S1B4 A Most Unlikely Pair

In this special bonus episode, our unflappable crew grows by an unflappable two, and someone won’t take a hint that some things are best buried in the Dockstation Theta trash ring.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:15

There's no real good uh adulting congratulations. Like there's no it doesn't feel appropriate to be like congratulations on making it through finals. It's more like congratulations on taking on too much and getting nothing out of it now that it's over.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

I mean, I told her the real degree is the degree she earns along the way.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

So it's true. He did say that this morning.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

What do you mean getting nothing out of it? She got an education.

SPEAKER_03 0:41

I can't believe it too.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

I can't believe it took me that long.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

I was waiting on the setup. Like it took him a little bit to process. I'm not the only one who's having sleep this morning.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Also, Ian has the completely wrong idea about cold open. He's just like, say something funny. No man, you record for like 30 minutes and organically something interesting. Not funny. Interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:16

We've been doing it wrong the whole time. Alright, time to start with.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Most of the time we do it right, because most of the time we just turn it on, and then uh one of us asks a question and derails the conversation.

SPEAKER_04 1:29

You mean you?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Let's hear the music.

SPEAKER_04 2:23

Hi, I'm Bree. I play Glitch, the ship's mechanic.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Hey, I'm Garrett, I play Tegan St. James, the ship's pilot.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Our episode begins with Tegan and Glitch standing on the hull of the Ryzen. Tegan is fastening something to a string. Tegan?

SPEAKER_00 2:41

So what you want to do is make sure that you uh you find uh anything you don't particularly care about. So uh say this uh dented tea kettle that I found in the mess hole. Uh you get the rope good and tight around it, make sure it's you know lashed in. And what you want to do is you want to hook it so that it goes just outside of the local reality bubble that the FTR drive makes. But you don't want the rope outside. So you're trying to catch it right there on the on that uh edge. And then we sit and wait and we see what it turns into, and that's sea sky fishing.

SPEAKER_04 3:14

So we're just we're just dropping these things into the drift and seeing how core black we are.

unknown 3:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:19

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Yeah, I mean you never know what you're gonna get.

SPEAKER_04 3:22

There's no manual, there's no instructions, we're just gonna throw it.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Yeah. Yeah, you just throw it. Uh, I mean, like I said, the trick is making sure you don't throw the rope out there because if the rope suddenly turns into like spaghetti or a snake or, you know, butterflies, and then suddenly you lose the thing. So, like that's tea kettle or whatever it's gonna turn into, it'd be gone forever. Uh, so we need to have just the object we're tying onto out in the uh the raw sea sky while the rope stays protected inside of the bubble.

SPEAKER_04 3:51

Is that how you ended up with little bubs?

SPEAKER_00 3:55

No, no, actually, uh little bubs is uh from where I grew up, and then Tegan hucks the line, like so.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

How long do we wait?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Well, hold on. I gotta uh I went a little far. I gotta pull it in a little bit. Uh and so he pulls the line in so that it so that uh he doesn't pull the tea kettle back into the bubble.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Um and once it's like sitting there, you know, right there on the cusp, uh, he'll turn and be like, yeah, no, we wait. No, actually, uh Little Bubs is uh his whole species natives to where I grew up. It's a little worldly called two dogs. Um they uh they actually grow there, and uh most of the ranch hands all have to go out there and and find one. Uh they're they're kind of a pain to to tame. But once you do, and you you get you can make them look your friends, and that's what me and Little Bubs are. We've been friends for a long time. So yeah, uh that's uh that's how me and him came together.

SPEAKER_04 4:49

So how did you know you you were gonna be best friends?

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Uh I didn't at first. I mean, I uh I I caught him once and then he he scrabbled like hell trying to get away from me. Uh I ended pulling him in. Uh, he tried to eat my finger. Uh he was a little much tinier guy then. He was not really much of a of a rope, more of a string. And uh but I fed him and I kept him in a in a pouch and uh um made sure to like sing to him and pet him, and uh turned out that he he didn't mind hanging around with me so much, but uh you never know. Uh and then sooner or later he kind of came around to me and then we started training.

SPEAKER_04 5:26

Seems oddly like how you and I met.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

You can feel little bubs uh purring against your side.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Hey buddy, my feet will snack. Yeah, that was a that was an interesting time when we met.

SPEAKER_04 5:38

So how do we know when it's done um curing?

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Well, so as we're watching, uh you can see how the handle the teapot just turned a different color. So we just kind of pull it back in whenever we think we're uh it's changed enough into something different.

