Introducing: Backwater Bastards

Summary

Podcast Summary: Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry – "Introducing: Backwater Bastards"

---

Episode Title: Introducing: Backwater Bastards

Release Date: December 23, 2024

Hosts: Jason Nguyen, Danielle Radford, Dan Casey

Podcast: Sagas of Sundry: Goblin Mode

---

Overview

In this special episode of Sagas of Sundry: Goblin Mode, host Dan Casey introduces listeners to the vibrant world of Backwater Bastards, a sci-fi comedy actual play podcast. The episode seamlessly blends character-driven storytelling with interactive gameplay, offering an immersive experience that highlights the dynamic between the show's characters and the challenges they face in the vastness of space.

---

Introduction to Backwater Bastards (00:00 - 02:15)

Dan Casey kicks off the episode by celebrating the immersive fiction that fans of Sagas of Sundry adore. He introduces Backwater Bastards, emphasizing its unique blend of science fiction and situational humor. The show features a trio of alien antiheroes navigating the galaxy:

• Cleo – A human bear
• Dr. Z – A psionic jellyfish
• Reese – A sentient ship

Their adventures are marked by quirky humor, deep camaraderie, and the constant threat of bizarre enemies lurking in the shadows of space.

Notable Quote:

Dan Casey: "Backwater Bastards is a sci fi comedy actual play podcast with an emphasis on slice of lifestyle situational humor." ([00:00])

---

The Butter Knife Scenario (02:16 - 27:16)

The main narrative unfolds as Cleo, Dr. Z, and their companion Boris face a dire situation. The evil necromancer they serve has vanished, leaving them to fend for themselves. The crew of the Grey Dragon attempts a risky maneuver to escape the blockade set by the New Terran forces.

• Situation: The crew must navigate through the shattered remnants of the Terran Wall, a colossal barrier originally designed to contain the Wraith territories.
• Challenge: Dr. Z initiates a daring slingshot maneuver around a moon-sized asteroid to evade the pursuing Terran ships, resulting in significant damage to the ship's shields.

Notable Quotes:

Dr. Z: "Look, these Terrans fly like they've got sticks up their bottoms. They're not gonna make it through the shattered wall." ([02:49])
Dr. Z: "Once the shields are gone, so are we." ([11:45])

---

Engineering Under Pressure (27:17 - 55:00)

As the Grey Dragon sustains damage, the crew scrambles to reinforce their shields using whatever resources they can salvage from the wreckage. Boris showcases his unconventional engineering skills, attempting to rig up extra shield capabilities from the ship's junkyard.

• Cleo's Role: Balances her immense physical strength with problem-solving under pressure.
• Boris's Ingenuity: Demonstrates resourcefulness, albeit with a chaotic flair, as he attempts to stabilize the ship's deteriorating systems.

Notable Quotes:

Cleo: "We've got loads back here." ([19:25])
Boris: "It sounds like a thing." ([17:54])

---

Moment of Chaos and Triumph (55:01 - 85:18)

The tension peaks when the crew faces a barrage of asteroid fragments threatening to obliterate the Grey Dragon. Despite a series of unfortunate dice rolls, their determination and teamwork shine through.

• Critical Actions: Boris recharges the shields using improvised tools, allowing Trevor, the ship's pilot, to execute a final evasive maneuver.
• Outcome: Successfully navigating through the asteroid field with minimal damage, thanks to Boris's quick thinking and Cleo's unwavering support.

Notable Quotes:

Boris: "You bloody did it, Trevor." ([11:32])
Cleo: "I'm trying. I'm busy as a fart in a colander back here." ([03:12])

---

Character Dynamics and Development

Throughout the episode, the interplay between Cleo, Dr. Z, and Boris is both humorous and poignant. Their banter provides levity amidst chaos, while their individual strengths complement each other, showcasing the essence of a well-knit crew facing insurmountable odds.

• Trust and Frustration: Dr. Z's cautious strategies sometimes clash with Boris's spontaneous engineering, leading to moments of tension and mutual reliance.
• Humor Under Duress: Cleo's witty remarks and Boris's offbeat solutions inject humor, keeping the narrative engaging despite the stakes.

Notable Exchanges:

Dr. Z: "You gotta trust me, Z. I've done this before." ([02:56])
Boris: "He knows. Look at." ([03:41])

---

Climactic Resolution and Future Prospects (85:19 - 90:16)

As the episode nears its end, the crew manages to restore order to the Grey Dragon, balancing the ship’s energy and preparing for the next leg of their journey. The episode concludes with reflections on their narrow escape and hints at future adventures awaiting them in the vast expanse of space.

• Shield Restoration: Boris successfully recharges the shields, allowing the crew to maintain their course.
• Future Challenges: The crew remains vigilant, knowing that their journey through the galaxy is fraught with unexpected dangers and opportunities for growth.

Notable Quotes:

Cleo: "We made it. We made it." ([11:32])
Boris: "This is the way." ([94:36])

---

Conclusion and Teasers (90:17 - 108:04)

The episode wraps up with thank-yous to supporting members and promotions for exclusive content available on Patreon. The hosts also tease upcoming episodes and encourage listeners to engage with the community through social media platforms, ensuring continued engagement and anticipation for future stories.

Notable Quote:

Cleo: "That's a good name. So many." ([89:15])

---

Final Thoughts

"Introducing: Backwater Bastards" effectively blends narrative depth with interactive gameplay, offering listeners an enthralling glimpse into the adventures of Cleo, Dr. Z, and Boris. The episode exemplifies the strengths of actual play podcasts: rich storytelling, dynamic character interactions, and the thrill of collaborative problem-solving. Whether you're a long-time fan or a newcomer, this episode promises an engaging and entertaining journey across the multiverse.

---

Note: Timestamps are approximate and correspond to key moments within the episode.

Transcript

[Dan Casey]

Greetings adventurers. This is Dan Casey from Sagas of Sundry Goblin Mode. Now we know you love immersive fiction that makes you laugh and tugs at your heartstrings in equal measure. So this week we're bringing you an episode of another show that we absolutely love. Backwater Bastards. Backwater Bastards is a sci fi comedy actual play podcast with an emphasis on slice of lifestyle situational humor. The show features immersive sound design, its own game system, and a team of alien antiheroes that will choose each other over the universe every single time. Join Cleo the human bear, Dr. Z the psionic Jellyfish, and a sentient ship called Reese as they take on the galaxy with their motley crew of space trash and found family. After a few years of evading societal responsibility and trying to survive the wilds of space despite themselves, they've got a couple worlds worth of connections and some real weird enemies in the rear view. This episode is titled the Butter Knife in which Cleo and Z race to get out of Zarg Moon territory before the New Terran forces blockade the entire sector. So get ready to join the adventure adventure on Backwater Bastards, the greatest best friend story the galaxy has ever seen. Available for free wherever you get your podcasts [e-mail] and now onto the show. Hey Dan Casey from Sagas of Sundry Goblin Mode here and I want to talk to you about something. Don't you wish you could wake up every Sunday with a great story just waiting in your inbox? The kind of story that totally sucks you in and transports you to another world? Well, if so, we share that thought and I recommend subscribing to the Sunday Morning Transport. It's an email newsletter that sends one great science fiction or fantasy story to your inbox each and every Sunday. That's it. That's all they do. It's a weekly email newsletter with a great science fiction or fantasy story written by amazing and often award winning authors delivered right to your inbox. Now, I've subscribed to Sunday Morning Transport for a while now and I look forward to my Sunday morning coffee and time to sit back with my Sunday morning story as well. Because I know a riveting science fiction or fantasy story is coming my way. Simply go to www.Sunday morningtra transport.com that is Sunday morning transport.com Go sign up today.

[Cleo]

Oh they're on us. There's a. There's a bunch of them.

[Dr. Z]

Trevor, I'm cutting six. Cleo getting that gun turret fire back at them.

[Cleo]

Oh no. Oh geez.

[Boris]

Trevor, what are we going to do in this situation? They are gaining on us.

[Dr. Z]

I'm taking us through the wall.

[Boris]

What do you mean taking us through the wall? Trevor said they're gaining on us, not kill us and fly us into a bleeding wall.

[Cleo]

I don't want to be flat.

[Dr. Z]

Look, you see that head like.

[Boris]

Yes, I see the big wall, Trevor. That isn't the issue. The issue is the ships following us behind.

[Dr. Z]

Look, these Terrans fly like they've got sticks up their bottoms. They're not gonna make it through the shattered wall. I can just.

[Boris]

Neither are we, Trevor.

[Dr. Z]

Look, you gotta trust me, Z. I've done this before.

[Boris]

How many times have you done this before this before?

[Dr. Z]

This shield's going to hold up. Cleo, they're firing on us.

[Cleo]

Well, I've given it back.

[Dr. Z]

I'm trying. Two and a half. Two and a half times. Two and a half times, Trevor.

[Cleo]

What did you say?

[Dr. Z]

Two and a half times. Someone helped me the first time.

[Boris]

Trevor is confident that he can get us through this war. Rhys.

[Cleo]

Oh hell.

[Dr. Z]

I must express some concern at our current course. Oh, we're taking fire from behind.

[Cleo]

I don't know whether to wind my eyes.

[Dr. Z]

The shields may not hold long against this asteroid onslaught. Are you sure you know what you're doing, Trevor?

[Cleo]

He knows. Look at.

[Dr. Z]

Yes. Shut up. Like I could really do with a bit less backseat driving.

[Boris]

Driving? The only backseat driving that's happening is bloody lasers being fired at us, Trevor.

[Dr. Z]

Okay, yes, but if you can get them off us. We need the shields to make it through the wall. The shields are a big part of the journey.

[Cleo]

I'm trying. I'm busy as a fart in a colander back here.

[Dr. Z]

Right, all right, let me try something. Let me try something. Just hold on to your seats. Strap in if you can and. What was that? Just, you know, I'm. I'm sorry in advance.

[Cleo]

What do you say, Z?

[Boris]

He said strap in. It's time to strap on.

[Dr. Z]

Here I go. This is a little bit risky, but strap punching it.

[Cleo]

Oh no. Oh.

[Dr. Z]

Oh dear. This is going to be good. Hello and welcome everyone to another episode. Oh, I just said the word episode. I didn't even try and do anything fancy of the back water bastards.

[Boris]

In space.

[Dr. Z]

Sorry, I'm your. I'm your dungeon master Dirk Dynamite. To my right here, that's Taylor, AKA Cleo.

[Cleo]

I'll be your human bear this evening, thank you.

[Dr. Z]

And off on my left there, that's the Mr. Daniel Matthews, aka Dr. Z.

[Boris]

Yes, and I will be Your human jellyfish and a Honey Boy Jelly Boy trademark.

[Dr. Z]

It's a Honey Boy Honey Boy Honey Fish. And welcome back, guys. It's just the two of you today because Herodotus, of course, has got a kingdom to mind, so get used to it.

[Cleo]

And we're unemployed, so we can be here. We don't have any like, real job.

[Boris]

Or we don't have space jobs.

[Cleo]

We don't have any, like, real responsibilities yet. I mean, I guess we gotta feed Jordan.

[Boris]

Jordan is going to be top priority now.

[Cleo]

That's about it.

[Boris]

Cleaning the rover.

[Cleo]

Oh, right.

[Dr. Z]

Well, there's. Right now there's. There's the two of you rocking around on the gray dragon, which is of course inhabited by the artificial intelligence called Rhys.

[Boris]

Yes.

[Dr. Z]

Stowed up out back, you've got Dr. Z's ship, the Fishbowl. The. The Fishbowl.

[Cleo]

We definitely have that.

[Dr. Z]

Yeah, you got that. You've got. You've got Cleo's Rover, which is a cherry red hot rod of a thing. You've also got the sort of. The kind of like, trash mobile that belongs to Boris. Speaking of Boris, you've got Boris, the new Tyran driver slash salvager. Just come along for the ride, mainly because he's completely enamored by the vintage Starcraft that you're piloting.

[Boris]

Well, and pretty good friends with us as well, you know. And it's not a. Boris likes us. We like Boris.

[Dr. Z]

And at least for the meantime, you also have Trevor, the Zag pirate.

[Cleo]

Trevor forever. Trevor forever.

[Dr. Z]

He's going to play an important part in your immediate future. Oh, all right, so let me. Let me paint you a little picture with words here. The shattered wall. The remnants of a myriad of space stations erected by the New Terrans centuries ago. The stations had the job of providing a fully encasing wall against the Wraith territories. They produced energy fields between them, of course, the Wraiths, before the wall was finished and constructed, before all the energy fields were up, the Wraiths just came in with a fleet of bombers and blew the thing up. Oh, this was. This was centuries ago. The Terrans have not tried to rebuild the wall, but the shattered remnants of the wall actually does a pretty good job at keeping Wraiths and Terrans from crossing over into one another's space. Because it is immense, it is light years long, light years tall, and pretty darn wide as well. It's in. Yeah, it's as wide as, like a, you know, as a decent sized star.

[Boris]

Oh, damn, that's quite wide.

[Dr. Z]

That's quite wide. And it's essentially impenetrable in the average starcraft because of just the, the amount of damage you will take from getting pummeled by these giant meteorite fragments that just swirl around. They have their own tides and shifts and orbits. There are currents through them and any ship that goes through them is just going to be knocked about for a few minutes and then their shields will be gone and then they will explode and become part of the shattered wall.

[Boris]

Good, excellent.

[Dr. Z]

But the good news is we picked.

[Cleo]

A great way to go.

[Dr. Z]

Certain daring pilots from Firstnare and Zog moon are able to pilot their way through the shattered wall. And Trevor is one such pilot, so he says with his, with immense skill and with that insider knowledge. Trevor just needs to get the six Terran ships off your back to make, you know, to keep enough shields to stand the buffeting on the way. Oh, and he's pulling off a risky maneuver flying directly at a moon sized asteroid.

[Cleo]

Oh, cool.

[Dr. Z]

And I'm gonna roll.

[Boris]

Oh, roll them dice. Here we go. First roll of the season.

[Dr. Z]

It's tonight.

[Boris]

Damn it.

[Dr. Z]

Okay, not great.

