.

JACK: I’m gonna say, “Waltz, we’ve got to catch up later,” and hit him with it [laughs].

[Music ends]

AUSTIN: And then we see fourteen of them, the rear fourteen, zipped up in this bag, in this net, attached to the ceiling and then one of them goes like, “Gggghhhhhhaaaahhhhhhhhh” [Ali laughs], right in front of Grand Magnificent’s face. Grand Magnificent, what do you do?

ART: I shoot it with my fine sidearm.

AUSTIN: Oh shit, you’re spending a gun thing! Holy shit. What’s that—[laughs] that’s a very Indiana Jones maneuver, by the way [Jack laughs]. Alright, what—

ART: I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is. I think you mean it’s a very Grand Magnificent maneuver.

AUSTIN: Oh my fucking God. What does your—what’s that gun look like?

ART: You know [exhales]...I’ve thought a lot about what this gun might look like.

AUSTIN: [laughs] Oh my God.

ART: And...it’s so hard, because there’s a part of me that thinks that the most consistent thing with the new Grand Magnificent is to have something that looks very plain.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

ART: But that’s not true. That just isn’t true.

AUSTIN: [amused] Uh-huh.

ART: That might be my brand now, but that’s not the brand.

AUSTIN: Right.

ART: So, this is like a museum-quality gun. This is like engraved and, you know, I don’t want to say that the barrel looks like the mouth of a dragon—

AUSTIN: Oh my God.

ART: But it does. It definitely does.

AUSTIN: [sighing] Oh my God.

ART: And it’s got two little arms, below, like the dragon’s got little arms, little claws, and that’s [Austin sighs heavily] like under, and, you know, the tail comes down the handle. The trigger’s just a trigger—

AUSTIN: Okay.

ART: I thought about making the trigger like little dragon legs but that’s obviously ridiculous.

AUSTIN: Did you—

KEITH: Maybe it’s like a forked tongue.

AUSTIN: Ooh.

ART: No, the tongue’s at the front, don’t be ridiculous.

AUSTIN: Oh, okay.

KEITH: It could be a second tongue!

AUSTIN: Ew. Don’t have an under-tongue.

ART: No, if it’s a tongue by the back legs, it’s not a tongue.

AUSTIN: [laughs loudly] Just pull that dragon dick, what’re you doing!

KEITH: That could be a tongue.

AUSTIN: Did you design this? Or did you make this with Cascabel? Like what—did you buy it?

ART: I think this is something that Cascabel gave me.

AUSTIN: Okay.

ART: And he was like, “Here’s your super-extra gun,” and I was like, “Well that’s not really who I am anymore,” but then it’s like, “But I’m definitely taking [Austin laughs] this fancy dragon gun, I’m definitely—”

AUSTIN: Alright, it’s a fine sidearm, the effect is gonna be greater. The thing you’re describing sounds like Scrap to me, unless you’re doing it in some way that I don’t understand how guns work [laughs].

ART: How—I lost my character sheet forever...oh, I see what I did.

AUSTIN: You shrunk it?

ART: I shrunk it.

AUSTIN: Okay.

ASRT: How do I unshrink it?

AUSTIN: Double-tap—double-touch it—double-click it.

ART: Okay.

AUSTIN: So, Scrap. You have a one in Scrap. Are you pushing yourself, are you using a gambit, et cetera?

ART: I’m gonna use a gambit, ‘cause this is fucking cool.

AUSTIN: Okay.

ART: And because I can get gambits when I use a gambit, so.

AUSTIN: That’s true, you can do that in a way that other people cannot. So, go ahead and give me a 2d6.

ART: What’s the—

AUSTIN: Scrap.

ART: This is—

AUSTIN: Sounds like Scrap to me.

ART: No, no, but it’s—this is Risky...Standard?

AUSTIN: Risky Standard, yeah.

ART: Bonus dice, one...

AUSTIN: One, yep. [sighs] Oooh, buddy.

ART: How’d I do?

AUSTIN: Not good.

ART: Well?

AUSTIN: No, no, you did extremely poorly [Ali makes distressed noise]. You got a three or a one, my friend.

ART: I’m obviously gonna take the three.

AUSTIN: Oh, yeah, well, one to three, still a failure, unfortunately. I think you, alright—

ART: Wait. And so...

AUSTIN: Yes?

ART: How do I resist?

AUSTIN: [laughs] Okay [laughs more]. So you can’t resist missing here. You can resist whatever’s about to happen to you.

ART: Alright. I would like to.

AUSTIN: Okay, but let me describe what’s gonna happen first.

ART: It’s “the fuckin’ spider’s gonna hurt me!”

AUSTIN: [laughs] It might! [Keith laughs]  You pull the gun out and you pull the trigger and it’s like, everyone jumps. Because no one hears gunshots, like, gunshots—There was a time when the people on Gift—in the Mandati—even had guns and used them all the time, especially in the military, but guns are not a thing that happen that often, especially not on their airship. And so everyone just like jumps back and the—you catch it, like, you hit it through the head of this big spider-robot. Unfortunately, the head is basically empty, and you lean forward and you can see as its mouth opens—it has that slit-mouth—and the slit-mouth opens bigger and bigger, and it’s like built to detain people inside of its jail-shaped head. Like it has a cage in there. And so, like, yeah, you shot right through it—

JACK: Aaaah!

ART: These are the worst things!

JACK: I hate these.

KEITH: [crosstalk] Yeah. I—

JACK: [crosstalk] What are these things called so that when our Wikipedia entry of them is made I can delete it?

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: [laughs] It’s called—they’re called “Ocelli”, O-c-e-l-l-i, like the eyes of a spider. And—

ART: And a cell in it ‘cause they’re also jails.

KEITH: Not “fusilli”, like Nick’s favorite pasta.

AUSTIN: Exactly, not like that [laughs]. Good g—deep cut.

KEITH: [laughs] Thank you.

AUSTIN: And then yes, Grand, it then leans forward to swallow you whole—

JACK: No!

AUSTIN: —into its mouth. That is the thing that you’d be resisting. It won’t kill you, it’ll just lock you up in its head.

KEITH: I like that Art failed so bad that he made their heads invincible.

[Keith, Austin, and Jack laugh]

KEITH: They weren’t invincible before that shot!

AUSTIN: He hit! I mean he didn’t—he’s not that close, you can’t miss, but there can be bad things that happen!

ART: Yeah, of course I can’t miss.

AUSTIN: [laughs] So yeah, to resist—so the thing you’d be resisting here is being bitten and like—some damage, and also being swallowed into its head.

ART: Yeah, I want to resist that.

AUSTIN: What are you doing? What are you doing?

KEITH: Do—

ART: Fucking going—

AUSTIN: Are you diving out of the way [Keith laughs]? Are you—

ART: Uh, yeah, sure. Diving out of the—yeah, I really don’t want to be in there.

AUSTIN: [laughs] Give me—so Prowess is how you resist.

ART: Okay.

AUSTIN: You resist by picking one of your three attributes: either Insight, which is like thinking and seeing ahead, Prowess, which is like body stuff, or Resolve, which is like willpower. You have two in Prowess, and so what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna roll 2d6 and what we do is, you’re gonna take six stress minus whatever your highest roll is. So.

ART: Fuck.

AUSTIN: Click on Prowess...that’s a six! You take no stress. Boom! In fact—oh no, you didn’t get two sixes so you don’t get to clear a stress but you take no stress, you dive out of the way, do you dive like through its feet and behind it? What do you do?

ART: Yeah, through and behind sounds good. Do we get a gambit from that?

AUSTIN: Do you get a gambit on—I don’t know if you get a gambit from resistance rolls. Um, I’m going to check [typing]. I know you get them from action rolls; I don’t know if you get them from—you only get them from action rolls, I think.

ART: Alright, well.

AUSTIN: I’m checking the resistance roll but I think it’s only from those. Unfortunately, sorry.

ART: No, it’s cool.

AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, you are now safe and sound. [Laughs] For now at least. As—and then you look up and there is netting that has netted together fourteen of these other robots and they’re all like, [hissing foley] “rahhh, kwarahh, kwarahhh,” and trying to get out. They can’t, but they’re like, right above you [laughs]; it is scary. I mean they’re way high up above you, this is a forty-foot long—or tall—building—or uh, floor—but boy, it’s spooky to look up there and see that shit.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: I think at this moment, Waltz draws both of his pistols, Fourteen, and like, I think the two of you basically have like a bit of—a little bit of a skirmish. He is a higher tier of enemy than what we’ve dealt with on this show at this point in Scum and Villainy.

JACK: Mhm.

AUSTIN: Which is to say that—

KEITH: You’re talking about award-winning bounty hunter Waltz Tango Cache is a higher tier?

AUSTIN: Yes, I literally have—here’s what I have written down for my notes on Waltz Tango Cache is, “The greatest mercenary in the fleet-slash-system,” and then, “Everything’s a competition,” which is his favorite [Jack laughs], his favorite—the first thing he said on this show was, “Everything’s a competition.” So.

JACK: Yeah.

KEITH: He also is canonically award-winning.

AUSTIN: He is. That is true, yes.

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: In the des—yes [laughs], that is absolutely true.

KEITH: I said that when I was playing Waltz Tango Cache.

AUSTIN: [laughing] That’s correct, he has won awards, I forgot. And so he pulls these pistols out and engages with you directly, and kind of puts you on the back foot, Fourteen. So you have this baton and he’s not like—he doesn’t have guns that he shoots, he has guns that he like, does gun-kata style shit with, like he is using them like batons [Jack sighs]. So he’s like catching your teleporting baton, and then like, you’re teleporting it to be past his guns, and he’s ducking under your swing, and then he’s like wrapping them around. And so, what do you do? If you don’t do something, he’s going to get you with whatever these things do when he pulls the trigger. Maybe he does pull the trigger and a bullet comes out, who could say?

JACK: Mhm. Yeah. What are the sort of—what are the moves available to me for sort of, like, breaking combat?

AUSTIN: So, you’re just looking at your stats as normal, right?

JACK: Yeah.

AUSTIN: What are you trying to do? Just make distance?

JACK: Yeah. Or sort of—God, there’s that ridiculous upgrade in Skyrim, where when you get good enough at sneaking you can crouch and enemies temporarily lose you.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

[Keith laughs]

JACK: And obviously we can’t do that, I love it very much. But I want—

AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s very good. It’s very silly, but it’s very good.

JACK: I want that sort of—I want—Yeah, I don’t know whether or not it’s getting distance so much as in the melee like, pulling things in front of him and then scrambling to a place where he’s lost me temporarily.

AUSTIN: So there is a thing called Scramble, which is partially what you’re describing, where you have no plans to—

JACK: Mhm.

AUSTIN: I think Skulk is probably close in that you’re trying to make separation and disappear, basically, right?

JACK: Yeah, yeah.

AUSTIN: Is that kind of what you—

JACK: Yeah, I’m trying to make separation and disappear.

AUSTIN: So that is—

JACK: What if—

AUSTIN: Yeah, “Skulk about unseen pickpockets, employ subtle misdirects or sleight-of-hand.” That sounds like sleight-of-hand and misdirection and stuff like that for sure.

JACK: Yeah.

AUSTIN: So you have a one in that; that’s a 1d6. Unless you want to do something else; again, up to you.

JACK: I’m trying to work out what interesting framing of this is, in a way that is fun.

AUSTIN: Yeah, me too. I’m curious.

JACK: ‘Cause we’ve got this great visual of the combat—

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

JACK: And I don’t want the punchline to that to be, “And then Fourteen runs away.”

AUSTIN: Totally.

JACK: ‘Cause running away’s cool, but it’d be nice to do that in a way that is like, good.

AUSTIN: Yeah. What if you—I have a good suggestion. What if you activate one of those discs on his chest?

JACK: Ohh! If I make it do the airbag thing?

AUSTIN: Yeah. Or you don’t know what all those discs do, but, yeah.

JACK: Oh, they do different things?

AUSTIN: [Amused] They do do different things.

JACK: Those things do different things? Cool!

AUSTIN: He’s got a Felix-the-cat-style bag of tricks, let me tell ya.

JACK: So here’s what I’m going to do.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm?

JACK: I’m going to throw myself backwards, as though I’m falling backwards. And as I throw myself backwards, I’m going to fling the baton away from me to hit one of his things—

AUSTIN: Yeah.

JACK: And then teleport it back into my hand again.

AUSTIN: Awesome. So that does sound more like Scrap than Skulk for me, but I’ll still—

JACK: Yeah.

AUSTIN: It doesn’t matter, you have a one in both of them, right?

JACK: Yeah, alright. I’ll do Skulk just for the fun of it.

AUSTIN: Alright, so 1d6, unless someone is helping or unless you are pushing yourself.

JACK: No, I think that this is—

AUSTIN: Just a 1d6, you’re just gonna roll that dice?

JACK: Yeah, I mean, I’m invested enough in the visual of this combat that I’ll be happy if it goes wrong in a way that is cool.

AUSTIN: [laughing] Oh Jack. Okay.

JACK: This is why people tell me off for playing characters like this.

AUSTIN: [laughing] They do. They do.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: Go ahead and roll.

JACK: Alright. I mean [sighs], if I were to push myself, I’d have to expend stress, is the thing.

AUSTIN: I understand. I get it

JACK: But is that worth the amount of stress that you’re going to make me in a second if I screw up? [laughs]

AUSTIN: I don’t know. You might not, I don’t know.

JACK: Oh, it’s like tactics, I see.

AUSTIN: It is. It is.

ALI: You can always resist!

AUSTIN: You can always resist.

JACK: Oh, I can always resist! Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll roll a d6.

KEITH: Can you resist? Do you have the stress to resist that?

AUSTIN: It would be very close. It would not be a good—it would be very close.

JACK: Fuck.

AUSTIN: He is—

KEITH: Honestly, sometimes you just gotta get fucking hit in the head, you know?

AUSTIN: Jack is—Jack has four stress boxes unchecked currently, listeners. The most you can get when you resist—the most that you can get is five, because you’ll always roll at least a one while resisting.

JACK: Mm-hm. Okay, no, I’m gonna—

AUSTIN: Oh! Oh! Oh! Wait, there was a resistance thing there. You already succeeded—Grand super-succeeded on his resistance roll, right? But, Tender, don’t you have a thing that makes it so that resistance is easier for y’all now that you’re in your mech?

ALI: Oh yeah!