SPEAKER_04 5:54

Hold on, I'm getting lens flares on my goggles. Let me pull them up. Oh, it really is changing colors. That's so weird.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Can I get a D12 roll from one of you? Ooh.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Glitch, you want to do the honors?

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Now that Brie is a dice rolling master.

SPEAKER_04 6:09

And a dice rolling master, like a master, glitch rolls a five.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Okay, so the handle of the teapot has not just changed color, but now it's also made of granite.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

See, so it changes a little bit. We could pull it back in now, and then we'd have a teapot with a different color handle that looks like it's made out of stone, or we let it ride.

SPEAKER_04 6:29

Yeah, I'm thinking a stone teapot's not gonna do us a lot of good. So is this how you make all your friends? Like pull them out of things?

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Yeah, it is weird how many uh people I've pulled out of things. I mean, it's like yeah, when I when we first met and I I pulled you out of that trash relange.

SPEAKER_04 6:46

I'd been looking for wake stabilizer pads. It almost found them when you pulled me out of there. Good thing you did. The ship was a mess by the time I got on there.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Yeah, well, I mean, your legs were kicking pretty bad like you couldn't get out from underneath the whole pile of trash. I figured you needed help.

SPEAKER_04 6:59

I was doing fine. I I could have gotten out of there eventually by myself. And hey, you were the one who needed help. That's you were digging around picking up all of the wrong instruments.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Yeah, well, I mean, I told you I I just fly the thing. I don't really know the hell about fixing it. The gods knows that propus was too cheap to hire an actual mechanic, so nah, it was uh that that was a good time. Um I mean, what what were you looking in there for?

SPEAKER_04 7:28

Oh, uh Well, you know, you know how it is. The last time you're always looking for for something. You don't know what you're gonna need, but you might find it. That thing that you're gonna need tomorrow, but you don't know you need it today, and well, uh I I I I wasn't really sure what I was looking for, but then you found me, and I guess I was the thing you needed to find, so it doesn't really matter what I was looking for, does it?

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Uh I mean we definitely needed a mechanic. Uh God knows, like I said, me trying to pull the ship together with baling wire and and duct tape wasn't working. So I guess it did. Well you came along just fine though. I mean, you didn't seem like you had anything else to do.

SPEAKER_04 8:07

I'd been picking up odd jobs. I mean, it was just you were the one that was right in front of me, and also you were holding me up at this cruff of the neck. It was kind of hard for me to go anywhere else.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

I apologize for that again. Uh oh, and then he resets the line a little bit because it was starting to drift out.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

So, uh yeah, on that note While you are adjusting the rope, you can see that you guys are about to cut in front of a Essential stream, and it's heading like toward the side of the ship, so you guys are going to just like skim by it. Tegan, you know that if you were to drag this object, this tea kettle, through the essential stream, it would rapidly speed up how fast it's going to transform.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Oh yeah, take a look at this. So, uh, we're we're about to do it. This is the best thing. So if you can catch one of these, it's the greatest. Uh we're gonna just skim this thing and hopefully it'll turn into something super crazy. But we gotta we gotta pay attention because I gotta pull it back.

SPEAKER_04 9:03

Alright, do it.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

Right. He does indeed guide it so that it's about to go through the stream.

SPEAKER_04 9:09

Well, I I mean, if we lose this one, it's cool. I grabbed a bunch of Quala's books. He won't mind if we take these, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Yeah, uh Nope, I don't think he would mind at all.

SPEAKER_04 9:20

I mean, you said just grab whatever crap we don't need, so I figured that this was uh this was definitely the stuff we could lose the first.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Uh, and Tegan like jostles the line. Does uh does T Kettle turn into anything?

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Uh it does indeed. Can I get another D12 roll from you guys?

SPEAKER_00 9:37

I'll do this one. I rolled a 12.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

That is awesome. So it has a granite handle, but now it also has a large eye, so the dent opens like it had been the lid of an eye, and it starts to look around, panicked, judging by the way that it's jaunting around. But you can also see now that you guys are up closer to this essential stream that there are things swimming in it.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Yep. Hold on, uh, we'll see. So I don't know. I I nobody really knows what those things are. Qualos says they're essential spiders, I think he's full of shit.

SPEAKER_04 10:15

Yeah, that's that's the most likely thing. And hey, Mr. T Kettle, don't worry, you're gonna be fine. There's plenty of sentient objects on the ship who have no idea why the fuck they're here.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

So, as you say that, something will latch on to the tea kettle. Something with talons and wings and an uncountable number of eyes, then it will bound rapidly up the line, making screeching sounds.

SPEAKER_03 10:39

Oh shit! What the flux is that?

SPEAKER_00 10:41

I don't know!