[Cleo]

Were you rolling as Trevor or a bad guy?

[Dr. Z]

I'm rolling for Trevor.

[Cleo]

Great, cool. Good to know.

[Dr. Z]

Trevor flies directly at this moon sized asteroid and pulling up at the last minute, attempting to get into a slingshot around in its orbit, pull away faster than he normally could. Yeah, that's one of these fancy Zog maneuvers. He kind of half succeeds, but he essentially flies, pulls up and scrapes the shields of the Grey Dragon across the surface of the of this moon.

[Cleo]

Oh man.

[Boris]

Oh, bloody hell. Trevor, I hope your flying improves. This is not a great way to.

[Dr. Z]

Start taking 13 points of damage to the Grey Dragon's shield.

[Cleo]

Whoa. Well, that's a whole chunk of the paint job gone.

[Dr. Z]

So right, it's only the shields at this point. The good news is the majority of the enemy ships following don't even want to like come near this. They're already like driving into the shattered wall, getting pummeled by asteroids left, right and center. They see Trevor doing the suicide dive into one of the big ones. Most of them don't even try, but two of the braver ones come in flying, you know, for all all their, all their worth trying to catch up. I've rolled 1 natural 1 and 15 goodbye. Both ships are coming in hot trying to pull up. One of them is like starting to pull up. It looks like he's gonna do similar to Trevor. He's gonna like, you know, he's gonna scrape the shields on the moon, but unfortunately, the other one just tries to do a barrel roll for some reason and just sort of comes in taking out the fellow ship. There's just carnage as both ships splat into the asteroid. As you pull up and sort of scrape away two of these ships just splat and explode on the asteroid behind you. As Trevor manages to pull off the slingshot maneuver, getting around to the far side of the large asteroid and then shooting off into the shattered wall hidden from the eyes of the new Terrans.

[Boris]

You bloody did it, Trevor.

[Dr. Z]

Oh. Oh, that wasn't. That wasn't what I was entirely what I was intending. What are our shields looking at? 50%.

[Boris]

What were you intending then?

[Cleo]

I mean, I mean we had.

[Boris]

True. Yes, yes.

[Dr. Z]

Well, the thing is, no matter how well I fly, we're going to keep taking damage to the shields and. What? I don't know how else to put this. Once the shields are gone, so are we. If we're in the middle of the war.

[Boris]

Oh yes. No, you could have put that in a much better way.

[Dr. Z]

At least we're not taking fire anymore, but. And then you can see there's just large asteroids banging from all sides. You're sort of wobbling about. Rhys is in the background making all these whimpers. You know, he's very protective. He's very worried that his paint job is going to get utterly decimated.

[Boris]

Boris. Boris. Where the bloody hell is Boris? Boris.

[Dr. Z]

Oh, sorry, I fell off my chair back here.

[Cleo]

All done. Boris, I told you to tape yourself down, boy. What are you doing back there?

[Dr. Z]

Hell, I was half wise taping myself. Cleo.

[Cleo]

Now you know I do. Like I told you, you gotta. You gotta avoid the hair.

[Dr. Z]

I don't have quite as much as you.

[Cleo]

Well, it's debatable. You seen yourself, boy?

[Boris]

Now, Boris, we're going to. As Trevor has just informed us, we're about to take quite a few hits to the shields. Is there anything we can do to rig up some extra shield capabilities from the junk that. Well, not junk. The treasures that you and Cleo have found or anything else in the cargo bay. Oh, could we redirect the power from the fishbowl, for example?

[Dr. Z]

I could recharge them if I can get to the outside of the. And he's sort of looking out the window, sort of seeing all these asteroids pummeling the ship from all angles. It's like from outside. Right, Trevor, the only wave that you can get me somewhere, a moment of respite and Trevor is like sort of, you know, like gritting his teeth, trying to dodge he's flying expertly. He's dodging a lot of the bigger asteroids, but still you're getting smacked by these, you know, like kind of car sized chunks of rock from all sides getting buffeted about. And Trevor's like, one moment, I think I've got an idea. All right, you see that there? And he's pointing. And as you're in this turbulent thing, like there's a lot of light being refracted around. There's just big chunks. I mean, it looks like rock, but a lot of this is like very strong shielding alloys, which is why it's lasted all these years. Because these space stations were made out of very, very dense rare metals. There was almost like these worm like constructs that you see almost like glowing, waving, moving currents through the wall. And if you look a little bit closer, you can realize that these things, they're basically like these slipstreams of just shrapnel of the really tiny pieces of asteroid.

[Boris]

Okay. Yeah.

[Dr. Z]

Because all the smaller parts end up sort of just getting whisked into the orbits of the larger ones and just shot through the wall at sort of crazy speeds and wailing about. And Trevor is directing you directly into the nearest one.

[Boris]

Now, Trevor, how are you sure about this? That does look almost as terrifying as the wall itself.

[Dr. Z]

Z. It's, it's exactly how you get through here. It's an old trick that my, my teacher taught me and well, you know, it hasn't failed me yet.

[Boris]

Yes. The whole two and a half times. Right.

[Dr. Z]

Closer to 3, 2 and 2/3 straight through them.

[Cleo]

Bullets.

[Dr. Z]

Oh, yes, about that. We, we're still going to be taking damage while we're in there. But, but the good can, it does get us a lot quicker. And there is a kind of calm spot right in the middle.

[Boris]

Oh, so Boris, you're gonna be ready for that calm spot. Then we're gonna need to get this ship repaired for what Trevor describes as a light buffering.

[Dr. Z]

Yes, yes. I will get my tools together. And Boris sort of plops up. He's staggering around because you've got a lot of like, you're just getting bashed about. And he's, oh, he's got that sort of that Captain Kirk walking through the hallways kind of thing where he's like bumping and getting through the door as he rushes off out back to assemble his goodies. And Trev's like, here goes. And just pilots you into the slipstream. And immediately like, the smashing about kind of stops as suddenly you pick up speed. You're traveling now with. Turn off the thrusters, and you're traveling now purely through the speed of these various flows and orbital powers, where you're just getting sucked through by the rotations and pulls of the larger asteroids. And you shoot off faster than the Grey Dragon's usual speed. Oh, watch the Gray Dragon.

[Boris]

What does Rhys think of this current, baby?

[Dr. Z]

Rhys is just going as you are now, almost vibrating and spinning around. You can't make heads or tails. There's no real up or down. Like, the whole ship is kind of. Because you're not traveling by your thrusters, you're kind of somersaulting through. There's no up or down. Like, the only way you can really make sense of what's happening is by just completely ignoring what's outside the window and just looking at the more sort of basic radar information of your relative location on the galaxy map.

[Boris]

Okay.

[Dr. Z]

And Trevor's like, okay, well, we're losing shields by the moment, but. Well, as long as we survive to the calm spot, I think we'll be fine. Well, and as long as Boris can actually recharge our shields. Right, we'll be fine. And. And as long as I successfully pilot us out the other end and as.

[Cleo]

Long as I sit in this chair.

[Boris]

Are you doing all right there, Cleo?

[Cleo]

I'm trying.

[Boris]

Can I take some of my Honey Boy body and cut off a little bit and put it on Cleo's feet to make some kind of stabilizing shoes to stop the vibrations from affecting Cleo too much?

[Cleo]

I was like, are you gonna put that thing on my head so that if I throw up, it's trapped?

[Boris]

I was first thinking I'd envelop you and stop you from shaking too much and just be like, it's stable inside.

[Dr. Z]

Just some little shockproof boot.

[Boris]

It's also silly.

[Cleo]

And then I was like, is he thinking that if my feet are cold, I'll feel better? And then I was like, would that work? Is that real?

[Boris]

I didn't even know that shockproof booties would work. I was just thinking, you know, like, maybe it might help you feel a little bit more.

[Cleo]

I think it's a good idea, though.

[Dr. Z]

It sounds like a thing.

[Boris]

Yeah.

[Cleo]

That's German engineering.

[Boris]

Cleo quickly put my sleeves on, and I drop this, like, drop two globs off my arms of Honey Boy onto the ground, and they just shake on the ground for Cleo to step into.

[Cleo]

J E L L O Jello. It's laugh. I just wanted to say that you.

[Dr. Z]

Can see Trevor is. He's like, he's white knuckled, holding onto the controls. There's this sweat on his brow.

[Cleo]

Oh my God. This is a Trevor moment.

[Dr. Z]

As he's looking at the planetary map or the galaxy map and he's sort of working out approximately where you are because he's gonna have to shoot out of this thing at the right moment.

[Cleo]

Well, they might kill us, Trevor.

[Dr. Z]

So sorry, what was he.

[Boris]

How can we help? I mean, we're here. We're two very masterful, masterful characters.

[Cleo]

Oh, Z, you're Wendy as a sacrifice. You need anything, baby?

[Dr. Z]

Yes, can you just keep an eye on the shields? What? What, what? Keep an eye on the shields. Don't tell me, don't tell me how much we've got left until we have very little left.

[Boris]

Right? We got this.

[Cleo]

You ain't got to worry about it. We, we got loads back here. I, I, I'm looking at.

[Dr. Z]

Okay, it's just, it's probably best that I don't know until I need to know.

[Cleo]

Yeah, well you don't even need, don't.

[Boris]

Even know right now. Clear. I see we're gonna need to go get started on this immediately.

[Cleo]

But I'm lying.

[Boris]

Yes, I know, Cleo.

[Cleo]

You think he knows?

[Dr. Z]

No, he can't.

[Boris]

No, he can't, he can't do it. No, no, it's fine.

[Cleo]

But I am lying. Yes, I'm lying. Like more than ever.

[Boris]

More than usual. Yes.

[Cleo]

If my lips is moving.

[Boris]

Yeah, well, I think the vibrations of the ship, it's hiding the trembling lip that you've got. But we should probably go make a start.

[Dr. Z]

So over the course of just sort of shooting through this tunnel of asteroids, you've taken a further three points of damage to your shield. Nothing to worry about, Trevor now sitting at 14, a little under half.

[Cleo]

I think we're doing good.

[Boris]

Do a thumbs up with my shorter arms.

[Cleo]

It actually went back up. I've got no, did you plug the charger in?

[Boris]

T. Rex style arms. I'm just doing a thumbs up. You're doing great, Trevor.

[Dr. Z]

And you see, there's these moments where Trevor like, he's like wincing, closing his eyes and then a motion, he's just like flicking on the engines and then off again just to correct your path a little bit, as when you were getting very close to the thin outside edges of the slipstream. You're almost like going to be catapulted or perhaps sucked into the orbit of one of the larger pieces.

[Boris]

I don't know much about piloting Cleo, but I believe this is called Edging. Let's go to the.

[Cleo]

I'm glad that you said it, because I was thinking it, and I was like, don't be the one to make this a sex thing. Don't be the one to make this. To make it about banging.

[Boris]

But it is.

[Dr. Z]

But as. As Trevor is just keeping just. Just by the edges of this.

[Cleo]

You didn't want to say that. You didn't want to say that.

[Dr. Z]

Stream of stone. The ship is taken a further five points.

[Boris]

All right, Cleo, I'm on my way. And I make a race towards the cargo hold or the engineering bay to help Boris and start fixing up some shield.

[Cleo]

I'm trying to get Boris into a spacesuit right now, but, like, you ever seen somebody dress a kid?

[Dr. Z]

So Cleo's got the spacesuit, and, like, Boris has, like, got both his hands, like, busily just shoving things into his little truck. Oh, at the meantime, Cleo's like. He's got his legs in. Cleo, you holding the legs out. And Boris steps both legs into one leg of the space suit.

[Cleo]

And then you Ain't you ever put pants on before? Who helps you?

[Dr. Z]

Oh, I need to plug this. And he's plugging things together. He's just. It's just trash as well. Like, it's just trash and sort of functioning batteries and cables that he's clipping together and plugging together. As Cleo has to sort of, like, you know, like, scoop up with one bear claw, sort of scoop Boris's left leg out of the right leg of the suit and get him back in place correctly. Meanwhile, if you don't put this on.

[Cleo]

Right, you can't pee in here.

[Dr. Z]

Are you saying that handing piles of heavy ordnance to Dr. Z, saying, Just put it in the back. Yes, in the back.

[Boris]

All right. On it.

[Cleo]

In the back of what? You ain't got a backpack out there, boy?

[Boris]

At the back of his space truck.

[Dr. Z]

Yeah, his back of his space truck.

[Cleo]

Yeah, he's taking the truck out there.

[Dr. Z]

He's got a lot. He's got a lot of things to take.

[Cleo]

Oh, this is gonna be a mess. It's gonna be a whole mess.

[Boris]

Of course.

[Cleo]

Is he going alone? Dick's pausing.

[Dr. Z]

That might be.

[Cleo]

That means we have.

[Dr. Z]

That might be a. That might be a conversation to have in character.

[Cleo]

Yeah. Oh, my God.

[Dr. Z]

But anyway, as. As you guys are getting this all together, loading Boris's stuff out, getting Boris into a space suit, I guess Cleo needs to. Probably might want to get into one too, if she's even thinking of going out there.

[Cleo]

I don't know.

[Dr. Z]

Meanwhile, the shields have taken another five points of damage.

[Cleo]

Oh, my God. Okay. Whoa, it's starting to. To get worse.

[Dr. Z]

Reese, you're sitting at. Sitting at four points.

[Boris]

We've got four. Cleo, we need.

[Cleo]

We need to keep our hold on.

[Boris]

We've got four points of shield left.

[Cleo]

Left. Oh, no. But we just took like two five point hits in a row and we have. We don't even have enough points left to do a hit. Okay, Boris, Boris, now listen. What do you need? Do you know?

[Dr. Z]

Yes, I think that's everything now.

[Cleo]

You got everything? You got your tool.

[Dr. Z]

Let's get. Let's get right by the door. Hang on. And he's like, he's waddling in this spacesuit. You can see that you've got one that's too big for him. He's sort of. He's flopping about in the thing, but it's all sealed up as far as you can tell. He flops his way into the driver's seat and starts backing his little space truck right up to the ramp at the back. He's really like. Doctor, if as soon as Trevor says it's okay, you just need to push the button and open this airlock and I will, and I'll act as quickly as I can.

