Okay, what's for dinner, guys?
Are you guys bringing in takeout?
Are you gonna go somewhere?
Barone is starving.
So what are we eating?
What are our options in this hellhole?
Yeah, I'll tell you what, uh there were definitely a couple.
There was a place with all of its lights on, there was a place with like half of its lights burned out, there was a place with pretty much no lights, and there's fast food.
I'll tell you what, Ryan, I think I got to choose last time.
Do you wanna choose what we're eating tonight for dinner?
How about the place with all the lights on?
You know, that rings so fucking true and I could eat a horse.
So yeah, let's get to it and I'll grab the keys and start walking towards the truck.
Great, you take the brain with you or are you leaving it in the hotel room?
We are not leaving that brain anywhere.
Well, I guess Del has it, so.
No, I think you took specific charge of it because of the call with Butterfield, I assume.
I think so, unless you're the only one who knew that it was of like, don't let it out of your site status, right?
Fair.
Yeah.
So knowing that we are going to go out to the wilderness this time, I think she has her her pack act like packed her M4s in the back of the truck.
Everything's ready.
I think before we go out into the public and she does have her backpack on still, I think she's going to take the brain out and she's going to look at down be like, so like I said,
I don't think I'm compromised, but I would rather oh
you know, somebody with all seven heads on their shoulders to uh maybe hang on to this and I'll hand the brain over to you,
How many did you count?
Yeah, I'll take it and I'll just kind of like tuck it into the side of my coat for now, know, swaddle it up in there until we have a slightly more permanent solution.
Um, you have a backpack, right?
I'm sure there's something.
Cool, great, awesome.
And then, yeah, now we'll make our way to the car.
So I don't have the brain anymore.
Who knows, Dell's got it.
You get behind the driver's seat and you take off toward the diner that you ate at earlier.
You get in there, same menu, order some dinner.
Barone, what are you ordering specifically?
Alright, let's see we have fish and chips and country fried steak and steak fried chicken, country fried chicken, fried chicken, um let's go for chicken and then I'll order country
fried steak, fried chicken and half a pizza no two three pizza slices I'm getting the works
Okay, okay.
Great.
The waitress comes out, she's still friendly as ever, calls y'all honey and darlin' along the way.
You get your food, everybody has their food in front of them, you're eating barone.
You start with maybe the chicken, right?
So you cut it with the knife and put the fork in your mouth and you take a bite of the chicken.
The chicken itself,
Whatever, it's not great.
But the feeling of the fork on your tongue makes you salivate.
You start to almost drool a little bit once that fork touches your tongue.
You find yourself, you know how when you have like a...
a sore tooth or like if you have ever got your wisdom teeth taken out, you can't stop putting your tongue in the spot where it was or you can't stop pushing on the part of your
mouth that is sore.
It feels like that as you lick this fork.
It's hard to take it out.
Interesting.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
I think I'll, try and maybe not make that known per se, um, that I have a sudden infatuation with metal in my mouth.
Um, but stick to the foods that require, forks entering, entering my mouth.
So all of the, like, yeah, all of the chicken stuff goes first.
I ignore the pizza altogether.
as I'm
Scarfing this on down.
Am I getting less hungry or just more uncomfortable?
You don't feel satiated, but you feel very full.
Like your body is fed, but there's some like yearning for you that's missing by this meal.
And the fork is, it feels, you wanna swallow it, but you don't, so.
Huh, interesting.
Okay, man, I forgot to even wash my hands.
I'm gonna get up and go to the bathroom to wash my hands.
Dell across the way, has it at all been like when a politician is in the back of a press briefing and they're blitzed out of their mind on cocaine and he's just like, like rubbing
his tongue all over the fork and he's just like, play it cool, bro, play it cool.
He's not at that, or excuse me, Barone is not at that point.
she, it seems normal.
She's eating a lot.
She ordered a lot of food.
You're maybe assuming how that she's super hungry.
You also saw her go down to the vending machine and get like.
13 candy bars and five bags of chips and some Slim Jims.
And this meal itself is big, but she slows down.
She doesn't eat the whole thing.
It's just the amount of things that she's eating is maybe weird, but Barone is also pretty ripped and yeah.
Hey man, it's bulk season for Barone, okay?
Yeah, I'm probably not judging.
okay in the bathroom after I wash my hands I'm gonna take one of the quarters from my pocket and I'm gonna put it in my mouth and Then I'm go back to the table
Yeah, you, without even thinking about it, you just swallow it.
What no shit All right Hmm, that's gonna have to come up later one way or another
Barone thinking to herself has never...
she's like thinking about how that thing could pass through and do some damage or not.
I think she turns around, goes into stall and relieves the pressure, if you will, of everything that she ate into the toilet to get that quarter back up.
Yeah, roll con and you want to fail.
I want to fail.
Well that's okay because no, my con is 75.
We passed by one, we got a 74.
Oh man, yeah, it's hard to get it up.
It's staying down.
have an iron stomach, I believe, right?
it's definitely not coming up without significant effort.
Alright, well I guess if you're that stubborn and you want to stay in there, so be it.
hm, fine.
And she washes her hands again and goes and rejoins the table.
Why not a half dollar?
Shit, man, I would have started with a dime.
Yeah man, should have just started with the fucking fork itself, right?
Agent Ryan, I'm curious, having your parade rained on earlier, how are you presenting at this dinner?
I'm pretty quiet.
I am not eating beans, surprisingly.
I opted to order a burger.
And I'm not super hungry, so I'm just kind of taking small bites and not really interacting much with everybody else.