AUSTIN: Yes! So you would actually get another die on your resistance roll, so...resisting’s gonna make it a little bit easier.

JACK: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Alright, so.

JACK: Alright, fine. I’m just gonna do 1d6 and we’ll see what happens.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

JACK: With these consequences.

AUSTIN: Risky Standard...That’s a two.

JACK: Fuck.

[Ali makes dismayed noise]

AUSTIN: That’s a two, that’s not great. So you throw it, and before you can—oh, I have a real good bullshit one. You throw your baton at him—he’s award-winning, we’re clear on that?

JACK: Mhm.

KEITH: Yeah, super clear.

AUSTIN: He slides—he, like, catches it in the trigger-space of his gun.

[Keith gasps]

AUSTIN: And then when you teleport it back, it fires. From the—

JACK: Oh my God!

AUSTIN: And what you learn is, they’re holding pneumatic pistons inside. And so you just get perforated by one of these pistons. Like, when he pulls the trigger, it’s almost like a pneumatic press just fires at once. And so you just, like, boom [snaps fingers], you get perforated right in the chest. And so—actually, probably in your hand, right, ‘cause that’s where you would catch it normally? But it comes back at a weird angle and just catches you in your left arm. Like, right in your forearm, basically. So we’re gonna use a—we really are the Chime today, this is a classic right now [Ali laughs]—the harm that you will take is a two, is a Level Two harm called Perforated.

JACK: Okay, can I—

AUSTIN: Actually it’s a Level One harm because it’s only in your forearm, it’s not in your chest. So, Perforated—or like, maybe not Perforated, maybe Perforated is too powerful—what’s a less perforated thing?

KEITH: Punctured.

JACK: Punctured.

AUSTIN: Punctured.

JACK: Can I expend armor here?

AUSTIN: Totally. Did you bring—yeah, you could spend two of your load to expend a point of armor. ‘Cause you don’t have—the armor costs two, right?

JACK: Oh, it does, it’s not two armor.

AUSTIN: Yeah, your class does not have a cheap armor.

JACK: No.

AUSTIN: You do have your special armor, which is when you resist with Insight you gain plus one die, or a special armor that you can expend for resisting persuasion or suspicion, which, maybe could have come up earlier.

[Keith cackles]

JACK: Mmhm. Mm-hm. Y’know—

KEITH: In the chat Art says, “Quick, someone send me a billion dollars worth of gross spider-machines on credit!”

[Austin and Jack laugh]

JACK: Okay, so it’s a Level One harm called Punctured?

AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Uh, yeah, punctured, yeah. Which gives you less effect—whenever you do anything physical right now, you would have less effect on those rolls, so—

JACK: Mhm. Okay.

AUSTIN: If you want to add that to your harm list, do you see it?

JACK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

AUSTIN: Cool.

JACK: I’m not going to spend armor on this; I think I might save that for later.

AUSTIN: That’s fair. I think he, like—you see the orb that is his head inside of the companion—the weird cube that is his head glow a little bit at that motion, which is just like, he’s appreciating the beauty of the back-and-forth [chuckles].

[Jack laughs]

AUSTIN: Yam and Gig.

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: I think Yam is getting tense; Yam wants to go help people.

KEITH: Okay. Um—

AUSTIN: What do you do?

KEITH: Okay, so first I want to do a flashback; I promise that it’s a zero-stress flashback.

AUSTIN: I don’t care if it’s a stressful—you just mark the stress if you want to mark the stress, shit.

KEITH: I don’t want to mark the stress. This is a zero-stress flashback.

AUSTIN: Okay, what is the flashback?

KEITH: It’s all of us together—

AUSTIN: [laughing] Being happy and safe.

KEITH: It’s all of us together, we’re planning this out, and I have something for Ali to say.

ALI (as Tender): Should we bring all of our mechs?

KEITH (as Gig): I can’t possibly see how that would help.

[Ali, Austin, Keith, and Jack all laugh uproariously]

ALI: Well, I’m going to bring mine.

AUSTIN: Good. Great.

KEITH: Okay, flashback over.

AUSTIN: You could spend the stress to have your mechs there!

[Keith and Jack laughing]

AUSTIN: You could spend one stress and have your mechs there! It makes perfect sense!

KEITH: No, it does, it does, I’m not saying it doesn’t.

AUSTIN: Okay.

[Ali laughs]

KEITH: But, what I’m going to do instead—I’m going to break into the lift that I couldn’t get into.

AUSTIN: Okay. So what does that look like, visually?

KEITH: This is—so my eye has little arms now.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

KEITH: And I’m gonna sorta to use my eye as a lockpick so I can get up close and I can see in the lock—

AUSTIN: I hate this so much. Okay.

KEITH: And so, my eyeball’s up against the lock and the arms are coming out—

AUSTIN: Oh it’s like a—it’s not like a lock, it’s like a door panel with buttons and junk.

KEITH: Okay. Well then—

AUSTIN: You can still do this with your eye, but you’re not sliding it—

KEITH: I’m still—yeah, I’m still fucking with it and gonna break into it.

AUSTIN: Okay.

KEITH: If I have to, you know, tear open a control panel then I do it.

AUSTIN: I think Yam just like, looks at you as you look at the control panel, and then it nods to you and gives you a thumbs up and then just rips it off the—rips the panel off so you can get to the wires underneath.

KEITH: Cool, awesome. I think this is a Rig, not a Hack, because it’s just my shit.

AUSTIN: Yes, agreed completely. Just like, one hundred percent. It’s definitely a Rig. This is the Mandati, this is the Gumption’s Gambit people, like—

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: —This is definitely a Rig. This isn’t—There’s an LCD screen, but like, a calculator one, not like a—

KEITH: Yeah. [laughing] You’re right, yeah.

AUSTIN: Alright. So Rig is—you have a 2d6?

KEITH: 2d6, yes.

AUSTIN: Alright, yep. You have a two, so yeah, that works. You have a fine—you have a—are you using your...whatever, your rig, basically?

KEITH: My just—just my two points in Rig? Yeah.

AUSTIN: Oh no, your fine hacking blade.

KEITH: [crosstalk] Oh, my fine hacking—well, that’s for hacking.

AUSTIN: I—

KEITH: I guess I could do repair tools, would probably be the rig tools, I imagine.

AUSTIN: Yes, totally. Totally, yeah.

KEITH: How would that change—would that give me a greater effect, or—?

AUSTIN: It’d increase your effect, yeah, totally.

KEITH: Yeah, I’ll take those.

AUSTIN: Alright, so instead of Risky Standard, it’s Risky Great.

KEITH: Okay. So I am rolling Rig...Risky Great—

AUSTIN: Oh wait, you marked Repair Tools already, right, down here?

KEITH: I just marked that, just now.

AUSTIN: Alright, you should be marking the top one if you want the ones that are two—do you see the one up top that’s a two-block one? That’s the fine one. The other one’s just like a regular repair tool, which you could also mark. You could mark it to just do it, that’d be repair tools. The one up top is the one that would get you the bonus effect. The problem is it would be—

KEITH: Okay.

AUSTIN: You’d be out of things to bring with your light load, ‘cause that would be your repair tools and your detonator [laughs].

KEITH: Okay. So do I—do I even need tools to do this?

AUSTIN: You do need—if you don’t have tools, I’m gonna say you’ll have reduced effect.

KEITH: Okay. What would—what does Great effect get me over—?

AUSTIN: So in this case, maybe you also can access—so it depends on what the thing is, right? I think in this case, the thing is—

KEITH: Oh sorry, I mean strictly mechanically. Does it change the numbers?

AUSTIN: Yeah, so it would be that it would increase the number of clock segments you fill when you succeed, which means that you can get through things quicker.

KEITH: I actually have Tinker, so I automatically double clocks.

AUSTIN: Oh shit. Okay, so what’s that do?

KEITH: Yeah. “When you work on a clock with Rig or Hack—”

AUSTIN: Awesome.

KEITH: “—or when you study a schematic, fill plus one segments.”

AUSTIN: Alright, so yeah, Tinker is basically turning regular tools into Fine tools for you. So yeah, that works.

KEITH: Oh, great, okay. Excellent.

AUSTIN: So give me a Rig.

KEITH: Rig...Risky Great...bonus dice, umm—

AUSTIN: You have no gambits left right now, I should mark that accurately, right?

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Because y’all spent them...that’s a four. Four is a success. It’s a slightly—with Risky, it’s not like a complete success, but it’s more of a success than a failure.

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: So I think you—with Great Effect on limited—I think what actually happens is you get the—I think you slip into a Desperate position here, which is that when you open the—you manage to get the lift working, y’all can get into this lift at this point if you want; it’s a big lift, it’s like—again, it’s like a thirty-foot tall—

KEITH: A room.

AUSTIN: —lift that you could fit two mechs into, right, two big-sized mechs—they have big mechs in this floor that are like thirty—you know, twenty-five feet tall—but all of y’all can get into it, but when you open it the alarm advances. And so it goes from a yellow alarm to a red alarm.

KEITH: Okay.

AUSTIN: Like, they’re not—or an orange alarm, let’s say. It is not totally locked down, yet, like the whole—you can get in this lift and go somewhere else; the whole place hasn’t gone into full alert, people aren’t putting on their combat gear, but this entire intake zone is now on alert, versus, like, before it was just this one room that Waltz was in; now it’s this entire first floor.

KEITH: I mean, good news: I’m leaving this floor [laughs].

AUSTIN: Yam is like:

AUSTIN (as Yam): Come on, everybody!

[Keith laughs]

AUSTIN: And the one spider-mech, the one oceli, turns to look at Yam when they say that, and begins skittering in that direction. Grand, Tender, what do y’all do?

[Ali sighs, hums]

ART: I mean, I’m willing to try and shoot it again.

AUSTIN: [Laughs] Yeah?

ART: I’m sure that facing the wrong way and aiming towards someone we know and like is not going to affect anything negatively at all.

ALI: I—

KEITH: I will also—I’ll say this: I’m not waiting in this elevator for very long.

ALI: I could have a sword, I could have an axe [laughs], I could have a not-gun solution to—

AUSTIN: You have two shots left on that thing, I think, right, Grand? You have like Mystic—

ART: I don’t think we’ve ever established that; I think I have fifty shots. I think it’s—

AUSTIN: Okay. I’ll go up to five, but I won’t do fifty.

ART: Three is fine [laughs].

AUSTIN: Okay.

ART: Two is fine, honestly, whatever.

AUSTIN: Yeah. You have Mystic Ammunition on your sheet; I think you need to have three for it to be ammunition, you can’t have one, right?

ART: Right. Ammunition, I think, is almost—

KEITH: Yam.

AUSTIN: Yes.

ART: —by definition plural.

AUSTIN: Yes.

ART: Oh, Mystic Ammunition says, “three rounds.”

AUSTIN: I added that; that’s ‘cause I added that.

[Ali laughs]

ART: So I have—that’s a thing I’m carrying, huh?

AUSTIN: Yes. But it’s free—

ART: Oh, it’s free, oh, okay, great.

AUSTIN: It’s italicized so it doesn’t count against your load.

ART: Somehow my coat does.

AUSTIN: It’s weird that your coat does. It’s still weird to me that it does, but it’s Fine which is probably why it does, because it gives you bonuses to effect.

ART: Sure.

AUSTIN: Tender, do you help this shot, or do you—what do you do?

ART: You can tell me not to shoot; you could be like, “I’m gonna stab them.”

ALI: [Considering] Yeah, I don’t have to? I’m like, I could—I’m in this robot and could act aggressively probably more efficiently? No offense.

ART: No, do it.

[Ali laughs]

ART: I’m not offended. People are good at things.

ALI: So it’s like walking away towards—

AUSTIN: It’s skittering—walking is so mundane, it’s so pedestrian [Ali laughs]—it’s skittering, loudly.

KEITH: I hate these!

AUSTIN: And like, you can see where the joints on all of their legs are, and there are eight legs because they are spider-robots.

[Art groans; Ali sighs]

KEITH: Does it, by the way, it does—we know it skitters—

AUSTIN: Yeah?

KEITH: But does it also chitter?

AUSTIN: Oh it’s like [chittering] chk-chk-chk-k-k-k-k-k

KEITH: Is it skittering and chittering?

AUSTIN: Ch-ch-ch-chk--k-k-k

[Keith laughs uproariously]

ALI: Ohhhh my God.

AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s doing both.

KEITH: It is both skittering and it’s chittering.

AUSTIN: Yeah, and you can see the cage of its—

ART: I quit.

[Austin bursts into laughter]

AUSTIN: [Amused] Y’all could help each other and then get two dice to roll instead of one, is a thing I’ll say.

ALI: [Makes inquisitive noise] Um—

AUSTIN: Unless one of you has more Scrap than I remember. No, each of you individually has one Scrap.

ALI: How do I even—I don’t see the—I’m on ship mode and I can’t c—oh you have to click to change it—

AUSTIN: It’s up top, yeah.

ALI: Good heaven.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

[Art laughs]

ALI: What do I have to roll to make—I guess it’s attacking it regardless. Okay, so—

AUSTIN: Yeah, I think you—You hit this thing, you’re gonna kill it, you know what I mean? [laughs]

ALI: Right, yeah, yeah. So part of the ability in this mech, and also just what Tender does, is that it can make—it has like—the way that I imagine it is that it has like, a sheath-thing?

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

ALI: That, like, is essentially like, almost like a blow-dryer [laughs]. And, like, it flips on and then can be, like, turns into a thing.

AUSTIN: Okay, cool.

ALI: It uses the Mirage?

AUSTIN: Right.

ALI: We were talking about a little bit. And there was that, like, if people remember, there was that, like, the first episode with the steam coming out, with the, like—in Mother’s Story’s face?

AUSTIN: Mother’s Story’s, yeah, yes.

ALI: So it’s kind of like that technology, but it’s like, it’s a tool now.

AUSTIN: Right, right.

ALI: So I kind of want to make like a sheath? Like a hook thing?

AUSTIN: Okay. I think you—

ALI: To just kind of like—

AUSTIN: I mean, you just have hooks and stuff. ‘Cause you’re a fishing mech, also.

ALI: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah [laughs].

AUSTIN: Trying to just save your stress, ‘cause you get stress when you make stuff.

ALI: Even if the robot does it? [laughs]

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ALI: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ALI: Even if the robot does it, sure.

AUSTIN: ‘Cause you’re making something from nothing.

ALI: Yeah, that’s a fair point, you got me there.

