Yesterday was Chill. In what has become something of a theme for this HQ, the envoys escaped with their lives, but so did the creature they were fighting.
Recall that last time, the envoys were in the Kuna Caves, fighting for their lives against a sasquatch. The beast had already badly wounded Jennifer (she was unconscious, which was handy since her player couldn't make it this time) and BB (who was hanging on through judicious use of the Restorative Art). Beth Anne had blinded all of the envoys with a mis-used flare gun...
Cut to a couple of hours ago. Dylan had gone to his office to grade papers, a move that the other envoys regarded as strange and perhaps a bit dickish. Dylan has in fact spent all day in his office, grading and then working on other things, before finally realizing where he was and checking his phone (which he'd put on silent; also uncharacteristically). Dylan sees that he's got multiple messages from the team, inquiring with various degrees of politeness when he'll be back, and finally telling him they're going into the Kuna Caves to look for the missing family.
Feeling like maybe this is going to get bad, Dylan goes back to his apartment and grabs some hiking gear and his pistol, and then heads out to the caves. He sees that the entrance is closed off, and drives up the road a bit. He finds a deputy in an orange vest, and tells him that he's looking for his friends. The deputy tells him that if they joined the search party, they'll have signed in at the HQ, up the road a few miles.
Dylan starts to head up there, but then remembers that his brother's disappearance felt very much like this, and the road to the check-in takes him in the opposite direction from the caves. He turns around and heads back, and finds the same entrance that the others did. He enters the caves, and sees their markings and glowsticks, and then hears a fwoosh sort of noise and sees a bright red light.
The light, of course, is the flare. The sasquatch bites Jeanie on the shoulder, and she cracks it in the head with her staff, driving it back. Dylan, arriving at the top of the slope, yells to get their attention, and BB hears and, using Feat of Strength, throws Jennifer up to him. Dylan catches her awkwardly, but neither are hurt further.
Meanwhile, the creature paws at Jeanie's staff and it shatters. BB hits it with his bola, tying it up momentarily. Jeanie backs up, and Emily, her vision returning, punches it, also using Feat of Strength. The creature, of course, snaps the cable. Not wanting to fight this thing hand-to-hand, Emily backs off and shoots it.
BB, not having a gun, picks up a rock, runs over, and brains it. He feels something crack, and the sasquatch retreats a bit, as Emily and Beth Anne both unload rock salt at it. It lets out a terrifying screech, and the envoys feel the will to fight leaving them. Emily falls back into protective mode, laying down covering fire for her squad. Beth Anne goes up the rope, followed by Jeanie and BB. Emily is last up, and the sasquatch is nowhere to be seen.
The envoys leave the caves, and load BB and Jennifer into Dylan's car. He drives them to the check-in and gets them medical attention, and tells the authorities there that there was a bear attack. Everyone is taken away to the hospital, and the state troopers go into the caves. The find the bodies of the unfortunate McCarthy family (and many others), and ultimately conclude that one or more bears had gone rogue and were eating people. Said bears, however, are never found.
In a couple of days, after the worst of the injuries have healed, Dylan sits everyone down for a little rap session (Crisis Counselor, you see). Beth Anne notes that she felt really useless - she's good with ghost-related things, but this was purely physical. Emily states that she was right to be concerned about going in unarmed, and she's never doing that again. BB argues the point - the reason they went in under-armed was because something was screwing with their perceptions, and if they can't trust what they see they shouldn't be getting trigger happy. Jeanie tells the story of when she first saw the sasquatch, before she joined SAVE. She doesn't know if it was the same one, but it looked like it.
The envoys talk about their situation, and decide that they aren't going after the sasquatch right now - it's too big an area, there are already cops around, and besides, they have no good base of operations with the ranch compromised. They get Chet and Darnell out, and stay in Boise (some of them have residences there and can put up couch space). They need to figure out what this "xaxog" is and how to kill it, and take the damn ranch back.
That's the next case, however.
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