Great.
Del, what are you doing for dinner?
uh
Uh, yeah.
I kinda imagine this place has a very eclectic menu where they're like, yeah, we could do that.
And so there's like, prime rib on there that they cooked like last Thursday.
But Dell thinks it's like a pretty fancy establishment on account of they have prime rib.
But it comes out like gray and lukewarm, but he doesn't really know any better on account of...
Prime rib is just like what they have in the movies.
It goes down okay.
Yeah, you get a prime rib.
It's the best prime rib you've ever had.
um Yeah, so yeah, it's delicious.
Brian looks pretty dour over there.
Barone is eating a lot.
Barone takes off to the bathroom and then comes back.
And are you planning at dinner or are you just gonna set out and start going for it?
No, I think a little plan trying to get Ryan looped into the Barone's idea of the little heist to steal the ATVs.
Let's try and build a little bit momentum on something that's like small potatoes and easy, you know?
But it'll make us feel cool.
Yeah, all right.
So on my thoughts early.
Oh, no, wait, no.
Yeah.
I'll have a banana split as well, please.
Thank you.
so what I was saying before, what we could do is, um, we know that, um, the Ranger station is, empty, here after the sun goes down and she peaks outside, it's dark outside.
So we should be good to go.
I have these keys.
There's three of us, one person to drive the truck, two people to drive each of the ATVs.
We could either.
go back to, well I guess we kind of have to go back the way that we did before and just take the ATVs, we could double up on one of them and maybe you know head out to the site
where the chanting was coming from.
How's that sound?
I love that idea.
Let's do it.
Yeah, fine by me.
I mean, it seems like maybe it'd be good to have a little walkie-talkie and visibility situation set up.
We'd probably be posted up there for a little while.
Maybe we just have some agreed upon protocols, what might call us to action versus observation only.
But yeah, I'm curious to see what Night 2 might hold.
Yeah, I think the name of the game is gonna be Stay Together.
I mean, we've seen enough of those horror movies where if you split the party, obviously you die, and I know I don't want to be alone right now, or pretty much ever again.
So maybe we don't split the party, stay pretty close, and find a vantage point once we park the ATVs near the swamp, I guess.
Yeah, yeah, deal.
Say, when it comes to that algae, if dawn were to rise and there were no nefarious creatures around and we had our way with that swamp, what occurs to you that you might do
with that algae, that being out there?
Hmm.
I think in war if somebody retreats they have obviously had it in their mind that they have lost and the will to fight has been taken out of them.
This creature did attack me but it did also retreat as it was defeated.
Del I'm not going to go out my way to kill things that don't necessarily need to be killed but at the same time this is mission number one.
If we need to hunt that down and that is our primary goal here.
You're gonna have to lead the way, but I can follow.
Well, I mean that fish creature...
I mean...
I don't know, maybe it's mighty in its own right, but it seems more like an underling, like subservient.
I'm not so concerned with that as I am...
whatever's bringing them to that place.
That algae, this network, the connection, like...
It seems like something we can't rightly leave behind intact as it is, you know?
If there were some way to...
disrupt this hive, this algae, this connection.
I don't know.
I'm looking for ideas.
Explosives.
Who knows what.
Yeah, I mean, Ryan, tell, do we have any of that?
We got a couple bricks, but I don't know what kind of area we're talking about when we really get down to it.
How about our pilot friend?
Maybe we could do a flyover now that we know where it's located and see what we can see from up above.
Yeah, I'm not opposed.
His window of waiting may have closed, not a problem to give him a try.
Yeah, alright, yeah, sure, let's circle back.
I can tell you right now though, I'm not heading into that swamp unprepared.
mean, this time we're mosquitonet top to bottom with a big old gun in my hand.
Like, in the nighttime, I'm not worried about coming across anybody and being passed as hikers.
Like, I'm coming for him.
Yeah, no, I think that's sound.
Okay, see, it just keeps ticking on my brain that we need to have a plan for whatever this amalgamation is in the middle of this network.
If it's not today, that's fine, but keep it in your minds if you please.
Yeah, for sure.
I say we get to next steps when we get to next steps.
Step one, get the check.
Somebody's going to have to pay that.
Step two, fetch the ATVs.
Step three, go to the swamp and hope for a chanting circle to give us next directions.
I think if we don't get that step three, then we figure it out from there.
Yeah, alright.
Yeah, I'll walk on up to pay the check and the woman's like nursing a hand cramp as she is writing out the itemized receipt for the bureau.
Perfect.
You get the check, she gives you very gracious goodbyes.
You get in the car and are kitted up and ready and drive out to Boggy Depot State Park.
It is after nightfall and you know the Ranger station closes by then.
So you just roll in and straight there.
Yeah, I think so.
uh Barone, yeah, with Barone driving, knowing that the Ranger station is closed, I think we go right on in.
I mean, I think we maybe stealth it a little bit.
And when we get close to the station, we turn the lights off and roll the truck in.
then, yeah, I mean, let's start from there.
Let's turn the lights off and roll the truck in uh once we get close to the station itself.
Yeah, you're able to flip the lights off.
There's no gate or anything.
Doesn't get enough traffic to warrant that.
And you roll up to the station, you see the ATVs there, the lights are off, there's no truck parked out there.
Okay, great.
I'll assume Dell's back in the back and I'll open the little slidey window.
Alright, have either of you two driven an ATV before?
not in there I've already jumped out to the side to go and make sure the computer monitor is off inside.
Definitely a no on the ATV driving from me.