AUSTIN: Yeah. you got hooks and shit, so.

ART: The robot’s not making anything.

ALI: Yeah. Okay, then I’ll just use a fishing hook.

AUSTIN: Okay.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: Give me a Scrap.

ART: [crosstalk] Are you salty about this?

ALI: [crosstalk] Yeah, but I would love to stab this thing.

AUSTIN: Oh yeah, totally.

ALI: What’s my positioning here?

AUSTIN: Desperate.

ALI: [intakes breath] Ohh.

AUSTIN: Because the alarms are going off, and now, the people who were once scared from the gunfire and the, like, fake smoke explosion, are now, like, quickly closing in around y’all.

ALI: You do have a point [laughs].

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

ALI: What is the effect?

AUSTIN: Standard.

ALI: Okay. Okay?

AUSTIN: Unless you have—yeah I think that’s—Oh, you know what? No, Standard is right. Standard is right.

ALI: Okay. Any bonuses?

AUSTIN: Only if someone’s helping you, or you have—

ALI: Grand, you wanna help?

ART: Suure?

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: How do you help?

ALI: I feel like the biggest help actually right now is maybe getting out of the way? Just so I can, like, pounce on this thing.

AUSTIN: Grand is not in the way at this point. Grand is—

ALI: Okay. I thought Grand was in between me and it.

AUSTIN: No, you are now about to get in between it and Yam and Gig.

ALI: Oh, okay.

AUSTIN: It is charging down this room towards a big lift, where it sees a Torch unit, which it has been programmed to kill because Torch units are from the NEH and they are very worried about the NEH showing up to interfere with Gumption being rebuilt.

ALI: That’s fair.

ART: I’m not sure how to help here.

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: There’s always just—try to think about like what would happen in the Avengers movie. Like, obviously you’re not Iron Man. But, like, pretend for a moment that Grand is Black Widow. How does Black Widow help Iron Man in this scene?

[Ali laughs]

ART: I mean, knowing Marvel, probably like—

AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Okay. We know where this goes.

[Ali laughs]

ART: Okay.

ALI: They’re friends, they’re good friends.

AUSTIN: Uh-huh.

ALI: There’s a lot of ways.

[Austin laughs]

ALI: Moral support is support.

ART: Sure.

AUSTIN: Is there something you can do to distract it? Is there something you can do to—

ART: I mean yeah, right? I can try and do, like, the Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park? Where I’m like—

ALI: Ohhh.

AUSTIN: This is the second Jurassic Park reference [laughs]

[Ali laughs]

ART: It’s a very good movie!

AUSTIN: It’s a great movie. Which—so what is the Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park that you’re referring to?

ART: Where he’s like waving the flare? And then he’s, like, trying to distract the Tyrannosaur. The Tyrannosaur gets him, is the problem with this particular analogy [laughs].

AUSTIN: He doesn’t die though!

ART: No, he gets mauled by a Tyrann—I would rather never get mauled by a Tyrannosaur! [Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: I get you, yes.

KEITH: Well, this is just a spider with a jail for a head, so you’re good.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: Give me the—I think that that works though. You find a flare for one of the people who were, like, dealing with the crates, and you can totally throw it or shake it around to get its attention.

ART: Yeah, just like, “Hey! Hey!”

AUSTIN: Yeah, got it, good.

ART: “Look at me!”

ALI: Uh-huh.

AUSTIN: Alright, Tender.

ALI: So, one bonus die—

AUSTIN: Yes, 2d6.

ALI: —That I’m rolling…

AUSTIN: Desperate Standard.

ALI: [Dismayed] Oh my God.

JACK: Oh nooo.

AUSTIN: Oh, you failed. That’s a two and a three.

ALI: I did fail, a bit.

AUSTIN: That’s super-bad. So, it’s not a T-Rex, Grand [laughs]

[Ali laughs; Jack chuckles]

ALI: Wait! Okay, you describe, ‘cause then I resist.

AUSTIN: Then you resist.

ALI: You describe first.

AUSTIN: It is going to jump on Grand. And it’s gonna—it’s just gonna do a leap, and while it’s up in the air, like, it turns to face Grand, it goes like, [growling foley] “Awgwahhawah,” and leaps into the air, and you can see that it’s spooling some this gooey, like green gooey webbing, that’s just like—again it actually looks like the same stuff that the box—the crates—were covered in; it’s that same exact goo. And it’s gonna shoot—it’s gonna jump up at you and then goo you and then land on you so that it can swallow you into its brain-cage.

ART: God.

ALI: I would love to resist this, and I know exactly how.

AUSTIN: How?

ALI: So [laughs]. Okay, so, the way that I was picturing this originally was the horrible Unit One version of this, where like, Tender tries to pounce onto this thing and stab it.

AUSTIN: Yes.

ALI: So, because she’s already airborne, like, it probably shoots the goo but she like, knocks into it. You know what—

AUSTIN: Ooh, okay.

ALI: Like, catches it in the head and they go rolling or whatever.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ALI: What do I roll, is it Resist?

AUSTIN: It’s Prowess, yeah.

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: And remember, you get plus one to this roll.

ALI: Okay. Where the f—oh, oh, wait, I should have two in Prowess, right?

AUSTIN: You do. No, no, that’s not, that’s XP.

ALI: Okay, okay, sorry [laughs].

AUSTIN: That’s XP. Your Prowess is just like, you have two, it’s how many arrows are on the left-hand side of all your Prowess things.

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: So, do you see you have one in Scramble and one in Scrap, so that’s Prowess is two.

ALI: Okay. And no bonus. And—

AUSTIN: No, one bonus.

ALI: Oh, right.

AUSTIN: From your mech. So your mech is, like, channeling your ability to—we didn’t talk about this before but when you made the netting, that should have—we should’ve talked about the emotional space here.

ALI: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Guess what, there’s been lots of netting here; there’s been lots of people lifting things, lots of things—emotionally, this is a place where people do work that’s often very much about, like, picking things up and carrying them around, and you know, I think that labor in that way is definitely a big part of this. Anyway, so go ahead and roll your Resist.

ALI: Okay. Please?

AUSTIN: Try to get that six!...That’s a six!

ALI: [Sighs in relief] Oh, thank you God.

AUSTIN: No stress, resisted. So, I think in this case, what you’ve done is you’ve cleared—the thing that you’ve resisted is, one, obviously, no damage is coming to Grand [laughs], which is good. Are you just like, shoulder-checking this motherfucker?

ALI: Yeah, I think that I’m like—my body’s on top of it.

AUSTIN: Alright, cool.

ALI: Or like, my mech’s body.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ALI: Like, it’s pinned down.

AUSTIN: Totally.

ALI: And is getting stabbed?

AUSTIN: Ah, you—

ALI: Nooo?

AUSTIN: I don’t think it’s—you’re not gonna advance something on a Resist roll, you know what I mean?

ALI: Yeah, yeah.

AUSTIN: But, the path is clear for Grand to join Gig and Yam on that lift.

ART: And I’m so—

KEITH: That’s good, ‘cause I was about to go up. I was about to ditch you guys.

AUSTIN: [Chuckles] It’s a big, slow-moving elevator, right, it’s a big—

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Like, the doors have to open and close for giant mechs, so, in this case, it’s like—the door is closing.

ART: And I am entirely perturbed by Gig’s willingness to leave us all to die.

AUSTIN: Uh-huh.

KEITH: I trust my team!

[Ali laughs]

ART: Why?

AUSTIN: That’s a good spin.

ART: What have you seen?

[Keith and Ali laugh]

AUSTIN: Alright—

ART: What are you seeing that I’m not seeing?

KEITH: I’m—Listen, I’m seeing a hot new mech fresh off the presses, I’m seeing an assassin, and I’m seeing one of the world’s greatest inventors—

AUSTIN: There we go.

KEITH: That’s what I’m seeing; I got my team out here!

AUSTIN: Fourteen?

ALI: Was that all me?

AUSTIN: Wow.

[Austin and Ali laugh]

KEITH: Yeah, that was all you.

AUSTIN: Fourteen, what are you doing now? You have a hole in your forearm?

JACK: What’s the situation? ‘Cause I feel like I specifically did not manage to do the evasion that I wanted, right?

AUSTIN: Yeah, you did not. So I feel like Waltz is like—I think Waltz steps back over to you, you’re bleeding from your forearm, slowly picks up his gun, and he says like—he looks over and sees the elevator doors are gonna slowly close, the lift doors are starting to close, and he says like—hmm, what does he say to you in this moment? He says just like—hmm, I’m trying to get into his head, I’m trying to decide who he’s focusing on. I think he has to go focus on Gig. Um, so yeah, he looks down at you—he just picks up his gun, and he goes to walk towards Gig and instead he turns around and looks at you and he says like:

AUSTIN (as Waltz): You really gotta know who you’re working for. I know I’m working for the good guys.

AUSTIN: And then he turns and like—turns into a sprint towards Gig and grabs one of the discs off of his chest, and is getting ready to throw it at where Gig and Yam and now Grand are as the door begins to close. So Fourteen and Tender, are you joining them in this lift?

ALI: Yes?

JACK: Yes.

ALI: Do I have to deal with this spider?

AUSTIN: The spider’s gonna chase y’all.

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: But you can get in this lift.

KEITH: Wait, how is Fourteen gonna get in front of Cache?

AUSTIN: Fourteen is not gonna get in front of this—

KEITH: Oh. So you’re—oh.

AUSTIN: I’m saying, is Fourteen also ch—also running into this place along with Walter Tango Cache—or [realization], Walter [laughs].

JACK: Walter?

AUSTIN: Waltz Tango Cache [laughs].

KEITH: Oh, is Cache gonna make it into the elevator?

AUSTIN: Oh yeah. If—

ALI: Oh, so it’s gonna be both of us?

KEITH: Okay, yeah. Yam really shouldn’t have said anything [laughs].

AUSTIN: Yam was helping!

KEITH: Yam thought that they were helping, yes.

JACK: Uh, yeah, I’m gonna just, like, pick myself off the floor and start sprinting—

AUSTIN: Okay.

JACK: —After Waltz Tango Cache.

ALI: Yeah, same.

AUSTIN: Alright. I think we get the shot of all of you sprinting, and then we see Waltz fling this disc, and it hits the ground, and inside of it—like, it slides across the ground of the lift. And then smoke starts pouring out. And then the smoke starts getting incredibly bright. It’s like the opposite of—it’s the opposite of a smoke grenade in that, like—or the inverse of a smoke grenade? I dunno. It’s still impairing vision—it’s like a very long flashbang. The entire room fills with bright smoke that makes it very hard to see, and so we get this shot of just, this lift slowly going up with all of you in it, this weird spider-robot on the outside, like, crawling around this cage that the lift is in, and trying to get in, and you can see it poking its talons in through various holes in the caging around the lift, and then inside it’s just bright, white smoke that is just like—you’re inside of this bright, white smoke. And Tango, from inside of this smoke, his voice like, echos around in here. Again, it’s a big space, it’s big enough for, you know, two Gundam-sized mechs to be on board at once. And he goes like:

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): Tell me what you’re here for.

AUSTIN: And you can hear him cocking guns and reloading and stuff.

ALI: We should definitely just have this conversation, right [laughs]?

KEITH: Uhhhhhhhhhh. Yeah. Well, here’s the thing. I don’t want to get shot.

ALI: I’m also old friends with him, can I just talk to him [laughs]?

AUSTIN: Both—all of you have worked with him except for Grand.

KEITH: I’ve been him!

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: Well—you, yes.

KEITH: Can I tell him—can Gig tell him that?

AUSTIN: No. No!

KEITH: Can Gig say, “Hey, I was you!”? [Bursts into laughter]

AUSTIN: We haven’t done the season that’s just completely fourth-wall breaking.

ART: Season Eight, huh?

KEITH: Okay.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

ART: No, I’m just—That’s not real.

AUSTIN: That’s not a real thing. We’re not doing the Deadpool season.

[Art laughs]

KEITH: We’re—I feel like—I’m talking to Cache.

KEITH (as Gig): I feel like you’re under the impression that maybe we’re working for people or with people different than who we’re actually working with. We’re just trying to help out some friends. It’s not a big deal. We just want to get in and out and steal something. But it’s gonna be fine.

AUSTIN: Oh my God. Oh my God.

ALI: It’s, it’s—

KEITH (as Gig): Listen, I cannot stress this enough, we’re just trying to help out some friends. And they’re not on a side.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): You’ve got a Torch unit though.

KEITH (as Gig): Yeah, that’s complicated. Yam?

AUSTIN (as Yam): That’s me! I’m—

AUSTIN: And you hear Wal—[laughs] I almost said Walter again, what is happening?

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: You hear Waltz say like:

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): Jesus Christ—

AUSTIN: —He doesn’t say Jesus Christ, he doesn’t know who Jesus Christ is. He says, uh—[laughs]

JACK: Trojan horse.

AUSTIN: The Trojan horse, it talks!

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: And Yam says:

AUSTIN (as Yam): I, I’m not—I used to be NEH, I’m not NEH. I belong to the Sailors now. Sailors of the Ark.

ALI (as Tender): Waltz, hi, hey, we’re—it’s—we’re with Cascara again. We’re also not trying to be weird criminals.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): Tender, why are you—Tender, why are you in a robot?

[Keith laughs]

        ALI (as Tender): I’m here on this mission, um, great to see you again.

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): And I don’t care who you’re working with. Also—

ALI (as Tender): That was the whole thing.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): —You’re working with Cascara?

ALI (as Tender): You literally just said you should know—I guess I didn’t hear that.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): I meant that it doesn’t matter that you’re working with Cascara—

ALI (as Tender): Oh.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): It was a—It’s a saying, it’s a way you speak, it’s not—I wasn’t being particular.

ALI (as Tender): Well I also know that I’m working with the good guys.

KEITH (as Gig): I would argue that we’re working around Cascara.

ALI (as Tender): Don’t argue that.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): Is she alright?

ALI (as Tender) Yeah, she’s great.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): She hasn’t checked in.

ALI (as Tender): Her situation is weird right now. But we’re not—I—you’re—

ALI: I guess I don’t—do I know about the Gumption thing?

AUSTIN: No.

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: Fourteen might have put it together from seeing that picture, but that’s a reach, honestly.

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: Oh wait, sorry. Did Waltz say it to Fourteen? Waltz said it to Fourteen.

JACK: Uh, Waltz, said like, “It’s a really big day,”

AUSTIN: Oh, okay.

