As last time, we were down a player. This time Quinn wasn't with the YOs, as her player was getting a truly sick tattoo. But lo! Here are our Authority Figures!
- Aunt Lydia: A very prim, proper, buttoned-up woman who is capable of administering the Torpor Timeout
- Figgis: A higher-up Tendril, sent in to clean things up
- Smedley Winter: A worker for the Tangle, a longtime Tendril
- Fruiting season: An event based on time of year or spore distribution where things...bloom
And our Friendship Questions:
- Sandy asks Perry: "Why did I find you alone in the woods the other night?" Perry: "I was looking for supplies for my slingshot, like you showed me."
- Perry asks Sparky: "Why did you pick up those poison plants?" Answer: "I'm used to manicured grass!"
- Sparky asks Tate: "How did you resolve being grounded by your mom?" Answer: "Now that Dad and I are more open, he's willing to run interference for me with mom. I'm technically still grounded."
- Tate asks Sandy: "How are you feeling after the conversation about your parents' food restrictions and your frustrations about them?" Answer: "Sometimes I'm cheating if I know it's safe."
Scene One: What's Up
Tate's player set this up, and chose Perry's question to Sparky: "Why did you pick up those poison plants?" Answer: "I'm used to manicured grass!"
We open after a baseball practice, on the aforementioned manicured grass. Sparky and Tate talk about sports practice and about what kind of stamina it takes to throw a ball repeatedly; Tate opines that he really doesn't understand sports, especially when the term "floating objects in one's elbow" gets used. The YOs talk about their next moves and fill Perry in on some of what he missed, and they decide to go to the woods and gather some more ingredients.
But when they get there, this section of woods just...isn't there. It's all short, uniform, manicured grass. Sparky is baffled how this happened this quickly, with no crews or anything, but Sandy is fully freaking out. The check the edges of the area, and realize that it's spreading, slowly but perceptibly, towards the section of woods where Sandy's parents live.
They run to the area and Sandy sees her face's face pressed up against the glass. He mouths as her to "RUN!" and Sandy, trained for years to be ready to bug out, tries, but Perry and Sparky pull her back and say that the clique can save them! They try; Sandy stands up and uses her knowledge as a Forager to tell the others where to step and which spaces seem to be immune, but Perry stands up and loses and winds up running around and stepping in those spaces and badly infected spaces and soon the whole area is covered in the stuff. The geodesic dome that Sandy's parents were building cracks and collapses, covered in "grass", and while their trailer can still move (and does!), the whole area is covered.
And here we have our Kickoff: The Tangle is spreading.
Scene Two: Fighting Back
I set up this scene, and I chose Tate's question to Sandy: "How are you feeling after the conversation about your parents' food restrictions and your frustrations about them?" Answer: "Sometimes I'm cheating if I know it's safe."
This scene begins right after the last one. Sandy's parents open the door to the trailer and tell everyone that they're taking off, and that Sandy needs to get in. It's time to go. Sandy is about ready to agree, but realizes that the "grass" is spreading wherever the YOs step - clearly something on their shoes is doing it, and it's spreading through the woods and heading towards the area where the YOs Clean Room is!
Perry stands up and embraces the Thrills; he takes the Tendril Tonic and goes spritzing the "grass" in the woods, trying to push it back. Sparky stands up and tries to talk Sandy's parents into sticking around (he is, after all, Trusted). But then Sandy stands up and loses!
Rather than allow the "grass" to infect her parents' trailer (and probably her parents), though, Sandy sells out Smart to Pedantic, taking the Tonic and treating the area in the right way and making sure everyone knows it. The clique gets Sandy's parents out safely, and the YOs head for the Clean Room.
Our first Beat is a Complication: The "grass" spreads via foot traffic. Our Question for the episode: "What does this 'grass' precede?"
Scene Three: Heating Up
Sandy's player set this scene up, and chose Sparky's question to Tate: "How did you resolve being grounded by your mom?" Answer: "Now that Dad and I are more open, he's willing to run interference for me with mom. I'm technically still grounded."
We open at the Clean Room. Sandy is feverishly working on a way to combat this "grass", and isn't much interested in stopping or resting. As night starts to fall, she asks Tate to get more supplies from his dad, and Tate gently (kinda) reminds Sandy that they have lives that they'll be missed from if they stay here forever. Sandy isn't interested, and she needs more dry supplies (coffee filters and the like) from Guy McGibb's restaurant.
The other three YOs finally agree to go get some stuff, and head to the restaurant. When they arrive, though, they see Tate's mom's (Charlotte) car in the lot, which means she's probably already aware that Tate isn't home. Sparky gives Tate his bike and tells him to head for home; he and Perry will get the stuff they need.
Tate tries to ride off, but has never actually ridden a bike before and promptly falls. As he does, he realizes that the "grass" is in the gravel of the driveway and growing up through it. He stands up (literally and figuratively) and draws on his Family Ties to spur him on to get home. Inside, Sparky and Perry go in and Sparky asks Guy for more filters and so on; Guy points him toward the dry stock. Sparky gets some coffee filters, but also notices a transparent, gelatinous sheen sloughing off his shoes. He asks Guy what he uses to clean the floor, and because he's Trusted, Guy tells him (briefly) about the mixture he uses before getting called back into the madness of dinner rush.
But about then, Charlotte notices Sparky and grills him about where Tate is. Perry stands up...and loses. But he sells out Orphan to Helpless, and collapses before Charlotte and does a full-on Oliver Twist routine, and Charlotte falls all over herself to take care of him. She takes him home and finds Tate already there (if a little bruised), and insists that Perry stay.
Scene Four: We Won
Sparky's player set this up, and chose Fruiting Season.