Alright Ryan, I'll tell you what, you take the wheel here, Dell and I, clearly he's a man of stature so he's for sure done this before.
I'll scoot out of the driver's seat, grab the keys and start walking towards the ATVs.
Dell in the office, you see that everything is shut down and it's quiet.
Okay, yeah.
Just for future reference, is there a window that looks in to get a view of the computer?
Okay, I think that's all I was interested in, is just a quick peek.
Then I'll go and find Barone near the ATVs.
Cool, great.
I'll have put the keys in one, started it up for you, left it in neutral slash park, whatever, switch to the other one and start that up so you could hop on and we could go
with as little hesitation as possible.
We don't wanna be here longer than we have to.
So you guys drive to that original trailhead or?
Yeah, I think so.
think since, you know, she is very much about route planning and knowing where stuff is and being able to draw a map in her mind, you know, resonates back to her time driving
convoys and knowing the area and having a scout session done, if you will.
That's the point of entry.
We know where we're going.
We know where the hostiles were.
I think that's, that's our point of entry.
Great, you get up there, it gets to the point where the truck can go no further.
So Agent Ryan, you have to stop the truck and you're waiting to get out on the trail.
Which ATV is Agent Ryan jumping on?
I'll jump in with Agent Barone.
Yeah, figures.
hop right on.
um Don't forget your bag or anything else you need as well.
And you'll see she has her backpack on her back with her uh M4 strapped to it.
I'm ready to go.
Great.
Both of you roll me a drive as you're getting out into the swamp.
Sure.
No, 80 fail.
Oh no.
Alright, I'm looking for a 70.
I get a 32 success.
Great.
You don't.
crash or anything Dell, it just takes you a little longer.
Barone, you start out going first.
It seems like Dell's having some trouble keeping it on the trail and following you.
You're going probably a little faster than usual.
So maybe you slow it down a little bit to let him catch up, but you're starting to lose a little time to get out there.
It's not clear if time is important right now, but you're starting to get to the point where the boardwalk
is do you drive on the boardwalk?
Hmm, let's see.
Yeah, probably ATVs are I don't know 300 400 pounds which is roughly two grown people in this boardwalk is Supposed to be able to support much more than that.
So I think yeah, we drive right over the boardwalk
Great.
Starts again, rattling in your heads as you're flying over this boardwalk and you get to the sawgrass.
Are you just pushing through it?
Yeah, we...
well, okay, let's see.
When you say we get to the Sawgrass, so off of the boardwalk, there's kind of a dirt trail for a while and then it splits in the two directions.
And there's like a swampy, moggy area.
Is that where...
that direction, is that where the crash was and where I got assaulted and where we're heading?
Or...
Yeah, so you yeah, so on the boardwalk you can see in the distance the algae area of the swamp right off to your left and to get there it's pretty watery next to the boardwalk
with the ATV you'd have to go through the sawgrass and circle around to where you walked to it before you were assaulted.
Does that make sense?
to say yes?
Sure.
I think that the ATVs, we know there's a clear dry walking path from the boardwalk to the town and then there's the Moggy Swampy area.
I think we don't want to push our luck with ATVs.
We know that this is going to get us to the town and beyond and a quick escape.
I think we leave them on the trail.
Nobody's going to come across them.
So I'm going to pull up and park and say, all right guys, I think it's probably a foot from here on in.
well I was gonna take a thread out of my like sewing patch kit, very thin, nothing to it, and I will tie it tree to tree so that if we were walking back and we couldn't see as
we've stashed them off to the side like under the underbrush or whatever, like we will be notified that we are at the place where they are.
brilliant.
Great, you're able to mark it, no problem.
Dell, you have a night vision scope that is not attached to your rifle.
You can attach it or you can use it.
Agent Ryan, you have the night vision goggles and Barone, you also have a set of goggles.
I do?
Okay great.
Yeah, I forgot about that entirely, yeah.
Alright, goggles on I guess.
Yeah, I'll take the minute to equip mine.
All right, so where are you trying to set up the, quote, ambush or stake out point?
think I want to be able to have eyes on as many places of interest in the swamp as possible.
Like decidedly the place, the origin of the footprints and the chanting circle, any sort of impact point.
Like, you know, maybe this is 30 feet up in a tree and we make a rope nest for...
little canopy for the night.
There are plenty of trees that are still pretty low hanging.
So you wouldn't get 20 feet up in one, but you could get a good 10, 15 if you wanted.
They're small.
If it helps, yeah.
Yeah, you get to the area where the sawgrass was and you assume the ritual happened where you found a lot of the footsteps or excuse me, the footprints and the place where you saw
the trail of something being drug earlier.
and you can set up and hide in the sawgrass or you can walk into the swamp a little bit and get into the tree.
There's not a vantage point that can see through the sawgrass where the ritual likely was because the trees are a little further from that point, but you can go in there if you
like.
How exposed would Dale feel being perched up there to other outside observers in the swamp?
Like if he went into the tree to get that vantage point.
How exposed would he be?
you're closer to any flying object that comes over.
That's what comes to mind.
Okay, but not especially to like line of sight people on the ground.
you feel like if they weren't looking, they wouldn't see you up there.
Alright, then I'm gonna go for it.
Great, give me an athletics or decks, whatever's higher.
Yeah, let's try Dex.
Yeah, 47 out of 75.
All right, get up the tree with your pack, have your rifle out.
Agent Brome, what were you gonna say?
I was just gonna say yeah, Barone's gonna help Dell up and be like, hell you, help him up and then take out her M4 at the ready, sitting at the base of the tree, I assume next to
Agent Ryan.
