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bexo-tic · 4 years

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Breath Play - Spencer Reid X Reader

Spencer Reid X Reader Slow Burn

Season 10 Episode 17

Word Count: 3234

The sound of heels clicking overwhelms my senses. I can’t believe I’m here, in the BAU office. Sure, I’ve been here plenty of times during my childhood to visit my uncle, but this time I came to work. My heartbeat slows as I take in the familiar smell of coffee brewing. It’s almost nostalgic, reminding me of the times I’d surprise Uncle Aaron with a visit. My heart aches a little as I think of Aunt Haley, but I push the thoughts from my mind. This is my first day and I need everything to be perfect.

“Y/N,” he smiles warmly as I peek my head into his office. I hadn’t seen Aaron since I left for college, I was too busy working on my degrees. We still called once a week, and that is why it didn’t feel forced or awkward to slide into conversation with him after 8 years.

“Well, everyone is at the table because we have a new case, I can introduce you there.” He leads me out of his office and into a small room filled with only a round table and a screen where the team waits. Their presence makes me nervous. They have all this experience with their job and probably only remember me as Aaron’s little niece if they remember me at all.

“Team, we have a new intern, Y/N Y/L/N. She’s my niece on Haley’s side.” He clears his throat after mentioning her and I can tell he isn’t as over it as everyone would assume. “This is Derek Morgan, Kate Calahan, Jennifer Jereau, David Rossi, and Spencer Reid. And our Tech Analyst Penelope Garcia.”

“Save the pleasantries, Aaron. She knows me,” David says as he gets up to hug me. The smell of his cologne fills my lungs, but not in an overbearing way. He cups my face in his hands. “You’re all grown up; it’s hard to believe.”

“I don’t think I believe it yet either,” I laugh as I sit down and he goes back to his seat.

“I hate to interrupt the joy, but we need to get to Wisconsin, also known as the lovely badger state, home of milk and cheese,” Penelope says. She goes into explaining the case and how the bodies of 3 women had been discovered as late as this morning. I tense my body to keep from shivering at the sight of their photos.

That might be the part that always gets to me, seeing the photos of the victims happy and smiling. I can’t imagine their faces once they realized what was going to happen to them. I watch as they discuss the case, their energy, and ideas building off each other. It happens so smoothly and effortlessly like they aren’t talking about murders. But to them this is normal, maybe they’re a little desensitized to it.

“Whether he knows the victims or not, he’s hit his stride and he’s not gonna take time to cool off. Wheels up in 30,” Aaron says, distracting me from my thoughts. I grab the “go bag” I left in my uncle’s office which is better described as a suitcase on the edge of exploding. It was my first trip and I didn’t know how long we’d stay so I panic-packed what was probably too much clothing. As I leave the office I bump into something hard. I look up and see Derek.

“Oh my- I’m so sorry. I didn’t even look and-” He holds up a hand to stop my rambling.

“It’s fine, it takes more than a suitcase to knock me down,” he says with a smile. I let out a relieved sigh and he continued talking.

“Rossi says you’re fresh out of college. What degrees do you have?”

“I have a Ph.D. in Psychology and a Masters in Criminal Justice.”

“And you’re how old?”

“26, I just took a lot of summer classes,” I shrug.

“Sounds a little like Reid,” he laughs. “Real smart guy, been here since he was 24. He graduated high school at 12.” I feel my jaw open and quickly try to close it.

“That’s um- wow.”

“Insane, I know. Let me help you get to the jet.”

“Yeah, thanks. I was going to ask my uncle where to go.”

“So is having Hotch as an uncle the same as having him as a boss?”

“Mm, I’d say yeah. He’s pretty reserved, but once you’ve known him long enough you can read him like a book. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk to you, it’s more like he’s too busy thinking to remember to talk to you.”

“Sounds about right,” he chuckles. “Set your bag here and just through that door is the jet.”

“Oh, thanks again for showing me.”

“No problem, Y/N.” He walked onto the plane. It felt strange hearing him call me by my first name when everyone else was referred to by their last name. But maybe I was reading too much into it. It was my first day and we couldn’t have made a bond as he had with everyone else in the 5-minute walk to the jet. I took a deep breath to calm my thoughts and walked through the door.

Already they were discussing the case again. Hearing them bounce ideas off each other and analyze was almost comforting if you forgot they were talking about a murderer. Their dynamic was so in tune like they all held the same vibration. Part of me didn’t want to speak and mess up the flow of the conversation.

“Alright Dave and Reid, go to the Medical Examiner with Em. Morgan and Kate go to the newest crime scene. JJ and I will interview friends and family at the station,” Aaron announced. My fingertips began to tingle with anticipation. This is happening! A part of me was excited to be here. I’d always admired my uncle when I was younger for putting away the bad guys and here I was beside him. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach and I tried desperately to calm down. It was my first case and I was determined not to mess this up. I didn’t want Aaron thinking I couldn’t handle this and sending me home, so I was determined to keep a calm demeanor.

<<< >>>

“Cartilage around the windpipe was damaged, but the COD was actually a crushed trachea,” the examiner says as he leads us to the victims’ bodies.

“I’m surprised Emma didn’t go into cardiac arrest before then,” Spencer says, looking back at me and David. I nod in agreement because I don’t have anything to counter with. I question why Aaron even sent me with them to the M.E. when I don’t have enough experience to be much help here.

“Nobody has sex for 6 straight hours, not even sting,” David says, pulling my attention back to the report. That’s where it should be. “Maybe he’s interacting with them beforehand.”

“Nonetheless, it’s an endurance test. He’d have to be in pretty great physical shape,” Spencer says. I try to form my own ideas as they talk, to just bring something to the table and not feel like I’m useless and watching from the sidelines.

“Well, do you think strangulation is just the dispatching method, then?” David asks.

“Erotic asphyxiation,” I call from behind them. They both turn to look at me and I feel my heart move up my throat. “I mean, the bruising from repeated strangling and releasing is similar to that.”

“If that’s the case, isn't the pleasure usually all for the recipient?”

“Maybe not for him,” Spencer answers. “Cutting off his victim’s air supply might be how he satisfies his own urges.”

I sigh, I might have just contributed something. I don't want them to think I can’t do anything to help. My eyes wander to the other victims. She has the same bruising as the other victim except her hair is blonde, Donna Rayburn. She almost looks like me, but her eyes are blue, not the dark brown I got from my dad. Noticing all our similarities makes me itch and I feel exposed. I jump when a hand touches my back.

“Hey, we’re heading back to discuss everything with the team,” David says. “Are you alright?”

I can feel Spencer’s eyes burning into me from behind, he’s not very good at acting like he isn’t listening to our conversation. I can’t help but wonder if he thinks I’m even qualified to be here; his intelligence is a little intimidating. He could probably profile circles around me.

“I’m fine, just nervous. First day jitters,” I smile in what I hope is a convincing way. David leads me to the car and I sit in the back on the way to the station. Looking out the window keeps me distracted and I let my mind wander. I wonder how the people who live here feel about the news. Everyone says “It could never happen here”, but somehow it always does.

“Six hours is a long time, especially late at night, for someone to be held and no one to hear anything,” Aaron says as David, Spencer and I make it to the table. Again they delved into a conversation trying to connect the victims. So far, the only thing they had in common was their interactions with the unsub. After what seemed like hours of discussion, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and got up to find coffee.

I found my way to a small kitchen with two coffee pots in it. I grabbed a guest mug and poured in the steaming liquid, leaving enough room for the cream and sugar packets on the counter. A voice behind me makes me jump.

“Did you know Hawaii is the only state in the U.S. that grows coffee?” I turn and find Spencer standing there with his thermos in his hands.

“Um no?”

“Yeah, the ideal coffee growing conditions require high altitudes, rich soil, and tropical climates.”

“Do you start every conversation off with facts?” I ask with a laugh.

“Mostly,” he smiles. “Oh, and I wouldn’t drink that coffee if I were you. Hotch just said we’re heading back to the hotel and regrouping in the morning.”

I checked the time on my phone, 11:33 PM. No wonder I was so tired, with the jet ride and busy day we had. The ride to the hotel felt like it lasted a few minutes, so I must have dozed off in the car. Aaron handed me the key to my room which I shared with JJ. I barely had time to shower before I fell asleep in the white sheets of the bed.

<<< >>>

I couldn’t believe the unsub killed again last night. I knew he would kill again, but it didn’t feel right that I hadn’t noticed. How did we all fall asleep so easily when the murderer we were trying to find had claimed a new victim? And here I was walking around Lynn Boyd’s house as everyone scurried around for evidence. I find my way into her bedroom.

“The bindings, the silk scarf, the rough sex. He’s using ‘Bare Reflections’ to choose his victims,” Rossi says. Finally, another step forward. Last night we concluded the unsub would be a married man, but it didn’t give us much to go off of. A call to Garcia would help us understand more.

‘If this book is mainstream, then his victim pool is large.”

“Garica, did any of the other victims besides Lynn own a copy?” JJ asks.

“Mary Healy had it on her tablet. Donna Rayburn checked it out from the library twice. Emma and Lynn both purchased copies locally.”

Although the book tied our victims together, who even knew how many other married women in the comfort zone owned the book as well. The list of possible targets would be too long to help us tie it back to the unsub.

“And- hey, a lot of the saucy texts are direct quotes from the book,” Garcia says. “Oh! Speaking of texts, I culled them from that he met Mary via message board, Donna at a coffee shop, Emma at the gym, and Lynn, he met Lynn using a fake profile on a discreet dating website for married people.”

“Thanks, Garcia,” Rossi said, ending the call.

“Profile?” JJ asked. He nodded in response. The ride back to the station passed in a blink. Maybe it was the satisfaction I was feeling. My fingertips tingled because we were so close to finally catching this guy.

“Based on area demographics, we believe that we’re looking for a physically fit white male in his mid-30s to early 40s,” Aaron starts.

“He’s a homicidal dominant with an interest in role-play,” Callahan continues. They build off each other so smoothly, and the rest of the team keeps it going.

“We believe his charisma has allowed him to latch onto women who are interested in a popular erotic romance novel called ‘Bare Reflections’.”

“In it, a sheltered female teacher falls for a handsome mogul with a dark past who forces her into a submissive role.”

“Despite her initial worries, Amber Stone finds she can’t live without Carson Bare, warts and all.”

“We believe the unsub and his victims are consensually recreating a scenario from this book.”

“In that scene, Carson introduces Amber to BDSM by binding her to a bed as they have rough sex.”

“The unsub uses this role play to get his victims into a vulnerable position before his fantasy takes hold.”

”This has provided the unsub with a victim pool who have dropped their guard.”

“His first victims were single, but his last two were married. This escalation indicates that he may be married himself and probably has a family.”

“This unsubs M.O. takes patience and caution, and is firmly rooted in a need-based desire, which means he won’t be stopping anytime soon. Thank you.” Aaron says, ending the profile presentation. I look back at the crime scene photos trying to piece together the puzzle. I notice Reid quickly skimming through the pages of “Bare Reflections”.

“Are you even reading it?” I ask.

“I can read 20,000 words per minute, so yes.” He doesn't even have to look up when he responds.

“Robot,” I say under my breath as I roll my eyes, but from his smirk, I can tell he heard me.