[Boris]

Boris, do you need us out there with you?

[Cleo]

Boris, do you need help?

[Dr. Z]

Yes. Not that might be helpful.

[Cleo]

Yeah. Yeah, okay.

[Dr. Z]

Yes. Yes. I didn't want to ask, but.

[Cleo]

Yeah, well, you really probably should because we're all about to die. I mean, God damn, he's so dumb he could throw himself on the ground and miss.

[Dr. Z]

Trevor's voice comes over the intercomse well, thank goodness we've still got plenty of shields left, right, guys?

[Boris]

Yes, we've got plenty of shells left.

[Cleo]

All right, well, like 30.

[Dr. Z]

You're all gonna want to hang on again because we're just hang on. Just hang on and. Well, it's, it's, you know, it's been a real pleasure working with you all if. Well, no, let's not do that. Don't worry. Don't worry at all. Here we go.

[Cleo]

Okay. Trevor, you doing it? You think we should have told him that we got 4% left or like maybe.

[Boris]

No, he said he wanted to know when it was really bad.

[Cleo]

All right, well, get my suit up because, I mean, look at Boris. We ain't. If he's the only one responsible for if we live or die.

[Boris]

While you two are out there, I'm going to jump in the guns and try to help keep rocks off you, and I'll slide my way down into the gun turret.

[Dr. Z]

That's a good idea. So I've rolled a 16 on Trevor's piloting.

[Boris]

Yes.

[Cleo]

Okay. Okay.

[Dr. Z]

What does it all mean? And there's a bezel. We are suddenly. Everything's sort of flying around like things are falling off the shelves. This is. This is nuts. And you're also, like, losing balance and stuff. Boris at least has strapped himself into his little truck, but the truck even wobbles on his wheels. It's got quite good suspension because he. Yeah, he souped up suspension. Yeah. He overloads this thing on a daily basis.

[Cleo]

That's called knowing your weaknesses.

[Dr. Z]

And Trevor has fired off at first full speed right on the corner as there's like a sort of turning, looping corner of the slipstream and burst out of it.

[Boris]

Oh, damn.

[Dr. Z]

And all of a sudden, like, all the shaking, all the vibrating, all the flipping about ends as it almost feels. You know, there's this sudden relief as though you're just floating in space normally, which doesn't last long before you suddenly. You can feel as though you're struck again by a larger asteroid.

[Cleo]

Oh, man. Come on.

[Boris]

I was really hoping that that moment was gonna last a little bit longer.

[Cleo]

Boy, oh, boy.

[Dr. Z]

I was like, great.

[Boris]

Here's our moment to recharge.

[Cleo]

No, I hope you got a taste of that before the waiter took it back.

[Dr. Z]

But Trevor's voice comes back over the intercom. Now, Boris, now.

[Boris]

All right. Boom. Push the button, Open up the thing for Trevor, for Boris.

[Dr. Z]

Airlock opens up. Boris and Boris and Cleo in the truck. Yeah. Sort of already sitting on the ramp as it descends. And Cleo, you can see now. And actually through the airlock, Dr. Z can even see that you've actually landed on a large asteroid.

[Cleo]

Oh, Trevor, you sneaky forever. Excellent landing Stick it.

[Dr. Z]

And it's from this vantage point because you didn't see the approach. You can't really tell how big this thing is. It's got a horizon, you know, like, it's.

[Cleo]

Right, that's enough.

[Dr. Z]

It's big. Ish.

[Cleo]

If it's got its own horizon.

[Boris]

Trevor, you've got tons of shields left. And I'm gonna jump in the guns. Please call targets. Let's keep our crew safe out there.

[Cleo]

Look at all them shields.

[Dr. Z]

I was hoping you might say that, Z. All right. Oh.

[Boris]

Oh.

[Dr. Z]

All right. I guess I can safely look. Oh, wait. We really don't have many shields left.

[Boris]

Nope.

[Dr. Z]

Trevor looking a little bit ill as it suddenly dawns on him how close you were cutting it.

[Boris]

Trevor, you asked us to do a thing for you, and we did it. I hope you appreciate it.

[Dr. Z]

He's got, like a real. Like a. Like a sickened panic look in his eyes. One eyelid sort of twitching as he just sort of grips the controls again. Meanwhile, one of those days. Cleo, you've got a real bumpy ride. As you can see. There's a. There's a great big. There's like a control panel that's just sort of like, almost looks like it's just been welded into. Onto one side. It's sort of between you and Boris in the middle of his truck thing, and he's just like, yanking down this big. Really sort of, you know, like, jagged. Like it's. It's like a gear stick, but, you know, the top's been screwed off, so it's just got, like, you know, the little screw end of the gear stick. It's a little bit diy, but he's yanking this lever down, and there's a good chunk as it seems he has enabled some kind of a personal gravity feel onto his own little Onto his truck, which then starts gjunking. The wheels don't turn quite as well as they do when operating under actual gravity as the truck just starts lunging and lumping its way out and around the gray dragon.

[Cleo]

Wow, Boris, this is a hell of a rat.

[Dr. Z]

Yes. And Boris sort of looks up with a sudden panicked look, as it looks as though suddenly a sort of flurry of meteorites are coming to impact with this larger one.

[Cleo]

Oh, I'm going to radio in. I'm going to radio in on my little watch right now. Is it. Is this thing on?

[Boris]

Yes, yes. Clear.

[Cleo]

Hey.

[Boris]

Yes, clear.

[Cleo]

Hey, Z.

[Boris]

Yes, this is me, Dr. Z. I'm in the gun turret.

[Cleo]

Listen, like. Like three and a half o'clock, right?

[Boris]

Yes. All right, I'll go to Rotary. Three and a half.

[Cleo]

Yeah, like three and a half clocks. You seen that?

[Boris]

Yes.

[Dr. Z]

So Zeke can sort of look around and see where Boris is driving. And. Yeah, there's meteorites coming in. Like, it's hard to say if they're actually gonna hit them, but they are there. Definitely a distinct risk of it.

[Boris]

I'm honest.

[Cleo]

There's a little.

[Boris]

Don't worry.

[Cleo]

Can you get them?

[Boris]

Yes, I got them. I'll lean back. Can I do a quick perception first to try and call targets to myself? Damn it. It's an eight.

[Cleo]

Oh, boy. Okay. All right. Hey, you know what? Maybe I should roll a D20 as well, just to see, like, If I'm in range with my blaster, it's a 10.

[Dr. Z]

So, Dr. Z, there's not a lot you can tell. It looks as though the one that's sort of sailing in closer to them, which is larger and sort of seems to be carrying the other asteroids in its wake. That looks like the real danger. That looks like something that is heading definitely in the direction of Boris and Cleo. Okay, Cleo, you can. You could very easily just leap out the door as long as you're hanging on to something because you don't have your own artificial gravity as long as you're hanging on to something, because this thing, it's. It's not that big, you know, Got. It really doesn't have a heck of a lot of, like, grip on you. You can see, you can feel yourself, like, wobbling about already now that you're out of the Grey Dragon, you know, you're sort of wobbling in your seat because the gravitational pull, it's not really enough to keep you on here if you jumped or stepped too hard.

[Cleo]

Okay, cool.

[Dr. Z]

But you could very easily take pot shots at this thing as well.

[Cleo]

All right, do you want to go first, Z?

[Boris]

Yeah, sure. I'll load up the Grey Dragon blaster and take a shot at the. What I perceive to be the center of these rocks. Oh, fuck. Oh, my God. It's a natural one.

[Cleo]

Hey, everybody out there listening. Do you smell that? Yeah, that's a nat one.

[Boris]

That's a nat one, but a 15.

[Cleo]

Damage, however that works. That's 15 imaginary damage is what that is.

[Boris]

It's two natural sixes, but a net one. Oh, buddy.

[Cleo]

It's like, hey, if he did get anything else, he could have hit real hard.

[Boris]

If you could have done this, it was going to be really great, but it's.

[Cleo]

It was going to be cool and neat.

[Dr. Z]

So let's. Let's roll a little 100.

[Boris]

Yeah.

[Dr. Z]

You want to do it? You want to do the honors or over it?

[Boris]

62.

[Cleo]

62% bad.

[Boris]

Yeah. Cool, cool, cool.

[Dr. Z]

Okay, so, Cleo.

[Cleo]

Yeah, I'm. I'm going to also.

[Dr. Z]

You help. So as. As you're sort of like, you know, getting ready to sort of like, lean out the truck and take a shot at this thing, you can see Dr. Z is firing right on you. What you have precious. You have precious few moments to react.

[Cleo]

That is very NAT1 energy.

[Boris]

Yeah, that is pretty NAT1. Yeah.

[Dr. Z]

As he. He is. He is going to blast 15 points of damage, which is a lot. That's. That's enough to vaporize a person. Oh, God. He is going to blast straight into Boris's truck.

[Cleo]

Okay, do I have reaction time before that hits?

[Dr. Z]

You got reaction time.

[Cleo]

Cool. How close are we to the.

[Dr. Z]

To Rhys, you're right by Reese. Like you can.

[Cleo]

Okay, cool. So what I'm gonna do, you could.

[Dr. Z]

Jump and grab onto the ship or something like that.

[Cleo]

Yeah. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to. Do you want me to roll first and then tell you or just tell you and then roll?

[Dr. Z]

Tell me, then roll. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Boris]

It's just never the other way.

[Cleo]

Shut up. I'm trying to finesse, okay? One of us has to bring food.

[Dr. Z]

Home to fails, then all I'm trying to do is tie my shoelaces. Exactly.

[Cleo]

No, I'm not gonna do it like that. You guys. You guys are. Are both. You don't believe that I'm. I'm doing the good.

[Boris]

It didn't sound like that.

[Cleo]

That I want to see. I'm doing the good that I want to see in the world.

[Dr. Z]

Okay, here's the thing. We have no idea what you're trying to do. That's. That's. That's my point.

[Cleo]

Okay, whatever, man.

[Boris]

But Boris.

[Dr. Z]

Yes, Cleo?

[Cleo]

Hit that anti gravity again, boy. Oh, I know.

[Dr. Z]

Are you Thor?

[Cleo]

Oh, well, yeah, sure as a laser.

[Dr. Z]

Coming straight to my ass without question. Boris chunks up the lever. He doesn't even know what the plan is. He doesn't even know what's happening.

[Cleo]

But cool, because I'm not done. We have now taken away our own little gravity. And all space suits in the movies, which is obviously the ultimate authority on all science, have these, like, long straps with carabiners on them because how could you not? Exactly.

[Dr. Z]

Because Clipping onto the outside. Earth.

[Cleo]

Yeah, Right. And I'm going to assume that our spacesuits have these. And what is going to happen is we're going to hit that and I'm going to lasso my carabiner onto Rhys and pull us over to Rhys so that we don't lose the car.

[Dr. Z]

You're going to try and basically strap the car, like, hold it with your bare strength and strap yourself to the ship. Oh, this is fucking like Guardians of the Galaxy. Drax, actually.

[Boris]

Yeah, lovely.

[Cleo]

Because I don't want to. First of all, I don't want to die. So I know we can save our corporeal forms by doing this to ourselves, because obviously, Boris and I are both suited up. We could carabiner ourselves, Therese. But I don't want to lose the trash mobile because I Love it.

[Dr. Z]

Okay, so I want two different roles here.

[Cleo]

Yeah. A dexterity and a strength. I felt that coming.

[Dr. Z]

You knew what I was gonna say.

[Cleo]

Yeah, I did. Because anytime I want to do something cool, I have to roll dexterity.

[Dr. Z]

So it was only if you want to suddenly, like, you know, like, lash one moving object to another moving object.

[Cleo]

It's fair. It's fair.

[Dr. Z]

And similar actions.

[Cleo]

It's fair. And I respect you, so I will do it.

[Dr. Z]

So we're talking negative one on dexterity.

[Cleo]

Shit. I.

[Boris]

Guys, what was that, Tank? What was that about a smell? Cause I think I found the source.

[Cleo]

How does the smell get worse?

[Boris]

The smell gets worse.

[Dr. Z]

Okay.

[Cleo]

But I'm really strong, so.

[Dr. Z]

Yeah. Which is good. I'm gonna even give you a suggestion, but let's explain what's happening here. So you've rolled a negative one on dexterity, but a 14 on strength.

[Cleo]

Yes. Boy, that is on breaking.

[Dr. Z]

So Boris. Boris just slams the lever back up. The wheels, like, suddenly just going into, like, crazy spins as you just catapult up off the ground. It's almost like sort of slow motion. Ish. As they. The momentum you had just sort of carries you up and forwards. The entire truck sort of flipping over backwards, going back up over the top. Wow. At that very moment, the failed blasts from Dr. Z shoot a crater in the asteroid right where you had been. Oh, good.

[Boris]

Okay.

[Cleo]

Hey, one win.

[Dr. Z]

Which is shortly. Shortly followed by an asteroid slamming into it, also looking like it. You know, just deepening the crater. Looking as though either of those two things probably flattened you.

[Cleo]

Oh, my God. A sandwich.

[Boris]

Yeah.

[Dr. Z]

As Cleo. As Cleo sort of, like, pops out the window, hanging on tight with one sort of curled arm. I'm thinking wrapped around. Yeah, you got, like, both windows open, and you're sort of wrapped around the gap between them, like holding onto the truck and then reaching out, you know, like extending the carabiner and strap out towards the gray dragon flailing at it. You miss one hoop where it could have been hooked. You miss another hoop where it could have been hooked. But your bear claw is sort of trailing along the side of the ship. It's slipping, like, buttery out of your reach. You, Boris, and the truck are just gonna float off back into the asteroid field.

[Cleo]

Oh, no.

[Dr. Z]

Unless something stops you, you still have energy.

[Cleo]

Can I do a bear claws to grab?

[Dr. Z]

You should do bear claws.

[Cleo]

I'm just saying, like, not to be cheaty, but that's something I'm good at, so I'm not gonna do something.

[Boris]

I love that response.

[Dr. Z]

Right Now, I mean, I was.

[Cleo]

I was hating it.

[Dr. Z]

I don't want. I don't want to. I don't want to put nose in your mouth, but your claws are.