Is the ground like a trail, like a dirt trail at this spot?
You've passed through the trail and have gone into the sawgrass and then passed the sawgrass to the forest, but you can stay in the sawgrass, you can even stay back at the
trail.
It's all near each other.
OK.
Yeah, I was thinking I would be on the dirt trail near the sawgrass, just kind of like making a triangle with our bodies to get kind of full coverage.
Also using my night goggles and ready with my gun as well.
Love it.
Once Barone settles in, she'll kind of uh hunker down next to the tree and look over at Ryan and give a little like okay sign.
Ryan does nothing.
Ryan flips you off.
No, I'm just kidding.
No, I just yeah, I see that and I just give a little head nod.
Great.
So everybody roll me luck, or excuse me.
Del, roll me alertness.
Agent Barone, roll me luck.
And then Agent Ryan, roll me alertness.
Yeah, 002, that'll do.
Jesus.
What'd you get, Agent Ryan?
I got fail 82.
Okay.
Wrong.
Barone rolled a 46 silver.
Luck is just 50-50, right?
So success, 46 of 50.
Great, you're sitting there, Agent Barone, looking around and you're just starting to get settled in and you notice that the swamp is very quiet.
There aren't the insects.
there's not a lot of other things happening.
You would think that you could hear even the ghost town from there if anything was going on there, but it's quiet there as well.
Dell from the tree, you are scanning around and through your scope, through the canopy behind you, not towards the sawgrass, you catch, it almost looks like a hand against a
tree trunk about 10 meters behind you, right behind where Agent Barone is posted up against the tree.
Okay, is the hand like in the process of retracting itself or is it just hanging out?
just there.
Okay, is Barone looking at me?
Could I give a little two finger wave to get attention real quick?
or maybe a red-bellied woodpecker whistle.
Yeah, wanna, inaudible would be preferable.
Sorry, what did you say?
I just said with the luck roll, Barone was actually looking up at you.
Got it.
Yeah, okay.
Then I will...
We've got like some commands down.
I'll give two completely fake nonsense commands and then the third one is like a get-a-load-of behind you, you know, with like a degree of specificity and hopefully you
can see what I'm seeing.
Barone looks at you and mouths, what the fuck?
And then catches the third signal and then spins on her heel with the M4 aimed in the right direction.
Yeah, you look behind you and pass the tree that you were up against.
In the night vision, there's some flicker to it based on the ambient light and...
you just thought you at first think it's just another one of those junkie kids passed out against a tree, like had too many beers or went on too much of a bender.
And you first clock the limp bizkit $3 bill y'all hoodie.
And the kid has a hat laying on his shoulder.
But the fabric is stained with red.
So maybe he's not passed out and
As you scan down his body, there's nothing below his waist other than entrails hanging out of it.
There are no legs there.
The face, now that you notice it, is slack-jawed.
His acne is even white at this point.
There are...
It looks to be tear marks all over his midsection where you can see his skin and you see a filthy converse off to the side with blood all over it.
What do do?
Ah shit, we got him killed.
Um...
Okay.
This doesn't look to have happened just now.
This looks to be something that was old.
It seems earlier.
Yeah, it's hard to tell.
earlier.
Yeah, for sure.
Okay, Barone's gonna look up to Del and do like the sign for like eyes and like on herself.
And then she's gonna start springing that trap.
Let's see what we got here.
And I'm gonna stay low and...
Let's say like crouch walk in that direction
You walk over slowly, go ahead and give me a stealth roll.
impact grenade in teeth.
Yeah right.
Okay stealth we're looking for a 30.
No.
Oh my god.
It's a 77.
That's a crit fail.
Okay, you walk and you get close to the body and there is a god-awful smell coming from it.
It smells like the swamp water mixed with a coppery rot.
You are in a slaughterhouse suddenly.
It just is an overwhelming stench of death.
and you get a little lightheaded and you fall down for a brief second, blackout on the ground and hit the ground.
Agent Dell, UC Barone's form just kind of slapped against the ground.
What do you do?
yeah.
mean, I am leaping 10 feet out of the tree into the muck, pulling my boots the two and a half feet out of the mud hole that I just created and trudging my way over as fast as I
possibly can.
You run over to Brone.
She's on the ground just waking up, blinking.
Agent Ryan, can you roll alertness once again for me?
Yes.
I got a 65 fail out of 45.
Okay, you are staring across, you see Barone take a fall and you're focused on that.
Before you know it, out of the water, a figure starts bolting towards the shore, towards where Del and Barone are.
You don't get a chance to get off a shot, but you see it and it briefly turns around and you see a large gash.
where it was stabbed recently.
And the face is a distorted parody of a human from that distance to the night vision.
And it has a...
deja vu effect on you when it turns and looks at you, there's a grin on its face that you swear you recognize.
Where do do I know where I recognize it from?
Not in this moment.
Dell.
go ahead.
Sorry, Agent Ryan.
No, go ahead.
Go ahead.
Yeah, this thing is charging up now after it's looked back and seen agent Ryan Dell, can you roll me a dodge as this thing dives for your back to gouge it?
yeah absolutely 50 flat is plenty hell yeah
Great, so you hear this thing squishing out of the swamp, you are half expecting this trap and you roll to the side and throw this thing off of you as it makes contact and it lands
on the ground.
It is your turn.
Yeah, the three point landing, the third point is the barrel of my gun, which I put a thumb into to squeeze the plug of Pete out that is now entrapped in there.