“There’s not a single mention of erotic asphyxiation anywhere,” he says as Rossi and a detective approach us.

“It’s the unsub’s fetish then.” Rossi’s brows furrow.

“He’s a charmer that knows that some people lose themselves in the moment and others stop at nothing to please their partners,” my thoughts come out loud as I walk towards them. “Somehow he makes his victims feel safe enough to abandon their hard limit.”

“What’s a hard limit?” the detective asks.

“It’s a common BDSM practice. Hard limits are anything that’s an automatic no-go. It differs by person and taste,” Rossi states.

“And a soft limit is an in which a submissive hesitates or places strict conditions on,” Reid pipes up.

“I had no idea that world had so many regulations. Where does he find somebody like-minded?”

“In “Bare Reflections”, Carson Bare takes Amber to an event called a munch.”

“Which is?”

“According to the book, it’s a social gathering for people interested in BDSM.”

“Where the heck do you find that?”

“We should call Garcia.” Reid nods at Rossi.

“I found one,” he says, showing his simple google search. While Rossi and Callahan go to the munch, the rest of us stay behind to go over the case files.

<<< >>>

“He knew crossing state lines would make it more difficult to link the crimes,” Aaron says about the three prostitute murders Garcia has just brought up.

“That’s a very different cooling-off period. I wonder what was so special about those dates,” Detective Pierce questions. Reid grabs an expo marker and turns to the nearest board.

“First kills were in 2000, 2007, and then he went dormant until last year. What triggers him?” He writes all the dates on the board.

“Deaths in the family,” Aaron asks.

“He could keep losing jobs?”

“These are sex crimes so what interferes with sex drive? Children,” Callahan offers. “The addition of a child would disrupt even the happiest of couples.”

“More specifically the births,” Reid nods and you can see the gears in his head turning. “What if each of these kills corresponds to the births of the unsub’s own children?”

“Garcia, how many men in the hunting zone had a child in 2000?”

“16 and because I already know what the follow-up question is going to be, 5 had their second child 8 years ago, and two had their third last year.”

“Were either one of them busted for something like peeping or exposure?” I ask.

“Yes and no, there's a Patrick Jon Murphy. He’s a physical therapist, here’s the thing he was never actually arrested. I do have some sealed family court docs, though, that I’m about to unseal and learn … Oh, when he was 12, he witnessed his neighbor strangle his wife to death in a sex game gone bad.”

“Even though he was only a witness, that moment created a single event imprint on his love map and probably started his interest in breath play.”

“Is his wife interested in BDSM?”

“Uh, no, doesn’t look like it. The Murphy’s have been in and out of couple’s therapy for years.”

“The therapy roller coaster may have been due to intermittent periods of frustration then bliss surrounding the murders.”

“And his urges increase during periods of non-intimacy.”

“If the unsub’s trigger was the birth of his kids, why change the victimology and accelerate the kills now?” I ask.

“I think the guilt he’s felt has been alleviated by ‘Bare Reflections’, and the intense female interest in it has justified his impulses,” Reid answers. Our phones beep as Garcia sends us his address and we race out the door. His house isn’t even that far from the station, it’s crazy that he’s been under our noses the whole time. JJ and Reid come out of the house looking defeated.

“He’s at the nanny’s house, we’ve gotta move!” We don't even have time to buckle up before we're barreling down the road. When we arrive at the house I can see a girl standing at the front door.

"You two take the front of the house, I'm going around back," Morgan declares. I can see him run after the unsub on foot as Callahan grabs the girl inside the house. That must be his daughter. The rest of us storm inside, clearing each room as we make our way through the house. Calls from upstairs lead us into the bedroom where we find a woman tied to her bed. Immediately we untie her as a medic comes in to check her out.

<<< >>>

“So, how was your first case?” Aaron asks as he sits across from me on the jet.

“Um, intense,” I nod and he laughs. “But I really enjoyed helping solve it.”

“I knew you had it in you.” He squeezes my hand. “Want some coffee?”

“No thanks, I’m gonna try to sleep before we land.” I curl into my chair and try to let the tension release from my body as I fall asleep.

#spencer x you #spencer reid #criminal minds #derek morgan #david rossi #kate callahan #jennifer jereau #aaron hotch hotchner #penelope garcia #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds fandom #spencer reid x reader #reid x reader

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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14x03 watching notes

Just finished watching and said, out loud and to no one: “Awww Jack.”

(This is not a spoiler, he’s just so sweet.)

Hallo, I am watching from bed despite having 3rd hand inherited a 2nd monitor over the weekend so theoretically my watching experience would be back to giant comfortable side-typing glory.

But comfy.

Easily accessible stuffed toys because Bobo Fucking Berens in Dabb era has made me cry more at this dumb show in the last couple of years than I cried in the previous ten.

Expectations: it's our Dean episode to make up for no Dean until now, and also Jody is there to see Sam's beard, and also Cas continues to be party!Cas, and Jack's shirts get darker and darker.

Side note: I think I was rushing out the door before I could talk about our lil Nougat of Denmark properly last episode where he was all, so we're killing my uncle then, and Cas was all D: D: D: D: D: who raised you. (Dean. Dean did. In this regard the boy is his father's son.) This, of course, is another Shakespearean irony than is being returned to Dean via Jack.

The point of this focus is very much to show Jack vs Cas mindsets on it when we're getting Dean returned to us, and I assume considerably more nuance is being added to the story. But for now, Jack being ready to kill his father to kill his uncle because his father was ready to kill him to kill the ghosts he saw of his enemies in Jack is more than enough of a pile of tragedy level angst to be working with.

I just need it to be clear that as far as I'm concerned, Jack is working in a completely different genre from EVERYONE ELSE around him, and the fact that it's the protagonist of a tragedy is fairly alarming, as it's a mindset that Sam, Dean and Cas have hurdled over since season 5/6 and though Dean still assumes he'll die bloody, he is at least capable of dreaming of a happy ending, and a lessening of the angst load has allowed that. Their personal stakes in the story are dwindling, in a sense, while Jack has showed up with like FOUR FATHERS and an evil uncle, which is so much potential family angst Shakey would have exploded. "Wait you can just addeth extra fathers thence addeth extra angst!?!?"

Yes my dude, yes.

*hits play* *Sam ruggedly cocks his pistol* You're stealing this whole shtick from Dean and I think it is time for the angst that you were the one dramatically cocking a gun and being the yes reductive heteronormative blah blah penis of the dynamic while Dean was not there to do it.

Oh no we immediately start with more Jack angst recap and aside from everything I just said I remembered that Bobo personally murdered me in 13x03 with the Jack n Sam stuff and here we are a year later.

Mr Stark I don't feel so good

THE BEARD EXCHANGE IS LITERALLY THE OPENING SCENE. BOBO I LOVE YOU. Thank you for breaking the tension and immediately drawing attention to how Sam has been busy and miserable. I think 14x01 set up well that every time he even had a moment to sigh his phone would ring again, and hence the beard appears as Sam eskews personal grooming and comfort in exchange for finding his brother. Jody is gonna draw attention to it at some point too because we have the promo shot of her nice peach fuzz-ing him, and I sincerely hope this is bookends to the episode and the next episode Sam is clean shaven with no comment except Jody prodded him in the face, and let me tell you only Bobo has me fantasising about the narrative framing of an episode like this.

God i'm a nerd

Anyway more seriously, this exchange coming out of the blue has a clear motive: Dean is up and about, still so freshly de-Michaeled he's in a waistcoat (and LORDY the only other scene he was in a waistcoat? 7x12's ending scene where Sam turns into such a moron in Jody's presence he's waving blushily at the door still AFTER SHE HAS GONE). Complaining about not being able to eat and sleep might be a sense of hyperbole to catch given the lack of elapsed time, but it also warns us that this might be how Dean reacts to being un-Michaeled. Or would he not, given he's up and about and snarking like his old self? How damaged will he be and how much can he repress into snark? He is playing off the very idea that this experience will have been damaging to his psyche and of course Michael did a ton of stuff which was expressly tuned to BE damaging to his psyche, then punched a mirror and shattered Dean's reflection for extra emphasis.

So all this question of how Dean is doing is loaded into the very opening line before he's even taken off his waistcoat, or of course, had enough time to truly eat/sleep/develop massive tells of the psychological trauma he may or may not have taken.

Obviously the show wouldn't be the show if he were fine, so I'm taking it as a question posed.

Then of course it slides into Bro Banter to prove it's Dean, remind us JUST how much we missed this snarky genre savvy fucker, and to make Sammy smile.

Also we're mocking Jared for being friends with that one Duck Dynasty guy who Jared's fans insist is the least awful of the bunch and also who you end up hanging out with when you're most embedded in the Texan stardom scene rather than living in Hollywood or whatever.

(God imagine being famous and from Atlanta and sticking true to your roots and you end up with the Queer Eye guyses as your BFFs instead)

Listen Bobo showed his socialist party membership card on twitter, he has no fucks to give about waving his politics around and I love him.

"If you're going to ask if I'm okay, you don't have to" (I am making fun of your beard, what more do I have to give you, bro?)

Buddy, I have been watching your face for over a decade and you have the sad tired pink eyelids of a Dean who is both tired and miserable.

Oh NO Dean walks into the main room expecting his comfy quiet library and war room full of 3 trusted family faces, and finds the bustle of Boss Sam's operation. The upcoming noise of these people before he turns the corner is an immediate warning that we should have expected this as dramatic irony for Dean's comfort levels from the start, and now he's back, well.

Panicked eyes.

He needs quiet recovery with his peeps, not alarming sudden change. A rug pull immediately after possession is a terrible thing to deal with. I've been wondering if this is a full reverse of season 6 for Dean - from the trustability of the hunter compound to the fact he lives in it, to the Samuel running it. But the effect is the same. Dean comes back from quiet time off to a change he can't handle and Sam in a new position in a family/hunter heirarchy. In this case, not Samuel's soulless goon, but a fully bearded Boss Sam King Of Hell Sir who Runs Shit competently in a way we the viewer trust implictly as Sam having Done Well, and also that the AU peeps might be a bit rough or untrained in some ways but 100% reliable in that they really do have no ulterior motive and every reason to think of Sam as an AU Moses who popped up and walked them to another land of safety and comfort.

Like, Dean, welcome back, you have Hamlet, Moses and Mobby to deal with. Cas seems to be the same as you left him, though. If somehow, impossibly, squintier.

"Right, Chief told us"

GOD I MISSED JENSEN'S MICRO EXPRESSIONS

You know how Michael sucks? No micro expressions. Guy doesn't have an anxious bone in his body.

This little bundle of neuroses I have chosen to love is full on having a meltdown on the other hand.

"Dean? Is it really you?" "Hey kid"

HUG. THE. BOY.

I suppose this is better than last year when he had a hug from a shapeshifter and had to wait to episode 6 for a hug from his father, but REALLY this season has been tormenting me with how bad Jack feels and even a hug from his gramgram isn't enough to satisfy how he should have been hugged by Sam, Cas and now Dean already this season.