JACK: And then we saw the arm coming up through the thing.

AUSTIN: Okay. Right, yes.

ALI (as Tender): Whatever plan you have, we don’t even—we didn’t know that you would be here, so we’re not, like, interrupting you; we’re really just trying to get a thing and go, kind of smash-and-gra—.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): What are you here for?

ALI (as Tender): Uhhhh.

JACK (as Fourteen): Uhhhhh.

KEITH (as Gig): The perpetually-on—

JACK (as Fourteen): Oh no, no, no, no. No, no, no.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): The perpetually-on what?

KEITH (as Gig): The perpetually-on, uh, we’re, uh, perpetually trying to get—[bursts into laughter]. We’re perpetually trying to get stuff to help our friends.

ALI: Isn’t it just junk? Is there a reason we shouldn’t be telling him? Or are we for-real stealing this?

AUSTIN: You’re for-real stealing this.

KEITH: We are for-real—this is like a big deal.

JACK: Yeah.

KEITH: This is a big deal.

JACK: I have a suspicion. I, I—yeah. I think that he would probably want that object to continue to be in this place.

KEITH: Well, he works security here, so.

AUSTIN: So, yes.

ART (as Grand): Hi, we haven’t met, Grand Magnificent, how are you?

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: Are you, like, offering your hand—we just get the black silhouette of Grand in the bright, white, weird smoke-space?

KEITH: He, like, dusts himself off.

AUSTIN: [laughs] Yeah. I think at this point, yeah, maybe we—no, I think the smoke stays here for this entire elevator ride. And it’s going up higher. You’re passing through another level at this point. You’re like in the middle—

ALI: Can I politely be covering people’s eyes with my big mech hand? [laughs]

[Jack chuckles]

AUSTIN: Y...es. I mean, people also just have eyelids that they can close, but.

ALI: [laughs] Okay.

AUSTIN: Yeah. And I think your mech probably has sensors, so you can see where people are generally here.

ALI: Yeah.

AUSTIN: It’s not like, electrically-charged smoke, or something that’s fucking with your sensors. Waltz is definitely like vulture-circling everybody very carefully.

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): Pleased to meetcha. You’re the artist, right?

        ART (as Grand): I mean—

        KEITH (as Gig): He’s not just an artist.

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): I heard.

        ART (as Grand): I’m more in shipping these days but, yeah, that’s fair.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): Me too.

ART (as Grand): Oh yeah?

AUSTIN (as Waltz): And I gotta make sure that no one’s messing with this shipment.

ART (as Grand): I get that. That’s a big part of shipping.

KEITH (as Gig): Is it just this one shipment you’re worried about?

AUSTIN (as Waltz): They brought me on special for this one.

KEITH (as Gig): Oh, okay. We’re trying to get a perpetual motion engine.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): From?

KEITH (as Gig): That’s already here! It’s not anything to do with what you’re here for.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): And you want me to look the other way. After you’ve broken in on my operation and you’re risking my reputation.

KEITH (as Gig): You could even help if you wanted.

ALI (as Tender): We can lie and say that we were here for the arm and that you got us, and you won!

KEITH (as Gig): Oh, that’s great!

ALI (as Tender): And you won.

ART (as Grand): You can’t do that; I don’t think everyone realizes that, like,—

JACK (as Fourteen): Also don’t feel great about that as an option. ‘Cause I feel that that paints a bigger—

KEITH (as Gig): Oh, you’re saying you don’t want people to think that we stole the arm?

JACK (as Fourteen): I—

ALI (as Tender): Certainly that we didn’t want to.

KEITH (as Gig): Or that someone was trying to, you don’t want to think that someone was trying to steal the arm.

JACK (as Fourteen): They’ve got a whole project going here, I think. Um—

KEITH (as Gig): Hey, why are you so fucking sure that you’re working for the good guys?!

AUSTIN (as Waltz): You’re from Gumption’s Gambit, they’re rebuilding Gumption, what are you talkin’ about?

KEITH (as Gig): Well—

JACK (as Fourteen): Right, this is—

KEITH (as Gig): How do you know that they don’t have any ulterior motives?

ALI (as Tender): What?

AUSTIN (as Waltz): What?

JACK (as Fourteen): It’s your Divine!

KEITH (as Gig): Yeah. [whispers] Listen, why are you guys—I’m just trying to, you know [Ali laughs]—what is wrong with you guys?

ALI (as Tender): So we were kind of, like, Divine-Defenders with Waltz, so we’re kind of on his side here, but we’re super not trying to fuck with that Divine so we shouldn’t have a problem.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): You’re still trying to rob from them. You were gonna say “smash-and-grab”, Tender, before I interrupted you.

ALI (as Tender): [laughs] I know that’s what you—I know that you know what that is.

[Keith laughs]

AUSTIN (as Waltz): I do. I can’t just let you do one.

KEITH (as Gig): [crosstalk] I think everyone knows what a smash-and-grab is, that’s not jargon.

ART (as Grand): [crosstalk] Smash-and-grab is really self-explanatory.

KEITH (as Gig): Yeah.

ALI (Tender): He’s very good at that; he won an award! [laughs]

AUSTIN (as Waltz): The Fleet’s greatest smasher-and-grabber.

ALI (as Tender): He won an award for smashing and then also grabbing.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): Separately. There’s an obstacle-course.

KEITH (as Gig): He’s got a Smashy and a Grabby?

AUSTIN (as Waltz) I got both.

ART (as Grand): Do you have business cards? You’re incredible!

ALI (as Tender): I was trying to appeal to your, you know.

ART (as Grand): Do you ever need work?

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN (as Waltz): I keep a pretty filled dance card, thank you.

KEITH (as Gig): You dance too?

AUSTIN (as Waltz): I’m incredible. You should see me on the floor.

KEITH (as Gig): What kind of—what kind of dances do you do?

AUSTIN (as Waltz): I specialize in two, I’ll give you two guesses.

KEITH (as Gig): Uh, flamenco.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): That’s not the right one. Anyone else have any guesses?

ALI (as Tender): No, but I know this great diner if you want to hang out later?

AUSTIN: Is this happening? What is—

        KEITH (as Gig): Russian ballet.

[Ali laughs]

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): They don’t call me Waltz Tango for nothin’.

        ALI (as Tender): Ohhhohoho [laughs].

KEITH (as Gig): I thought that was ‘cause you, like, messed with people.

ALI (as Tender): Oh.

ART (as Grand): I thought it was a phonetic alphabet thing. I thought you, like, had initials. Oh, that’s risky, huh?

KEITH (as Gig): Listen, Walter—

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: If Signet were here, she could do the move to find out what his true name is, and it’s Walter [laughs]

[Keith laughs]

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): [sighs] We’re at a bit of an impasse here.

KEITH (as Gig): I mean, you can go back and do the arm thing, we gotta go do the engine thing, dude!

AUSTIN (as Waltz): They’re gonna view the tape and see that I came on here.

KEITH (as Gig): We’ll knock you out!

JACK (as Fourteen): Alternatively—

KEITH (as Gig): As a fakeout; we’ll fake knock you out.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): Alternatively?

ART (as Grand): What if we steal the tape? What about steal the tape?

ALI (as Tender): Ooh.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): You could steal the tape. If you keep going up on this lift, it’ll take you to the defense room, and, uh, on that floor there are—there is a security booth you could go into and get the footage. But the thing you’re looking for is on this floor; it’s at the far end.  

AUSTIN: And it is in fact, where Keegan marked it. Keegan Coldbreeze marked it.

KEITH: I gotta buy that kid a Slurpee.

AUSTIN: The kid’s alright.

ALI (as Tender): I have a proposal. Wait—Gig, hmm, Gig has a full dance card. Um, ‘cause I was gonna say, I know about hacking, he knows about footage, we could go get the footage.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

        ALI (as Tender): And you two can get the engine. And everyone’s happy!

        ART (as Grand): Okay, but don’t let Gig shoot a new version of the security tape.

[Jack laughs]

        ALI (as Tender): Ohh.

AUSTIN: Be Kind, Rewind-style, with cardboard boxes and stuff.

[Keith laughs]

ALI: Yeah.

ART: Yeah.

ALI (as Tender): He’ll just have to repeat the frames.

AUSTIN: Yam says, like:

        AUSTIN (as Yam): And I can carry the big, heavy machine!

        ALI (as Tender): See? Yam, you’re really coming through!

AUSTIN (as Yam): Doing my best!

KEITH (as Gig): Nice job, Yam.

AUSTIN (as Yam): Mister Cache, I promise I’m not with the New Earth Hegemony.

ALI (as Tender): And if he is, who cares?

KEITH (as Gig): Yeah, c’mon!

JACK (as Fourteen): They’re telling the truth.

AUSTIN (as Yam): I care!

AUSTIN: —says Yam.

        ART (as Grand): Yeah, that’s a horrible—“Who cares?”

        ALI (as Tender): [laughs] Sorry!

        AUSTIN (as Yam): They made me kill people!

        ALI (as Tender): I have some friends there now, I know, but, you—

        KEITH (as Gig): I just meant for argument’s sake.

        ALI (as Tender): —We should talk later. Um—

AUSTIN: Waltz like shakes his head and is like:

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): [wearily] I don’t know. I don’t know about this.

AUSTIN: I think there’s gonna need to be a roll. Like, this is a clear direction but there needs to be a roll here.

KEITH: I—so I don’t have a super high [Austin laughs]—I don’t have a super high, what is it, Sway? I have one. But—

AUSTIN: This can be Sway, this can be Consort, this can be Command. It depends on how you’re doing it.

JACK: What does—

KEITH: I don’t have super high anything; I have one in Sway, one in Consort. But I do have Mechanic’s Heart, which is when I speak from my heart, “Your words can reach even the most hardened criminal and you gain potency.”

ALI: Ooh.

AUSTIN: So that would give you plus one on effect there.

KEITH: Yeah.

JACK: What is Consort? That’s like—

AUSTIN: So Consort is—

JACK: Using contacts, and—

AUSTIN: Yeah it is. “You Consort with connections from your heritage, background, friends, or rivals to gain access to resources, information, people, or places.” This could totally be Consort.

JACK: Huh.

ALI: Yeah, this feels like Consort.

AUSTIN: You’re talking with a friends, you’re not tricking them.

JACK: Yeah.

AUSTIN: You’re not saying, “Hey, I have a different thing,” so like yeah, this could be a Consort, Fourteen.

JACK: So I reckon what I say—and there’s still just smoke everywhere, like, we can’t see each other as we’re negotiating this [chuckles].

AUSTIN: Yeah.

JACK: I guess Waltz can. It’s just like:

JACK (as Fourteen): It was good working with you before. And I wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to work with you again. We’re trying to make something out of this place. And we’re trying to make something with the people who have found themselves in it. We’re trying to make homes. And we’re trying to find what homes are here. And I don’t want to be the one standing in a load of electric-blending smoke promising you that we’ll be able to find something for you, but if this goes badly for you, we can try and put in as much of a word as we can in with our bosses. We have a great ship. We have a fantastic ship.

AUSTIN: Give me a—give me a Consort.

JACK: Okay. Consort. Risky…Standard...no extra dice.

AUSTIN: Yeah. No extra—no one’s helping, I guess, again, no one else is—

ALI: I think I am?

AUSTIN: Okay.

ALI: I think my presence is, like—

AUSTIN: What do you say? I need words. I think presence helps but like, words help more, especially in white-smoke places.

ALI: Okay [laughs]. I feel like I said a bunch already during the conversation!

AUSTIN: You did, you did, but this is—

ALI: Right.

AUSTIN: —You’re pulling the trigger, right?

        KEITH (as Gig): [whispers] Tell him about the—tell him that it’s for kids!

[Austin laughs]

ALI: I don’t know, well—

AUSTIN (as Waltz): Waltz Tango Cache loves kids.

[Ali laughs]

KEITH (as Gig): We’re trying to help kids! We’re trying to help just some kids!  

ALI (as Tender): We are helping some kids.

AUSTIN: Is that what you say, Tender?

        ALI (as Tender): And I’ll tell Cascara to give you a call.

AUSTIN: Alright, give me a roll. 3d6—or 2d6 plus one.

ART: Seriously, Waltz Tango Cache is like the Animaniacs’ Jack Nicholson impression.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN (as Waltz): I’m doing my best, I’ve never seen Jack Nicholson for real…

[Keith gasps]

AUSTIN: Oh, buddy. Oh, pal.

JACK: I rolled three dice.

[Ali gasps]

AUSTIN: Uh-huh.

ART: I haven’t seen yet, I’m gonna click over to the tab where—

ALI: Oh my God.

ART: —I can see this, and oh my goodness.

JACK: Oh my God.

ALI: I’m so mad.

KEITH: Yeah, it’s bad.

JACK: I rolled three dice. One of them is a two, and the rest of them are ones. Jesus Christ.

ALI: I can’t—

JACK: This is one of these ones where the dice just do stuff.

AUSTIN: Here’s what he does—

ALI: I’m so sad about how he feels about us.

AUSTIN: That’s not what it is.

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: That’s not what it is. He’s like:

AUSTIN (as Waltz): [sighs] It seems like you’re doing right by whoever you’re working with. And, uh, I want to help you. But I can’t just walk away. So.

AUSTIN: And he like, reaches to one his—one of the discs on his chest, and he, like, holds it out and he, with his other hand he hits a button and on his chest a communicator turns on and he says:

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): They got me trapped in here!

AUSTIN: And then he hits the disc, and his arm blows off, and gets flung out of the whole fucking lift and down to the bottom of this floor, and the entire place goes into red alert but you’re free to go.

[Ali sniffles]

AUSTIN: So, you get what you wanted! But, this is the only way—

JACK: Oh, it’s the worst one! It’s the Austin Walker special!

AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Which is, yeah, you win, you got it!

KEITH: [laughs] Oh boy.

AUSTIN: But he has to protect his rep, you know?

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Also, because I’m not a cruel person, the explosion destroys the last spider-robot.

[Ali laughs]

JACK: Also, just—if this is something that is deliberate, feel free to say, and we can go ahead with it—

AUSTIN: Mm-hm?

JACK: Have we just killed Waltz Tango Cache?

AUSTIN: No, no, no, no.

ALI: No.

JACK: Okay, cool. I would—

AUSTIN: His name is Cache because he’s invi—because he’s immortal. Like—

KEITH: He’s got a backup.