And then I am just going to put it on full auto and bring it up blasting so that there's 12 shots in the muck before it gets to the feet of this creature.
Yeah, give me the firearms roll.
You will hit this creature, but we just wanna look for crit fails.
uh
All right, not today, just to 10.
Beautiful, gimme lethality.
Beautiful words, beautiful words.
55 for 10 total.
All right, your rifle careens up this creature and it's midsectioned and it just hits it one shell after another.
And one of them hits it straight in the jaw, tears off its jaw, the back of its head explodes and it flops on the ground beside you.
Agent Barone, you were looking through night vision.
The muzzle flash has temporarily blinded you.
Agent Ryan, yeah.
Agent Ryan also, it's very bright as it's gone off.
You almost like put your hand in front of your like face, but then hit your goggles a little bit.
And there is another one coming straight at you.
Agent Ryan, but it is your turn.
What are you doing as this thing is lifting itself from the swamp right at your feet?
Definitely taking a shot with my gun.
All right, roll your firearms and at this range you have a plus 20.
Okay, thank God, because it's not very high to begin with.
Oh my God, just failed at 44 out of 40.
Oh, that's a crit fail too.
Yeah, yeah.
You are startled.
The muzzle flash has added a strange artifacting to your eyes as you look down and you point down and shoot and realize that you had the safety on.
You will have to take your next turn getting the safety off.
um Agent Barone, you are on the ground.
this dead thing next to you blinking out the artifacts in your eyes as the night vision has blinded you.
What are you doing?
can't well how well how well can i see at this point am i like hey you don't you kind of don't have a turn ish or can i see well enough to do something
you would probably have to use your turn to get up and survey because you are laying on the ground looking up at Dell as he has just blasted this thing.
Um, yeah, I think, the, next thought is, okay, the, trap is sprung.
Maybe they're not the only one.
I think that's exactly what I do.
I'm going to use my turn to get up, get back to back with Dell, and pull the rifle up to the ready and do, do a quick scan around the area if I could please.
Yep, as you're scanning, you clock something coming out of the water at Agent Ryan's feet, and then you see the gun, or you see him pull out his gun and fiddle with it.
You're not sure what's happening over there.
It's a little far away.
Okay, but I don't have time to take a shot yet, correct?
Okay, as I'm seeing it, I'm at least gonna uh reach behind me and tap Del's shoulder and point in the direction of Ryan.
Great.
Agent Ryan, roll your dodge as this thing reaches up to grab your leg and yank you into the swamp.
Kiddoke, I got an 82.
I'm just killing it over here.
You feel the claws wrap around your calf and just yank at you and you slip down and your ass hits the dirt path and it starts yanking you towards the water the claws are starting
to dig into the muscle of your, or muscle through your pants.
Delsin Dusky, it is your turn.
Uh, yeah, help me with the distance of Ryan to creature, creature to water.
So they, the creature is holding Ryan and you are about 20 meters from there.
and the creature submerged still just moving towards the water.
It is moving towards the water and fully out of it right now.
It stood up out of the swamp as if it were like a crocodile in weight laying there and has stood up to get pole Ryan in.
It's bent over, but yeah.
Yeah, it seems like both of these folks have not like maybe been in an active combat situation with night vision involved.
But Dell, kind of like you would see a journeyman welder, like hold the welding torch in one hand and use his mask or his shield and kind of like check back and forth, right?
Not really wearing it.
He's going to use the night vision scope until he fires and there's just like a single shot where he pulls it away from his vision.
and he uses the muzzle flash to like, you know, plug the gap while it's away.
And he's just gonna fire a few single shots as he charges straight towards Ryan's position.
Firearms coming at ya.
That's an 82, which is exactly what my new firearm score is, god damn.
Whoa.
Damn.
get it doll.
Boom.
Lethality, baby.
An 8 and a 3.
11 points.
Yeah, you shoot and it hits this creature right in the head.
Black goo flies all over your face, Agent Ryan, as this thing is.
Seemingly exploded right in front of you to you.
It's like the entire world as it was right on you you just see a split and some flesh fly up in the air and are blinded as your night-vision goggles are covered in its blood and
You feel its grip slacken on your body
Thank God, because that was really painful.
Yeah, I think Dell keeps on running.
He's just like, don't touch my man.
And he like gives a, like a flying drop kick.
Cause like, it's still kind of stuck into you, right?
Not entirely clear that it's dead dead.
Yeah, you kick it fully off of Agent Ryan's body.
It is undoubtedly dead though.
You hear Barone, you're still alive, huh?
And she fires two shots into the ground next to the thing.
I got him.
Don't worry.
It's I got him also too, Del.
And then I'll uh kind of run over and be like, holy shit, is there more?
I don't.
And then she's going to spin around to see if any more are coming at him.
Yeah, Dell turns towards the water too.
They'd be brave motherfuckers as we ch-ch-ch the rifle.
They be brave, tell they be brave.
Agent Barone, roll your alertness.
sure.
Alert, we are pretty good at that.
We're looking for 81 and a roll of 56, success.
In the distance, you see one of their heads watching from the water.
What do do?
Oh, fuck, guys, there...
That wasn't a joke, there are more.
Over here.
And I'll, you know, shake my muzzle in the direction.
But I saw exactly where it was, correct?
Yeah, you can fire if you want.
Absolutely.
I whisper under my breath, pop pop, and pull the trigger.
me that firearms.
So we needed a 53.
We got an 81.
So that is a fail.
It's a tough shot.
You know, it's just a little oval in the ground.