We're only on epiode 3 and he's already got more hugs than he had this point last year. Deep breaths, Lizzy

Children need a lot of cuddles to affect their development into sensitive people okay? Dean got a lot of hugs up to age 4 and Sam basically did not, and he's an awkward moose and Dean is snuggly. I want Nougat to have the same development into a sensitive lad because he has EIGHTEEN FUCKING PARENTS AND NONE OF THEM HUG HIM

CAS HEARD 'DEAN' FROM ACROSS THE BUNKER, ARRIVES IN A BLUR

GOOD NOUGAT, HUG DEAN.

But like, dude, Cas just showed up at a run and made the gooiest eyes at Dean who made them back, and now you're officially cockblocking, so naff off, kid

I watched with prayer hands and Cas just got gooier and Dean got sulky he didn't get a Cas hug and this is officially the worst. Bobo, you let me down, my guy.

I mean no, Cas's gooey eyes were

...

Cas doesn't do gooey eyes. He squints. Squintily.

Who is this guy

Lol Mobby aren't in the episode because they stayed back to clean up - Sam gets stammery to Jack. Is he scared to imply they're maybe banging because he finds it weird but everyone else present is an even worse audience to announce this to for one reason or another (historically coped much better with the concept of dad sex when discovering adam and also didn't drive the car off the road into a ditch on finding out mary banged ketch), or is he trying to protect Jack from the concept of Michael leaving a pile o dead bodies for one reason or another, knowing Michael is his rage button?

He was the one who dealt with Jack trying to stay back in the AU to fight Mikey instead of just coming home.

"Speaking of clean up, I need a shower" *gestures vaguely* *Cas opens his mouth like why did I have a reaction image here? Do you want -* *closes mouth* *dean leaves*

Guys. You fucking suck. Go take a shower together and work things out.

"Still okay, I promise" *bisexual finger guns at Cas*

cut to: Cas squinting after Dean like "is he implying something"

"..."

"I really feel like he was trying to communicate something to me"

"..."

"I have no idea what Dean just hinted loudly to me twice in short succession and now that he has gone to shower I guess I will never know what he was attempting to communicate to me"

"Where's Nick?" "Hopefully not in this episode. Let's just say he needs some time because he's in a dark place and hope that's ALL we have to say about him"

Oh no. "Sam. Dean. How is he really?"

Cas has a one track mind.

But then we get the shot of Dean opening his door and they're still talking about him over the top of it, but it's that same shadowed shot of himself silhouetted in the doorway, the inner darkness represented by his room... Sam went into his and stripped himself of the tools in his pocket but before he could sleep, Jo called and set them all off again with the next lead.

Now Dean opens his door and turns on the light so we can see his inner self in a moment of peace and privacy, but essentially with a voice over about how he's super not okay.

Just how we left it. You can't even tell that for the last 2 episodes/3 weeks Cas has been coming in and snuggling your pillow every time he's not in a scene because where the fuck was he inbetween scenes in 14x02

God I have missed lingering shots of Dean's room, equating his inner space to his inner feelings. *paws lovingly at the shot* Dean's room all tidy and orderly and as he left it, yet feeling somehow very very empty and off-kilter in an unfamiliar way because he hasn't been here for so long.

It was all serious then guitar music started playing as Dean started stripping

and look

I saw the promo pics

you saw the promo pics

some person in the audience is like... why are we lingering on Dean getting undressed alone in his room while guitar music kicks up?

Is this what all that winking and finger gun action was about?

(Dean didn't wink but I took a lil break to chat with Mittens and the moment has evolved into him gurning at the door for like a minute trying to remind Cas that this means he joins him in the shower in 5)

"Fuck this shirt in particular"

I still think it was the audacity of wearing a bow tie that dragged Dean to the surface last episode

I love how Dean changes from this plain white t-shirt which is completely clean and shiny, into his normal dark dark brown shirt between scenes. I hope he got to shower. Whatever happened, this scar could have said "Ha ha ha I'm behind you", and he would have finished stripping down right to the skivvies then started fresh with his own boxerbriefs before freaking out and rushing to show the others.

But yeah, he's PISSED and embarrassed about Michael. You don't throw a guy's shirt on the floor like that unless you feel SERIOUSLY used, and here we end up with a creepy sort of STD metaphor, complete with the visual similarity to the clap: https://www.giantmicrobes.com/uk/products/clap.html

Bad fling, Dean?

Poker!witch gave Sam the clap in the episode which was totally not a metaphor about Sam getting the clap then beating poker!witch at his own game like nearly 20 episodes before he was possessed by Lucifer then beat him at his own game.

"Do the whole vulcan mind meld thing" Listen, James T Kirk, you can't just MAKE yourself one of the most iconic slash pairings of all time by comparing - wait

wait a minute

*Checks slash history books and sees them as a dictionary definition or two*

Anyway.

Dean's so eager for Cas to jump into his head. Just, like. Again. We all said it but immediately after that shirt throw? It REALLY emphasises that Dean sees Cas in this transcendant way to being used by an angel that got in his head. And left an STD mark on his arm. He can just immediately think, well, that sucked. But here's MY angel and I'm just gonna rev myself up and present my head for inspection and this isn't even a thing I'm concerned about. Hit me, big guy.

Oh come the fuck on Bobo.

I didn't have time to hit pause to have a heart attack about Cas putting his hand over The Scar, the one on the wrong shoulder, to get a clearer reception, because there's a HISTORY in scars, okay? They leave a mark and to the discerning poker and prodder like Cas that history can be read in the mark... And Cas sees... Michael being stabbed by a spear. Not just, like. Seeing Michael being stabbed by a spear, mind you. He sees it in a Bobo episode in a way wildly reminiscent of Patience seeing Claire/Kaia getting stabbed by a VERY SIMILAR LOOKING SPEAR and getting her Wayward introduction that way, when the whole Dreamhunter thing ended up being a massive Destiel parallel and Kaia getting stabbed already mirrored CAS getting stabbed by a spear (Michael's, natch) in 12x12, never mind the other stuff.

So Bobo has just built up a Destiel Dreamhunter sandwich, with Destiel nonsense either side, complete with bonus shoulder scar imagery, and a nice gooey dreamhunter centre.

Bobo, if you hadn't noticed, is really really really really reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally bitter he isn't off writing Wayward Sisters and hanging with his girls.

There's still a bunch of stuff to add up here, about why and who and how it all connects, which would involve dragging in these other spear-y episodes to assemble the full picture, so I'm just gonna hit play now I'm recovered from the shock :P

Oh dude it was a hooded figure who even LOOKED like bad Kaia and tbh at this point I'd say maybe even was?

Like, how many pronged spears are out there anyway and Jody's dealing with it so is it local? Did Michael pop up on Kaia like hey so you and I are both from alternate universes, what do you wa - OW FUCK JESUS FUKKIN CHRIST -

"Dean, who was that?"

Dean recognised her, and Cas was mind-melded enough with him to know that Dean did... Good grief I can not handle Dean and Cas existing on an emotional plane.

It's enough to mean they're the ones who call Jody with a tip off for HER rather than months of them asking her to help THEM.

Introducing us back to the Wayward world - South Dakota mug, and a text that Claire is a little angel who has been training her gals and even did the laundry.

I'm so happy

Eyebrow raise

God, Kim Rhodes is the most beautiful woman on the whole show and that's saying something considering, like. Ruthie. Lisa Berry. Something about the way she uses her face is so full of intelligence and humour that I am HELPLESS in her presence

God damn I want that fabled Girls' Night episode. Billie comes along too on a night off.

Rowena calls her up for chats sometimes these days, they're actually really good pals.

Sam you fucking moron you can't even finish a sentence in her presence. Just slap Dean on his WOUNDED arm and throw the ball to him.

Everyone leaning over the phone... This is the closest Cas has ever come to Jody.

"Jody, that's the good news."

Jody recognises that gravelly voice and snaps to holyshitanangel attention. "What's up?"

The implicit thing here is that Cas and Jody know each others' voices and are on at least chatting acquaintance. I would like to think they're invited over for beer at the same time but we have no proof..................... yet. This is Bobo on a "fuck you" rampage so I'm just, like, gonna wait see.

Bad Kaia has been going around ripping heads off things. DAMN, GIRL.

Considering the placement of the pronging was ~random~, in the sense that she can meat fork you anywhere, that means the placement of it on the meat of Dean's arm where the handprint once was on the other is even MORE significant in a metaphorical sense, of writing about "the scar" in the way of giving it a mystical property tied into the wider framework of all these relationships and events at once. The amount piled onto a simple stabbing is unbelievable, and the use of the scar as the vector for all this is definitely the byline of the episode given the title and all. It's brought Kaia back to us, given Jody the clue she needs.

And more dramatic irony that Claire was just asking to help, and Jody was like DEFINITELY HUMAN, SO ALL MINE. HAHAHA. And now we know, no, it's not all "human", it's bad!Kaia and that makes her CLAIRE'S.

I keep stopping to seal clap

it's 7:20am

Cas is packing up to leave with them!!!

And Jack looms blurrily into the background in his darkest t-shirt yet. And he's been RAPIDLY cycling through them.

In a sense this is good laundry practice, in order that you have a full load of lights followed by a full load of darks.

Metaphorically, however, this is BAD.

Jack sounds pissed they're all wearing jackets and packing bags, and he's wandering around in an over-sized dark grey t-shirt (one of Dean's? AUBobby's? It doesn't look like his standard fare which fits his body, this makes him look SMOL), with no idea we were off to kill the wizard.

Let's be charitable and say he wants to meet Jody and hang out with Kaia again.

But more likely Bobo is once again messing with Jack's inherent darkness in his presentation, especially as right now, once again while Jack is being The Sweetest Little Cookie, meeting his grandparents for ice tea and looking through the family photo album with misty eyes, he is ALSO Prince Nougat of Denmark and this is causing some serious darkness slippage because, well, revenge. Revenge is bad, kiddo. Don't need a ghost of your dead father (hey Dean's back) to tell you that.

The accusatory tone is enough to warn us that Jack's not doing so well and I'm going to assume drags Cas away from a mission with Dean followed by cooldown eating pizza and watching flicks with the girls.

"Kaia's killer is in Sioux Falls" Buddy. "He, she or it can hurt Michael" BUDDY.

I suppose they're bringing Cas because Bad Kaia kicked their asses and they assume Cas is the same height as her pet/metaphor for Kaia's inner fucked-up-ness so he can probably fight it??

"Michael's my enemy too! I fought him. For MONTHS." JACK sweetie. You can't just go around like, having an enemy list. And comparing it with your collective fathers' list.

The line about bringing Kaia into it and being responsible for what happened to her is good, though. Jack's got a social consciousness and that is lovely because he keeps doubting his goodness but when it comes down to it he wants to meet his grandparents and feels bad that Kaia got dragged into things and killed.

Of course, not realising this is Bad Kaia, they're all off to get MORE revenge on that thing that killed her.

Aw, Dean, no, don't point out how smol he is. He's wearing a huge baggy shirt to emphasise it already.

"I didn't - I didn't MEAN to be a dick" Whoops. Well, you were. You also missed the part where Jack went from smol precious child to angsty teen.

Fun fact: Hamlet was supposed to be like 18 or whatever, but because a famous actor wanted the lead role but was like, idk, 50, Shakey bumped up Hamlet's age a lil so he could get away with it, making him more of, like, a giant manbaby who is still functionally a teen in all ways except he keeps getting portrayed by middle aged men.