[Cleo]

It's just at this moment, your claw is doing a lot of work alone and maybe you should help it. And I'm like, baby, I will help it. Shoot. Okay, everybody cross your claws.

[Boris]

I've got mine crossed. Yes.

[Cleo]

Well, yeah, we got a 19 in this house.

[Boris]

Amazing.

[Cleo]

Sorry, Reece, if I puncture any holes in your beautiful Reese coat.

[Dr. Z]

The Cleo, one arm hanging onto the side of the truck. The other claw sort of like skiffing along. She digs her claws in.

[Boris]

Yes.

[Dr. Z]

Grabs onto just the side of the armored exterior of the gray dragon. She is pulled all the way out of the truck. She has now become the barrel of monkeys shaped bear between these two vessels. As all that energy of the flying truck is caught there between her chest.

[Cleo]

Oh my God, y'all. I'm sweating for real in my real life.

[Dr. Z]

But same her strength holds out as the truck sort of flips out and stops at that full extension. And Cleo is there holding the gray dragon and holding the truck.

[Boris]

Hell. Sorry about it, Atlas.

[Dr. Z]

As that energy sort of dissipates and Cleo's left with almost like a giant balloon. There's so little gravity and it's. But it kind of. It naturally wants to go back down towards the asteroid because the asteroid does have some small amount of gravitational pull.

[Cleo]

Okay, well, we're scared of that. I'm like, now that I'm up here, I'm like, boy, it's gonna be real shitty to get it back on the ground.

[Dr. Z]

Boris is like, he's strapped in, sort of sitting there. He's like, if you can get the wheels back down, I can turn it back on. The gravity, that is okay.

[Cleo]

Theoretically, if I push off with my feet on Rhys and like aim towards the ground, maybe it'll then have less distance to fall.

[Dr. Z]

You're up couple meters up off the ground with the same weird floaty balloon truck.

[Cleo]

Because if we drop it from too high up, that's just as bad as it getting shot, you know? I guess. And let.

[Dr. Z]

I mean, not quite as.

[Cleo]

Not really.

[Dr. Z]

You might, you might wreck the truck, but you certainly won't lose the stuff. All the equipment required to recharge your shields, which is top priority.

[Cleo]

Is that another dexterity?

[Dr. Z]

No, I just call that a strength. Because you just basically just try to force this thing down onto the ground. You know, you can do it.

[Cleo]

I'm getting strong. Bear Strike bear hood.

[Dr. Z]

Oh, that's 19. So Cleo, sort of out there in space in her bare astronaut suit, just maneuvers this truck back down towards the asteroid. She's still hanging on with her claws. Gets her feet both out and pinned up against the side of the ship. And then extending them both down, releasing the claw with a sort of Hail Mary, she pushes down and shoves the truck back down where it lands with a sort of a gentle bounce on the. The upgraded suspension, back down on the slightly unfirm ground of the asteroid beneath. And once again, with a good chunk. With a painful, awkward. Looks as though like it doesn't even. The lever isn't installed straight enough to really want to move. And it's on its axis. Boris forces. Forces his little ramshackle artificial gravity to turn back on. And with a bounce, and it's about a lump, the truck cements itself back down to the surface of the asteroid.

[Cleo]

Well, we're back. Ain't nothing happened.

[Boris]

Oh, yes. I appear to have miscalculated my last shot there. Sorry about that.

[Cleo]

Cleo and Boris ain't a thing. Chicken ring.

[Dr. Z]

Chicken ring.

[Cleo]

Or whatever. Things get lost in translation over time. Okay.

[Boris]

Yeah.

[Dr. Z]

Cleo doesn't even know what a chicken is.

[Cleo]

Probably not. Probably not. I've never seen one, you know, even though we do have Art of a Chicken, but that.

[Dr. Z]

All right, Boris pulls a. He's got a line just like a cable line comes out from underneath the glove box, and he clamps it onto his. Onto his suit and then throws open the door and clambers out of his. Out of the ship. The first step he takes, he's just like, launches up into the sky and sort of, like, bobbles about before, like, catching on the end of the line and sort of seesawing back down to the ground. As he starts clawing his way along the outside of his truck back to the trunk. His legs just off the ground because he's. He's pulling himself with his arms. His legs are sort of flying behind him as he opens up the trunk to start getting some of the gear out. Oh, this is going to be easy, Cleo. None of it weighs anything. As he very haphazardously is grabbing, like, way more than he would normally be able to lift with one hand, just sort of swinging it out dangerously out of the back of his truck. You see, like, a few, like, sort of loose cables and tools just drift off into space.

[Cleo]

Classic is probably gonna be really excited by that. I hate to say. Like, I would like to say that she's, like, hey, stop it. We need that stuff. But she doesn't say that. Instead, she sees that and she's like, hell. And she tries it, you know? And if. Well, I mean, if that don't start your fire, then your wood's wet. You know what I mean? Hell, look at me. And she picked up the.

[Dr. Z]

Cleo is able to pick up literally just everything. Obviously, this lower gravity and her intense ursine strength. You don't even need to roll a strength trick. You could probably pick up the Grey Dragon if they turned off its landing gear.

[Cleo]

Oh, I don't think she thought of that. Because I do not want to have to roll and be the reason that we live on this asteroid now. But, you know, depending on how long we're here, things could develop. So that's probably really good motivation to get going. So I'm gonna, like. I'm gonna communicate her into Z and Trevor again. Hey, Z.

[Boris]

Yes, it's clear.

[Dr. Z]

Zeke.

[Cleo]

Zeke, we're down here. We're at the place. Thrown out like a string. He climbed it. He's up there waving things. Anyway. Yep.

[Dr. Z]

Over now. Communicative.

[Cleo]

That was the update.

[Dr. Z]

All right.

[Boris]

Excellent.

[Dr. Z]

Trevor is sort of, like, looking like. He's sort of, like, wiping the sweat off his forehead. He's finally starting to calm down. Doesn't matter that the shields are on four. We made it. We made it. That part, that was the hard bit. As long as Boris isn't full of shit about being able to recharge our shields, we can get out of this. And if Boris is full of shit about being able to recharge our shields, then we're gonna die so quickly, it won't matter.

[Cleo]

Hey, you know what? Always look on the bright side of life. I'm gonna look up to Boris. Well, what kind of help you need up there?

[Dr. Z]

Boris is like, you need. Trevor. Trevor. Oh, I didn't bring my communicator. Can I. And he's, like, sort of squeezing his face right next to Cleo to try and talk into her communicator.

[Cleo]

All right, hold on. Let me press the button. Let me.

[Dr. Z]

Hold on. Can you hear me? Trevor? Trevor, you need to turn off the shields just for a moment. Just. Just. Yeah, I need you to turn off the shields.

[Cleo]

Um, you got that?

[Dr. Z]

Trevor's like. Sort of like, Trevor, those shields are the only thing. I mean, what if another big one comes?

[Cleo]

Well, I mean, he won't.

[Dr. Z]

I know.

[Boris]

Guns. I will not miss a second time. Do not worry about it. I've got it completely on lockdown.

[Dr. Z]

Trevor gives Dr. Z. A very wild, untrusting look.

[Boris]

Yes, I see you have complete trust in me, Trevor. Do not worry about it.

[Cleo]

I've got this gun in the width.

[Dr. Z]

Reaches down on the console, taking a deep breath and just powering down the shield.

[Cleo]

Oh, did you hear that? You hear that?

[Dr. Z]

Does move kind of swiftly and competently as the shields power down.

[Cleo]

Look at him go.

[Dr. Z]

He's just like, Cleo, hold this. He shoves like a. So the universal tool thing into Cleo's mouth and sort of like, you know, like stacks some more things into her arms. As he starts prying open a. A control panel on the exterior of the Gray Dragon, he's sort of pulling on cables that he grabs quite easily. There's a big cable. He's like yanking it, trying to unplug it, pulling it, twisting it every which way. And when you can see asteroids are still landing all around you on the surface of this thing. Only, only small ones are hitting Rhys at the moment, sort of doing some minor cosmetic damage to the, to the paint job. And Reece is still sort of just going. And then Boris, he's tugging and twisting. He can't get this cable out. And he looks, looks over at Cleo and he's like, cleo, the knife.

[Cleo]

Hold on, hold on, hold on. Which, this one or that? Which this one.

[Dr. Z]

The big one.

[Cleo]

The big one. Well, okay, all right. You're a big knife guy today. All right, Hands it over.

[Dr. Z]

Sort of big energy blade vibro knife thing. He grabs it, fires it up. It looks like some kind of like electro meat cleaver. It really doesn't look like a tool that he should be using for this sort of fiddly business. But he sort of just gets in there and starts like waving, waving the tip of it around inside the control panel of the ship. And then there's a sort of a spark and the lights sort of dim on the inside of the ship for a moment as he pulls the loose cable out of its housing, you can see it's been roughly chopped at one end. Now, inside the cable, there's just loads of little wires sparking about as Boris sort of like licks his fingers and starts separating, stops the sparking. He separates out the wires and stops the sparking.

[Boris]

Boris, you fucking mad lad.

[Dr. Z]

And then he hands the blade straight back to Cleo. He forgets to turn it off. He's holding it by the blade, though, to be polite, getting sort of zapped by it. As he hands the handle back towards.

[Cleo]

Cleo, Cleo takes it right back and immediately turns it off and is like, jesus. Jesus.

[Dr. Z]

He's not really a weapon.

[Cleo]

Mad as a dirt wall.

[Dr. Z]

Hell, There wasn't time, Cleo. There wasn't time.

[Cleo]

All right, all right, all right. Mozart, do your thing.

[Dr. Z]

The solder. The solder.

[Cleo]

All right, hold on, hold on. I got it.

[Dr. Z]

I got it.

[Cleo]

I got it right here. Here we go.

[Dr. Z]

Wait. No, there. It's this one underneath.

[Cleo]

Oh, God damn.

[Dr. Z]

Hang on. We can lose this. He reaches and grabs a big trunk that Cleo's carrying, yanks it out of her grass and throws it off into the air for it to drift off.

[Boris]

Into space.

[Cleo]

From hell to half acres. Boris, what was in there?

[Dr. Z]

Oh, those were dust. My screwdrivers.

[Cleo]

Oh, okay. It don't matter. Here.

[Dr. Z]

We probably won't need them.

[Cleo]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Z]

I just brought them because it's always good to be prepared with any tool that you might need.

[Boris]

Yes, of course.

[Dr. Z]

And we possibly will need those.

[Cleo]

Oh, you think? Okay. Oh. How far away are they right now?

[Dr. Z]

They. They are. They're floating off, like, their reach. He literally just tossed them away. Not really thinking about the. Not really thinking about the zero gravity situation as they vanish off.

[Cleo]

Got it. Got it.

[Dr. Z]

Cool off amongst the sky of bright lights and asteroids.

[Cleo]

Wow. He's so dumb. He. He is so dumb. He thinks Johnny Cash is a pay toilet.

[Boris]

I'd love that.

[Dr. Z]

Cleo thinks he's reckless.

[Boris]

It is great.

[Cleo]

I feel like he is, like, really at the top of the meter right now, though. Like.

[Boris]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Z]

Well, yeah, he's got to work fast.

[Cleo]

But I'm not gonna stop him.

[Dr. Z]

This is genius.

[Cleo]

I know genius when I say, exactly.

[Boris]

Yeah.

[Dr. Z]

So he grabs the soldering tool from Cleo and as you can see, like, he's sort of wrestling about. And he sort of starts walking up Cleo's chest. He's hanging on to the cable with one hand, and he reaches the end of his own steel cable going back to the truck. So, like, looking down the carabiner on himself, then looking up because Cleo's holding the stack of gears. And he's just walking up Cleo's chest to get up to the things that Cleo's carrying. He's got one boot sort of resting on Cleo's chin, the other on her chest as he nods and unstraps the carabiner from his own suit. And then he's floating up now. He's sort of holding on to the power cable coming from the ship. He's no longer attached to anything other than the fact that he's hanging onto this thing as he sort of flips about. So suddenly he's pivoted around the heel of his boot now landing on Cleo's face. Obviously she's got the space, she's got the space suit to stop her but it's still sort of right there in her face.

[Cleo]

That's all right.

[Dr. Z]

He pivots around and clambers up walking up onto the stack of things where he begins working, humming away from, he's soldering away. He's attaching this cable that goes to the Grey Dragon to some of the things that Cleo is carrying.

[Cleo]

Listen, there's a part of this that is dead.

[Boris]

Oh yeah, I'm feeling it.

[Cleo]

This is real.

[Boris]

This is way too natural.

[Cleo]

This is real ship. This is coming fast.

[Boris]

Yes.

[Dr. Z]

But at the same time there is another asteroid shower just spiriting down in and Trevor looks over at Z and he's like do not worry Boris, can we turn the shields back on?

[Boris]

Do not worry, I've got this Trevor and I do want to try and use my computering side to try and figure out a ideal target again just a perception or is there any way I can try and sneak a hacking in there?

[Dr. Z]

Probably not, no. I mean not really. These things are just, you know, they're asteroids flying in at you, you know you've already.

[Boris]

I've rolled an 18 on my team to try and figure out what the best target is.

[Dr. Z]

Alright so you can see this time that most of these things they're coming in like way short of the Grey Dragon. They're not going to hit you. All right? Worst case scenario they're just going to fling sort of sand up in your face. All right, but one of them, one of them is coming in looking like it's just going to clip the wing.

[Boris]

All right, I will let the crew know that we have a fleet of asteroids coming in towards us but only one of them seems to be immediate danger. I have target painted that for us all Trevor. If I do miss this however it could be aiming for the wing.

[Dr. Z]

Trevor doesn't even wait to hear the entirety of that sentence as he dives almost head first into the other gun turret. So getting himself in there like wheeling the turret around as well.

[Boris]

Alright then Trevor, okay, I'd love to see your trust in me much like I had trust in you for this suicide mission into the wall.

[Dr. Z]

Shut up Zee and fire.

[Boris]

But I think it's just a bit hypocritical of you to immediately without seeing any kind of action from myself try and take it upon yourself to save the day. Now, I know that we named a ship after you, the hero, but you could give a jelly a chance.