AUSTIN: Unless someone destroys his backup’s backup. And also, I don’t think this kills him, I think just, like—

JACK: Yeah, cool. I just didn’t know if we were supposed to read, like, his arm was blown off and he’s fallen out of an elevator, and that was the end of Waltz.

AUSTIN: He’s fallen out of a giant, forty-foot long elevator, but like, no—

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: He’ll be—we get the shot of like, you know, people rushing to him inside of this main vehicle construction service place, and roboticists, like medical roboticists [Jack laughs], coming on their way. But yeah, you’re about—half of you are about to get to the defenses and, like, that room, and the other half have to really hurry and get this to this power and engines room.

JACK: Jesus.

ALI: Oh wait, do we still have to do that?

AUSTIN: I mean, I guess not, you could now not go to the defenses, right?

ALI: Yeah, ‘cause his story is fine.

JACK: I mean, although—

AUSTIN: Yeah, at this point, his story would hold up.

JACK: Wouldn’t they have the tapes of him talking in the elevator?

AUSTIN: No, he has this weird white smoke.

KEITH: It’s a visual-only tape?

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ALI: Yeah.

AUSTIN: He’s fine, he’s good at this.

JACK: Okay [laughs].

AUSTIN: Y’all only got to see what like three of his discs did, he had like six discs.

KEITH: That’s so many discs!

AUSTIN: He got a sick disc changer in the trunk, like he’s ready to go!

[Jack laughs]

ALI: He’s super gonna hang out with us later.

AUSTIN: [laughs] Okay.

ALI: I’m texting him now!

AUSTIN: [laughs] Oh, okay.

KEITH: Yeah, he blew off his arm but it was really just the arm of the container that holds him.

JACK: Is that the first, is that the first farewell to arms—

AUSTIN: [crosstalk] Oh shit, he does say one more thing! Oh—

ALI: Hmm?

AUSTIN: Wait, is it the first farewell to arms? Is that—Friends at the Table, AKA Farewell to Arms.

JACK: [crosstalk] My partner’s tagline for this show.

ALI: [crosstalk] So we had two arms this episode.

AUSTIN: The first season—or the first episode of this season—had arms.

JACK: Oh, I meant post-Miracle.

AUSTIN: Yes, this is the first post-Miracle arm. You got shot in the arm, there was an arm coming through a tube, we got this arm blowing off. Um, before he does it, he does say one thing; I’m gonna flashback. And like, he’s like getting ready to do it and he says:

AUSTIN (as Waltz): Quick word of advice—

KEITH: We’re not hanging out later.

AUSTIN (as Waltz): We’re definitely not hanging out—Hey, let’s go and get milkshakes.

AUSTIN: No, he says:

        AUSTIN (as Waltz): Be careful of the Waking Cadent.

AUSTIN: And then he hits the button and he says, you know, “They got me trapped in here,” boom, blow, boom, [claps hands] gone.

KEITH: Did he say Waking Caden?

ALI: Yeah. Waking CadenT.

AUSTIN: Cadent.

JACK: Cadent.

KEITH: Oh.

AUSTIN: Yes. Which is one of the factions.

KEITH: That makes more sense.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: Alright, so what do y’all do? You going for this powers and engines thing?

ALI: I would love to.

AUSTIN: Alright, so I think this is just a chase sequence, basically. You have to get into Power and Engines, you have to get this thing, and you have to get back. So, I’m gonna start a clock and then we’re gonna—this is the final step of this heist. I think this is just like a cool chase sequence through this main, like, giant garage, where there’s con—they’re working on spaceships, they’re working on mechs, again, they’re building buildings in here. It’s sort of like the Titanfall 2 level where they’re building a whole town, do you remember that level?

JACK: Mm.

KEITH: Oh, it was so good!

AUSTIN: That’s fucking so good.

KEITH: That’s such a great level.

AUSTIN: Except it’s not as cool as that because there’s just a single room where they’re doing that.

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: It’s a giant room on a giant floating airship, but it doesn’t twist around the way that one does.

KEITH: Yeah, that game has like three really amazing levels in a row.

AUSTIN: That game is so f—that middle section is sooo good.

KEITH: Yeah, that section is great.

AUSTIN: I should replay Titanfall 2, that game is great.

KEITH: And that last level is really good too.

AUSTIN: It’s so good. Alright, so, but what is happening is, I just want to paint this picture a little bit. You’re little people inside of—it’s like Jack and the Beanstalk, like everything in this room, everything in this entire floor, is built for giant mechs to walk around—like, twenty-five-foot tall mechs to walk around in—and everyone’s in their own custom-built ones. Like, so there isn’t even, “Oh, they all look the same,” so it’s like weird ones with giant arm-pads and other ones that hover around on hoverfeet, and other ones—like for a moment you think you’re seeing a giant spider-mech, except it’s just a giant—like the person’s giant mech that has spider legs that are gigantic, that are ten feet tall, and they’re just like going about their business except that then the alarm then goes off and everyone’s scattering all over the place and you start to get these other like fifteen-foot-tall security mechs that drop down from the same elevator shaft that you are leaving in, and so you are—y’all are in a race to the Power and Engines place as smoke is pouring out and alarms are going off, so again I’m gonna drop this.

It’s a—this is a Race clock, a set of Race clocks, and so the way that these work are, “Create two opposed clocks to represent the chase. The PCs might have a progress clock called—”. In this case we’re gonna have one called, uh—let’s get this nice six-sided one here, I’ll just put this in the token layer—this is [typing] “Retrieve and install the—what is it called?—a perpetual motion device, yep, okay. Or engine—PME,”...save changes and let you actually see that nameplate…So that’s yous, you have to fill that one. But you’re also going to have one to deal with called “Being chased by Mandati defenses” [typing]...defense force. So we’re pretty much abstracting this because of time, but also, yeah, I think stylistically the heart of this mission was dealing with Waltz Tango Cache, right, and you’ve done that now, and so the rest of this is going to be a pretty fast-paced, like “get the loot, smash-and-grab.” You’re gonna do the smash-and-grab! So, as you’re running through this place, you’re being chased by people; what’s it look like as you try to get to where the Power and Engine section is?

KEITH: Is there—’cause this is a big place and I assume that, um, not everybody’s got like a big-ass robot—are there any, like, vehicles that we can steal?

AUSTIN: No, this whole place is big-ass robot town, like that’s the thing. Like every—

KEITH: There’s nothing for anyone?

AUSTIN: No.

KEITH: Dang.

AUSTIN: It’s—There are people who are like—there are people in rooms above who are looking down at things, but like, no.

KEITH: Can we steal a big-ass robot then?

AUSTIN: You could—you could try, totally [laughs]. Some of you are in a robot already.

ALI: Mm-hm.

AUSTIN: Um, some of you even have—

KEITH: Yeah. I’m gonna—

AUSTIN: —had—yeah.

KEITH: I just imagine that’s the fastest way to get down the hallway, is to have big legs.

AUSTIN: It would, that would help, certainly. So yeah, are you going to try to steal a robot from somebody?

KEITH: I’m gonna steal a big robot, yeah.

AUSTIN: Alright, what are the rest of you doing? ‘Cause if you’re all doing this, then that can become a group action versus one of you doing it is just like one of you doing it.

KEITH: Yeah, do we wanna all—as a group do we want to hijack some big robots?

AUSTIN: Tender, you’re in a robot.

ALI: I’m in a robot, would love to [assist] any way that I can.

AUSTIN: Fourteen, Grand?

ART: Sure, why not?

JACK: Yeah.

ALI: [laughs] I could make y’all some rollerblades though?

AUSTIN: Oh, that’d be so fun.

JACK: Oh, that would be really good!

AUSTIN: Oh actually, so this is—you’re still in a Desperate position, Tender [Ali laughs]; this might be a good moment to do your fucking thing.

ALI: Which—I have so many things, which thing?

AUSTIN: The thing that gets you out of a Desperate position.

ALI: Oh. [whispers] I don’t know what that is.

AUSTIN: [whispers] That’s your whole—

ALI: Oh, [shouts] yes I do! [laughs; Jack laughs] Sorry, I’m sorry.

AUSTIN: Alright.

ALI: Okay, I’m sorry, I’m in my mech.

AUSTIN: You’re in your mech. You for—yes.

ALI: There’s so much to introduce but we had a two-hour conversation about this the other day, so.

AUSTIN: We did, we did.

ALI: Lot of things to go over.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

ALI: So we’re like, approaching the thing?

AUSTIN: You’re like moving through this gigantic super—like, it’s—when I say it’s big, it’s like city blocks long, right? So you’re running down city blocks, except the city blocks are a giant mech garage, and building garage, and spaceship garage, where they’re working on stuff. Like, and you see they’re working on the sorts of mechs that’re gonna go up and help rebuild Gumption’s Gambit; they’re working on—you already see a whole finger of Gumption up here—and I said Gumption’s Gambit, I meant Gumption before—you know, they’re putting together tons of like—there’s one section that’s just like, a strip mall they’re building that they’re going to deploy from here down the road, you know?

ALI: Um so—

AUSTIN: Go ahead.

ALI: The thing I can do is similar to the thing that Tender used to be able to to, which is where like, if I’m in a digital environment I’m able to remake the environment?

AUSTIN: Yeah, if you remember in the very first episode, you did it while fighting Morning’s Observation.

ALI: Yess.

AUSTIN: Like y’all were in space and then you were like, “No, we’re actually in a New York City soundstage basically.”

ALI: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Which is really dope, and so you can do that now just—

ALI: I would love to. Can I like—will it be us and the engine, or will it just be us being able to move through this space?

AUSTIN: You’re just gonna change this whole space.

ALI: Dude, okay.

AUSTIN: So what you’ll do is—you tell me, right?

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: I’ll just read this move so that we can be on the same page.

ALI: Yes.

AUSTIN: “Push yourself—” so. So. We get a shot of your—like, your HUD gets—do you do this on purpose, or does this just happen when it’s just like very clear how desperate this all is?

ALI: I feel like I do it on purpose.

AUSTIN: Okay. Have you done it before?

ALI: No.

AUSTIN: Okay. But you’ve like read this—you know what the system is, or—? Oh, do you just start to do it yourself?

ALI: Yes, I think that like, the situation is so desperate that I willed it into happening, right? Like—

AUSTIN: Okay. Right, right.

ALI: And then—Yeah.  

AUSTIN: We get like, more of those spider-mechs jump down from the—a different elevator, we get all the people in mechs are like turning to look at you and it’s like “Oh shit, there’s a bunch of things happening here.” And then we get the shot of your Heads Up Display and your face lit by it and it says “ReFrame System.” R-E—with a capital R, lowercase E, capital F—Frame—System, you know, Version point zero, or point—you know, zero point eight-zero-zero, and then underneath there’s definitely a symbol from the New Earth Hegemony there, and it says “Activate”. And then the move says: “Push yourself to use the ReFrame system to enhance your abilities as a stratus and architect, to reconfigure a large area as if it were a digital space.”

JACK: Oh my God.

AUSTIN: “When you do this, tell the GM how you feel, describe the space, and set the party’s positioning to ‘Controlled’. When you push yourself to activate this ability you still get one of the normal benefits of pushing yourself, as in plus one dice, plus one effect, etcetera, on any adjoining roll in addition to the special ability.” So it’s just like making that net before, except you’re doing it for a space instead.

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: And also, everybody gets to be Controlled instead of Desperate, which you desperately need right now [laughs].

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: So what’s—how do you feel and what does space get turned into?

ALI: I think I feel a little bit nostalgic?

AUSTIN: Mhm.

ALI: ‘Cause it’s like we’re in a really desperate situation, I just talked to this guy I haven’t seen for a really long time—

AUSTIN: Right.

ALI: And that’s kind of sad. But it’s also a little exciting, we’re all on this mission together!

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

ALI: Um, so I think that’s how I feel and I don’t know what to—I, like, what’s like—

AUSTIN: I mean, you just had like that—the rollerblades idea is kind of amazing.

ALI: [laughs] Yeah, I feel like that’s probably, like, it’s like a—as if it was like a roller rink, but like straight, because it’s just a [giggles]. You know?

AUSTIN: Right, yeah, yeah, totally. Totally. It’s like a long hardwood or something floor—

ALI: Yeah.

AUSTIN: That’s been waxed carefully or whatever.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: And everyone’s just recast—for the move that was this version of it in the Veil, was like, when you’re in a digital space, like if you wanted to suddenly be World War II, everyone is just in soldier uniforms and shit [Ali snorts]. So is this—is everybody suddenly in rollerblading gear?

ALI: Everyone’s in what they would think they would wear to a roller rink [laughs].

AUSTIN: Oh, thank God. Please, everybody tell me what you would wear in a roller rink.

KEITH: Um, you know those—

AUSTIN: We only have like seven minutes though, so.

KEITH: Okay. You know those parachutes that are like all different colors that you wave up and down?

AUSTIN: Yes. Yes.

KEITH: So I’m wearing that as a sort of shirt, with a cape.

[Austin sighs]

KEITH: Big-ass sunglasses.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

KEITH: And like, uh, they look like cargo shorts but they’re like dressy cargo shorts—no, they’re dress—they’re like dress-pant JNCOs [chuckles].

AUSTIN: Perfect. Good. Good. Fuck off [Ali laughing in the background]. Fourteen, what are you wearing to the roller rink?

JACK: I am wearing, uh, similar to what I’m wearing at the moment, except because we’re in the Mirage and we can get, like, extremely extra always—

AUSTIN: Uh-huh.

JACK: It is as though I am moving underwater. Like, my hair lifts up around my face—

AUSTIN: Oooh.

JACK: I am able to move very fluidly, like, when my feet leave the ground, they hang in the air for moment as though I’m swimming or treading water.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm. Love it. Grand?

ART: I’ve provided a photo reference.

AUSTIN: Oh my God.

[Ali laughs]

JACK: Let’s see, let’s click on this, let’s see what we’ve got here.

ALI: Oh, perfect.

AUSTIN: Oh yeah, absolutely.

ART: I’m the kid on the far left.

AUSTIN: Yeah, of course you are.

JACK: With the superstar [laughs].

AUSTIN: Can you describe that in this audio medium? This audio medium?

ART: Yeah, it’s a ringer tee. I’m not sure if it’s white or off-white, the lighting’s a little hard, I’m not gonna like actually find this—

AUSTIN: Uh-huh.

ART: But it’s a ringer tee with navy on the sleeves and neck, you know, ike a ringer is?