So, of course, we have our one and a half year old Nougat who is a 29 year old actor now getting into his terrible teens, and if that isn't the funnest nugget of trivia...

... then you are not as much of a nerd as I am about irony, coincidence, and neat overlaps of thingies.

Point is: get me a version of Hamlet where the other expected actors are adults of course, but Horatio and Hammy and his squad are dumb teens.

Lol Bobo just randomly introduces a cool lady hunter who is dragging a random victim of a hex down into the bunker to be healed by an angel. That poor girl is going to have a story to tell.

A lot just happened in a few seconds but at least Jack, who has stormed off for his nth teenage sulk of the season, now has a Cas trapped in the Bunker with him.

Dean n Sam gonna get their asses kicked by Bad Kaia

honestly is this just a ploy not to keep Cas where Jack is, but to keep Misha away from stunt fighting?

Anyway Dean communicates most of the above to Cas silently, and tells him that he should stay with Jack and also heal this girl and they have the most married eye conversation about what needs to be done, which is wonderful that they've been having these silent conversations all Dabb era but this is definitely the wordiest so far. I mean one of their more recent was just "Dean I can hear that cowboy music in your head" "what cowboy music?"

DEAN DOESN'T EVEN LOOK THRILLED TO BE DRIVING BABY AGAIN.

Sam mostly looks concerned he's hitting 80mph

I don't know anything about American speed limits but this is an alarming speed to me because in the UK 70 is usually like, the Most, and we don't have enough long straight roads that when there's no speed limit it's ever really recommended to go super fast because you will flip your car and die because all our roads are one and a half car length wide and extremely wiggly. And our motorways are congested enough you're more likely to be in a traffic jam than top speed anyway :P

I love that Dean measures people by their favourite Spice Girl. Hey Dean the 90s called, they want their pop culture relevance back.

You gay icon you.

(I'm reminded of 12x07 and Bobo and a similar conversation where Dean listed off all his manly manly historical faves)

Dean thinks Cas can handle it back home :')

"Something huge happened and you won't really talk about it!"

Okay Sam, he's traumatised and that's surface text.

You do realise the entire massive subtext is his repression and yet another metaphor for some huge queer experience and that this is the same conversation as 10x04 when he was grumbling into his chin about being embarrassed about what he did with Crowley? You realise that right?

Stop poking him about it, he'll talk when he's ready to open up. In the mean time he's feeling used and ashamed that this fling didn't go as planned after the whole first flirtation with waving his wings around and killing Lucifer where it all seemed fun to embrace his ~true self~ and have a crack at being a Flaming Michael Sword.

Also of course, we might just take him on his word that he really does NOT remember most of everything that happened because if he was truly repressing that much he wouldn't have been so gung ho for Cas to read his mind earlier but this mood pre-dates that so even if he remembered everything when Cas poked his brain, which seems unlikely as Cas saw it too, the wider sulk about his Clap Scar is more than just this.

It's a common experience, though, that Dean is repressed and moody, and Sam barrels in there trying to make him talk about it before he's ready, so the pressing is in character, regardless, that Sam doesn't trust that Dean is telling the whole truth and that there's some huge secret he's holding back.

The best part of queer subtext is that whether there is one or not it works - if there isn't, it's a metaphor for the obvious. If there is, same as above but the metaphor is concretely attached to whatever Dean is not telling Sam, and that in turn then becomes a part of the queer subtext, offered up on a platter to tell us more about how Dean is handling his post-possession shame of being, essentially, roofied after thinking he'd agreed to a consensual fling with a dude on his terms of entry and no strings attached, no walk of shame like he did when he was undressing earlier.

Poor guy can not catch a break. Shoulda hooked up with Aaron when you had the chance so your first time having a dude in you wasn't such a big deal, but just a nice booty call to keep in your phonebook. Now it's all Crowley this, Michael that...

"We need to deal with it." "Okay, I'm literally going EIGHTY to deal with it"

Dean, that's.

that's not therapy

"How can I be running from something when I'm RACING towards it" "I don't know, it's kinda your thing"

Sammy boy you have been trapped in the same car as Dean for way too long. Your analysis is getting deep. Deep deep cuts. Leave him alone.

I mean this is a guy who dealt with a gay panic by hooking up with Crowley and singing karaoke for him so.

"I just *need* you to talk to me. Slow down."

Oh SAM you said a good and interesting combo of words there. Dean, go 70 instead of 80, give us some time to feel this out because I've been FREAKED and, for you, you got a time skip but I lived it all real time and it SUCKED, and I'm hurt too by this. Reminder: our family does not do well with LOSING each other, and this is every conversation we've ever had post-thinking that happened, and I did things responsibly and grew a beard and became Boss of a bunch of peeps and also King of Hell but we'll talk about that later... Like, slow down. I have my issues too. There's 2 of us in this car and you can't go 80 and time skip to the end of this conversation either. Not when I have 3 weeks of angst packed into it.

Also: classic Sam projection. Trying to get Dean to open up because HE has pain he wants to air, instead of just bringing up how he felt, he tries to get Dean to open up, and when this continues, as always, not to be how Dean deals with things, Sam gets upset because it never gives him the opening to talk about his shit until it's an argument...

You could have just started the convo, sorry about the beard, I really mean it when I say I haven't had a moment to myself for 3 weeks, it's been HELL and funny I should mention Hell, er, did you know you can kinda just declare yourself king these days... heh

At least he's using racing metaphors about wanting to catch up and also, like, catch up

Dean responds to the sport metaphors

Dean is like nah call Jody we're almost there. I skipped ahead.

Look, I'm delivering you to your boo, what more do you want?

Jody smiles at the sight of them in a way which is almost as revolting as Cas smiling at seeing Dean again

Hugs!

Send Jody to the Bunker to HUG OUR BOY

"How'd you do it?" "What, me vs some assbag archangel? Who would you pick?" "You, every time."

And this, guys, is how Jody is never, ever patched into their angst, because they present a narrative where Dean just kinda chucked off Mikey and sent him packing and it's all cool and he's a hero.

Jody has at multiple points threatened to beat Dean into submission in order to hear a true version of how he's doing and he has so far not given in and sat at her kitchen table with a box of tissues to sob through his crap, but I hold out eternal hope like the fool I am.

Anyway it's also telling RIGHT AFTER that last conversation where Sam was probing Dean so intensely, that this is the version of "I'm fine" that Dean is going with, and even though Sam KNOWS there's more to it, this is the wall Dean is projecting, even to him. Even when he knows Dean is freaked by it and doesn't know all the details.

Jody goes up like 18 pitches "Heeey I liiIIIiiike it!" she squeaks, forcefully tweaking Sam's beard because "nice peach fuzz" is too understated both for Jody and the volume of facial hair Sam has produced without comment until Dean came back and Jody showed up.

Dean has never been so offended in his life

*Jody continues giggling to herself while Sam desperately looks for a normal conversation*

AHAHA "I haven't been home since I talked to her........... I may be avoiding her"

Yeaaaah, bringing up that it's not just a normal human beheading and weird stab mark, but ALSO a KAIA-RELATED ONE maaay be... too much.

i'm going to be honest I've been so thrilled about everything I forgot to check what cast is flashing up on the screen

Anyway there is very much a subtext to Jody's avoidance of telling Claire what's going on that she knows how much she loved Kaia and how much of an issue this is - even if it's gonna be for revenge, because they don't know it's Bad Kaia - this is something where Claire's feelings make a MESS.

Bobo gets in Sam's serial killer thing, Dean is staring into the void like am I still even here or am I in hell. Is this a hell that Michael conjured. Mikey. Hey. Mikey. I figured it out. We're done here. Let's go back to regular torture. Michael. This is the bad place. Michael.

Dean stomps off into the woods because waiting for daybreak means being stuck in the same room as Jody and Sam flirting for a few hours.

Jody firmly pokes Sam in the chest with a map.

Sam.

A raven caws in the background, and Jack is wearing layers, the darkest shirt yet, a thick corduroy jacket in the style of early Sam, and is packing a bag.

He wrote a note and his handwriting is as disgustingly adorable as I thought it might be.

Alex wrote "Jack" with a cutesy backwards K in an autograph for someone who requested it at a con and I thought that was a cute detail but not how Jack would write and the real story - and I assume like with others they made him write it in character - is much more nuanced. His letters are competently shaped like he knows exactly how they should be, but shakily written, like he's not used to holding a pen, because, well, he isn't. He's not developed the muscle memory for it, just as he hasn't for fighting and all the other stuff, because in may ways he IS still a smol toddler with no life skills. His capital letters are huge and precise, like he knows he has to write them big, but disproportionate - putting so much emphasis on the titles of the people around him, the capital letters a metaphor for their influence on him. There's something clearly unconfident about writing and yet for all that obviously written by someone intelligent enough not to make basic errors of backwards letters and other things. He knows exactly how he is SUPPOSED to do it, but the execution is shakey, and disproportionate and generally looks unschooled and painfully revealing of his entire state of being.

Is this the scene where Bobo said out loud to an empty room, awww Jack.

I've been dreading that since the hiatus.

Maybe I should dig up that post and use it as the title for this one.

Triss is gonna die, Jack stopped by the stairs up out the Bunker in the war room, heard and saw Cas moving around, then in a fit of conscience or missing him already or something, stopped by to open the door and look in.

They have DEFINITELY expanded the Bunker set, in the sense that they've attached extra rooms to it or Wanek has sat down and made some parts more standardised, because they've shown off the corridor connections in every episode so far, and in this one we're seeing a never-seen-before connection which actually explains what is behind that window and how it fits. I mean, I'm pretty sure we've seen this particular room a few times, window and all, but never actual connections which show connected sets, so much as scenes starting or stopping there with no transition.

"She's been enchanted" "Like sleeping beauty" Jack says with awe "Awwwwwwwwwww" Lizzy says with awww

I honestly can't tell which moment Bobo said "Aw Jack" out loud about because we're getting such a series of them

Anyway, Hamlet, the great procrastinator, is distracted away from his mission to kill his uncle.

Not sure about the overlap of hearing things from the other side of a wall but I mean at least he's not going around stabbing people so

Jack also seeing all the important work they do for other people, even randos, and Cas getting involved in huntery business, distracted from emotionally nurturing him because of sleeping beauty there, and phoning rowena, doing the work to unknot a spell...

If we get Cas doing spellwork I'm gonna die, it's been Too Long.

Cas [squinting]: "Are you going somewhere?" Sleeping Beauty: "ooooww" Jack: "No."

Hon, that was so suspicious you are lucky this is Cas and not one of your other dads.

But. Aww Jack to an empty room.

"If I get a vote I'm team stick together" Jody remembers 9x19

Also Sam remembers bad!Kaia kicking their butts. They're on her natural territory

she is the Predator.

Sam keeps LOOKING at Jodio.

Look, I just

Cas keeps looking at Dean, Dean keeps looking at Cas

Jam won't stop looking at each other

That head is a Warning.