[Dr. Z]

Okay, okay, okay, look, it's fine. Let's just. You know, you should probably fire.

[Boris]

I have fucking rolled a one again.

[Cleo]

Oh, my God.

[Dr. Z]

Oh, my God.

[Cleo]

Damn.

[Dr. Z]

We should not be putting Dr. Z in this turret, man.

[Cleo]

This is the second natural one in a row.

[Dr. Z]

Wait, at least he's not firing.

[Cleo]

At least the last one, though.

[Boris]

It's the exact same.

[Dr. Z]

At least he's not firing at you.

[Boris]

Yeah, it's. Oh, no, it's not the exact same. It's a 6, 5, 4.

[Cleo]

Oh, I see it. Never mind. It's different. How did you do that?

[Boris]

I'm terrible at this, but I.

[Cleo]

This is phenomenal.

[Boris]

This is painful. I'm really embarrassed. This is hurting me as a person. And a jelly.

[Dr. Z]

Well, give me another percentile, Rol.

[Boris]

Come on.

[Cleo]

How bad? How bad?

[Boris]

62.

[Cleo]

Oh, six again.

[Boris]

And this is.

[Cleo]

Wait a minute. No, no, no, no, no. This is the exact same. Because last time you got 62 as well.

[Dr. Z]

This is. Wait. Yeah, this is.

[Boris]

Wait, this is the exact same.

[Dr. Z]

This is pretty weird. This is almost as though Dr. Zetus has, like, one.

[Boris]

No, no, no. It could be different, but no.

[Dr. Z]

Holy hell. Those are just.

[Boris]

Unless.

[Cleo]

What? Hold on, I want to screenshot it.

[Boris]

That is crazy luck. Bad luck.

[Dr. Z]

1, 1, 1 and a 15. And then a 62. And then a 115 and a 62. What are the chances of that?

[Boris]

I know.

[Dr. Z]

Hi.

[Cleo]

This is like during begumens when I got that, like four out of four, like, weird things.

[Boris]

That is crazy luck. But in the wrong area. Yes.

[Dr. Z]

So Dr. Z fires and he actually fires. Pretty true, because he hits the asteroid. Oh.

[Boris]

And then it just makes all the other ones into the.

[Dr. Z]

Breaking it into a myriad of pieces, most of which are coming in strong at the Gray Dragon.

[Cleo]

Burning rain, Burning rain. I just wanna see you standing in there.

[Dr. Z]

Trevor is, like, looking madly at this burning rain of asteroid parts as he just fires blindly into. Fires off a bunch of rounds. But what can you do to, like, a hundred small pieces? You know, he. He gives it his best, though.

[Cleo]

Yeah.

[Boris]

Wait, I've got an. Do we have time? Because I've got another idea for what we could do.

[Dr. Z]

Maybe. Well, what Trevor does is he fires and he hits.

[Boris]

Okay.

[Dr. Z]

One of the larger pieces of asteroid. For what good that does because there are still, you know, like just dozens of these asteroid pieces coming in at you and your shields are turned off.

[Boris]

Do I still have time to do something?

[Dr. Z]

Yeah, yeah. You still got another two points of energy after all.

[Boris]

All right, I'm thinking if I fire and Trevor fires at the exact same time and they, the two blasts of laser hit each other at the same time, could it like maybe take out.

[Dr. Z]

A bunch that superhero double laser effect.

[Boris]

Exactly. And try and like get the two laser shots to hit it and make a little explosion in the sky to take out some of those, that debris.

[Dr. Z]

That'S just, just crazy enough to work.

[Boris]

Yes.

[Dr. Z]

Now I don't cross the streams.

[Boris]

We need to cross streams. Trevor.

[Dr. Z]

Trevor sort of like wildly looking at Dr. Z. And then, you know, there's a sort of a dawn of realization. He said, and this is, I mean this is kind of like a Zog maneuver. This is the kind of crazy shit they get up to. So he's in nods and you can see like when he's back in action, but he's not. He's no longer freaked out about the fact that like he was operating on such low shields. He's now back in problem solving mode because he is a, he is an action hero after all. And he get a toothy, a toothy zarg like grin at Dr. Z as he aims at a point where the asteroids are incoming.

[Boris]

All right. Target pain. Trevor.

[Dr. Z]

All right, I'm. I'm going in here.

[Boris]

Right, you're going in there. I mean, was that the right. I shouldn't question it. I have missed twice. Yeah, I will, I will follow your lead on this one.

[Dr. Z]

Alright. Shoot the damn thing.

[Boris]

Shoot the damn thing. You shoot the damn thing. Am I firing first? Are you firing first or should we fire on three?

[Dr. Z]

We should fire together.

[Boris]

Fire together on when?

[Dr. Z]

One.

[Boris]

Yes.

[Dr. Z]

Two.

[Cleo]

Haha.

[Dr. Z]

Fight. Rolled in two. What? Oh my God. Have I got it like your chances.

[Boris]

Are that low or anything.

[Dr. Z]

You don't have any negative or anything.

[Boris]

I'm just. Oh, I'm so annoyed. Genuinely annoyed.

[Dan Casey]

I'm so upset.

[Dr. Z]

You both fire off your lasers and they, they go sort of near together and then just sort of fly past one another.

[Boris]

We've got one more chance. Do we?

[Dr. Z]

You got one more chance. Quick. Again. Again, Again, Again. All right, we can get this. We can get this.

[Boris]

I don't know, Trevor. I mean, I'm glad that now you finally believe in me, but I am not starting to believe in myself. This is very embarrassing. This is very embarrassing. This is painful.

[Dr. Z]

All right. On three. On three this time. On the three.

[Boris]

On the three.

[Dr. Z]

One, two, three.

[Boris]

Eleven.

[Cleo]

Eleven.

[Boris]

And you rolled eleven.

[Dr. Z]

They matched eleven as well.

[Boris]

They actually match two elevens. They match we hit perfectly.

[Cleo]

That's so lucky. It's eleven, eleven eleven. Make a wish. I wish the asteroids would.

[Boris]

I wish that they would just fucking let me hit things when I try to hit asteroids with a fucking space gun.

[Cleo]

11, 11.

[Dr. Z]

On your last chance to do anything about this, the two blasters you're both aiming from the pirates. The turrets inside of the shield matches, though.

[Boris]

That's fucking cool.

[Dr. Z]

Firing off. And your shots are symmetrical. You both fired at the sack moment at the same location. Synchronicity as they fire off and they strike together. Like some of the asteroids have already sort of come past your impact point by the time they strike together, but they hit together and they just blast out. The full energy is just sort of blasting out in all directions, evaporating the vast majority of the asteroids, firing some of the smaller pieces straight back down at you at higher speed like little, little pallets. But the Grey Dragon is well armored. The same, I'm afraid, cannot be said about the paint job, however, as Rhys is just carpeted with. It's like he's being like buckshot. Like he's just.

[Boris]

Oh, like the bad bloke from 007 with the diamonds in his face.

[Dr. Z]

Yeah, just sandblasted as the paint job is really messed up as like little bits of asteroid are embedded in the armor. He doesn't. Doesn't take any damage, but he's still whimpering like he's in pain. As you know. Definitely his vanity has taken a serious blow.

[Boris]

Freeze. You'll be alright. We'll get that paint scrubbed up and bright, bright new colors replacing it. It is. It is time that we do all go shopping. I think we all deserve new outfits. And Rhys, you will be on the top of that list.

[Dr. Z]

Thank you, Doctor. But please, Boris, we need to get the shields back on as soon as we can. It's okay, it's okay. I'm almost done. Boris sort of wiping the front of his space helmet as dike. He and Cleo just showered sand and shards and dust.

[Boris]

It's better than actual meteors.

[Cleo]

It's just me and you, mate.

[Boris]

It's meteor dust.

[Cleo]

It's just all over the place.

[Dr. Z]

He's done a bunch of stuff and then suddenly Cleo sort of feels something coming loose. And so a large chunk of what she's carrying is just sort of like pulling away. As you sort of. You look up, you can see.

[Boris]

I agree, Tate, I agree that with that phase that you're pulling.

[Dr. Z]

Boris is now pulling himself hand over hand along the cable back towards the Grey Dragon. His legs up in the air. And on the other end of the cable, there's just this box. It's like a crate. It's like twice the size of Boris himself, of just ramshackle things strapped together.

[Boris]

That's the battery pack.

[Dr. Z]

That's the battery pack. As just sort of floating. Floating and flopping loosely at the side of the grey Dragon.

[Cleo]

Oh, no.

[Dr. Z]

As he's like pulling himself hand over hand back towards the. The gray dragon. And you can see he starts rummaging around inside the cavity he made inside the control panel. And he sort of looks back, big grin and says, ah, Cleo, a screwdriver.

[Cleo]

Are you fucking kidding me?

[Boris]

Hell.

[Cleo]

Okay. Cleo is straight up just looking at him like. Like when a dog is hearing a weird noise and her head's kind of cocked. You mean like, like them ones? And she points out to space where.

[Dr. Z]

The sort of the. The slowly rotating, getting smaller and smaller case vanishes off behind the asteroids.

[Boris]

Yeah, I just.

[Dr. Z]

Boris looks up there, idly looks back down at Cleo.

[Cleo]

I knew I should have done something.

[Dr. Z]

Looks up again, and then he's like. Well, it's just to turn the safety key back round. So a butter knife would do.

[Cleo]

Okay, can I see the. The screw or whatever he's looking at?

[Dr. Z]

So if you were to sort of peer in there, you can see there seems to be like a safety power engage and like on and off kind of thing. Like a keyhole.

[Cleo]

Okay.

[Dr. Z]

One of the things where you just jam a flathead screwdriver and you can turn it one way, so it's an.

[Cleo]

Insertable that would require something like a Phillips head screwdriver or a flat.

[Dr. Z]

Like a flat head screwdriver. Just anything that he could just jam in there and twist will do this job.

[Cleo]

I feel like Cleo would just inherently have something like not a screwdriver, but like a wedge of metal or like a grenade key or something. You know what? I'll bet Cleo's got a grenade that she.

[Dr. Z]

And you can just like, you just bend back the key and just use that.

[Cleo]

Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do.

[Boris]

It's so crazy that you go there. You have a knife.

[Cleo]

Do I?

[Boris]

Dick even said like a butter knife.

[Cleo]

But it was an energy blade.

[Dr. Z]

Yeah, but it's still a. I don't.

[Cleo]

Have a butter knife.

[Boris]

No, I know, I know. I'm not telling you. I'm saying it's just funny that your mind goes to like, let's bend the key back of a grenade, whereas you have like a.

[Dr. Z]

That's something that Cleo definitely has on her at all times.

[Cleo]

You know, I mean, I don't always have a butter knife, but I do always have a grenade.

[Dr. Z]

I feel like Cleo. Cleo just licks butter straight out of the.

[Boris]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Cleo]

Oh, my God. Who uses a knife for butter?

[Boris]

Like, more like butter spoon.

[Cleo]

I have my own tub. And when I have food, I just. The food is slosh it.

[Boris]

Open the vehicle for the butter.

[Cleo]

Yeah, right. I can't believe we're even having this conversation. This is a cultural difference, I think. This is obviously, like, if you were from dais, like, I think you would probably better like that too. You would get it. But it's cool that you don't mean not.

[Dr. Z]

Not that.

[Boris]

Yeah.

[Dr. Z]

And dais, they have butter. It would just be. They definitely do not have food grade lube or something.

[Cleo]

Yeah, yeah, they don't. Even if. And that's like, if you had a really good take after robbing a transport, that shouldn't have been there.

[Dr. Z]

You know, like, you can grease up your flatbread with some food grade lubricants.

[Cleo]

Yeah. I mean, and that's like a. That's a Christmas thing. You know, you're not just like, that's not a Tuesday, but. Yeah. I'm gonna use a grenade. All right. I got. I see what you need. I got. I got you, Boris. Now, you know, I know I got a screwdriver because somebody. Somebody eated them, but I do got. I got this.

[Dr. Z]

Oh, that's perfect.

[Cleo]

That's what I thought. Now me and you speak the same language, my friend.

[Dr. Z]

Toss it here, Cleo.

[Cleo]

Well, yeah. All right. Here you go.

[Dr. Z]

You know what I'm gonna ask for?

[Boris]

Oh, no.

[Cleo]

Yes. I. Oh.

[Dr. Z]

I mean, you. You fell for that. That was Dick magic. I'm sick.

[Boris]

That was rude.

[Dr. Z]

That was very rude.

[Cleo]

I know. But I knew what was happening, Dan. I shouldn't have done it, but it felt fun.

[Dr. Z]

It felt so good.

[Boris]

My mind's telling me no, but my.

[Dr. Z]

Body, I mean, I was definitely, like, early stage of this. I was considering throwing additional spanners into the works, but it's just not been necessary. Oh, well, thank you, Dick.

[Boris]

Thank you.

[Cleo]

That's what you say every time. You're always like, hey, I mean, I was gonna use initially, I was gonna use your disadvantages against you, but you guys do it all the time yourselves.

[Dr. Z]

Yeah.

[Boris]

But you know what? Today I'm still al. So you know what?

[Cleo]

Still alive.

[Boris]

We're still here. We're still kicking.

[Cleo]

But Cleo's.

[Dr. Z]

Cleo's got A grenade. It's not. She hasn't pulled the key all the way out, although she has twisted it around.

[Cleo]

This is a dexterity. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna say my prayer to my God, which is butter. And here it goes.

[Dr. Z]

Okay, It's a negative 2, but at least it's not a natural one. Wow.

[Cleo]

Okay, cool. Well, it feels about as bad as a natural one.

[Dr. Z]

What is Cleo. She's doing, like a nice. Nice, safe underarm toss with this grenade towards.

[Cleo]

Playing in no gravity very often.

[Dr. Z]

But she fumbles with her claws at the last minute, putting a spin on it, and it just sort of is just flying off up to join the screwdrivers.

[Cleo]

That's fine. I'll go back into my suit for something else else. I'm gonna. I'm gonna look for something else. How would you. How would you like me to do that? Would you like me to assume an item? Or.