You shoot and it goes over its head a little bit, hits the swamp, causes a big splash and the thing dips under the water.
What's everybody doing?
shit, I tried man.
I just he's over there
Honestly, I'm kind of just having fun at this point.
I don't know how many of these vermin there are, but something tells me we might not even be making a dent.
Well, we do have a direction to make a dent, if you will.
Ryan, how are you, are you okay?
Yeah, and I'm just scooting back on my butt because my leg is pretty fucked up.
But I can see what you're seeing, and I try to take a shot as well.
Yeah, shoot.
Roll it.
got that safety figured out.
yeah, do I still need to the safety off?
You're out of turn order, but yeah, you have enough time to turn the safety off and shoot at where it was.
my god, I got exactly 20, which is what I needed.
All right, you shoot and it hits the exact spot where you think it was or is, but nothing happens as it hits the swamp where it disappeared into.
I have also seen that Mythbusters and know that water actually does stop bullets.
Okay, okay.
Yeah.
And Agent Ryan, can you roll me intelligence times five?
Yes.
43 out of 80.
Yeah, you absolutely remember that when you were looking at the footprints, there were six or seven sets.
You mean back on ritual night?
Back on ritual night, yep.
Yeah, there's probably definitely three or four more out there, guys.
Alright, mean, springing the trap was definitely my plan there to get the upper hand, but I think now that's sprung, we're heading into territory that's not our own, and they
probably have the advantage.
Yeah, I mean, I'm more than willing to hear out your proposals of how we advance from here, but it does not seem like a straightforward proposition.
No, definitely not.
And he disappeared into the water, correct?
Yeah, it dipped under the water right after you took your shot.
And then Agent Ryan was like, pop!
And just hit the water where it was.
Hmm.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think I don't think Barone has any willpower in her to dive back into that water at night time after what happened last time in the middle of the day.
I am.
I'm gonna take a Limp Bizkit body and try and float it out there.
Alright a bit morbid, but sure I'll give him a helping hand And I'll grab the dirty converse and roll it over my hands and be like well Dell Ryan I think they got Cheryl as
well just So everybody knows
Agent Barone, as you're going for the body and helping Del, can you roll your sanity?
absolutely I can ah
rigor mortis biscuit.
God.
my god.
uh
Uh, I failed.
Yeah, my current's 49, I got 76.
Okay, give me a d4 for sand loss.
Roll low two right in the middle.
Okay, are you projecting that or are you just gonna take it?
two, two.
Let's project it.
I haven't had a chance to project recently.
Let's do that.
which bond do you want to project it on of your bonds?
Yeah, sure.
Let's see.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, let's project it on uh Jackie, my uh rival shop mechanic.
She was always the person that pushed her to get better at her skill.
And out here, she's definitely feeling like she's losing that friendly rivalry as she is not getting anything right out here.
Yeah, it's been a tough go at it.
Go ahead and roll that D4 again to see how much you can actually project.
Sure.
We got a one.
I got a one.
so you lose one willpower and one from that bond, but you only take one sanity loss.
sure.
you're able to get the body out onto the swamp and throw it out there.
Any special description for that or are you just throwing it out there?
I mean it hardly qualifies as chum, but I am effectively trying to chum the waters, right?
Trying to see if we can encourage anything that to come to the surface to disturb it to give us a window to fire even just briefly.
Okay, you throw it out there.
Give me one second.
I'll go ahead, sir.
and so like we might get like a long stick or something like that so that we could prod it at intervals and make it look like it is moving through deeper into the swamp, at least
just a little bit, right?
Beautiful.
Yeah, for sure.
As, Dell is doing that, I think everybody's on high red alert.
So I think, Barone is, you know, in a, um, single knee down position waiting for her shot.
Agent Ryan, are you aiming at the area as well?
I am, yeah.
Pretty not stuttery, because I'm in a lot of pain, there nonetheless.
all right.
So each of you are gonna add 20 % if anything pops out.
see if anything pops out.
This corpse starts to sink a little bit and like a crocodile turning prey over, you see a arm and then a backside pull this thing over and roll on top of it.
So its back is now above the water.
Agent Brone, you can take your shot.
Agent Ryan, you can take your shot as well.
absolutely here we go 53 hmm I failed with a 79
Is that with 20 % plus?
Oh, um, yep, yep.
So it'd be 73 and I failed with a 79.
Pop pop.
two shots off, both of you miss and it goes under the water quickly.
Well, it's not likely to fall for that again.
No, yeah, probably not.
Right, well, options as you see them.
I don't know how much more effectiveness we have on the combat front.
If we care to stick around for ritual chances, I think they're slim, but we's already out here.
What else do you see in our cards?
Hmm.
yeah.
Taking a look back around.
So before when we waded out to the semi-clear area, I could look down and I could see, like a, not an orb, but like an egg-shaped thing in the water, correct?
No, it was a head, right?
The head came out of the water, basically.
Yep.
I'm misremembering.
was the head.
That was the first time we were here.
Not even the second time when we saw something crash, but there was, there was a path before that.
We saw something where something was pulled from the water and drug in a direction and it had pushed the grass down.
Which way was, which way was that?
you would just keep walking deeper into the swamp pass where you found that kid's body.
Okay, yeah, I mean, you're right.
don't, Delvin, I'm sorry, I botched that too, but the only other lead I could think of is when we were here before, there was that path where something was drugged kind of back
that way, and I point in the direction of where it looked like something was drugged before.
That's all I got, because I'm not going in that water.
Well, shoot, mean, we's already here if we want to go take a look.