The clique is back at school the next day. Perry is chipper because he actually got to sleep in a bed last night. Sandy is pretty stressed, but the discovery that the floor cleaner at Guy's restaurant can be used to clean the "grass" off everyone's shoes is very useful. They meet up by the bleachers after school, and decide that they need to go big, and if they're going to do that it better be on their terms. They also realize that this grass isn't grass. Each blade is an individual fungal body, and the tops of them seem to be plumper than they were. Sort of engorged.
Sparky points out the groundskeeper's shack, where the sprinkler controls are. If they put this floor cleaner into the sprinkler...
They move over to the shack and Sandy goes in with a bottle of the stuff, but the groundskeeper, Roger, spots her and calls her out. Sparky stands up and, once again, leans on his Trusted Conviction, but while Roger doesn't think Sparky is involved, he tries to pull Sandy out. Tate stands up and yells at Roger, calling him an ass-bucket (because he's a Bad Seed, you see), and Roger yells for help from other staff, but still isn't letting Sandy get away with this. Perry stands up and darts in to help, seeing as how he's Always Underestimated, and Roger's attention wavers for a moment, but the YOs notice that the "grass" is developing little marshmallow-like bulbs on the tops of the blades.
Sandy stands up and loses, but decides this is too important and sells out Pleasing to Cloying. She pushes past Roger and dumps this stuff into the water, and turns on the sprinkler. The sprinklers distribute the chemical all over the school grounds and it melts the "grass" into a viscous brown goop, but the chemicals also splash Sandy and change her. She always had a natural odor that the Tangle found, well, pleasing and inoffensive, but it's changed now to something artificial and overly sweet.
Scene Five: We're Fucked
Perry's player set this up, and chose Figgis.
The YOs fall back to the Clean Room and talk about their victory. The discovery of the floor cleaner and what it does to the fruiting grass is a good step. As they're talking, Sparky's phone starts blowing up. His team group chat is up in arms because baseball season has been cancelled. He asks why, and no one really knows, but the name "Figgis" gets mentioned. No one's heard of him, though.
Tate's phone buzzes - it's his mother, but he ignores it. And then Sandy's phone rings (wind chimes). She answers, and her mother asks her to come to the restaurant. She talks with her for a moment, and then hangs up. Her mother has been compromised, she says. She hasn't used a sentence without the word "like" in it, ever.
The YOs gear up (there was an A-Team montage moment) and head for the restaurant, and when they get there they see that Sandy's parents' trailer is parked nearby. A thick blanket of fruiting grass covers the area, each with those awful little white bulbs on the end, and a tall, thin man with an inoffensive, almost surprised look on his face walks through the parking lot. That must be Figgis, and he's looking for them.
Perry stands up and embraces the Thrills of squirting Tonic and floor cleaner, cutting big brown swaths of goop, but Figgis reaches down and swipes at the grass, and the bulbs begin to burst, releasing spores into the air. Sandy stands up and, as a Sun-Lover, tries to expose more of the area and kill off the Tangle, but then Tate stands up and wins on Perry's Thrills Conviction. Throwing caution to the wind, he rushes in and throws the floor cleaner on Figgis...and Figgis throws his head back and screams. His head cracks in half at the jaw and the top part falls off, a long, pink fruiting body erupts from his esophagus before melting away. In a moment, there's nothing left but clothes and brown sludge.
So we have our second Beat, a Reversal: Figgis melts. And answer to the Question: What does the fruiting grass precede? Figgis (or rather, a more aggressive advance by the Tangle).
Scene Six: Who Wins?
Tate set this scene up, and chose Smedley Winter.
The YOs pile into the trailer and get moving. They've treated Sandy's parents and Tate's mom with the Tonic, just like they did Tate's dad, and the three of them are out cold as the spores work themselves out of their bodies. Sparky calls his mom and leaves a message, but his parents are pretty checked out generally (and probably more heavily spored, meaning they're not sure what effect the Tonic would have). They tell Guy to head for the Clean Room, but as he does, they hear sirens. There's a Jeep behind them, like a forest ranger's.
Guy pulls over and a man they recognize as Smedley Winter walks up, puts his hand on the door and asks for Guy's license and registration. The YOs realize that his fingertips are leaking spores into the van!
Sandy stands up and Pedantically exclaims that they need to go, now, and activates the window. It closes and severs the tops of Smedley's fingers (ew), which tumble into the van and start fruiting (EW). Tate stands up...and wins on Sandy's Pedantic! He lectures the others briefly on how gross this is and why they need to keep the spores out, and sprays them with Tonic to melt them. Guy floors it, and they pull away, go off road, and make it back to the Clean Room.
The YOs have won the episode. They make the restaurant their new Exploit, giving them a wider base of operations and some more adults that are willing to help.
Scene Seven: Dust Settles
I set this up and chose the last remaining Friendship Question, Sandy's to Perry: "Why did I find you alone in the woods the other night?" Perry: "I was looking for supplies for my slingshot, like you showed me."
Later that night, everyone is asleep except Perry, who is far too keyed up. He's outside practicing with his slingshot, and realizes that there are still bits of the fruiting grass popping up in the woods. He runs inside and grabs some of the cleaner (waking the others in the process), and runs back out and starts spraying. He figures he can fix all this, even if he's Always Underestimated.
What he doesn't realize is that the cleaner is making the other plant life in the area brittle! A squirrel jumps on a branch and it cracks, and Sandy, a Forager, realizes the impact it'll have if animals get infected, too. She catches the poor rodent and tosses it to a safer tree. Sparky, now awake, wakes up and starts treating the areas that have fruiting grass Fast, and Tate stands up and wins on his Fast Conviction (following suit).
The YOs have managed to avert a major escalation from the Tangle...but things are clearly getting worse and the Tangle is bringing in bigger guns. What next?
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