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ART: And it just says “Superstar” in like an arc. And then it’s like, you can’t really see it but I have to imagine those are some real nice jeans.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: Are you also standing next to American hero and hip-hop star recording artist Bow Wow?

ART: Yes, of course, that is part of the performance.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: That’s part of the—okay.

[Keith laughs]

ALI: Vision is being [laughs]

ART: And maybe second-to-the-right too, maybe in the yellow?

AUSTIN: You’re like a mix of these.

ART: I don’t know that I’m—

KEITH: Oh, so it’s a—

ART: No, I’m not like a mix it’s just like, this is my roller skate posse.

[Ali and Keith laugh uproariously]

AUSTIN: Oh, I see [laughs]. I gotcha.

KEITH: Oh, so it’s you, Bow Wow, and that other guy.

ALI: Oh God. Of course, Grand’s dream of going to a roller rink is like, here with my friends.

AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Yeah.

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: What’s amazing is that his dream is not being Bow Wow. He wants to be in the back. Like, he doesn’t want to be—

KEITH: He’s part of a badass entourage.

AUSTIN: I actually love this. Which is like, he gets a ent—he becomes part of an entourage. There are two other people in front of him now, that he is like, with as y’all are skating through this place; it’s part of why you’re Controlled—this is a controlled space. And they’re not real people, they will disappear once all ends.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: What the fuck does Yam look like?

ART: Yo, do a Google Image search for Roll Bounce because every outfit in this movie was amazing!

AUSTIN: [laughs] I’m doing a search. Yeah, this is all—this looks great. This looks fantastic. Man...

KEITH: But—By the way, we’re doing—we’re wearing roller skates not rollerblades right? We’re—

AUSTIN: No, because I think—I think it’s whatever you want, right? It’s what you would wear to a roller rink, right?

KEITH: It’s whatever I want, oh, okay. Well, I’m wearing roller skates.

AUSTIN: Well—

KEITH: Two by two—

AUSTIN: Uh-huh.

ALI: Am I? Okay.

KEITH: With a little stopper on the front.

AUSTIN: Yes.

KEITH: You know what I’m talking about?

AUSTIN: I gotchu.

ART: Far-left and far-right in the last—

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ART: —In the second image I sent are also incredibly on point.

AUSTIN: It’s very good. Yam just gets a helmet and elbow pads and knee pads, and is wearing rollerblades [Ali laughs]. And they are brightly—like neon colors. And, yo, Yam can rollerblade [laughs].

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: Yam is like, “Oh, this is fun,” and like, just gone. I think this is a group activity at this point?

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: That is probably a Scramble.

ALI: Real quick: hoodie cut into a crop top, like—

AUSTIN: Are you like—? Uh-huh.

ALI: —basketball shorts that are really short—

AUSTIN: Is this over your mech? Or is this inside of your mech?

ALI: Oh My God. [Keith laughs] I’m not out of the—oh boy.

AUSTIN: No, you’re in the mech!

KEITH: You’re in—

ALI: But I’m in the scene! Grand gets two people!

AUSTIN: You’re in the mech! You’d be big!

[Jack laughs]

KEITH: Someone please though—please someone draw a mech wearing short-shorts.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: And a hoodie.

KEITH: And a hoodie.

ALI: Can the mech in the scene just be my body?

AUSTIN: Yeah, I guess, but you’d be tall.

KEITH: You’d be big, you’d be twelve feet tall.

AUSTIN: No one’s changing—

ALI: I—Grand’s two people and I can’t be 6’3”, like Tender—[bursts into laughter]?

AUSTIN: There’s a difference between adding—We’ve described you adding fish to a pond already [Ali laughs]. We have not described you making a big thing tiny.

ALI: Yeah, but it’s—I just made a roller rink! An outfit! [laughs]

AUSTIN: You can be skating and your fucking robot can be flying behind you. But you won’t be in it.

ALI: No.

AUSTIN: See what I’m saying?

ALI: I—I think the robot has knee-high—[laughs] socks — [bursts into giggles]

AUSTIN: [gleeful] Thank you!

JACK: Yes!

AUSTIN: Yes.

ALI: Cut to a crop-top and basketball shorts and they’re really....really, short [laughs].

AUSTIN: I can’t believe it, I can’t—

ALI: She’s also wearing the same exact outfit inside.

AUSTIN: Right, yes, we get that, one-hundred percent, it’s very cute and good. [amused] I need a roll to progress.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: I believe—I’m gonna switch you back over so I can see what stats are—I believe this is a Scramble roll, and I believe that this is a Group Action—

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: —’Cause everyone is doing it. “Lead a group action: roll for each—” so each character rolls. “The best single roll counts as the action result, which applies to every character that rolled. Take one stress for any one to three result, including your own. Who is leading this roll? It sounds like Tender to me.

ALI: Cllllllearly me [chuckles].

AUSTIN: Yeah. It seems like it’s Tender. So, start with one. One die. Oh, except that you’re—yeah, that’s correct. So, it’s—oh, you get a plus one from pushing yourself. Yes.

ALI: [laughs] Okay.

AUSTIN: So that’s two—

ALI: Do I get a stress for pushing myself, or—

AUSTIN: You take two stress for pushing yourself, yeah.

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: Oh no, you don’t, no, no, no. Or, yes, you took the two from using the ReFrame system.

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: So mark those two.

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: But then you don’t take an additional one for pushing yourself.

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: You’re just getting that plus one. So you’re at two dice. Everybody else—

ALI: One crystal per mission.

AUSTIN: Yes. Yeah. Um, you are now just—everybody else is gonna roll Scramble also. So everyone just roll Scramble; it’s Controlled Great. Gig in the chat says, “This mission is so hard, those kids are gonna fucking hear it when we get back.” Please roll well. Remember that you all can push yourselves on this roll.

JACK: Yeah.

AUSTIN: But everyone’s rolling Scramble.

KEITH: How does pushing yourself work?

AUSTIN: You spend—hm. You spend two stress to get an additional die, or to increase the level effect, but you’re already at Great effect.

ALI: And we’re rolling Scramble?

KEITH: I’ll spend two to increase the die.

AUSTIN: Yes, you’re rolling Scramble, yeah.

JACK: I will not spend two to increase the die.

AUSTIN: What’s your stress at, Jack?

JACK: My stress is at five.

AUSTIN: Okay. That’s not as bad as I thought it was.

ART: I’ll spend two.

AUSTIN: Alright, so—

KEITH: I’m glad I did that.

AUSTIN: Uh-huh, so far we have a four from Gig. Which is a success so we know you don’t fail here. We have a—wait I thought—oh, you didn’t—you don’t have Scramble, Jack, woof.

[Ali makes distressed noise]

AUSTIN: Oh, you got a six from Grand!

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: Ali, you have to roll too.

ART: So we get a gambit.

ALI: Oh, oh, sorry.

AUSTIN: So we do—you are going to get a gambit, I’m just gonna see if you are gonna get even more.

ALI: Sorry, I thought that they rolled and I didn’t.

KEITH: So we definitely succeed, and we definitely—

AUSTIN: You super succeed.

ALI: I get the bonus die for pushing myself, right?

AUSTIN: You do get the bonus die for pushing yourself, correct. You get two sixes!

ALI: Two sixes!

AUSTIN: You get two sixes!

KEITH: Nice.

ALI: Bam!

AUSTIN: So, so, so, so, you don’t only just get that—oh wait, you don’t get extra because this is Controlled, not Desperate. So you don’t get a gambit from this, ‘cause it’s Controlled.

ALI: I though group actions, yada, yada, yada.

AUSTIN: It’s Desperate. Groups actions is when it’s Desperate, you still get—If a teammate assists you on Desperate rolls.

KEITH: Wait.

AUSTIN: Oh, you’re totally right! When someone leads a Group Action, if multiple sixes are rolled, you gain two gambits instead of one. So, there you go. Alright. So you get a gambit back. Or you get two gambits back. Hell yeah. So that is a six—you get two sixes, which is a crit, which we’ve never seen in this system [laughs]. Critical: you do it with increased effect, which is perfect because you already had Great effect [laughs; Ali giggles]. So you get more than Great effect here. So I think we do just get y’all getting in. I’m gonna tick this—you have this six-part clock that you have to fill; I’m gonna tick it four times. Normally, it would have been three but that is now four.

So y’all get in and you get into the engine block, basically. I think inside of the engine room, it’s not a rollerskating rink [chuckles; Ali laughs in the background]. Like, it’s just like [Jack laughs] you’re through and you’re like [relieved exhale], and you see this like—it’s humming in here with energy, because there are like forty of these devices. They are what’s powering this whole thing, and they’re all plugged in. But they’re just like big, metal—they’re almost like, um, I’m trying to think of what I can—you know what they actually kind of look like is little metal cylinders—or not little, they’re big metal cylinders—that have like ridges and stuff around them and are are little bit smaller on the top than on the bottom, but they have a flat top. I’m trying to think of what they look like it’s hard to even describe, but y’all can get in there and begin to pick it up. Gig Kephart in the chat says, “Were we in formation during the skating or was it a free skate?” Ali, what did you say?

ALI: I said, “We rolled so well that we’re in formation, and the best song is playing, and it’s ‘All We Do Is Win’ by DJ Khaled.”

AUSTIN: Wow. Good [Ali laughs]. I have emotional connections to that song now, because of Art’s wedding.

ALI: Yeah, same.

AUSTIN: It’s nice. And y’all can pick this thing up. You hear the fucking—all the robotic spiders are, like, trying to bust in behind you but you’re able to get this thing. So now you have it. How do you get out of here?

KEITH: Window. Jump out a window.

AUSTIN: I don’t think there’s any windows on the back of this thing, because you’d be looking out into where the engines are behind it.

KEITH: We punch a hole in the wall, and I take stress because— [pauses]

ART: You punched a hole in the wall? [laughs]

KEITH: Using the information that we got from Keegan—

AUSTIN: Yeah.

KEITH: —We knew where this would be, and we got a fucking—we got someone waiting for us to jump out this wall.

AUSTIN: Oh, so some—

ART: Keith, can I just draw our attention to something on the back side of this thing that’s close to where we are.

KEITH: Yeah.

ART: Which is this—

AUSTIN: Uh-huh.

ART: And this.

ALI: Wait.

ART: Wait, there.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

KEITH: That’s not markers for where we should punch holes in the wall?

AUSTIN: Those are giant engines that are shooting, like, jets of fire, but this sounds fun! [laughs]

KEITH: Yeah, my thing sounds fun, right?

JACK: I don’t want to accidentally crash Big Garage.

ART: I don’t want to die in a fire.

[Ali laughs]

KEITH: I’m sure that we can figure out a way to not die in the fire.

ALI: Two valid points.

JACK: I have an idea.

KEITH: That’s what the stress is for, the stress is for us figuring out—

AUSTIN: For the idea.

KEITH: For the idea.

AUSTIN: What’s your idea, Fourteen?

JACK: Well, the World Without End can reach this altitude pretty easily.

AUSTIN: I have such bad news about the World Without End, y’all.

ALI: Hmm?

JACK: Oh, did they break my ship?

AUSTIN: It’s in outer space currently.

ALI: Why?

AUSTIN: They needed to do a low-orbit drop [laughs] from it, so they parked it in space.

JACK: What?

[Jack laughs; Keith laughs]

ALI: Are we stuck?

AUSTIN: No, you can fly up there, with your mechs.

JACK: Oh, that’s great. I love that I just like, opened my communicator—

AUSTIN: [laughing] Yup!

JACK: —And just like, “What?”

AUSTIN: Uh-huh!

ALI: Wait.

AUSTIN: [gleeful] It’s in orbit.

ALI: Can Yam do the, the, the balloon?

AUSTIN: Yam could call for one of these balloons, yeah.

JACK: Wait, which balloons?

AUSTIN: It would be below. It would be—The ones that you took to the base to begin with.

ALI: To the Ark.

AUSTIN: Yes.

JACK: Oh, dang! What if we like—alright, hear me out. This is a bad idea.

AUSTIN: I’m ready for it.

ALI: Parachute out.

JACK: What if we BASE jumped onto a balloon?

ALI: [singsong] I’m already in a robot.

AUSTIN: Yeah, you’re already in a robot.

JACK: You’re already in a robot.

AUSTIN: You have mechs. I can’t believe we spent a week talking about mechs and—

KEITH: Well I—here’s the thing; I feel my mech isn’t finished yet. It’s mostly finished but not totally finished.

AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s mostly there.

KEITH: It’s mostly there so I didn’t want to unveil it until it was, you know?

AUSTIN: I get it, until it’s perfect, sure.

KEITH: Until it’s perfect.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

JACK: I mean, the thing is, yeah, is the thing here that’s it’s like the end of like in Iron Man 3, where we punch a hole in this thing and on the other side of it are mechs.

KEITH: I just feel like Yam carrying this thing would break a balloon.

AUSTIN: Yam’s heavy, this thing is heavy.

KEITH: Yam’s heavy, this thing is heavy.

AUSTIN: Balloons are good. Give me your plan and we’ll pull the trigger.

KEITH: Um—

ART: I mean the answer is to do all the mechs.

AUSTIN: Like, the answer is to punch the hole through the wall and the mechs are there already?

ART: Yeah. The Iron Man 3 solution.

AUSTIN: Is this, is this—Gig, is this another flashback for you, where after [laughs] after you said, “No, we don’t need them,” you wake up in the middle of the night and are like [Jack laughs], “Aw, fuck, [Keith laughs uproariously] we’re gonna need those mechs.”

KEITH: Yeah, it’s a retcon flashback.

AUSTIN: Yeah, of like, you and Yam programming in the catch route for them.

KEITH: Yep.

AUSTIN: Alright, good. Spend the two stress and they’re there.

KEITH: Maybe I didn’t even tell anyone else about it, and then when Yam breaks a hole in the wall—

AUSTIN: Yeah.

KEITH: —they’re there.

AUSTIN: Yeah, so spend that stress, you have those there, and y’all are—you punch this hole in the wall, it’s just like a giant hole—

KEITH: Big hole, yeah.

AUSTIN: And your mechs are all there. What do your mechs look like as you board them? I know they’re all these basic—they’re all basically these Angler units, so they are these modular, ten- to twelve-foot tall—like eight- to twelve-foot tall fishing mechs, that we’ve described in various ways at this point, so I’m not gonna go over it again. But like, colors, special shapes—

JACK: A one-sentence description of the mech?