[Boris]

Wait, do you still have your bucket of bits that you're gonna. You were gonna do, like, a dice roll for the bucket of bits stuff?

[Cleo]

I do, but I never completed the list. I could make something up.

[Dr. Z]

Let's. Let's just do a percentile roll on your bucket of bits.

[Cleo]

Okay?

[Dr. Z]

And I will treat it as big good, small bad.

[Cleo]

Okay, so I've got a 55 bucket of bits. Bucket of bits. Okay, fine. So we made it, guys. We made it. Five points.

[Dr. Z]

So as Cleo sort of reaches back into her bucket, just pulling out the first thing that feels vaguely like it might slot into that gap and pulls it out. It is. It looks like a little piece of packaging. It's sort of like a really. Sort of a firm but flexible like. Like card. Like plastic, but long and thin. And although it's quite floppy and flimsy, if it was turned just right and didn't scrunch up too much, it might just do the trick.

[Boris]

Oh.

[Cleo]

Oh, my God.

[Boris]

Feels like Boris has got some rolling to do himself.

[Cleo]

I'm gonna. I'm, gonna, like, pull that out of my container, and I'm gonna hold it up into this chill space, air, if you could even say that, because it is very oxymoronic. And I see now the error of my ways, but nonetheless, into the atmosphere, into the absence of air. And I'm just gonna say, boy, I can't believe we just wasted a grenade. Boris. Hell. And I'm gonna hand him this, Try that.

[Dr. Z]

Just sort of reaching out a full extension. Yeah. So Boris is sort of like, reaching out with his arm. He's hanging on One hand onto this cable, and there's legs just sort of flailing in space as he, like, extends out with his other arm. We've got this sort of this barrel of monkeys thing going on again. As he reaches over to Cleo, he ends up having to sort of repel himself and shimmy down the. Down the cable a little bit. He's looking kind of precarious. As he finally gets close enough to grab between two fingers of his oversized spacesuit. His fingers are a bit sort of floppy and waving about. He grabs this flimsy little thing and pulls it back towards the ship. And Boris, as an expert engineer, he's gonna make an engineering role here.

[Cleo]

Oh, my God. 14. 14. That's better than anything we've rolled.

[Dr. Z]

As Boris reaches. Reaches his hand in there, he's fiddling around, and he manages to twist the little safety knob as suddenly the makeshift battery pack he's produced sort of just starts humming. And there's a blue neon glow emanating from it as inside the ship, Trevor has climbed back up out of the gun turrets to check on the console. He's like, it's working.

[Boris]

It's.

[Dr. Z]

It's. It's working really fast. It's. Oh, this is, uh.

[Cleo]

Oh, too fast.

[Dr. Z]

Boris, what happens if you put too much power into our shields?

[Boris]

Oh, my God. Oh, my God, Boris. Jesus fucking Christ.

[Cleo]

We cannot.

[Boris]

We need to take. Ever have damage to keep the shields low. This is like turning into heat, but, you know, you have to drive a certain speed or the bus will explode. No, that's speed, Boris. Sort of like different movie.

[Cleo]

We are on speed right now. Wait.

[Boris]

Yeah, sorry, Cleo.

[Dr. Z]

What?

[Cleo]

I forgot that. That was another.

[Boris]

Another thing that you do in your spare time.

[Dr. Z]

It's simple science, Trevor. Oh, is it good if you overpower the energy field? That's just how you make an energy blade. Oh, shit. Boris.

[Boris]

What? He just turned the fucking great dragon.

[Cleo]

Boris just turned. Turned us into a knife.

[Boris]

Yeah.

[Cleo]

Okay. Wow.

[Boris]

Well, all right.

[Dr. Z]

And then Boris looking at the gray dragon and then sort of looks down at his own body looking over at Cleo, and he's like, oh, my God.

[Cleo]

We should get up, Cleo.

[Dr. Z]

Yeah, I think we need. And then he looks over at his truck, and then he sort of like looks down at his wristwatch.

[Boris]

Oh, Boris.

[Dr. Z]

He's like. And then his eyes finally do sort of, sort of settle and widen with surprise as he's like, run. He starts scrambling along the ship, abandoning all the things that he's got as he starts just crawling along the ship back towards the airlocks.

[Cleo]

Oh my.

[Dr. Z]

Run, Cleo, run.

[Cleo]

Can I just ask, like, has he left our only tools up here?

[Dr. Z]

I mean, he has, he's got backup tools. He's got a lot of crap. He's a hoarder.

[Cleo]

Okay, I like how you said that so that you could, could keep me from staying up here and trying to get him.

[Dr. Z]

I mean, you guys do not have a very good track record with like suddenly emanating energy fields.

[Cleo]

You're right about that. I feel like we recently might have had an episode where I probably am still like shaved from that. Probably shaved being a really variable term here for like got burnt off. The chafing still haunts me, but I'm still getting ingrown hairs from that. But I. Yeah, I too, will. Will, run. I'm following Boris.

[Dr. Z]

Yeah, run. We're going to go into action mode here as Cleo and awkwardly at almost zero gravity, just sort of like clawing their way. I'm thinking like sort of along the underside of the Grey Dragon Mad hand foot. Every time you touch it, you're getting these little static shocks as though the energy shield, even though Trevor hasn't turned it back on, it sort of seems to be trying to like set itself off and break out.

[Boris]

Oh, shit.

[Dr. Z]

From Trevor's viewpoint, he can see the energy shields are back at. At full. But you know, like they are, but they're a knife now, so they're back at full. But like things don't look normal with them. It's. There's no proper heads up display for the phenomenon that's happening.

[Boris]

True.

[Dr. Z]

So he can only imagine what's going on, but they recharge faster than they should be and the recharging signal is still sort of going on there even though they're at full.

[Boris]

Trevor.

[Dr. Z]

Trevor's like staring through.

[Boris]

See right now, I have been caught in that energy field before and it is not fun. We need to slow down that recharge rate while we buy some time for Cleo and Boris to get back on board.

[Dr. Z]

What? There's nothing I could do. Boris is taking control over the network from the outside.

[Boris]

Yes. I'm saying bounce this ship into small things.

[Cleo]

What?

[Dr. Z]

Trevor sort of like looks at you and he's like, oh, yeah.

[Boris]

Hit the shields with small debris, slowing down the recharge, buying them time to get back inside before this whole fucking ship turns into an energy blade and our best friends get cut into billions of pieces. Now's the time to be a reckless pilot, Trevor. Bump into things.

[Cleo]

Holy crap.

[Dr. Z]

Trevor's Sort of like. Oh, yeah. As he disengages the landing gear, the gray dragon begins to float up away from the asteroid, leaving Boris's truck behind. We'll just have to stay here. Perhaps you can claim it back next time you come through.

[Boris]

Yeah, it'll be a little memento, Nick, A little relic of our voyage through the Wall.

[Dr. Z]

As the Grey Dragon barely drifts. But we try.

[Cleo]

That's a landmark.

[Boris]

Now, we barely tried, but Cleo and.

[Dr. Z]

Boris still sort of scurrying along it. But as Trevor looking for a choice meteorite that's just near enough and close enough to your current trajectory that he doesn't have to engage the engines too long and risk shaking his friends loose. This is one of the more dangerous situations you guys have been because unlike Herodotus, sort of zero g effects as well. You are in the middle of a riven asteroid field. So floating up into space, you know, is very dangerous. Like, you. You could potentially still be rescued by the gray dragon flying well, but you could also be smashed by a lot of flying objects.

[Boris]

Well, that's not happening right now. So let's.

[Cleo]

We're good. We're good.

[Dr. Z]

We're good.

[Cleo]

We're good.

[Boris]

I don't know why you're even thinking.

[Dr. Z]

About Trevor's like, All right, just hang on for one second. Hang on for one second, guys. Hang on really tight. You holding on?

[Cleo]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Z]

And then there's a quick little burst. It's almost like he's rigged the system. He's done sort of thing. He's using two different ignitions. Like, he's popping on the speed, but then he's, you know, cutting the engines manually at the same time. Just get this tiny, minuscule burst of energy. Yeah. Not as minimal as possible, but I'm gonna roll a little piloting roll.

[Boris]

Of course you are. My butt is clenched dicky.

[Dr. Z]

It's a nine. So I'm gonna need a strength save from Cleo and Boris because this isn't quite going as. As intended. It's a little bit too much power, and you. You're gonna have to, like, make sure you're holding on good.

[Boris]

Amazing.

[Dr. Z]

So Cleo has rolled a 23 on the strength save.

[Boris]

Oh, my God. Boris just.

[Dr. Z]

And Boris has rolled a 10. Boris sort of flapping about, but he manages to hug on as the ship sort of bursts out, blasting his way through. He's got himself into the line of fire. It's just getting pummeled by these smaller asteroids. They're just, like, whacking the shields, keeping them in check as the shields are sort of like wavering and flickering on because the shields aren't properly engaged. Sometimes they're just hitting Rhys, who's just squawking and squealing with pain. But Cleo and Boris are finally able to continue scurrying along, no longer getting these static shocks. As the shields are kept somehow at bay.

[Boris]

I will rush over towards the airlock door, communicating with Boris and Cleo. Cleo, Boris.

[Dr. Z]

Cleo.

[Boris]

Boris is still there.

[Cleo]

Z? Z, yes.

[Boris]

Cleo. Cleo. The bloody shield. Boris has rigged them. They're going to. Well, are you close?

[Cleo]

Well, yeah, almost.

[Boris]

All right, I'm going to be meeting you at the door.

[Dr. Z]

Okay.

[Boris]

Boris? Boris, you there?

[Cleo]

I mean, he's there.

[Dr. Z]

I'm just behind Cleo.

[Boris]

Oh, right, okay, he's still there. Good. I, I would just, I just, you know, Boris, you were very silent there for a moment. Everything, everything's a bit tense at the moment.

[Cleo]

Well, it's because he made us into a knife.

[Boris]

Yes. I mean, Boris, next time you go making an entire ship into a bloody energy blade, do you want to maybe talk to the entire crew first? I mean, the original plan was increase shield capabilities.

[Cleo]

Oh, he did, he did.

[Boris]

Well, of course he's bloody God done it. And he's going to use himself as the first test experiment.

[Dr. Z]

Well, yeah, it is quite exciting, Doctor. I did say, think anybody has done this before.

[Boris]

Edging was exciting enough. I don't know if we need to be doing this as well.

[Cleo]

This really turns out the edging.

[Dr. Z]

Think about the application.

[Boris]

Yes, I can think about the applications.

[Cleo]

You ever edged with a knife?

[Boris]

No, no, I have not. But I've seen people who have done it and they have been scarred for life.

[Dr. Z]

Clif.

[Cleo]

I mean, that is, that is true, that is true in many ways.

[Boris]

I'm at the door now. I'll punch the button and open it and pop my head out and wave and be like, Cleo.

[Dr. Z]

Boris, you can see Cleo is right there, just dragged herself pretty much to the door.

[Cleo]

Can I drag Boris in?

[Dr. Z]

Trailing all behind? Yeah. Once you sort of get a foothold in there, suddenly, you know, the artificial gravity of the Grey Dragon is finally at play again. You're actually no longer the sort of like bare balloon and you're able to easily just sort of hoist the weightless Boris, yank him in the door.

[Boris]

Okay. As he comes in, I. Boris, look, I do think what you've done is bloody brilliant, but it is insane.

[Dr. Z]

Boris is sort of like wide eyed and he's like, oh, no, oh no, we're going to miss it. And he starts running down the hallway towards the bridge.

[Boris]

Miss. What?

[Cleo]

Oh hell.

[Dr. Z]

Oh miss.

[Boris]

Ed.

[Dr. Z]

He's like rushing in as Trevor is.

[Boris]

Like going guys, well we're, we're coming. Well yes, of course we're coming because.

[Cleo]

I don't want to miss.

[Boris]

I'm gonna pull the door closed first and shut this airlock.

[Cleo]

Yeah.

[Boris]

And then look over at Cleo and be like, I thought we were meant to be the ridiculous ones. Now we've been paired with Boris and Trevor apparently just, just fly us into walls and turn us into knives.

[Cleo]

See, I ain't never seen anything like that.

[Boris]

Look, I think, I think we need to get control of this crew again. Smart bear and a doctor, not ridiculous knife and fly into a wall.

[Cleo]

We gotta turn this back into the float science center that it was in the first place.

[Boris]

I agree.

[Dr. Z]

I mean, anyway, as you follow behind ridiculous, you can see like Boris has just rushed straight into the bridge where he's standing there like holding onto the back of Trevor's chair. Both of them sort of slack jawed, looking out the front as there's just blue light just like filling the cockpit and the outside. It looks like you're looking through this sort of this rippling blue fire.

[Boris]

It's very cool. Boris, look. I mean it's ridiculous, but it is cool.

[Dr. Z]

As Trevor sort of like looks back to you guys. I haven't even turned them on. And he turns the shields back on.

[Boris]

Oh.

[Dr. Z]

And there's like a, like a jolting feeling. It's like an electricity in the air. That sort of, that rippling blue fire ahead of you suddenly just solidifies crystalline into, just points. There's like a, like a, just a, almost like a bladed point out the front of you before can sort of see like a sort of almost crystalline energy shield shape extending out from the grey dragon at various angles.

[Boris]

Wow.

[Dr. Z]

As Trevor, a big toothy grin forming on his face, fires up the engines as you begin cutting through asteroids like butter.

[Boris]

Oh God. Tingles you guys. Literal tingles. This is sick.

[Cleo]

Dick, you're so freaking smart, man.

[Boris]

This is great.

[Cleo]

I'm just gonna look at Boris and I'm gonna be like, Boris, Boris.

[Dr. Z]

Yeah, Boris.

[Boris]

I agree. Boris.

[Dr. Z]

Boris is just like staring out the window, his smile getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

[Cleo]

Boris, what remote did you get that battery out of?

[Boris]

Boris, how did you bloody think of such a thing?

[Dr. Z]

I mean really, it's easy. That's the thing. A sip like this. It has very, very big batteries for the life support units.

[Boris]

The what?

[Cleo]

Hold on. What?