I'm curious just like you.
Yeah, let's.
Ryan, uh how's your leg?
Not very good.
Yeah, is there a way for me to know like how badly I am injured?
Yeah, roll a d6.
I love
sick.
Five.
You can barely stand on it.
no.
Well.
Who knows?
Okay, well I'm probably not uh walking very far from where I'm at then.
Yeah, I think maybe I will go back to the ATVs and fetch up a couple of tent poles I imagine we packed at least one tent in our bag in case we had to spend the night out here
and I'll fix up like you know with duct tape like something that will Splint your your leg to at least make it a little more bearable to walk
Okay, the ATVs are about a 10 minute walk and a seven minute jog from there.
At the ATV, can you roll your alertness?
Oh, sure.
44 critical success.
Nice.
start wrapping, I know, I know, man, you start creating this makeshift leg splint and you catch out of your peripheral vision something low to the ground, stocking up to flank you.
You have first action, what do you do?
yeah, I continue as though I had not noticed with like my path undisturbed and then I am simply going to, it's off to my right, I will roll off to my left and do a quarter turn
and fire, as I do a little back tumble.
Great.
Roll it.
Firearms, 28 is plenty low enough.
Lethality says a 1 and a 7, 8 points of damage.
Okay, you fly backward, the recoil pushes you back even further as you're firing and the three shots hit it.
It is still coming and now it is running fast for you.
It dives for you, roll your dodge, minus 20, cause you're on the ground.
Yeah, no, the minus 20 does me in.
Okay, roll a D6 as this thing runs and dives on you with a death wish and rakes your shoulder down to your chest.
one man I hope it was worth
Yeah, so you take one damage.
It's a little bit of a scratch.
It feels deep though.
You start to bleed.
It is back to you.
I mean, it was my favorite shirt after all.
Yeah, I think...
I think I have a combat knife on the end of my gun that will kind of like swivel out almost like a bayonet that affixes into place and I'm gonna do one of those and just like
charge this thing right in the sternum.
Yeah, it's laying on top of you.
You just have to reposition to stab it in the side of the sternum.
And it's gonna.
as a majestic looking but we're gonna try it all the same
you're fumbling on the ground with it.
That's right.
Is this a melee weapon?
Yep, melee weapon.
Okay, yeah, let's try no 59 just a little too high.
All right, the maneuver is too high and goes over its back and it cuts it a little bit, but does not find purchase.
It comes back at you.
It opens its mouth and tries to come down to bite at your neck.
Roll a dodge.
note 84.
Okay, it digs its mouth into your collarbone, just missing your neck.
It starts to rip out a chunk.
Give me another D6 of damage.
6.
Hey, what's your HP at?
CX.
Okay.
Okay, you are very, very injured.
You have one more action before you pass out.
What do you do?
Yeah, I mean, it's just like up on me, right?
So I had gone for a stab, gun interposed between us, it grapples onto me, like thrust up towards my chin.
I'm going to draw it down to get it underneath its rib cage and I'm gonna brat-brat right up through its spinal column.
Fire it.
No whammies, baby.
That's an 83.
Which is...
Yeah!
Yes, I do.
All right.
It tries to claw at you, but it's dark and misses.
Give me a contest to see if you can stay awake.
That's 20-0 and I needed a 55.
We all right.
Okay, you're able to stay awake.
You cannot shoot your firearm.
What can you, what are you going to do?
Yeah, there is a knife in my boot at all times.
And it's coming out and like all of, I guess all of these maneuvers have looked relatively practiced, right?
As though it's like, what is the best thing to do in this situation?
Allow me with as much surgical precision and practiced hand, carry that out.
When this knife comes out, there is a wild flailing like somebody who, you know, has no skill with this thing at all.
It is like pure primal instinct stabbing.
And it seems good enough with a 30.
That'll hit.
It critically failed its dodge, so you're able to stab it where?
It's on my neck.
We're kind of like dogpiling on each other.
It's this like very futile rush to see who can snuff the other one out the fastest.
All right, give me a D6 for damage.
Yeah.
Three.
All right, you are able to, you don't even know if it's you or its own flailing that does it, but you able to hack through half of its neck just by chopping frantically and you
feel its head start to split off and go ajar as its wound starts bleeding all over your chest and you pass out.
with this thing on top of you.
Agent Ryan and Agent Barone, you hear a few gunshots and a shout in the distance
Del, as you are fading in this godforsaken swamp, you look up to the sky and see the pinpricks of starlight far in the galaxy, staring down at you, uncaring, but those lights
start to remind you of a place.
A place in the past before you were sober.
The place was called the Cherry Pit, kind of bar that smelled of secrets and spilled beer.
It was Tuesday, which meant the silence was almost as thick as a cigarette smoke hanging in the air.
Just a few patrons sitting around the bar.
You were there, nursing a bourbon.
It was mostly ice at this point and water.
watching motes of dust dance in a single beam of light coming off of a KUR sign in the window.
You were halfway through your third drink, which meant you were starting to feel the edges of your own private darkness start to soften.
Just then, the door opened and the night got a whole lot heavier.
Three of them walked in, big men who seemed to take up more space than their bodies required, noisy, brutish.
They even smelled.
They wore leather vests over their flannel shirts.
Their faces were roadmaps of bad decisions.
But it was the ink on their neck that told you the real story.
Jagged, ugly SS lightning bolts.
The kind of tattoos that were a statement of intent.
How would you look at these guys as they came in?
I would do my best not to.
Not on account of...
I abide it.