AUSTIN: Yeah.

JACK: Uh, so, Fourteen’s mech is called the Watermark. It is dark green, sort of like British racing green.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

JACK: It is a humanoid figure of the fishing mech that is carrying on its back a sort of huge—like you might imagine carrying a huge suitcase—it is carrying large, cylindrical tank of murky water.

AUSTIN: It’s like the same size as the mech—like, it’s like as big as the mech—

JACK: Yeah.

AUSTIN: —the big weird thing on its back, yeah.

JACK: And it is floating with its arms outstretched, like it’s like T-posing.

AUSTIN: Yeah. Are you going to just jump into the weird tank?

JACK: I’m going to jump for the mech—

AUSTIN: Okay.

JACK: And Titanfall style, it’s going to just pick me up and put me in the tank [laughs].

AUSTIN: Okay, great. Ohh my God. Uh-huh. Uh, Grand?

ART: Grand’s is just the one out of the catalog.

AUSTIN: Right.

[Jack laughs]

ART: He just got a very standard mech. We’re still working on the particulars, I think, you know, there’s some upgrade packages, but it’s really just a very—

AUSTIN: Yeah, I think it’s just higher quality. I think with yours, I’m just like, “Oh, its crew quality is higher.” You spent all of your savings on like, the trim, and it shifts into gear quicker, and it just has the wood paneling, and the—you know?

ART: Yeah.

AUSTIN: The surround sound [laughs], and that’s it. Like, you didn’t do anything custom with it, right?

ART: No, it’s completely stock. Except for this, you know—I mean upgrade packages are stock, right?

AUSTIN: Yes.

ART: That’s still what it came—he ordered it from the catalog, it came, he put it in the hangar bay, and that was it.

AUSTIN: God. And Gig?

ART: And one of the features it has I think is—

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ART: —It’s hooked up to his physiology in a really good way, so he jumps out of the hole and it like, contorts itself to catch him—

AUSTIN: Ins—right.

ART: —It like opens up and makes it match and he like, falls into it.

AUSTIN: Okay. Cool. Um, Gig? Oh, what color is yours, Grand, real quick?

ART: Gray.

AUSTIN: Okay [laughs], great, beautiful [Keith laughs]. Really eye-catching. Gig?

KEITH: So mine is sort of like different rust colors, like orange and—sort of like rust to cream to orange is the sort of like, it’s—and uh, it looks sort of like, it kind of looks like it skitters, I guess, ‘cause the way that I have it in my head is that like, it moves it moves itself by like—it folds itself into different configurations.

AUSTIN: Jesus. Lots of skittering today.

KEITH: Yeah, a lot of skittering. It’s not a creepy skittering, it’s more like a, almost like a really fast stop-motion, you know?

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

KEITH: Um, that’s—yeah.

AUSTIN: Okay. Cool. And do you also get into yours?

KEITH: Yeah.

AUSTIN: And what color is it, what are the colors? You said rust colors?

KEITH: Yeah, it’s like rust colors, like creams and—

AUSTIN: And oranges.

KEITH: —oranges and browns.

AUSTIN: Alright. So y’all are all are in your mechs. I think Yam activates, like, booster jets, they like pop out of their back and their boosters are also in their feet and they’re just hauling this big heavy fucking thing and that is the thing that’s gonna keep this, that’s gonna make this anything. The only reason there’s rolls left is that ‘cause carrying this big heavy thing is gonna take a long time. It slows everybody down. Y’all could help, obviously, but even then, it’s a big heavy thing that you’re carrying, right? So, I think this is it, the last stretch is getting from Big Garage—if you look down at the map—from Big Garage back to the Ark, and you’re done. How do you do it? You just fly through the air, do you cut through the scrap yards—the Crash Yards rather—do you—like what’s this, who’s leading this?

ALI: I just want to say—

AUSTIN: Yes.

ALI: That in the interest of these children [laughs]—

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ALI: I would like to not immediately break out of this and go straight towards the colony.

JACK: Yes.

AUSTIN: That’s a good call.

JACK: Colossally, colossally, agree.

AUSTIN: Yes.

JACK: This is not the ‘rob God and go back to our house’ situation.

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: Hell yeah, good call. That sounds like a Skulk to me then.

ALI: Okay.

AUSTIN: Again, this would be a group action, I think.

ALI: Okay. I imagine the, um, the like, lose them in the Crash Yards is kind of a thing—

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ALI: —And then we’ll just kind of sneak out.

AUSTIN: That’s a good call. Fourteen, are you using your special thing to lead this?

JACK: Oh, the thing I can do?

AUSTIN: Yeah.

JACK: Because of my mech?

AUSTIN: Yeah.

JACK: Yeah! Let me just, read through the actual wording of this. So, uh—

AUSTIN: There’s two things here, kind of, right?

JACK: Yeah, um—

AUSTIN: So let’s describe actually, what’s it look like inside of this thing, like from your position? So again, we described it pretty quickly, it’s a mech with a backpack, and the backpack is gigantic. It’s like—the backpack is big, it’s like ten feet big, it’s like a tube—it’s a cylinder. You’re in it, with murky, weird, water.

JACK: Mm.

AUSTIN: Right?

JACK: So we’ve talked briefly before about like, one of the things we’re interested in in the back half of Twilight Mirage is ,like, this idea that there’s places outside the Fleet.

AUSTIN: Yes.

JACK: Or there’s places outside the Mirage. Somewhere, I’m not super sure where, there’s a lake on a planet, and this water in the lake has the property to like, retain information, I guess?

AUSTIN: Yeah.

JACK: But the water knows stuff, and there’s an old man who lives on the lake who makes a fortune [Austin laughs] by bottling up huge tanks of this water and selling it to organizations who might need something for one of these Watermark units. So what I can do is I can float in this water, where I can breathe, and the water makes me better at leading group actions or studying things. I essentially have access to the memory of this liquid, right?

AUSTIN: Yeah. Like I think it’s almost like—so the way it works mechanically is you have the Commander ability from Pilot, which just like gives you a bonus to group actions—basically, you get plus one Scale, as your group action, your small group counts as a medium group—but also you have a version of the Stitch’s thing; the Stitch has that ability called, “I’m a Doctor, Not a ___”, and that lets them— in this case, Signet uses that to use Doctor instead of any other thing as long as she can tell you a story about where she picked it up from. For you, we came up with a move called, “I’m a Lawyer, Not…” and you can “Push yourself to roll your Study rating while performing a different action. Describe how the Angler’s precise scanners, vast library, or many simulations allow you to do this.” Uh [typing], there we go. So, yeah, you can use Study to, for instance, Skulk instead, but you have to tell me what you know about—like, what book did you read, or what reference, what scans did you do, what special simulation did you run in order to be able to do that? So between those two, you could make a Skulk roll now for the whole team with your Study, or you could lead a group—you could also do the leading thing without pushing yourself and still at least everybody would be—would get the bonus, the Commander bonus basically, which is Huge effect.

JACK: Yeah, I think I’m gonna do just the leading the group action thing.

AUSTIN: Okay.

JACK: In part, because I don’t know whether or not this is a studying situation [Austin chuckles] so much as it is the Watermark mech kind of hangs back while the other mechs go streaming ahead through the Crash Lands.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm. And is like, plotting a route for them?

JACK: Like, Fourteen and Tender, are like, talking about what’s going on there, or what’s going on over there, or whatever.

AUSTIN: Right.

JACK: But that’s just from, like, hanging back, rather than any sort of particular studying?

AUSTIN: Right, yeah, I think that’s fair.

JACK: I’m still happy to—

AUSTIN: I think the Commander side of it is just like, this is the captain’s mech, this is the mech the fisherman would theoretically have used. All of these sets of mechs are, like all of the World Without End-class of ships have these ten Anglers units on them, and one of them is always the Watermark unit that the commander uses, and so you’re the captain of the ship, you own that ship, and so you took this one. And so yeah, I think it’s like oversight and basic stuff. So yeah, you’re gonna take this lead action, so it’s a Skulk roll, and it’s another group activity. So.

JACK: I gain—We count as a medium group here.

AUSTIN: Yeah, which I would—in this roll, the way it makes sense to me is like, you’re able to find the path quicker, you’re able to lift this thing more easily because you’re like [laughs], you’re just like commanding them to do better with it, right?

JACK: Well, I mean, let’s see how this goes.

AUSTIN: We’ll see. Remember, y’all have two gambits, and it’s a group activity, so everybody’s gonna roll Skulk.

JACK: Risky...Standard.

AUSTIN: Controlled Standard, you’re still Controlled.

JACK: Okay, cool.

AUSTIN: Which is very good.

ALI: Did we use all of our gambits?

AUSTIN: No, you have two, you have two.

ART: We got them back from those sixes.

ALI: We got two. Oh, okay, okay.

AUSTIN: Yeah, you have two, yeah, yeah.

JACK: Do we want to spend a gambit on this?

ALI: Um, I have no Skulk, so I’m going to.

AUSTIN: Good call.

JACK: Okay.

ALI: Stress is rough for you, so.

AUSTIN: Yeah [laughs].

ALI: So what was the position again, I’m so sorry?

AUSTIN: Controlled Standard.

ALI: [hums] Controlled Standard, plus one. [clicks]

AUSTIN: That’s a five, a four, so far successes are good. Gig?

[Ali and Jack gasp]

AUSTIN: Oof, that’s okay, the one doesn’t count, it’s fine.

KEITH: Um—

AUSTIN: I mean, you’re gonna take—Take one stress for that, Jack, but.

JACK: Okay.

KEITH: It was—Sorry, you said it was Controlled, right?

AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s Con—oh, wait, I thought somebody spent a—I thought you spent gambit, Jack, did you not spend a gambit?

JACK: No, I wasn’t sure whether or not I was supposed to be spending a gambit.

KEITH: Ali spent a gambit.

ALI: I did.

AUSTIN: Okay, gotcha.

ALI: So it’s down to one.

AUSTIN: So yeah, Gig, it’s Skulk.

KEITH: So the highest right now is five?

AUSTIN: Correct.

KEITH: Ooh. I’m deciding whether—maybe I should do a gambit? Because I have none in Skulk.

ART: It doesn’t matter.

ALI: After this roll we can take a—oh, it’s gonna reset, right?

KEITH: It’s gonna—

AUSTIN: This—if you succeed here, you will install this thing and this score will be over—this job will be over.

ALI: Okay.

KEITH: So I guess I’ll take the gambit.

AUSTIN: Right, it would reset, correct.

ALI: Yeah, our gambits are gonna reset so we should spend them.

AUSTIN: Yes, yes.

KEITH: So, Controlled Standard.

AUSTIN: Yep.

KEITH: Bonus die one.

AUSTIN: Yep….

[Austin and Ali make dismayed noise]

AUSTIN: Alright, Jack, Fourteen, you’re taking two stress. Where’re you at now? Two total.

JACK: I have—I can take two more stress.

AUSTIN: Alright.

ALI: Okay, okay, okay.

KEITH: That’s a real glass half full way of looking at it.

JACK: The thing is, I feel interesting stuff can happen to Fourteen when they take trauma.

AUSTIN: Yes.

JACK: I don’t want to take top-level harm on Fourteen, but I might be able to get away with doing some interesting with trauma.

AUSTIN: So this is an easy one in terms of—y’all got a five, which is a complicated success. You used both your gambits...so I think we just get that same sort of shot, the same style of shot that we got—actually, I think it’s reverse. I think we get lots of shots in this sequence that are holding in place, and we just see action happen past them. So we just get a shot from the top of a stack of old refrigerators inside of the Crash Yards, and then like, over top, we get, like, Gig and Grand fly by in their mechs, and then we get, you know, Yam flying past, carrying this big, heavy thing, and then we get the spider-drones chasing after you, jumping from pile of trash to pile of trash. And we get, you know, a tall shot—a high shot looking down at the various pathways through the Crash Yards, and we see Fourteen Fifteen kind of scanning it for the optimal route and telling Tender where to take the next turn or whatever, right? But, we also then get a long shot from Big Garage, and from there we can see the very anime-style, like the lights and the engine-glow from all of your mechs in the distance, and you can just see a blinking light on Big Garage as it picks you up, and like, notes the make and model of your ships, or of your mechs. Like, they didn’t see you fly away but they see you in the distance, they see you in the Crash Yards, and so I’m increasing Heat by two more. But then you get back, you shake them, you shake them, you shake the spider-mechs, you hide in—what’s a fun thing to hide in [laughs]?

KEITH: Oh, a playground is really fun to hide in.

AUSTIN: It’s like a—it’s not just a single playground, it’s like, for a football-field length there’s just a deposit of playground equipment. So it’s just like thirty swing-sets and, you know, twelve slides and, you know, four of those gigantic ball-pits [laughs], and you’re all just sitting there and Yam sits down, like, Yam is sitting down on top of the perpetual motion engine and everyone is just there. It’s like a deep breath moment; you’ve shaken them, you’re gonna get back to the Ark with this thing, it’s gonna be fine.

AUSTIN (as Yam): That was very close.

KEITH (as Gig): That  kind of was tough, yeah.

AUSTIN (as Yam): I’m glad you didn’t hurt anyone—well, you didn’t mean to hurt Waltz, right?

KEITH (as Gig): Waltz kind of took that into his own hands, I think. Get it?

ALI (as Tender): Waltz will be fine.

[Keith laughs]

AUSTIN (as Yam): Hm.

        ALI (as Tender): He’s award-winning, he’s gonna be fine.

KEITH (as Gig): He’s award-winning, also that’s not even his arm, that’s just the arm that he was using at the time.

AUSTIN: Yam looks down at their own hand and is like:

        AUSTIN (as Yam): His hand looked like my hand.

        KEITH (as Gig): That’s true. He’s a ro—he’s—yeah, good point.

        ALI (as Tender): I’m sorry that he was...like that, towards you.

AUSTIN (as Yam): I understand. When we first showed up, we were scared. We woke up one day in a pile, here. And—

KEITH (as Gig): In a playground?

AUSTIN (as Yam): Ha, ha, ha. No.

KEITH: [laughs] I love that when Yam laughs, it seems like it interrupts all other—

AUSTIN: [laughs] Yeah.

KEITH: Like it’s a recording of laughter that they have to play.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

AUSTIN (as Yam): We woke up here and some of us were like this and some of us were not like this, and we stopped the ones who were not like this. And Vanya and the others taught us how to talk before we had voices. And they were hurt and they were scared. And now they are less hurt and they are less scared, but I’m still scared.