Come no further, mortals

I think Bad Kaia lives here

Vampires.

they really need to figure out how to biologically identify them except for teeth because they really come up against a lot of dead ones

"I brought tissue samples home, Alex ran them underneath the microscope"

Look, girls supporting girls, I knew what they needed to do before they did it lol

Dean: I was stabbed here

YAY I went frame by frame before the reveal and that is Kaia's face in there, the hood less spooky than before and more open to reveal her

Dean: bout to be stabbed here again

Dean finally has the moves to take on Bad Kaia after a season or two with the new stunt guy

but then her hood falls back and he's STUNNED

Now everyone is stunned

I think they've been using the Wayward Sisters Bad Place soundtrack for this but I'd have to check

the music is so very different and I'm not good at music ear thing

Cas: *eye twitches violently* Me: Cas why are you having trouble with this line Cas: "... marked.................... 'gross stuff'"

Cas, internally: Why did I marry into this family

Future MoLHunter 100 years later: "Man, this place is sweet, but the filing system is balls to the walls." Other Future MoLHunter: "Babe, you did not read the Winchester Gospels before your initiation?" F MoLHunter: "There is a drawer here marked 'hands of god' and the only thing in there is a pair of chopsticks and a ladel" OF MoL Hunter: Okay I will give you that. -

Me out loud to an empty room: aww Jack

He's so concerned about Sleeping Beauty, and he can't do anything about it but he's curious.

Maybe he CAN fix her and this is how he gets a lil power back.

I hope so because awww Jack being so concerned about her.

This is a Good Procrastination From Revenge

Hamlet, take fucking notes

"Is that your dad?" "One of them, yes." Aw Jack

Aw Bobo

Jack's flipping around on family - he's accused them of talking about nick/Lucifer as his father, he's disowned everyone but grampa and grammy Kline, and now he's fondly thinking of his three hero dads

He's really struggling to work out his place and what sort of family set up he belongs to and to be fair, he has so many fucking options and all of them are somewhat disastrous or tragic, so he's 100% in his right to be fuckin confused.

On the other hand Sleepy Beauty has no context so she's gonna assume Cas is gay married with a kid Jack's age and that's like, not untrue.

"My mom... but she probably hates me" "Why?" Jack says, horrified at the entire concept that a mom could hate a child, because, well, Kelly's love was COSMIC for him "because I left," she anvils

"I was sick of being treated like a kid, and i thought I could make it on my own" Oh boy. She's just expositioning how Jack feels and immediately telling him if he leaves he'll fall in with a witch, who curses her with an AGING spell which will make her old before her time.

I feel like there is probably... a metaphor........... in here...............

Also a reverse of Dean's aged down curse, because the girl and her other victims were hansel and greteled.

I had a sudden whim a couple of nights ago to see aged down Dean and current Jack hang out. Bring back Dylan Everett to go play basketball with Jack out on the front step.

"Gave us all nice things," she says, clutching at a HUGE EVIL EMERALD PENDANT AROUND HER NECK

Jack.................................

Is that cursed

"She said having us there kept her young" She put her own age into that locket

dang I should get a bonus point for bringing up poker!witch before he was relevant

I'm always curious about the show's implications about witches maintaining their youth by sucking it from others, because almost every witch we've met who had a focus on age was doing it for that reason, whether it was eating children or playing poker.

And we have a 300 year old witch chilling around who we don't know anything about when it comes to immortality, except that she has it and she bestowed it on Oskar so it's clearly a spell she can do rather than an inherent trait of reaching a certain level of magic practitionery.

"Then it started taking me too. Even faster than the others!" yeah because she killed the witch so she probably has to suck poor sleeping beauty dry in order to regenerate and skulk away and start over somewhere

PS: Sleeping Beauty is really doing an amazing performance here. I 100% am in Jack's shoes of being horrified and wanting to protect her

"Cas is going to fix this. I promise" Sweetie! Have you ever called him Cas rather than Castiel before? It seems weird. He even wrote castiel on the letter

Sam deducts Michael's entire plan off the clue that Alex couldn't detect the vamps in her sciencing, and based on having been attacked by super werewolves.

But why is Michael cleaning up these people?

Unless he's taking threats off the board who would be too cool and powerful and may challenge him...

"Doesn't change the plan" "but Dean - "

Dean walks off

Dean has no time for Sam suggesting maybe this is something awful because of Michael that Dean might know about or else be weirdly intimately connected to because of his weird Michael-based condition.

We have no clue what's going on and Sam doesn't like that and Dean's powering through and Jody is hovering in the background like WOW I can see why you leave me out of all your dumb main plot angst normally. Never done me one of these MAIN PLOT ones before. Can we go back to normal MotW where you're low key angsting in the subtext about whatever currently ails you?

Jody slaps Sam on the lower back

lower, babe. Lower.

Cas does magic, boom purple smoke!

Aw no she's still withered.

Jack, take her necklace off and smash it

because you did the good work of a hunter and talked to her and through being kind discovered what was wrong with her

Jody has a phone provider that gets her signal in the wilderness

"Claire's been doing so good, but anything connected to Kaia... she's a powder keg"

"FIRST LOVE STRIKES QUICK, AND TO LOSE IT LIKE THAT"

okay no Jody didn't shout it, but Bobo did.

ILY Bobo

I'm like 0% surprised but I am guessing other people who had been less trusting are throwing a complete party to have it textually confirmed like that. I felt like Bobo's intent especially when he went on the record in that stream AND he had been saying already that he shipped it right after Wayward Sisters, that he never ever meant to be coy about Dreamhunter, and confirming that Claire was madly in love with Kaia was a top priority on his fuck you list since he didn't get to write the show he wanted in order to work on this naturally.

Sam nods like fair enough, happened to me with Jess, but uh wow okay no i did not - yeah okay yeah

"He's not ready for this case" "maybe he needs it"

Jam jam jam jam

I mean

Yeah mature adults discussing issues together and working out how they feel about Dean rage-hunting Bad Kaia

hey look it's that one cabin that has been in like every episode of the show in the same way that one little stoney valley was in every episode of BBC Merlin

Has she lost her spear??

Dean, that was RUDE, you're so horrible to all these versions of Kaia

That zoom up on his face is one of the top 10 Dean Is Not Okay zooms of the show

So not like "bad cas" or "new bobby" are Dean's definitions for AU peeps - no word on what Charlie is to him, maybe because AU Charlie is a real issue for him to define as he couldn't help treating her like his Charlie.

But Bad Kaia insists that she is to Kaia what she is to me - they're joined in a different way. A way that back in Wayward Sisters was implied to be a dreamwalking connection of a very different sort, something anchoring our Kaia to the bad place and their connection was... weird.

"That was an accident. I was trying to kill the blonde" She's remorseful about killing Kaia but upsets them even more by reminding them that she was out for Claire instead.

How about we kill no one, bad Kaia

Oh no, Michael keeps sending monsters after her... Now she sounds like the original Kaia just because she's got "always more" things out for her. I suppose Michael learned of her through Dean, found her, and either wants to stop her or capture her because she has universe-crossing dreamwalking abilities, and woooow that will be useful to him.

NOOO SLEEPING BEAUTY DIED. THIS IS REALLY BAD. JACK COULDN'T SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE HEEEEEEEEEER

waaaaaaaaaah

Stop fuelling Nougat having an interesting dark arc about his entire self and purpose and let him just hang around the bunker and watch TV and eat nougat and be hugged. Can we not just have a son who is okay and nothing is wrong with him?

Oh no even the random hunter (did I really catch her name as Brunhilda or did I imagine that?) is crying at Jack crying over Sleeping Beauty dying. Cas is contractually obliged not to cry or do complicated stunts but he looks miserable too.

Oh, jack figured out the pendant?

But can they actually save Sleeping Beauty?

Sam as usual getting in before I can - "Break her!??!?"

don't you dare hurt Kaia any more, she's already told you what she knows, Michael hurt her, you punched her out with the same face and then threatened her a bunch. She might be a snarky monster-hunting feral woodland weirdo but she's still Kaia-like and you have a history of being completely horrible to Kaia-like girls when you're in a bad place.

And it turns out Dean just wants the spear that pronged him, to figure out what it did and how to hurt Michael with it. To go on his own revenge mission that he denied Jack because, guys, we are now in competition for who gets to have the angsty anti-Michael revenge mission. Jack and Dean literally competing to be most angsty about it.

Jack is being considerably more productive even if Dean solved the Kaia mystery.

But yeah. Revenge sucks you guys.

Dean you need to eat a snickers and take a rest.

smiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirk because fuck you Dean for always hurting me and the other Kaia who is probably also me.

Jack is being much smarter.

The smartest cookie.

Who needs powers when you are a good cookie.

"She wasn't cursed. This was."

GOOD COOKIE.

I vote Jack gets to kill Michael. Dean has lost his Michael killing rights.

"You're no different from him. Threats, violence, anything to get what you want." "I am nothing like him."

Hon.

"Yeah you are. And you always have been."

I don't know if Kaia knows or if she's pulling a gambit, but acting like a mystic know it all and reading Dean stone cold in a villain way sure did take some of his rage away into that good old Dean self-loathing and fear, which was one heck of a good chess move regardless of if she can magically read him or not.

No I don't think Dean is these things but Michael is a means of exploring Dean's "blunt little weapon" sort of mindset that he has suffered from because of John's upbringing all this time, and Michael emotionally mauling Dean to the point of being a non-functioning worst version of himself who threatens Kaia (AGAIN) really is an on the nose way to display the sort of trauma that Michael tore into his psyche.

Crap I need to go to yoga, but this is too good to rush so even though I don't have much left, I will be back for proper notes in a bit!

Him smash magic glowy thing with hammer

just like i told myboy to do!

Cas's hair is ridiculously spiky.

"What happened?"

YOU MADE NOUGAT FEEL GOOD ABOUT HIMSELF THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED

Aww jack to an empty room

Sam I have been gone for hours. How have you not tackled Dean to the floor and apologised to Bad Kaia

"I saw what you did to her, when you got angry. You shoved your gun in her face." To be fair, at the time Dean had also been emotionally mauled by the feels bear because Jack gave him a vision of Mary being tortured in Hell-equivalent and he was also fucked up beyond belief.

Kaias really are seeing the worst side of him all the time.

Bobo likes breaking Dean

That was enough to make Dean let go

Also to ask a really good question about how she knows!

I'm way more curious about Kaia than Dean yelling at her :P

Then she points out that he's angry and impatient because he's scared, like, duh, but sometimes he needs to be reminded that he can have "weak" emotions like that because he wants to be all tough and on the case and instead he's freaked out because Michael has messed him up completely. Like. Stay home. Help the boy with lore or something. Take a pyjama day.

Wheee full flashback!

The early evening light gives it a Bad Place colour tinge, which is awesome.

I can't believe Mikey shows up in his hat but not his jacket.

He says he's BORROWING Dean here. Hm.

Also, what I suspected, that he sensed her around and was just curious. Probably having a "what the fuck that's KAIA!?" from Dean inside him and being like Kaia huh? Time to chat.

Mikey do you literally not have your own version of that fuck off huge spear they stabbed Cas with a couple seasons ago, or do you just collect cool spears?

There's something more than usually terrifying about his face in this conversation.

And he now says there's a war coming and thinks something weird like Bad Kaia might appreciate being on his side.

Oh boy.