It's just, I've seen them roll through and usually just best to clear the way till they get out of your space.
Yeah, they moved in heavy bovine almost.
Men of certainty.
Looked like they've never lost a fist fight and they didn't plan on losing one tonight.
Then you saw the waitress,
Abigail.
She moved through the gloom of the cherry pit like she owned it, the palm all dangling from the corner of her mouth, smoke curling up past her eyes like she had seen too many
closing times.
She was pretty in a way that, eh, your hard life could only show you.
She was a hillbilly princess, a spine made of rebar and a confidence that you hadn't seen much in your times.
And she said, what can I get you fellas?
Her voice low, gravelly purr.
She didn't look impressed.
She didn't look scared either.
The biggest man, he had a beard of rust and a gut straining the buttons of his shirt.
He grunted and pointed a thick greasy finger at something in the back of the bar.
The other two men walked to the back.
Back there you saw a Native American.
Maybe he was Hispanic.
It was hard to tell in the dark.
You didn't frequent the same bars a lot, so you didn't know any of the regulars.
And two of the men walked up to him and you started hearing a little scuffle in the back.
Yeah, I think I would drink the dregs, my third drink.
I would loudly announce that I was standing up from the bar the way the bottom of that glass contacted the wood.
And then I'm going to stand up and make an obvious pass towards the restroom swaying in their direction.
As you get closer, you hear one of the men laughing and grabbing the man by the shirt, and you hear get the fuck out of here.
And you're stinking up the joint.
Come from the conversation and you get even closer and they throw him past a pool table and he stumbles toward the door.
He stands up with a semblance of dignity and tries to.
dust his shirt off, then the third man at the bar who he was closer to now grabs him and pushes him out the exit and then starts laughing.
I'm gonna take four large steps like a track athlete going for a long jump, but the long jump is going to be with an outstretched Superman arm into the square underside of his jaw
um coming from the backside of him, and I am not waiting until his skull hits the ground before I am charging towards the second one furthest from the door.
You connect, you hit him in the jaw, you feel a telltale crack of some of his teeth snapping in his mouth.
There's probably gonna be blood and tooth matter coming out as he slams against the ground of this dirty bar.
and that second one spins around and gets his arms up and you are in a gridlock with him as you've jumped onto his chest.
He's a big beast of a man and he's holding you up and you can hear the third already running to aid his friend.
Yeah, not a lot of time.
Does he have, are we like grappled arms occupied then at that point?
um I think I will um drop my weight down to my heels and I will leap up and skyrocket my forehead into his nose um with as much spring power as my
legs can offer.
you squat and jump as hard as you can under the weight of his arms.
It hits him in both the chin and the nose and you see his head fly back and blood starting gushing out of both his mouth and his nose.
um He pulls you in tighter and just spits a glob of bud in your face and starts to squeeze you.
As he's squeezing you, you feel something slip between your ribs into your side as you're assuming you were just stabbed by the other man and it twists.
The agony shoots through your body and you black out for a second as this man is squeezing you.
Any thoughts as this is happening?
Yeah, I think the feeling of unfairness, I think, is maybe what Dell is still wracked with.
Not for himself, that doesn't really matter.
Just the notion of how someone could live their life walking into a place like this and just upending it for everyone else all of a sudden.
Like that, that's no way to be.
as you're thinking that, they feel like they could be your last thoughts as you feel the blade exit and then enter your side a little above where it had before.
And you hear what must be Abigail shouting from behind the bar and coming around.
You find yourself on the ground and...
You see her in between these two men as they're standing over you, one bleeding profusely out of his face, looking pissed, the other one holding a bloody knife in his hand.
You can't hear what she's saying.
You just hear the murmur of them talking and some baited shouts from the men at her.
What's on your mind as you're seeing this?
We're in my plan for anyone to come to my rescue.
And as that occurs to me, m maybe that was the plan all along.
Was I gonna leave this place tonight?
Well, now I'm not so sure.
You see her continuing to talk.
Their rage does not look abated.
And then a key moment, she places her hand on the man who has a knife in it on his wrist.
Maybe there's a sudden flash of fear that you feel for her.
But then you see with her hand there, his face calms and he looks down at it.
and he looks to you and then he looks at her.
She's still talking the entire time.
And then her other hand goes to his shoulder and she gets a little closer to him and you see him completely diffuse in front of you.
m
Yeah, I think...
think it never occurred to me that an altercation could come to an end like that, especially one that had started as it started.
well, suddenly I'm wondering if maybe I ever had the tool to beat all three of them, or if I was kind of doomed from the start.
Maybe there's something else out there to know.
You watch as the men start to back off from your body on the ground and the world goes black.
You don't see anything anymore and you're left to your deep, comatose thoughts for some time.
God only knows how much longer later uh you wake up in heaven.
It's white all around.
There's a comfy bed under you, something you're not used to sleeping in.
By your side is your hillbilly angel, Abigail.
Somehow she is still protecting you for some reason.
and you look over and she's reading a book, Pride and Prejudice, and she looks up and sees you coming to.
Yeah, I think I will sputter some of the mostly dried blood out of my throat.
I'll say, oh no, they killed you too.
You see a huge smile erupt across her face.
She stands up and you feel those hands on your chest now.
You understand why that man was diffused in that moment.
It's all ripped away.
You cough blood and black bile spurts out of your mouth as you look at the pinpricks of stars.
above your head in that God-forsaken swamp and then fully lose consciousness.
This time Abigail will not be coming for you.
She will not be your guardian angel.
You feel completely alone.