[Dr. Z]

Oh, it's fine. You can live without those for days, right?

[Boris]

Yes. And I suppose, is that what we should expect then, Boris? To be living without those for days?

[Cleo]

But like, what part? Like what part though? Like.

[Boris]

Like food replication.

[Cleo]

Did you turn the food replicator off?

[Boris]

Did you turn the food replica? I don't mind so much the food replicator, as long as the source machine still works.

[Cleo]

Boris. Boris, let me tell you. Let me talk to you.

[Dr. Z]

Boris is sheepishly sort of like turning around. It's almost like he's got one eye off to one side, still looking at his handiwork as Trevor is just mowing his way through the asteroid field.

[Boris]

We're gonna have to talk about this later.

[Dr. Z]

Boris shuffling to himself as Boris sort of like, you know, like, guiltily looks back into the living area where the. The food replicator is set up. Maybe it's on that circuit.

[Cleo]

Cleo immediately sits just in the floor.

[Boris]

Oh, we're doomed, Cleo. We are doomed. Look at us.

[Cleo]

I just didn't know. I didn't even empty anything out of like, I. I didn't.

[Dr. Z]

Look, we.

[Boris]

All we asked him to do was to turn the bloody shields on just to recharge them, and now we've got no source in the entire ship.

[Cleo]

I just. Hold on. I need a minute. Cleo's gonna head into the turret. Can I see the grenade in space?

[Dr. Z]

I mean, give me a roll. The chances are low, but, you know, I'll let you try.

[Cleo]

Okay.

[Boris]

Nope.

[Dr. Z]

Cleo can't. Cannot even see the grenade, but just sort of wobbling by, sort of rotating slowly and space. There's a small screwdriver case.

[Cleo]

Can I shoot it?

[Dr. Z]

Why not?

[Boris]

I just get that rage out.

[Cleo]

I need to.

[Boris]

Nailed it.

[Dr. Z]

That's a 23.

[Cleo]

Well, thank God for that.

[Boris]

Cleo Club.

[Dr. Z]

Polar opposite to Dr. Z's shooting vaporizes. Yeah, probably a few. The screwdriver set?

[Boris]

Yeah, I couldn't hit an asteroid. Cleo can hit a screwdriver. Yeah, okay.

[Dr. Z]

Fair as suddenly the second half of the journey is rather effortless as Trevor is able to cut the. The now souped up and souped down. Grey Dragon. Nice as you're gonna have to. You're making your way into Wraith space rather. Rather safely, but you've only got a couple days of. Well, of sort of basic life sources, obviously your oxygen supply, your. Your water supply, your waste management.

[Cleo]

Oh, good.

[Dr. Z]

And you're just gonna have to do. Do without food replication for.

[Boris]

It's a shame we weren't very, very clear about what we wanted Boris to do. That is, I think, unfortunate that we weren't.

[Cleo]

I don't think the menu was that big.

[Dr. Z]

Well, there hasn't been really like. Boris is on a few occasions, he's just taken upon himself to get things going. And every time he's done things in an unexpected way and kind of fucked with your shit a little bit.

[Cleo]

But, like, we're a knife now in an asteroid.

[Dr. Z]

I love it.

[Boris]

I love it.

[Cleo]

This is the only way to get through an asteroid.

[Boris]

This is the way.

[Cleo]

And I mean, Cleo might spend the next three days in the turret singing like, I hurt myself today.

[Boris]

Starts looking at Jordan being like, Jordan, Jordan.

[Cleo]

Cause I can't get a meal.

[Boris]

So, Reece, how does it feel to be the thing that deals the damage and cuts through things now.

[Cleo]

How does it feel to be a knife?

[Boris]

How does it feel to be a knife? Rhys.

[Dr. Z]

I am getting my revenge on the asteroids.

[Boris]

See, right.

[Cleo]

Rhys is a bastard.

[Boris]

Reese is laughing at hurting rocks.

[Cleo]

I feel that on a cellular level.

[Dr. Z]

And as Cleo sings her sad song to herself and thinks of brighter days when she was able to get food on demand from the ship, knowing damn well that the only food left in the ship are the things that she is like. Much like the. The wild bear she is. She's stowed in various places.

[Cleo]

It's true.

[Dr. Z]

And that's. That won't last long, you know, not now that she's got the hunger for it now. She knows where they're all placed, so she's, you know, she's gonna. She's gonna eat them pretty quick. But Trevor and Boris are both looking quite gleeful as.

[Cleo]

As I can just see them.

[Dr. Z]

This potential certain doom has been turned into. Turned into a real adventure. Boris. Boris hasn't even, like, really thought about the fact that he's left behind his truck and lost a lot of his tools.

[Boris]

We'll get him a new one.

[Dr. Z]

We will still enraptured with the thing. And Rhys, you can hear still just going with a childlike joy as asteroids just seem to, like, burst and pop like bubbles.

[Boris]

Oh, yeah.

[Cleo]

So wholesome.

[Boris]

It is. It's just such a good family moment.

[Cleo]

Because we struggled so hard that I feel like you deserve to have that kind of ending. Like, there were so many ones.

[Boris]

So many ones. I'm actually upset.

[Cleo]

Is that the name of the episode?

[Boris]

So Many Ones? Yeah.

[Cleo]

So many.

[Boris]

I think that's a good name.

[Dr. Z]

I don't know if that's the most ones we've ever done, though.

[Boris]

No, but it was the most One. It was the most bad ones in a row.

[Dr. Z]

Yeah, they were. They were quite important shots. And they were like.

[Cleo]

Or is the name of the episode. You call that a knife?

[Dr. Z]

Yes.

[Boris]

That's much better. That is much better.

[Cleo]

You call that a knife?

[Dr. Z]

You call that a knife?

[Cleo]

You call that a knife?

[Boris]

Because no one will ever figure out.

[Dr. Z]

Probably won't need screwdrivers.

[Cleo]

Probably won't need us.

[Boris]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, too many good names. All right, man. Dickie, Great episode.

[Cleo]

Feeling good. I'm feeling really good.

[Dr. Z]

Or that was so the. The butter knife. And people initially, they will think it's, you know, about a button off that Cleo's gonna give.

[Boris]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Z]

Give Boris to turn the key. But then it turns out, no, the dragon, the gray dragon is the knife.

[Cleo]

The butter knife is the old Getting dick magicked all day, dick magic all.

[Boris]

Day, dick magic all night, getting dicked.

[Dr. Z]

Cutting through asteroids like a knife through butter, I think is the word I used.

[Boris]

Even so there was this, like, intricate web of tunnel systems and currents and things that Trevor has, like a London cabbie got locked away in his brain, and he was going to take us through that. And Boris being fucking ridiculous, just turn the ship into a knife. And now Trevor just needs to drive straight. It's insane.

[Dr. Z]

Cut a path. But might I add, is adding a new slipstream behind you.

[Boris]

Oh, so a new. Just, like, direct path. Just a tunnel.

[Cleo]

Wait, is that really bad? That's really good for us.

[Boris]

Good for us. We know where it is.

[Dr. Z]

Well, it's only halfway through, and it's from the giant asteroid. So, you know, it's like our secret.

[Boris]

Entrance and exit to. Through the wall.

[Cleo]

We have to, like, move a rock in front of it. Yes.

[Dr. Z]

I love that idea.

[Boris]

That's so good.

[Dr. Z]

But also paint. But also paint the rock paint. Yeah, so.

[Cleo]

Cause we'll freak out.

[Dr. Z]

You paint a big, like, big cross on it.

[Boris]

But it's like this unnatural rock just sitting in the middle of this.

[Cleo]

No nerds allowed.

[Boris]

Yeah. Oh, my God, I love it.

[Dr. Z]

Well, it's also like. I mean, like, the majority of pilots would never think to fly into those slipstreams because they're. They look like the worst part, you know?

[Cleo]

Yeah.

[Dr. Z]

That's where the most super.

[Cleo]

That's super smart, though. That's how it works. If you're, like, driving through a river, like a glacial river, like, you're supposed to go into the, like part. That looks more dangerous.

[Boris]

Right.

[Cleo]

Because people want to go through the, like, if you have to drive through.

[Dr. Z]

It there, it looks clear, but it's actually deep.

[Cleo]

Yeah, like you're supposed, like people want to go through like I can't remember which way it is. Because the way they teach you how to drive through a river is opposite here because a temporary glacial river is different from like an existing river. So it's like the flat part that looks really shallow.

[Boris]

It's actually super deep and dangerous because.

[Cleo]

That'S like the newer part. So it's more turbulent. But if you look at the like, like skinny deep part, like that's the part that's more stable.

[Boris]

Good to know.

[Cleo]

We just did that organically. Space.

[Boris]

Yes.

[Cleo]

When you're smart.

[Dr. Z]

I mean, I, I, I, I really like how like just those beats we got in that, like, I couldn't have planned a lot of that. Especially if you did even just like the turning it into a knife and then like the sort of the other, the, the, the little one, two punch of like.

[Boris]

Oh, but he had to, he had.

[Dr. Z]

You know, he's fucked the ship. You, you've only got a couple days left and you've got no food. Like, that was a last minute thought. Oh, good.

[Boris]

I'm glad we. But like it worked with that.

[Dr. Z]

It works so well.

[Boris]

That was so if we kept our mouth shut.

[Cleo]

That was the whole time we were playing that. And I was like, how did he think of all this shit? Like, I was like, if he didn't do all this, this story would be dumb.

[Boris]

Yeah. No, it was so, so good. I loved it.

[Dr. Z]

I was like having, I was thinking like, I would make it so that like you'd have to like defend, borrow. Like I was gonna have like some sort of like. Yeah. Like Sandworm come out of the as or something. Yeah. It just was, it was not. We didn't even need it. Like once I started getting on a roll with, with like Boris being the anti, rocks were like actually, you know.

[Boris]

We were our own worst enemy. Rocks. Yeah, rocks. Couldn't have been enough rocks and ourselves.

[Dr. Z]

As soon as like, you know, because like you're supposed to be like, you have this cruiser that's got its own little chunky gravity thing. You guys can be like strapped onto it, just working on the ship.

[Cleo]

Why would we do that? Why would we behave that.

[Boris]

Is Boris upset that we've lost his car?

[Dr. Z]

Well, it's, you know, he hasn't had time to process that thing because he's too excited about the fact that he's just invented.

[Boris]

Also, how great is it that this like insane, amazing energy blade ship that's flying through space now cutting through rocks is essentially just a ship with, like, a few cable wires dangling off the end of it with a fucking box just bouncing along just like. That's the source of the tower. It's just this weird dongle just being.

[Dr. Z]

Like, just bashing around on the back of the ship.

[Cleo]

Like a deep sea angler.

[Boris]

Exactly. It's just. It's just gonna, like. All it needs is one hit to that dongle and the fucking whole super weapon of energy blade in space is gone.

[Cleo]

But currently, wow, we're not a great target right now, are we?

[Boris]

No, we're not. That's super cool.

[Cleo]

We're a ranged target.

[Boris]

I love it, though.

[Dr. Z]

I love it.

[Cleo]

The minute that you get up close, we're in trouble. Oh, my God.

[Boris]

I hope we can keep this. I know it's like, now, but the.

[Dr. Z]

Minute they get up close, you cut through them because you're a giant energy blade.

[Cleo]

But if we roll another one and miss and then they cut us. Oh, my God.

[Boris]

Well, I mean, I think we know who not to put in charge of those rolls, then.

[Cleo]

Both of us, man.

[Boris]

No, you've rolled badly. But I rolled ones.

[Cleo]

You rolled ones, like, the whole game.

[Dr. Z]

You did almost kill Claire.

[Boris]

I.

[Cleo]

That was. How many times does that happen, though? Let's be real.

[Boris]

I was.

[Dr. Z]

That was actually. That was really. That was genius. Like, turning off the, like, the very genius. That moment. Super genius truck.

[Boris]

Yeah.

[Dr. Z]

So the truck, like, floats. That was. That was cool. And then we get that moment of, like, Cleo, like, holding the two ships together.

[Boris]

I know.

[Dr. Z]

Atlas. Atlas Bear.

[Cleo]

Oh, my God. We almost died 10 times.

[Boris]

I know. I know. Season two did, but we never do.

[Cleo]

We never do, though.

[Boris]

We never do.

[Cleo]

I don't feel. I feel like that's the trope. Like, every time we start a season, we have to almost die.

[Boris]

It is almost a trick.

[Cleo]

Remember the first one?

[Dr. Z]

Yeah.

[Cleo]

That was probably a similar thing.

[Dr. Z]

It'd be so, like, in a first episode, it would be really sad to kill off a character. Like, next episode, we could sort of, you know, maybe in a position where someone could die. But, like, I was like, I was really worried that Boris was gonna get killed, and it would be kind of be for nothing, you know, it'd be.

[Cleo]

Like, oh, my God. We couldn't. We would have had. Honestly, we couldn't have killed Boris. I was. But after, like, three ones, I was like, I know it would be weird if we had to roll a new character on this. The first sin. So we're only here all the way into season two, and this is season two. Of Campaign two. So, like, there's been a couple of campaigns, there's been a couple of seasons. There's been hundreds of episodes. Now, if I can say that, because there's like 100, like 12 or 13 or something. These have only been possible because of you. And so everybody gather around the campfire.

[Boris]

Gather around.

[Cleo]

First.

[Dr. Z]

Roll up, roll up.

[Cleo]

Season two, roll call of the Bastard Legion. And that is you. And you are known by the monikers Cheaper by the Dungeon.

[Boris]

Cheaper by the Dungeon. Thank you.

[Cleo]

And Lucas Duff, who you all just enjoyed in our last episode and we.

[Boris]

Need to have back again very soon. Lucas Duff. Thank you. That was amazing.

[Cleo]

A million times, thank you, Doc.

[Boris]

Just live here now, please.

[Dr. Z]

Thank you for your patronage and for your patronizing.

[Boris]

Yeah, and that's Ballad of the Seven Dice. If you want, check out his podcast, please do. Because amazing.

[Cleo]

And Marcus Brackleman, as they say. As they say, they do talk about.

[Boris]

They do say that he is a broccoli.