        ALI (as Tender): What are you scared about, besides the, you know, obvious things?

AUSTIN (as Yam): I thought if we could be more like people, if we could be—I’m still a Torch unit, and even though we can communicate, even though we can communicate in different ways—sign language, voices now, I can draw—we’re still Torch units, and I can’t go outside in Big Garage. But this is my arm, and I don’t want to change my arm. This is my head—

AUSTIN: And Yam points to their head, and like, lights up the Torch unit flashlight thing, but only very lightly. Like actually softer than you’ve ever seen them light up before, like you didn’t know they could be lit softly like this. It’s actually really nice, you know, it’s kind of a purple twilight right now, and it gives a little bit of light here.

        AUSTIN (as Yam): I’m scared that by having us there, they’ll think that those are bad kids.

ALI (as Tender): I mean, it’s kind of why we’re doing this whole thing, so there can be someone involved who can help that. The world’s really weird right now, so, you know people are gonna look at you and they’re gonna assume a lot of things, and that can’t change overnight. But if we keep doing the jobs that we’re trying to do and try to make this make more sense, I think that people will start to understand who you are. And like, who you really are, not what they think.

AUSTIN (as Yam): I hope so. [abruptly] Okay, let’s go.  

[Ali laughs]

AUSTIN: And, like, it reaches down and grabs this thing that it’s sitting on and it begins to hover up [Ali laughs], and it like hops off of it with a little mini-hop and starts carrying it behind it. Like, that’s it, done with that conversation, they’re moving on now.

KEITH: [imitating Yam] Ha, ha, ha!

[Austin and Ali laugh]

AUSTIN: Um, and then flies back to the Ark, and helps install this thing. Let’s paint with a broad brush as we wrap this up. I think we get a shot of Vanya welcoming you back. I think they want to test it and they want you on the outside when they test it. Do you stay on the outside?

KEITH: Yeah.

ALI: Yeah.

JACK: Yeah.

ART: Sure.

AUSTIN: And they bring it up and we just get a shot of like, Vanya and Winchester and Yam and Garlic and some other Torch units—I have a bunch of Torch unit names I didn’t get to say, Orellia is there [Ali laughs]—I’ll save them; there’ll be other Torch units I’m sure [laughs]. They do have one big red Torch unit also, and that one’s name is….was it—fuck, what was it, shit—here it is. Salami, Salami is there [Jack laughs]. Salami is the one that was lifting Winchester in the recording that Alabaster had that convinced him  that she’d been kidnapped. What was really happening was Salami was like, tossing her up in the air, like playing with he, and that dude just sucks and doesn’t understand what fun looks like.

And they turn on the shield, and it blossoms. It glimmers into place and it looks like a rainbow. Actually what happens is, where the rainbow is in the center of the park, it, like, spreads out from there and kind of asymmetrically filters until it’s covering the entire park. And you’re on the outside and, you know, you can touch it and it doesn’t—you can’t push through it. It pushes back,it’s like magnetic force almost. And then they bring it back down and let you come back in, and like, Vanya’s happy to have you here now. What do you all set up? Like you talked before about wanting there to be people here, what is it that you put in place?

ALI: Um, I mean—if anyone else wants to say anything [laughs]—

KEITH: Wait sorry, what was the question? I—

AUSTIN: The whole—the pitch that Tender made was like, ‘we help them get this thing but also we’re not just getting them a shield, we want to get them more than that’. What is the ‘more than that’?

ALI: I mean, we wanted to get them in touch with...Cascara.

AUSTIN: Cascara. Right, but like, what is the pitch to Cascara. Other than there are these kids who need help. Because, you know, what’s your pitch for what you want? Like, let’s zoom out a little bit and say over the next week or two you speak with Cascara, you intro—Cascara shows up and you introduce her to these teens. And like, you negotiate back and forth, and there’s probably a lot of resistance at first [Ali laughs], right? And like, depending on what you pitch to me, I don’t know what we end up with but like what does the structure look like you have in mind  that’s not just a bunch of nineteen—thirteen to nineteen year-olds living in the desert look like?

ALI: I mean, I think that—and anyone else can answer—but I think that it’s like—’cause I don’t want to ignore the point that Vanya made that was like we—“if we are gonna have legitimacy we have to earn this ourselves.”

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

ALI: But I do think it is like, Cascara moving through the space and taking notes.

AUSTIN: Mm-hm.

JACK: Yeah.

ALI: And like, pointing out places where like, you know, she can bring an electrician in—

AUSTIN: Right, right

ALI: Or like build a thing, and—

KEITH: Sounds like she’s adding a bunch of fucking rules, is what it sounds like.

ALI: No, no.

KEITH: [mockingly] Oh, don’t play near exposed wires.

[Austin and Ali laughs]

ALI: I think, you know, that it’s—she spends a lot of time with Vanya specifically, just in terms of like, these are the sorts things that I can offer you.

AUSTIN: Right, and then Vanya kind of pitches them back to the group, and they decide as a group what they want and what they don’t, basically.

ALI: Right. Like, I don’t know that they need overseers, but like—

AUSTIN: No, no. I think they explicitly don’t want anyone who stays with them, right, or maybe they accept one or two people, you know what I mean, as like—I bet you they want—I think that they probably want someone who is an educator of some sort—

ALI: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Like a teacher who can teach them, but not like history, like first aid, and—

ALI: Like a trade school

AUSTIN: Like a trade school, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Exactly.

JACK: Yeah.

AUSTIN: And I think Cascara can probably set that up.

ALI: I think like, I don’t know, a big part of this that I kind of wanted to see is the ability for like, some kids to let their moms see the cool fence that they made.

AUSTIN: Mm.

ALI: For, like, those who want that, right?

AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah.

ALI: Or...visitation. Or like, the ability to go back and forth.

AUSTIN: Yeah, I think that’s probably one of those things that’s like—

ALI: That can be long-term.

AUSTIN: That’s what I was gonna say. I think we get that conversation with Vanya, where she’s like, over beer or something, is like:

AUSTIN (as Vanya): You know, a couple of the kids have asked if they can call home, and of course they can. But it means we’re gonna get closer and closer to needing to use this shield. But that’s why we have it. Hopefully, it doesn’t come to that, but, like, you know.

KEITH (as Gig): I mean, it’s a perpetual motion shield, you don’t—you’re not wasting it by turning it on.

AUSTIN (as Vanya): Exactly. And Keegan’s really proud of the crops this year, and, like, they don’t talk to their parents anymore but they have a cousin who used to run a corn farm, and [sighs] yeah of course they should be able to send a picture, right? So yeah, we’ll see.

JACK: And I wonder if there’s also like—I think a lot about, you know, the stuff we talk about when we talk about building communities, where it’s like, you should try and get some—extend the way towards best practices, where it’s like—

AUSTIN: Right.

JACK: —Okay, here’s what we’ll at least begin to talk about if one of us gets really ill, or like—

AUSTIN: So they—they do have those in place.

JACK: Yeah..

AUSTIN: Which is like, we didn’t do the tour, right? You know [laughs],  If this was the only arc we needed to do this season, we would have spent a lot of time [Jack laughs] viewing each of these five areas—or four areas—on the map, they would have walked through what happens when someone gets sick, you know?

JACK: Yeah.

AUSTIN: Like they—People have gotten sick here before, you know. But, yes.

JACK: I think just contingent for Fourteen at least is that we don’t fall into that trap of sort of saying like, “People will just be nice and sort it out, we’ll just give them the tools and they’ll sort it out.”

AUSTIN: Yes.

JACK: Like, it would be great, and it seems that that’s the case, that people are having the conversations of like, “Here’s what happens if Vanya gets really sick.”

AUSTIN: Yeah. Yes, yes. So Cascara I think sets up—connects them with resources for other autonomous communities, from people that are older than them, but not that much older than them. She also—one of the big things she sets up is, and I think Vanya encourages this, is if you want to fucking leave Gift-3 and go pursue something—if you want to go train with Sho Salon on Altar, where she runs a school, I can set that up, you know. And so, weirdly, despite the shield coming, you get a community that’s actually  a little more flexible and a little more permeable than it used to be. It’s like now that they feel like they’re protected, they let their guard down a little bit more, and I bet that there’s still gonna be problems, but they're in a good place. This is me the GM saying, you did the mission, you know, they can’t pay you much [laughs]. Cascara’s gonna toss a few bucks on top for doing this weird thing.

KEITH: We were supposed to get paid for that?

AUSTIN: Yeah.

KEITH: [laughing] I didn’t even consider that any of them had money.

ALI: We get that Winchester bad-uncle money, right?

AUSTIN: I mean, I don’t know that that guy’s gonna pay you for this.

ALI: Um—

AUSTIN: Like, you didn’t—

ALI: Grand [laughs]

KEITH: Well, let’s go fucking shake him down then.

[laughter]

ART: Sorry, we didn’t—

ALI: Do you not get paid for your jobs, Grand Magnificent?

ART: I mean, that’s not—that wasn’t the job; the job was to get in contact with—he didn’t talk to his person.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ALI: Mm.

ART: So we didn’t do the job.

AUSTIN: Like, is it really worth making her call this uncle she doesn’t like for a couple bucks?

KEITH: No.

ALI: No.

AUSTIN: So. I mean, you could still—

KEITH: Was that the—I thought it was just find her, I didn’t think it was—

ALI: Yeah.

AUSTIN: You wanna go b—

ART: And he wanted to talk to her.

AUSTIN: He—Yes. He wanted more—

ART: We can check the tape.

AUSTIN: You can check the tape. And if I said he just wants you to show up and say, “Oh yeah, she’s there,” then—[laughs]

ALI: Grand said all we have to do is lay eyes on her like twelve times in the last episode [laughs].

AUSTIN: Yeah, but that was Grand saying it.

ALI: Hmmmm.

KEITH: Yeah, that’s fair, but also, like, this guy sounds like he’s probably. a piece of shit, maybe he can pay us.

AUSTIN: Shake him down with those new mechs you have.

KEITH: Yeah, we got these new mechs. Hey, buddy, you got money? You got money for the tall kids? Tall kids in town.

AUSTIN: Be good role models. Alright, is there anything else, or should we go to dice? Or go to wrap-up, not dice.

ALI: Um, I—sorry.

AUSTIN: No, please.

ALI: Is there like an NEH thing that I can do for the Torch units?

AUSTIN: I don’t know, what do you want to do?

ALI: I feel like I would love to talk to them and see if I can maybe get permission to tell Declan about the situation.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ALI: And just be like, he’s also not with the whole thing.

AUSTIN: Yeah. I think we get a lot of scenes with—we get again, a lot of abstract—not abstract but, you know, montage—of you talking with them and setting up. Most of them, first of all, still communicate with sign, partly because some of them don’t want to have a voice. Like, I think Yam wanted to have a voice. We saw Yam really being into music, I think Yam wanted to, like do—Yam wants to sing, Yam wants to go “Ha, ha, ha!”, that’s a Yam thing. I think some of the other Torch units will eventually get those, but I think part of the lesson that Yam learned was like, oh no, talking—they don’t like me because I’m a Torch unit and because they associate me with the NEH. The problem with the Divine Fleet was never like, “Oh, people who only use sign language aren’t trustable,” like, no, that wasn’t the thing that was keeping them from trusting the Torch units, you know?

And so, I think you get a lot of—there’s a conversation with them signing to you, which you can read through your eye, Tender, and are talking about whether they even want the NEH to know that they’re alive in this way. They don’t know why they’re alive in this way. They have different theories, like some of them think Quire did it, some of them think that like—some of them think they didn’t exist; some of them think that someone on this planet dreamt up the notion of sentient Torch units and that’s why they came into power—or came into existence. Some of them think that they were sent here by the NEH as assassins and killers, and that’s why they woke up near other ones who were going to hurt people. And so there’s debate about that, they’re not sure if they want the NEH to know, but they’re definitely okay with you telling Declan’s about it—Declan’s Corrective, about it. I think we also just get them wondering if there’s something y’all can do for them publicly, but like, they don’t know what that looks like. I think Yam just maybe asks you, Gig, like:

        AUSTIN (as Yam): Can you show them I’m good?

KEITH: Yeah, I actually was going to message you during one of the scenes, if I could be—in case something happens—

AUSTIN: Yeah.

KEITH: If I could be collecting snippets of the Torch units be obviously not bad.

AUSTIN: Right, like helping them with farming, and like—

KEITH: Yeah, yeah.

AUSTIN: Heading out.

KEITH: I didn’t because we got into something, but—

AUSTIN: Yeah, totally. But yeah, you totally could have been collecting that. We’ll deal with that in downtime as maybe your first weird documentary thing.

KEITH: Okay.

AUSTIN: We’ll figure out how that works. But like, yeah, I think that’s totally a thing you could have been doing this whole time. Anything else before we go to the end of this? We just get y’all leaving? Right? Like flying up to the World Without End from down here, in your mechs. I think Vanya, like before you all leave, is like:

AUSTIN (as Vanya): The next time you’re on Gift-3, come through. I want to keep growing this thing, I want to keep, like—this could be, it doesn’t have to be Seiche, it doesn’t have to be Big Garage [The Notion begins playing]; there’s other ways to live, you know?

ALI (as Tender): Yeah.

KEITH (as Gig): Yeah.

ALI (as Tender): We’ll see you then.

AUSTIN (as Vanya): Gig, you should, like, make better stuff.

        KEITH (as Gig): You should fucking shut your mouth [Ali laughs]. I hate you.

AUSTIN: She laughs.

AUSTIN (as Venya): I’m serious. Like, I—you used to make dope shit, and now I want to see that again. I want to see the old—I miss the old Gig.

        KEITH (as Gig): [indignantly] It’s the same Gig, it’s the same shit!

        AUSTIN (as Vanya): It’s not! Dude, it’s not!

        KEITH (as Gig): It is, it’s all the same! It’s like the same thing.

AUSTIN (as Vanya): Dude, you’re living on a weird pirate planet, what’re you talking about?

KEITH (as Gig): Oh yeah sorry, it’s not cool to be on a pirate planet, yeah, you’re right, sorry, pirates aren’t cool.

AUSTIN (as Vanya): You sound forty-two! You sound like an oldie!

KEITH (as Gig): Cannot stand this place, I am not ever coming back here, bye.

AUSTIN (as Vanya): See you sometime soon.

AUSTIN: And you all take off.

[Music continues to end]