SPEAKER_04 10:42

You told me they were just picking up Z-Sky crap!

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Yeah, uh well, this is the fun part, and I yanked the the the rope hard back into the local remote.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

The creature rides that momentum to land on the side of the hull, uh, underneath where you guys are standing, and then you hear a grinding drilling sound.

SPEAKER_04 10:58

Tegan, what have you done?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

What have we done?

SPEAKER_00 11:01

And then I go chasing after it.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Uh, cool. Can I get an agility challenge roll, I believe?

SPEAKER_00 11:11

So I got an 18 with fear.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

I've got a 15 with fear. Uh, I will take that delicious fear. You both manage to Ollie hoop around the outer edge of the hull into the new hole this thing made. And it made a hole in the side of the ship terrifyingly fast. And it's just large enough for you two to like jump in, sort of like the Dukes of Hazard, through a car window. Uh, and you land back uh into the ship in a hallway. There are sparks and bits of like loose stuff now hanging where the hole had been made. But uh, you jump in and like down one of the hallways, you can see that this creature is still skittering and running through the ship.

SPEAKER_04 11:51

Tegan, if this gets into the ducks, we are so fluxed. We need to catch this right now. Yeah, I'm on.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

You see it jump into a duck?

SPEAKER_00 11:57

God damn it. Oh hold on, hold on. I think I have an idea. Uh Tegan will take the uh semi-sentient teapot and he runs back to the uh the mess hall. He unties it, sets it down, uh, and then he goes into like the little cold box fridge and pulls out a ham still on the bone. And uh he comes running back with that on the rope. He's like, which duct?

SPEAKER_04 12:24

Well, you'll be able to tell because my ankles are kicking out of it as I'm trying to wriggle my way into the duct, so you'll have to pull me out.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Oh, okay. And I'm like, oh hey, it's like deja vu. Uh, and I'm I pull out by the ankles.

SPEAKER_04 12:41

Yeah, deja vu.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

I I I hold up the the ham in uh one of my things with the the rope tied around the bone end, and I'm like, eh, we'll lure it out. And I toss it into the vent. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 12:53

Tegan, have you done this before? Is that why there's so many raw patches that keep appearing on the outside of the hull?

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Uh, I mean, I know that's definitely why there's more ham in the vents than you think there should be.

unknown 13:05

Oh!

SPEAKER_04 13:10

Okay. Let's just catch this thing before something blows it up, or it blows something up, or we end up stuck with a thing in the vents and uh more ham.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Okay. Uh let's uh let's just be quiet. We'll see what it does first. It could probably smell green.

SPEAKER_04 13:26

Hold on, you you be quiet. I've I've done this once before. Every duck's got its own story. Usually, if you get real quiet, you can hear a hum, and it should be, and I'm psss suddenly stick my hand in back in the duct and go, it should be right here!

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Nothing.

SPEAKER_04 13:51

That usually works.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Uh I mean, is that from another ship you worked on or maybe like an air conditioning system to a building?

SPEAKER_04 14:01

Seagan, are we having a confessional here? I don't ask you about your past.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

I'm not, I mean, I wasn't trying to pry or anything. Uh and look, I I get it. I mean, I've got things that I'm not proud of. Um it's just, you know, you got I mean, yeah, I don't talk much about it. Again, I growing up wasn't the hard part, but when I first kind of got into the sea sky uh after I left home, uh I fell into some wrong the wrong kind of crowd and I did some things I'm not proud of. So I'm not one to judge anybody by what they did before.

SPEAKER_04 14:38

I'm gonna surprise you. I'm I'm gonna wrap my my arm very cautiously over your shoulder in this moment. Turn away from the vent, and you know, part of why I like you is is you're so comfortable not talking about your past. And uh I'm gonna tell you this. Have you ever cried in Zero G before? I I don't recommend it. It's real gross. You kinda want to take those feelings, stuff them right back down.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Uh yeah, actually I did one time. Uh it just kinda like glows around your eyes, you can't see nothing.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Uh yeah, gets it's a little gooey. It's just not worth it. You all are are having this moment when you hear in the vents a tinkling sound.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Uh Tekin heads perks up from the mid-hug he's got that glitch put him in. What's that?

SPEAKER_04 15:25

I don't know. The the horizon doesn't tinkle.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

Uh do you look in the duct?

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Cautiously.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

In the duct, you can see the creature that you pulled in from the sea sky and uh the teapot. Uh uh the teapot seems to have uh developed articulated legs that were like made of the same teapot material. The creature from the sea sky looks to be grooming the teapot, and the teapot seems to be uh chirping in appreciation and stroking the creature.

