Chill: Spreading Panic

Ai-yi-yi! Here is last session! Yip yip! (What am I on about?)

The envoys, along with five cops, delve into the Kuna Caves. Beth Anne remains behind so as to avoid bringing Jaworsky with them (read: her player couldn't make it today). Emily leads the way into the dark, which results in Emily being the one to fall down a hole.

She rolls when she lands and twists her ankle but avoids serious injury. There's nothing down here, just an opening small enough to miss in the dark. BB helps her climb out, but the envoys realize that the cops are no longer with them. From up ahead, they hear gunfire and screams.

They rush to the noise, and find one of the cops sitting against the wall with a talon wound in his shoulder and the other waving his gun around in a panicked kind of fashion. Emily calms the latter while BB uses the Heal discipline to fix the former, and both of them stare in amazement ("magic" says BB with a waggle of his fingers). They head further into the caves, and wind up in the big round room where the sasquatch kept its kills before. In the center of the shallow pit in the room is the corpse of a man, probably the father of the family that's gone missing. 

The envoys cope with this to a greater or lesser degree. Vicki looks at the corpse and notes that his throat has been ripped out, but there are no other wounds. She finds his wallet - Frank Phillips. She finds a picture of his wife and kids, too. She uses her Clairvoyance discipline and finds the mother and the little girl, huddled together, crying, but alive at the end of a tunnel. She can't tell exactly where, though. 

The police captain notes that there are three exits to this room, not counting the one they came from. He tells Murray (the cop that was wound but BB healed) to stay put and act as a lookout, and points the other officers down two of the tunnels, while he takes the third. 

Emily recommends not splitting up; they should take each tunnel in turn. Melinda agrees with the cops, though - they need to find the survivors while they're still survivors. Vicki heads down the center tunnel, BB goes with the captain, while Melinda goes with the other cop. 

Meanwhile, Dylan is outside, fretting over the other envoys. He (and the cops) hear gunfire, and he makes another entreaty to be let in. The cops allow him in, but don't follow. He follows the trail down to the round room and finds Murray, waiting. 

And then suddenly everything goes pitch dark. Dylan raises a Sphere of Protection, although doing so takes his very last ounce of will. The Sphere allows the flashlights to work, and Dylan sees, at the edge of the barrier, the sasquatch. But as it's pushed back, it seems to flicker a bit, and Dylan sees the chalk-white, featureless form behind the sasquatch disguise. He struggles to maintain the Sphere, and yells for help.

Down the hall, a snarl and a clawed hand, and the police captain collapses to the ground! BB puts himself between Davis and the creature, but then everything goes black. No attack comes, and BB heals the captain. 

Another tunnel: Emily and Vicki suddenly find themselves in a similar bubble of blackness. Emily gets in from of Vicki and they start picking their way down the hall, but then hear Dylan yell and head back. 

Melinda and the last cop, in the other tunnel, find the woman and her daughter, but then something grabs Melinda's neck and yanks her back. The cop turns and fires his weapon, and Melinda ducks low. If he hits anything, though, it's not obvious.

Everyone regroups (the envoys get to the round room just in time to see Dylan collapse), and they leave the caves. Captain Davis talks with BB, and BB tells him that being fully honest about this just causes panic. He says that they can probably kill this thing, but they need a little time to figure out what they're dealing with. Davis, who is a rational man but watched BB heal his badly lacerated face, says he'll keep the area cordoned off as long as he can. The envoys head back to the ranch.

Once there, Vicki does some research and finds that a creature like this - one with a true form that is so featureless - is probably a natural shapeshifter. She also thinks back to something BB said: attacks like this spread panic. This "copycat" is mimicking attacks that have already happened in Boise, stoking old fears. Vicki notes further that it seems to be a corporeal creature, vulnerable to mundane weapons, but it can also apparently teleport. So how does one trap it? 

While Dylan leads the group in a quick therapy session to talk over what they've been through today, Vicki uses her Clairvoyance discipline again, but this time focuses on the creature. She sees it near the cave entrance, watching the EMS and bystanders. She relays this, and the group decides that since the creature is still there, perhaps they can go back and kill it. Dylan can perhaps trap it in a Line of Defense circle, giving the envoys enough time to shoot the thing. 

Darnell relays a message from Beth Anne - she didn't text because she doesn't trust text messages, and she'll catch up with them later. The envoys are a bit worried about that (and Jaworsky), but they have a plan. They're going to take a bit of xanax (to take the edge off and keep their wits), go back to the caves, and try to bait the copycat into a circle. Then Dylan will seal it and they'll kill the thing. 

Will it work? We'll find out.