"Wild one" that's so cool

Michael really has some great lines for being a massive pillock

Omg he fight good too

AAH this is Kaia's memory and she's psychically implanting it in Dean's head

"Stop!" he says, clearly not enjoying watching himself beat up Bad Kaia and, like, realising exactly how awful it looks to do this when he has to watch himself from the outside and for all we know feel her pain too.

Of course Dean being desperate to get the spear to fight Michael could come across with a blur of ambiguity of Michael being desperate still to have it, whether to stop Kaia using it or because he just really wanted it and doesn't like being told no.

The concept that Michael just disappeared from Dean still lingers.

So many fights with a whole bunch of people this season. Maybe just because there's so many friggin characters

"Now you're in trouble" *Bad Kaia literally leaps through a window to avoid dealing with this* I love her

NICE STAB

thanks for saving Jody

Well that was quick

Also you're badass and terrifying and I think Claire might fall in love with you too >.>

"I'm used to it" Oh babe.

She literally raised herself in a terrifying doomy forest so

I mean at least this world has dry crackers and beans. SCORE

Jody has got a LOT of thinking to do about how to phrase any of this to Claire.

"So there's a feral Kaia living in the woods outside of town"

Awww Sam offering her a lift to the hospital

Bobo wants us to remember 9x06 and Dean having to tend Cas's broken hand maybe

Sam. Hug her right now. RIGHT NOW.

Nope Jody just looks really tormented

She's in a reverse Jack position - one mom to 3 hunters instead of one kid to 3 hunters :P

Hey look it is Jack and one of his fathers.

"Jules is off!" Hey look Sleeping Beauty was called Jules. Nerdylittleshit doesn't read these notes however so she will never know that I decided this character was named after her :P

Cas apologises for not being there for Jack, because it took this long to realise he's the father who's always at work while others have taken the stereotypically maternal role to Jack, Cas just gets to be the cool strong father who is usually dead, captured or just busy saving people and too busy for Jack as a result.

"It's okay," Jack says, sounding considerably more emotionally balanced about it than he had in 14x01 when everyone was neglecting him

"Today you PROVED that you have the mind of a hunter. And the heart of a hunter" Raised by the best, bitches!

Awwww Cas wants to be a hunter with Jack! They can get a terrible car and hit the road and do an easy case and bond as they go and eat crappy food at diners and

Jack develops Nephilim Flu in response to having a nice moment with a father because he's so unused to being treated with full attention.

Cas: *squints*

"Must be getting my first cold!"

I have a cold too Jack! Awww!!

Cas is going to make him some soup. This is too sweet. I don't even have words for any of this it's just gross. My teeth hurt.

Jack I swear to god if you stopped your revenge quest and it hurt you so bad inside you're about to cough up a lung I am going to LA to kick the writers' asses in person so if you dare be even the slightest bit consumptive

Oh thank god the scene changed before he coughed blood into his hand

Awww and then Dean admits Sam was right, while still being the one driving on the way back.

I wonder if they filmed these side by side. "Dean slow down" "Sam you were right"

"What Michael used me for" Ouch, hearing him say it like that... Sad sad thoughts.

He just wanted to skip ahead and have it all done because revenge makes you feel SO much better.

"Dean... you did what you had to do" Okay it's even worse hearing someone else justify it rather than hearing that phrase come out of someone's mouth. At least when they say it about themselves they're just in a bad place. I don't even know if this is a pavlovian response I'm having but really flipping it around to have Sam say it is a validation - Sam certainly thinks things are better off with a dead Lucifer and would have a favourable bias, because it got the job done and whatever Mikey is up to at least it's not Lucifer doing it. Because even if Lucifer were doing the exact same things it would just be intangibly but clearly worse.

"It wasn't a blink, being possessed."

Dean says to Sam, who has been possessed by an angel twice and when it was Gadreel, for almost as long as Dean was Michaeled

Dean's so freaked out because fighting the drowning sense of being possessed was so horrifying and made him feel so weak and useless and he didn't even win that fight, Michael just bailed and let him have it back. With the "I own you" hovering over him.

It certainly reeks of being haunted by a bad relationship. The sense the nasty abusive ex hovering around outside the place you work every night...

"And it's all on me, man" No it isn't, he got through because Lucifer told him how.

Well I mean if you wanna go cosmic consequences, yeah it is because Billie done told you not to go universe hopping and that's several billion dominoes you messed around with doing exactly that

But despite how I spent all of season 13 SHRIEKING at you not to do it while knowing full well you did, and how this is technically your cosmic hubris for doing that, I also don't actually blame you on a personal level, Dean. Just, like, so you know once I get back to the shrieking. Because ow you are very sad and in pain and if Nougat wasn't coming down with Nephilim Flu in the other scenes I'd basically rank you No 1 for wrapping in blankets and feeding soup.

You're still in the top 10. Jodi had a pretty bad day too :P

Oh COME ON JACK

*starts packing my bags for the ass kicking*

Aww Jack to an empty room

Um EXCUSE ME HOW MANY CONSUMPTIVE TISSUES HAVE YOU GONE THROUGH?

GO FIND YOUR FATHER RIGHT NOW

HAVE YOU BEEN DOING THIS FOR THREE WEEKS?

Well no wonder you've been in a panic to get Michael killed.

SHEESH.

Dean's back and he's gonna kick your ass because he remembers when Sam did this in the Trials and he is very very anti consumptive family members.

#Asks #rape mention cw #for thematic parallels to the whole Michael-ing thing #because consent drama and angels as per usual #14x03 #season 14 spoilers #my stuff

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solarwindandcosmicash · 7 years

Text

priority: anhur (part ii)

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Now that the party has gotten the password and eliminated Delta, supposedly one of the leaders of the rebellion, the party moves on to the rebel headquarters. There they encounter Zeta, Delta’s half-sister, and convince her to help them eliminate the rebel leaders. Zeta eliminates Quincy handily with the party’s help, and after and a tough fight with Kany and Nyeck, the party finds themselves ultimately successful, though Zeta had died in the conflict. They return to the Apricity soon after.

summary

With Delta eliminated and the password in hand, and once Phos has hidden Delta’s body, the party moves on to the rebellion’s headquarters. Aster had plotted a route for them and informs them that there is a front and back to the headquarters building, though he doesn’t know which would be better. The party decides to enter through the front after lively debate; in trying to do so, Beetle tries to pass tea as drugs in order to get inside, which fails, and after Vekar gives the password Zeta, the five of them enter the headquarters

Inside the headquarters, the party finds themselves in a wide hallway. At the end of the hallway is the back entrance to the headquarters, with two guards standing there; inside is deserted, oddly enough, with six doors spaced along the walls, three on each side, and a staircase leading down. The party sets to work to open the doors, all of which are locked; inside some of these rooms, Kate and Phos find credit chits valued at 1000, and Vekar finds some cryo rounds in a safe. Vasir and Beetle hack a disabled FENRIS mech but promptly forget to tell it to heel.

When they enter the last room, the party encounters Zeta T’Pavis, Delta’s half-sister. Phos, with Beetle’s help, convinces Zeta that one of the rebellion’s leaders, Quincy Lorraine, was responsible for the death of her sister and, seeking vengeance, Zeta ropes the party into helping her eliminate him. She leads them down the stairs, where she explains that while Nyeck had been cleaning up the Reaper creatures on Anhur, they had actually been keeping them here in cages, for use whenever they saw fit. The party learns that there are husks, marauders, and cannibals around, but Zeta bypasses them all and heads straight for a room down a hallway, instructing the party to intervene at the signal.

The signal ends up being a gunshot, and when the party bursts into the room, they find Zeta grappling Quincy on the ground. Upon request, Phos walks over and stabs Quincy with her cleaver, causing enough damage that he would eventually die, but slowly. Kate, in a moment of compassion, kills him quickly, much to Zeta’s displeasure, and from there, the party convinces Zeta to help them eliminate the rest of the rebellion’s leaders. Zeta warns them that this will be difficult, given that Kany and Nyeck are almost always together, but eventually comes up with an idea.

The plan is thus: Zeta will distract either Kany or Nyeck, separating them from each other and sending them towards a trap the party will have laid out. From there, the party can eliminate that person before proceeding to Zeta’s location to help her. Zeta lets the party choose who they want to target first after providing some information on who Kany and Nyeck are; the party decides to eliminate Kany first, and after a few fail-safes are put into place, Zeta moves off and the party heads over to the husks’ cage, with Beetle placing a grenade on the door in order to blow it open on Zeta’s signal and the rest of the party moving to hide in the observation deck nearby.

The signal comes through Vasir’s omni-tool, and Beetle triggers the grenade by shooting it. A few moments later, Kany makes her appearance by biotically charging in and then dropping a nova at the escaping husks, killing all of them instantly; however, she notices the party hiding and Kate takes the opportunity to biotically charge Kany, knocking her briefly off-balance before the battle begins. Kany is very powerful and wreaks a lot of havoc before the party successfully takes her down, and soon after, the party rushes to where they think Zeta is, knowing that she is alone with Nyeck.

The party arrives in time to see Nyeck kill Zeta, and then Beetle throws a grenade and Kate sets it off by shooting it; the party avoids damage by closing the door to the room where the grenade explodes. Moments later, however, it becomes apparent that Nyeck is no easy target, either, almost killing Vekar before Vekar freezes them and Beetle takes a killshot with the sniper rifle she’d foisted from a human earlier that day. Once Nyeck has died, and once Beetle has named her new sniper rifle the Cold Shoulder, the party collects several documents under Aster’s direction before booking it back to the LZ, calling for pickup and being brought back to the Apricity soon after.

notable lines + interactions

DM: So last time... last time on this campaign, I forget the name, sunlight and stardust, y’all broke into a tea shoppe and killed a dude. Actually a lady. So. GG.

Phos, OOC: Ideally, we find an incinerator or something so we can burn the body and everything else. DM: Maybe roll a twenty on perception next time.

Beetle, OOC: Beetles takes a free action to dab. DM: You - you don’t need a free action to do that, you’re not in combat. Beetle, OOC: It’s still a free action. DM: Uh, okay, you, uh, you dab. It - it looks like a dab. [pause] Yay.

Vasir, OOC: Your dab did not destroy my internet, I’m offended you think it’s that bad. Beetle, OOC: Okay, that’s fair, but it’s still pretty powerful. Vasir, OOC: You didn’t roll for it. It was a free action, you said so. Beetle, OOC: Goddammit, you’re right. I’ll roll for it next time.

DM: As you get closer, Aster says - what does he say. [pause] This is not the right word document. [pause] This is also not the right word document. Beetle, OOC: I believe in you.

DM: Phos intimidated some people so now you don’t have to fight. Congratulations.

DM: [Beetle and Kate] were playing rock-paper-scissors to see who was the scary one. But you both lost, like, you both played scissors too many times. Beetle, OOC: Yeah, we kept tying, and then we gave up. It was really sad. DM: It was really sad.

DM: We are not making this The Adventure Zone!

DM: Okay, it’s not from The Adventure Zone, it’s actually from outofcontextdnd. I just forgot in the heat in the moment.