SPEAKER_04 16:01

I'm kind of scrambling. I've leveraged the hug into like scrambling on your shoulder to try to see past you into the vent at this point.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

You're like up on my shoulder.

SPEAKER_04 16:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:10

I don't man, is that whole ham gone?

SPEAKER_02 16:13

The whole ham is indeed gone. And you can see while the teapot is being groomed, that it is also quietly doing a small repair to the duct. So there was a piece that was chipped out of it, and it's like pushing it back into place and seemingly somehow welding it with some fluid that it's producing.

SPEAKER_04 16:31

I'm gonna take back what I said about that teapot being useless. This might be my favorite thing you've ever pulled out of a hole before. That I'm aware of at least.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

They're kind of grooming each other, I think. I mean they're they're kind of cute.

SPEAKER_04 16:52

This is fascinating. I mean, they're either playing or establishing dominance, which I mean that's basically the same thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:00

I mean, I'm just happy they're not killing each other and tearing the ship apart. They're in there pretty deep, though. I don't know if we're gonna be able to get them out. At least not easy.

SPEAKER_04 17:08

And this is how infestations become family.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

I mean, they're not hurting anything right now. I I I don't see a problem keeping them.

SPEAKER_04 17:18

Well, that granite void busted kettle spider thing, it it kinda has duct drone energy. I mean, it appears to be patching the duct. Maybe we could call it Stitch?

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Oh, I I thought you were gonna go with with patches, but yeah, I guess stitch makes sense too.

SPEAKER_04 17:38

No, no, patches sounds like there's an evil clown living in the ventilation system, which is not the experience I want to have on this ship.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Anymore, right.

SPEAKER_04 17:48

Anymore, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Uh okay. Well then uh alright, so stitch, and and that seems like that's pretty good. Uh I don't know about the other one. Uh it's uh got a lot of eyes. Oh, I got it. Perfect. Potato.

SPEAKER_04 18:08

Yeah, that's no, that's not perfect at all. Come here, baby. Come here, baby, look at mama. Look at what what are you looking at? Look at my Oh.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

You see it turn, or at least you think it's turning, but more of its eyes are now facing you than before, and they have this greenish, reddish tint that like shimmers between the two colors.

SPEAKER_04 18:33

Aren't you just the sweetest thing? Aren't you just the sweetest, sweetest thing?

SPEAKER_02 18:38

It makes it sound like a violin being tuned.

SPEAKER_04 18:41

Oh, we can call it mango.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Okay, yeah, sure. Potato's no good, but mango's fine. Yeah, okay, sure, mango. That's good.

SPEAKER_04 18:48

I don't know how to explain it, but to me that is clearly a mango. Isn't that right, mango baby?

SPEAKER_02 18:53

Yeah, that's fine. You are it turns away from you, and the kettle, which is just finished uh patching up or stitching up the duct. Uh the two of them begin uh either uh playing or doing some sort of ritualistic mating dance. Because of their bizarre anatomy, it's impossible to know which it is.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Uh can we give them some privacy?

SPEAKER_04 19:21

I mean, I can't tell what's going on. They seem to have formed an attachment. Are they they're bonding. Well, that's gonna definitely complicate their inevitable death.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Huh, I don't know. I mean, there's plenty of busted stuff that winds up on the horizon. I think it'll be fine.

SPEAKER_04 19:40

I don't know. It looks like they're doing that thing where two creatures pretend not to care about each other while they're caring a lot. I feel like we have a lot on that ship already.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Yeah, so you know, what's one more? And Tegan like slides the duck vent cover back in place.

SPEAKER_04 19:55

I guess you're right. Probably fit right in. Funny thing about Mango. It almost looks like a cat. Did you get that? I got big cat vibes.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Oh, I didn't get a cat at all. Maybe like some sort of rabid lava squirrel.

SPEAKER_04 20:10

Yeah, exactly. Like a very angry cat.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

What kind of cats have you been dealing with?

SPEAKER_04 20:17

What kind of cats have you been dealing with?

SPEAKER_00 20:22

I mean. Speaking of, we're cabinet though.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

And with that, we're gonna end the session. A special thanks to our sound team, to Dairy to Press for creating Daggerheart, the awesome game we're playing, and to our incredible fans. Don't forget to like, subscribe, comment, five stars, follow the whole thing. It's the number one way to help the show. Colossus of the Crux is part of the Witch Key March universe. If you're interested in playing in any of the associated games, you can find them on startplaying.games. And you can also join us on our Discord or follow us on Instagram. Links are in the doobly-doo, and we will see you next week. Next week! Ow! How about that? Nice beautiful.

SPEAKER_04 21:02

That was beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

I got it. Perfect.