[Cleo]

Well. And they say more things than that.

[Boris]

We're not allowed to say those things.

[Cleo]

We're not. This is. This may be rated as explicit, but not X.

[Boris]

Don't worry, broccoli. We got you.

[Cleo]

If you know what I mean. We'll keep that secret. And Eric B. Rose.

[Boris]

Eric Rose, take me. You a ho, you a ho, you a ho. You already know.

[Dr. Z]

You were filthy.

[Boris]

Down, right, down, right. Do we love you, fucking ho. Eric Rose.

[Cleo]

That was beautiful. I've heard many covers of that song, but nothing like that.

[Boris]

That was for you, Eric. That was for you from the heart.

[Cleo]

That belongs on a whole cassette tape.

[Dr. Z]

And noodle noodle boy, noodle boy, noodle boy.

[Cleo]

Our favorite, carbohydrates.

[Boris]

I eat them daily.

[Cleo]

Yeah, well, not healthy.

[Dr. Z]

I know I ate worms, but they're pretty much noodles.

[Cleo]

Yep, that's the same. Dan. That's. You can have a worm dick said, thank you. Yep. And the Abael Queen. Watch out for those bees.

[Boris]

Watch out for those bees.

[Dr. Z]

I've been eating delicious wasp meat.

[Cleo]

Also a fine choice.

[Boris]

A fine dining.

[Cleo]

Cole. Nicole.

[Dr. Z]

Hey, guys, it's Nicole. Hey, guys.

[Cleo]

The biggest bastard of them all.

[Boris]

It's Nicole.

[Dr. Z]

Such a bastard. Bastard. Such a.

[Cleo]

Such a bastard. And Randy.

[Boris]

Randy, Randy.

[Cleo]

Randy.

[Boris]

Climb that shit rope. Get away from that shit river.

[Cleo]

Randy. What is that?

[Boris]

Trailer pup. Boys.

[Cleo]

Yeah, okay. All right. I was like, okay, We've said it so many times that it must be a thing, but sometimes it's not.

[Boris]

It's Mr. Leahy talking to Randy in Trailer Park. Boys.

[Cleo]

I need to watch that again. I haven't Seen that since like 2000.

[Boris]

Oh, that's great.

[Cleo]

I like bubbles.

[Boris]

Yeah. I mean, who doesn't?

[Cleo]

He's my favorite. And why bots999, who is actually a real sick.

[Boris]

Yes, he is. And that was a bit upsetting when he. When he told us and he was like, hey, guys, I'm actually, actually a synth. And we were like.

[Cleo]

But he's self aware.

[Boris]

He is.

[Cleo]

And he makes his own choices. And that's why he chose to be here.

[Boris]

Thank you. Why Bots?

[Dr. Z]

Thank you.

[Cleo]

And Trevor Forever. That's his real name.

[Boris]

First and last. Thank you.

[Dr. Z]

But it's spelt like what, like forever. Like F O U r. It is.

[Cleo]

He had to pay a lot of money to get it changed to that because.

[Boris]

But that's what he feels and that's who he is. So that's who he is forever.

[Cleo]

And he's the only pilot that we know that can get us through the wall.

[Boris]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Z]

That is until Boris starts, you know, like mass producing these knife shits unannounced fuckery.

[Cleo]

Listen, you can't be blamed for other people's genius. And speaking of genius, we have Ben from no Mercy podcast and he is. Is an actual genius. An actual genius in real Life.

[Dr. Z]

You of 312, if you can believe it. That is, if you don't believe it, then fair enough. You know, like, I. I can't do.

[Boris]

Anything to force you to believe.

[Dr. Z]

I can't convince you.

[Cleo]

The dick magic only goes so far. You know what I mean? And that's okay, because next is Doff or Daphne, for those of you who are uninitiated. Doff, another genius. Once again, she's picked the right place.

[Boris]

She has. She is.

[Cleo]

And that is here.

[Boris]

Doff has arrived. And here she is.

[Cleo]

Doff and then Clayton. Dogmeat.

[Boris]

Dogmeat. Dogmeat teaches his daughters how to fuck shit up. And you gotta watch out for the Dogmeat family. Cause they are gonna. When the apocalypse hits, they're gonna fucking have everything.

[Cleo]

They're gonna make it.

[Dr. Z]

Well, I'm imagining sort of like shotguns and flamethrowers kind of thing, probably.

[Cleo]

Yeah, I know, but I think that's about dog meat.

[Dr. Z]

Or is it more like like. Yeah, like a boxing glove on a spring. Yes.

[Cleo]

Can you imagine how cool it would be if your surname was dog meat?

[Boris]

Yeah. Now, all I'm saying is, look out for the dog meat family. Because when the apocalypse hits, run from the dog meats.

[Cleo]

Do you think we could join the family, like, legally?

[Boris]

I'm not strong Enough to join their family. They are handsome.

[Dr. Z]

Thing is like, you know, but the tricky thing is if you join a family and you're not like, sort of a core member when the cannibalism times are. Yeah, this is it.

[Boris]

Yeah.

[Dr. Z]

You got. You got to decide who you like the least and eat them. And you know that, you know they're going to stick together.

[Boris]

You need to look ahead far enough into the future to start thinking about.

[Cleo]

I have a lot of really marketable skills, though. I can make a quesadilla out of human flesh.

[Dr. Z]

But can you? Can you convince someone to eat their own family member in lieu of you? Because that's the only skill that's going to matter when the apocalypse might do.

[Cleo]

Might do.

[Dr. Z]

And I'll tell you what. It's a skill I've been working on for a long time. I've not been cannibalized yet.

[Boris]

Well. Well, maybe I will politely just take myself outside and just lay myself out.

[Cleo]

Like a hot sun.

[Boris]

I'll just lie down on the blade. I just. There I go. I did it for you.

[Dr. Z]

Mustard?

[Boris]

Mustard.

[Cleo]

I don't think they'll want you if you're dead, though. You know how, like, a lizard won't eat something that somebody kills? So, like, when you drop its dinner in the tank, it's gonna be alive?

[Boris]

Yeah.

[Cleo]

Or is that snakes?

[Boris]

Either way, sushi isn't fun enough. I mean, lizards.

[Dr. Z]

Lizards. Lizards are just walking snakes.

[Cleo]

Yeah, that's true.

[Boris]

Lizards. They thought they could pull that one over us, pull a fast one, but no.

[Cleo]

Dick's noticed there's a snake.

[Boris]

Dick has figured it out.

[Cleo]

Snake with legs. And it tries to be like calling itself a snake. Still.

[Boris]

Still, if you got legs.

[Cleo]

That's what I was saying, but it's in the dictionary and everything. And the last bastard. Legion. Yes, Legionnaire. Is that how that works?

[Boris]

Yep.

[Dr. Z]

Yeah. Legionnaire is a member of the Legion.

[Cleo]

Nah, that's a disease, Dick. Come on.

[Dr. Z]

Shima disease.

[Cleo]

Legionnaires to see. I think. I don't know.

[Dr. Z]

Shima. Legionnaires. Get it.

[Cleo]

That's true. That's a great point. That's something to think about.

[Boris]

Yes.

[Cleo]

And Shima is the last bastard at this time. And so that means if something goes wrong, we're gonna save.

[Boris]

We need to save Shima.

[Cleo]

But we cannot.

[Dr. Z]

If something goes wrong, we're gonna eat Shima first.

[Cleo]

No. Yeah, well, don't let him know that. But maybe.

[Boris]

Chima, you got a 50, 50 chance here. Okay? You're either first or last.

[Dr. Z]

I would work on the whole convinced Us. We should eat someone else. Skittle.

[Boris]

Chima, I like you, but I can't say what way I'm gonna go on the day.

[Dr. Z]

It just depends, like, what kind of apocalypse we're facing exactly. You know, it might be. There might be loads of food.

[Cleo]

It's also kind of like if you line everybody up, who smells the most. Like a bacon.

[Dr. Z]

Like a bacon.

[Cleo]

You know what I mean?

[Boris]

Chima, I will give you a chance to, you know, let us know how you feel about it. But, yeah, it really is gonna depend on.

[Cleo]

They have some marketable skills on the.

[Boris]

Type of apocalypse and also where we're at at the time. So, you know, Kane, never could.

[Cleo]

You never know till you know. Yes, this is Wheel of Fortune. Will you be consumed at the end times? Bastards.

[Boris]

Sheena, look, I just think you're being a bit selfish, okay? We are all hungry. Not just you, all of us are hungry.

[Cleo]

The food replicator's been broken for a.

[Dr. Z]

While, and so anyway, and I guess what I'm saying is, like, you should. You should become a patron and get. Get claim that last in line spot. Especially if you've always had the sort of, you know, weird, sort of dark, warped fantasy of being cannibalized by a podcast.

[Boris]

Yeah.

[Cleo]

We're about to open this up to an entirely new demographic.

[Boris]

Yeah.

[Dr. Z]

So check out. Check us out on Patreon.

[Cleo]

Check us out. Hey, we're here.

[Dr. Z]

We probably won't eat.

[Boris]

Probably won't. But that doesn't mean won't.

[Cleo]

Both of y'all are vegan, though.

[Boris]

Well, I can't say what's gonna happen.

[Cleo]

When I get hungry, because veganism doesn't count people. Right.

[Boris]

People are fine.

[Cleo]

That's. That's like a free.

[Dr. Z]

Well, I'm just thinking, like, if.

[Cleo]

If.

[Dr. Z]

If, you know, if veganism isn't. Yeah, because, like, people are only going to turn to cannibalism if veganism is off the table.

[Cleo]

Because typically, though, like, you know what.

[Dr. Z]

They'Re not going to be like, it's meat or nothing.

[Cleo]

You know, the philosophy of veganism, though, is to save the Earth. So in a way, I go vegan. In a way, you should eat people, because we're like the biggest plague on the planet.

[Boris]

And I'm saying, shima, you know, 50.

[Dr. Z]

50 Dan's looking at you eating people. You're keeping one person alive, even as you can.

[Cleo]

But if you can take out a lot of people, then in a way, it's kind of like, you know, as.

[Dr. Z]

A net benefit, I guess.

[Cleo]

Yeah, yeah. The net benefit of that is is quite good.

[Boris]

You only have to eat too. And that's what you come to backward bastards for is for you shouldn't stop it too.

[Dr. Z]

Well, anyway, thanks for entertaining our. Our podcasting and our.

[Cleo]

And our thanks for letting us do this.

[Boris]

Thank you.

[Dr. Z]

Conversations on cannibalism.

[Boris]

And if you haven't already, then sign up up on the Patreon because you will get access to our new and exclusive for a month of early access show, Sidearm, where we release an extra episode every week, sometimes two if we. If we have an emergency.

[Cleo]

Yeah, you never know.

[Boris]

We'll.

[Cleo]

If I can't shut up.

[Boris]

If we. We have urgent stuff, we'll release it. But Sidearm is a patron exclusive for a month for the patrons.

[Cleo]

Yeah, you get to hear it before any of those plebes out there. And then you can come into our discord, into the secret channel and we can all talk about it and look at secret stuff and nobody else can see it. And even when it releases to the rest of the whole wide world, they still can't look at the secret channel because they are not in the club.

[Boris]

So come join us there. It's good fun.

[Dr. Z]

Early access secret chat probably won't get eaten.

[Boris]

Yeah, yeah, there you go. You move up the list apart from Shima. Shima's holding the back end.

[Cleo]

Shima. If you want to help Shima, probably you should sub. So sub the Patreon.

[Boris]

Excellent. All right, see you next week.

[Dr. Z]

Yeah, we'll see ya. Bye.

[Cleo]

Y'all come back now, you hear?

[Boris]

I think that was fun.

[Cleo]

I think we got it.

[Boris]

Yeah, that was good.

[Dr. Z]

Cool tuning. Next time for another edge of your seat adventure in space with the backwater bastards.

[Boris]

If you enjoy listening but also have.

[Dr. Z]

Eyes, check out our Instagram where we post drawings, illustrations, character art from our.

[Boris]

Adventures backwaterbastards, check out our Instagram on Instagram. Buffet brawlers, glory holes gone wrong. Cannibalistic castration cabins, public poopers. These are just a few of the crazy topics you'll hear covered on Excuse Me, that's Illegal, the pettiest podcast around. Whether you need a break from all that murdery true crime stuff or just enjoy hearing hilarious stories told in a unique way, I got what you need. I'm Leroy Luna, your fearless host chauffeur. So come hop in my minivan and let's go for a ride. I promise you probably won't be disappointed. Excuse me, that's Illegal is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, basically everywhere you consume podcasts with new episodes dropping on the 10th, 20th, and 30th of the month, baby.

[Dr. Z]

Hi, this is Rob Benedict and I am Richard Speight. We were both on a little show.

[Boris]

You might know called Supernatural.

[Dr. Z]

It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes.

[Boris]

And though we have seen, of course every episode many times, we figured, hey.

[Dr. Z]

Now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again.

[Dan Casey]

And we can't do that alone.

[Dr. Z]

So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers.

[Boris]

It was kind of a little bit.

[Dr. Z]

Of a left field choice in the best way possible.

[Boris]

The note from Kripke was he's great.

[Dr. Z]

We love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type with.

[Dan Casey]

15 seasons to explore.

[Dr. Z]

It's going to be the road trip trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now. Hey, folks, we're the hosts of Comic Sans, the podcast about comics for those who are sans knowledge. I'm Yen, a reader, writer, liver and breather of comic books.

[Dan Casey]

And I'm Nat.

[Dr. Z]

I used to know absolutely nothing about comics, but now. So actually I've got a quiz for you. I still have a lot to learn about comics. Thank you. Thank you. On Comic Hans, I make Nat read some of my favorite works in the medium, including saga, Daredevil and the Flintstones. And Yen talks about what makes that comic special. Sometimes it's a story, sometimes it's channeling, gutters, page turns, colorings, lettering, semiotics, juxtaposition. Okay, professor, save it for the episodes. You can listen to Comic Sans on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Boris]

You can binge.

[Dr. Z]

Our first two seasons, that's over 20 episodes on 20 different comics and we just launched season three. New episodes every two weeks.