Beetle, OOC: We have two lines of attack: one in the back posing, and one in the front attacking while everyone is staring at the ones who are posing. Party: [laughter] DM: Wouldn’t that be the other way around? Like - like posing in the front, attack from the back? Beetle, OOC: Look, this is tactics, okay.

DM: Need I remind you of the first rule of D&D? I’ve had to every session so far.

Vasir: Let’s see if the front door and the password work before we use the violence, how about? Phos: Hmm. Beetle: This sounds fake, but... okay. Vasir: We can’t start attacking the people we’re supposedly with. Beetle: Supposedly we can’t start attacking people. Phos: Supposedly we didn’t just kill one of their leaders and steal tea from her shoppe, but sure. Vasir: Is the concept of sneaking that hard for you all?

Phos, OOC: Right before Phos opens the door, she uses fortification - DM: Shh shh shh. Shh. Shhh. Shhhhh. Phos, OOC and sheepish: Sorry.

Phos, OOC: [Phos]’s not dealing with this tall-ass turian. Vekar: Fine. Next time I’ll let you get shot. DM, whispering: Oh snap.

DM: So how was everyone’s day today? Vasir, OOC: I actually got up as a reasonable time. Went out and did stuff. DM: Hell yeah. Productivity. Phos, OOC: I played games. Thanks to [Vekar’s player], the savior. DM: Hell yeah. All hail.

DM: So Beetle... Beetle. Oh, Beetle. There’s no corners for you to get lost in. But there is a wall, and you walk towards this wall. And you realize, suddenly, that all you can see is this wall, and that you are hopelessly lost. And everywhere you look, all you can see is wall. And you are just lost in this single wall. Beetle: This room only has one wall and I can’t leave! DM: Exactly. You are a two-dimensional thing now. There’s no escape.

Beetle: Holy shit, Phos! You did it! You rescued me again! Again!

Phos, OOC: I’m wearing armor! DM: You didn’t get any damage, you just looked stupid. Phos, OOC: Oh, god. Vekar, OOC: Psychological damage.

Beetle, OOC: It took me two years but I did it! DM: So you unlock that door. GG. Plus one experience. There’re four other doors remaining.

Beetle: The wall got you, too? Vekar, having just walked into a wall: Sadly, it did. It’s a trickster wall, it is.

DM: You’re really fascinated with the desk, I guess. It’s a really nice desk. Beetle: I like this. I’m into it.

Beetle: Can we take this desk apart and take it with us? [quietly] I really like it.

Beetle: You know, Vasir, you really loosened the lid on this good, good - mech. DM: Nice save. I knew what you wanted to say there. Beetle, OOC: Yeah, Beetle didn’t want to force gender on it.

DM: So Beetle and Vasir, you manage to open your doors, but there’s nothing in the rooms they open to. They’re trash and trashed. Beetle, OOC: [posts this in discord]

Beetle, OOC, unnecessarily: It’s trash. DM, exasperated: Thanks, McElroys. Where would we be without you?

DM: And roll perception for me. Vekar, OOC and desperate: No...

Beetle: We’re invested in helping you avenge Delta. Phos: Yes, she was very kind to us. Zeta: Yes, yes, she’s - she was always like that. DM: You guys are terrible people, you know that? Party: [laughter] Vekar, OOC: We try our best. Phos, OOC: The power of a nat twenty, baby!

Zeta: [kills two guards very quickly] Beetle: Good execution! DM: She does not respond to that. Beetle, OOC: But it was a good execution! DM: ... Ahaha, hahaha, haha, ha, anyway.

Phos, OOC: [leaves to make themselves hot chocolate] Beetle, OOC: I’m just imagining Phos going back to the shop to make herself a nice cup of coke-co. DM: Coke-co? Beetle, OOC: Yeah. DM: Goddammit.

DM: Yeah, Kate’s just watching you guys hack this, like - Vasir, OOC: She’s thinking, “Ha ha, nerds.” DM: And she’s like, “Godspeed.”

Phos: Are we playing ‘hide and husks’?

DM: I don’t want to make you roll stealth checks, but at this rate...

Someone’s mic: [picks up the sound of a car horn] DM: Beeeeep.

DM: Yeah, it’s a miracle [Beetle] hit at all. And by miracle, I mean a nineteen.

Phos: Which door do we think there would be the boss of this place? Vekar: Probably the biggest door. DM: This isn’t a Zelda title.

Beetle, OOC: ‘Oral’ could mean her mouth. DM: I said ‘aural’, A, U! Fuck off!

Beetle, OOC: Can I roll to have Beetle stand real casual? DM: You don’t have to roll that, she can just do it, she - Beetle, OOC: Like, I’m not with these nerds, like, chillin’. DM: Okay, yeah, you can - you can just stand there, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, looking really cool. Beetle, OOC: Nice. I’m into that.

DM: And then you just hear some tussling - tussling? Tussling? Wrassling? Wrestling? Just fighting noises, basically. Vekar, OOC: Fisticuffs. DM: Yeah, you hear fisticuff noises, that’s it.

Vasir, OOC: Roll to find a chair, [DM]! Beetle, OOC: Rolls a crit fail.

DM: Phous? Phos, OOC: Phohs. Beetle, OOC: Phoosaphone. DM: Phoosaphone. [quietly] Goddammit.

Phos, OOC: How bad does Nyeck look? DM: He’s fine. [incredulous silence] Phos, OOC: He’s not even bleeding? DM: Nope. Vekar, OOC: Shields, man. Vasir, OOC: That armor class. Phos, OOC: Shit.

DM: [Nyeck] just roll out of the way. They’re really not feeling this. Beetle, OOC: They’re just McCree rolling out of way. DM: They are! They are indeed. They’re also reloading and - just kidding, they’re not doing that.

DM: You’re lucky [Nyeck] didn’t hit you twice. This would’ve killed you. Vekar, OOC: Thanks, that’s so kind of them.

DM: Top of the order. Vekar, you’re up. Vekar, OOC: Alright. Well, shit.

DM: And that’s the end of your turn. Let’s see if you wombo-combo.

DM: You just did 26 damage. Party: Party: [collectively loses their shit] DM: This person is dead. This person is very, very dead.

DM: This sniper rifle is your new best friend. What do you name it? Beetle, OOC: Uh. Phos, OOC: Headshot. Vekar, OOC: The Cold Shoulder. Everyone: [loses their shit]

technical notes

The party finds a place to hide Delta’s body. Investigation roll. 1d20 + perception modifier.

Phos → 14 + 3 → 17 Vekar → 16 - 4 → 12 Kate → 8 + 1 → 9 Vasir → 8 - 1 → 7 Beetle → 1 + 3 → 4

Phos finds a place to hide the body (a dumpster).

The party intimidates others into leaving them alone. Intimidation roll. 1d20 + knowledge modifier.

Phos → 15 + 0 → 15 Vekar → 6 + 3 → 9 Kate → 4 + 0 → 4 Beetle → 4 + 0 → 4

Phos intimidates a group of batarians into leaving the enemy alone. Kate and Beetle play rock-paper-scissors, but end up tying so many times that they give up and let Phos be the scary one.

Beetle tries to sell the rebel guards tea, passing it off as a drug. Persuasion roll. 1d20 + knowledge modifier + proficiency bonuses → 14 + 0 + 1 + 1 → 16

The guards contest. Perception roll. 1d20 + perception modifier.

Guard 1 → 20 Guard 2 → 17

The guards successfully contest.

Beetle does not convince the guards that she is a business partner, as the rebellion is not involved with drugs in any way.

The party looks around the headquarters’ main floor. Perception roll. 1d20 + perception modifier.

Vasir → 17 - 1 → 16 Vekar → 16 - 4 → 12 Phos → 5 + 3 → 8 Kate → 5 + 1 → 6 Beetle → 1 + 3 → 4

Beetle gets lost in front of a wall. Vasir notes all possible exits and doors.

Vasir and Beetle go to unlock two of the doors. Decryption roll. 1d20 + technical modifier + proficiency bonus.

Vasir → 18 + 4 → 22 Beetle → 14 + 4 → 18

Vasir opens the door easily. It takes Beetle a bit longer to accomplish the same feat.

Kate, Phos, Vekar, and Vasir check out the room. Perception roll. 1d20 + perception modifier.

Vekar → 18 - 4 → 14 Vasir → 15 - 1 → 14 Kate → 12 + 1 → 13 Phos → 1 + 3 → 4

Phos walks into the doorframe, stubs her foot on the desk, and then stumbles into shelves. Everyone else sees the FENRIS mech in the room and notes the locked drawers of the desk.

Kate breaks the lock on one of the drawers of the desk. Strength roll. 1d20 + strength modifier → 14 + 2 → 16 Kate breaks the lock on the drawer, finding a credit chit valued at 1000.

Vasir hacks into the FENRIS mech. AI hacking roll. 1d20 + technical modifier + proficiency bonus → 3 + 4 + 1 → 8 Vasir finds the firewalls on the mech too frustrating to hack and gives up.

Vekar breaks the lock on one of the drawers of the desk. Strength roll. 1d20 + strength modifier → 11 + 1 → 12 Vekar opens the drawer, but it’s empty.

Vekar breaks the lock on the last drawer of the desk. Strength roll. 1d20 + strength modifier → 11 + 1 → 12 Vekar opens the drawer and finds a slip of paper with a combination of numbers on it. He pockets it.

Beetle unlocks another door. Decryption roll. 1d20 + technical modifier → 18 + 4 → 22 Beetle opens the door easily.

Kate, Phos, Vekar, and Beetle check out the room. Perception roll. 1d20 + perception modifier.

Phos → 19 + 3 → 22 Kate → 11 + 1 → 12 Beetle → 2 + 3 → 5 Vekar → 1 - 4 → -3

Vekar walks into a wall again. Beetle is fascinated with the desk. Phos notices a safe underneath said desk.

Vekar opens the safe. Vekar opens the safe using the combination he had found in the previous room.

The DM determines what’s in the safe. 1d6 → 1 Inside the safe are cryo rounds and a credit chit valued at 1000. Vekar takes the rounds; Phos takes the chit.

Beetle hacks the FENRIS mech. AI hacking roll. 1d20 + technical modifier → 14 + 4 → 18 Coasting on Vasir’s previous attempt, Beetle successfully hacks the FENRIS mech.

Beetle, Vekar, and Vasir hack into another two doors. Decryption roll. 1d20 + technical modifier + proficiency bonus.

Vasir → 17 + 4 + 1 → 23 Beetle → 13 + 4 → 17 Vekar → 6 + 1 + 0 → 7

Vasir and Beetle manage to open their doors, but there’s nothing in the room beyond.

Vasir opens the remaining door. Decryption roll. 1d20 + technical modifier + proficiency bonus → 12 + 4 + 1 → 17 Vasir opens the door to the last room.

The party tries to mentally place the asari in the last room of the headquarters. Perception roll. 1d20 + perception modifier.

Phos → 19 + 3 → 22 Beetle → 11 + 3 → 14 Vekar → 17 - 4 → 13 Vasir → 13 - 1 → 12

Phos realizes the asari looks strikingly like Delta.

Phos opens the message Kate sent over omni-tool. Technical roll. 1d20 + tech modifier → 7 - 2 → 5 Phos is unable to read the message Kate sent, which read simply: “Wasn’t Zeta supposed to be a hostage?”

Phos convinces Zeta that Delta was killed by Quincy Lorraine. Beetle corroborates her story by showing Zeta the tea she had stolen from Delta’s shoppe. Persuasion roll with advantage. 1d20 + knowledge modifier → 11 + 0 → 11, 20 + 0 → 20

Zeta contests. Perception roll. 1d20 + perception modifier → 12 + 2 → 14 Zeta fails to contest.

Phos successfully convinces Zeta that Delta as killed by the rebel leaders.

The party listens to the sounds in the basement. Perception roll. 1d20 + perception modifier.

Beetle → 18 + 3 → 21 Phos → 15 + 3 → 18 Vasir → 10 - 1 → 9 Kate → 6 + 1 → 7 Vekar → 7 - 4 → 3

Beetle and Phos hear the noises down the hallway and immediately ID them as husk noises.

Zeta grapples Quincy. Strength roll. 1d20 + strength modifier → 15 + 1 → 16

Quincy contests. Strength roll. 1d20 + strength modifier → 11 + 3 → 14 Quincy fails to contest.

Zeta wrestles Quincy to the ground.

Phos stabs Quincy. Damage roll. 2d8 + damage bonus → (5 + 3) + (4 + 3) → 8 + 7 → 15 Phos’s krogan cleaver cuts deeply into Quincy’s neck. He’s not dead yet.

Kate kills Quincy. Kate mercy-kills Quincy with her omni-blade.

Phos convinces Zeta that Nyeck Slatojor and Kany Canard were also implicit in Delta’s death. Persuasion roll. 1d20 + knowledge modifier → 18 + 0 → 18 Phos successfully convinces Zeta to both tell them about Nyeck and Kany as well as help kill them.

Zeta assassinates the two guards. Stealth roll. 1d20 + dexterity modifer → 18 + 2 → 20 Zeta stabs both of the guards in quick succession, killing them instantly.

The party looks for a place to hide. Perception roll. 1d20 + perception modifier.

Phos → 18 + 4 → 22 Kate → 18 + 1 → 19 Vasir → 19 - 1 → 18 Beetle → 15 + 3 → 18 Vekar → 9 - 4 → 5

The party notices a little observatory room where they could hide. The door is locked.

Beetle, Vasir, and Vekar work together to unlock the door. Decryption roll. 1d20 + technical modifier + proficiency bonus.

Vasir → 15 + 4 → 19 Vekar → 17 + 1 → 18 Beetle → 13 + 4 → 17

Between the three of them, Vasir, Vekar, and Beetle make quick work of the door.

Kate braces at the door. Kate draws her pistol and braces.

Beetle shoots the grenade. Attack roll. 1d20 → 16. Beetle manages to shoot the grenade, exploding the door of the husk cage and allowing the husks to escape.

Kany charges the husks. Attack roll. 1d20 → 18 This is sufficient to do damage.

Damage roll. 1d8 → 6 Kany hits all husks on impact.

ADDITIONAL ACTION: Kany throws a Nova down. Attack roll. 1d20 → 13 This is sufficient to do damage.

Damage roll. 2d4 → 3 + 4 → 7 Kany kills all husks.

Kany looks around the room. Perception check. 1d20 + perception modifier → 16 + 1 → 17 Kany notices the group hiding in the observatory.

Kate charges Kany. Attack roll. 1d20 → 7 This is not sufficient to do damage. Kany is thrown off-balance.

Everyone rolls initiative. 1d20.

Vasir → 20 Kany → 19 Vekar → 16 Kate → 12 Phos → 9 Beetle → 7

Vasir uses Energy Drain on Kany. Attack roll. 1d20 → 17 This is sufficient to hit.

Damage roll. (17 - Kany’s armor class) x 3 → 2 x 3 → 6 Vasir steals 6 of Kany’s barrier.

Kany attacks Kate. Attack roll. 1d20 → 17 This is sufficient to hit.

Damage roll. 2d4 → 4 + 1 → 5 Kate’s barrier takes 5 points of damage.

Free action. Kany moves into the husk cage.

Vekar takes cover by the cage’s door and shoots. Free action. Vekar moves to the cage’s door and takes cover.

Attack roll. 1d20 → 17 This is sufficient to hit.

Damage roll. 3d4 → 1 + 2 + 3 → 5 Vekar deals 5 damage to Kany.

Kate shoots Kany with her sniper rifle. Attack roll. 1d20 → 15 This is sufficient for a body shot.

Damage roll. 2d6 → 6 + 3 → 9 Kate shoots Kany for 9 points of damage.

Phos uses Fortification. Free action. Phos moves to block the doorway of the cage.

Phos uses Fortification. Phos adds +2 to her AC, bringing her AC up to 18.

Beetle takes a shot at Kany with her sniper rifle through Phos’s legs. Attack roll. 1d20 → 19 This is sufficient, but because of her positioning, she does not get a headshot.

Damage roll. 2d6 → 4 + 3 → 7 Beetle shoots Kany for 7 points of damage.

Vasir delays their turn.

Kany charges Phos. Attack roll. 1d20 → 19 This is sufficient to hit.

Damage roll. 1d8 → 7 Phos takes 7 points of damage.

ADDITIONAL ACTION: Kany drops a Nova. Attack roll. 1d20 → 20 Crit.

Damage roll. (2d4) x 2 → (2 + 2) x 2 → 8 Kany hits Phos, Beetle, and Vekar for 8 points of damage. Additionally, she sends them flying. Phos, Beetle, and Vekar are now prone.

Vekar stands up. Vekar stands up and moves away from Kany.

Kate takes a shot at Kany with her sniper rifle. Attack roll. 1d20 → 13 This is not sufficient to hit.

Kate takes a shot at Kany, who deflects it with her biotics.

Vasir jumps back into the order and uses Incinerate. Attack roll. 1d20 → 3 This is not sufficient to hit.

Vasir messes up the Incinerate program and it doesn’t manage to leave their omni-tool.

Phos stands up. Phos stands up and moves in front of Beetle.

Beetle uses her Marksman ability. Attack roll. 1d20 → 16

Damage roll. 4d4 → 2 + 2 + 4 + 2 → 10 Beetle shoots Kany for 10 points of damage, killing her.

Beetle investigates Kany’s body. Investigation roll. 1d20 + perception modifier → 14 + 3 → 17 Beetle doesn’t find anything on Kany’s body.

Phos listens to her surroundings. Perception roll. 1d20 + perception modifier → 14 + 3 → 17 Phos hears nothing out of ordinary, excepting the Reaper sounds.

The party chooses between going left, right, or forward. The party goes left.

The DM chooses which direction was correct. Random number between 1 and 3 → 1 Left is the correct direction.

The party listens in at Nyeck’s door. Perception roll. 1d20 + modifier.

Beetle → 20 + 3 → 23 Phos → 15 + 3 → 18 Vekar → 17 - 4 → 13 Vasir → 12 - 1 → 11 Kate → 6 + 1 → 7

The party hears talking, but can’t make out the words. Beetle knows that the conversation is civil.

Nyeck and Zeta notice the party. Perception roll. 1d20 + perception modifier.

Nyeck → 15 + 2 → 17 Zeta → 8 + 1 → 9

Nyeck notices the party, Zeta doesn’t.

Nyeck melees Zeta. Nyeck stabs Zeta in the neck, causing fatal damage.

ADDITIONAL ACTION: Nyeck shoots Phos with a shotgun. Attack roll. 1d20 → 17 This is sufficient to hit.

Damage roll. 2d8 → 4 + 4 → 8 Phos takes 8 damage.

Everyone rolls initiative. 1d20.

Vekar → 20 Beetle → 15 Vasir → 11 Kate → 12 Phos → 9 Nyeck → 3

Vekar uses First Aid on Phos with his Medicine talent and medi-gel. Effectiveness roll. 1d20 → 3.

Roll healing. (2d4) x 2 → (1 + 4) x 2 → 5 x 2 → 10 Phos regains 10 points of damage.

Beetle throws a sticky grenade at Nyeck. Attack roll. 1d20 + dexterity modifier + proficiency bonus → 11 + 3 + 1 → 15 Beetle lands her grenade on the desk behind Nyeck.

Nyeck notices the grenade. Perception roll. 1d20 + perception modifier → 2 + 2 → 4 Nyeck does not notice the sticky grenade.

Kate detonates the grenade by shooting it. Attack roll. 1d20 → 19 Kate shouts “bomb’s away!” and shoots the grenade.

Free action. Kate slams the door shut, preventing the party from taking damage.

The grenade explodes. Damage roll. 5d4 → 2 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 1 → 13 Nyeck takes 13 points of damage.

Vasir uses Overload. Free action. Vasir opens the door.

Attack roll. 1d20 → 10 This is not sufficient to hit.

Nyeck dodges the Overload with a roll.

Phos melees Nyeck. Attack roll. 1d20 → 15 This is not sufficient to hit.

Nyeck dodges the cleaver with a roll.

Nyeck shoots Vekar with their shotgun. Attack roll. 1d20 → 17 This is sufficient to hit.

Damage roll. 2d8 → 8 + 4 → 12 Vekar takes 12 points of damage.

ADDITIONAL ACTION: Nyeck shoots Phos with their shotgun. Attack roll. 1d20 → 18 This is sufficient to hit.

Damage roll. 2d8 → 6 + 6 → 12 Phos takes 12 points of damage.

Vekar shoots Nyeck with his cryo rounds. Attack roll. 1d20 → 17 This is sufficient to hit.

Damage roll. 3d4 → 4 + 3 + 3 → 10

Nyeck contests cryo. Strength saving throw. 1d20 + strength modifier → 5 + 3 → 8 Nyeck fails to contest.

Nyeck takes 10 damage and is frozen.

Beetle shoots Nyeck point-blank with her sniper rifle. Attack roll. 1d20 → 20 Crit.

Roll damage. (3d6) x 2 → (6 + 4 + 2) x 2 → 13 x 2 → 26 Beetle says, “Don’t try and give me the cold shoulder,” and shoots. Nyeck takes 26 damage and is killed instantly.

Beetle checks to see if there’s ammo in the sniper rifle. Perception roll. 1d20 + perception modifier → 2 + 3 → 5 There might be ammo in the gun. There also might not be. Beetle is sure, however, that this sniper rifle is her new best friend.

Beetle names her sniper rifle. Beetle names the stolen sniper rifle the Cold Shoulder.

Phos takes Nyeck’s shotgun. Kate takes the shotgun and gives it to Phos.

Beetle takes back the pouch of tea she had given to Zeta. It’s covered in blood. It’s a little gross.

The party checks out Nyeck’s office. Investigation roll. 1d20 + perception modifier.

Kate → 18 + 1 → 19 Phos → 14 + 3 → 17 Vekar → 12 - 4 → 8 Beetle → 4 + 3 → 7 Vasir → 3 - 1 → 2

The party finds some documents that Annos wants, as well as the button that will release all the Reaper creatures, but nothing else of interest.

Phos reads the meme Beetle had sent to the group on her omni-tool. Technical roll. 1d20 + technical modifier → 7 - 2 → 5 Phos fails to read the meme in her messages.

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#session #session 3 #summary #priority: anhur #the dm

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