The party awakens once more in the Bannock & Boobrie, only to find Miss Marble comatose in the lobby, with Officer Dimbly attempting to bring her to the church, on Sheriff Knowles' orders. They offer to help, and while carrying Miss Marble to Dimbly's car she deliriously asks the nice gentlemen to keep people out of her office. While rooting through Miss Marble's pockets while Dimbly was occupied inside the inn, the Private EyeNTJs find a ring of keys, $40.00 Canadian (equivalent in value to approximately R$3 Brazilian reals), and some gross old people candy that had been collecting lint in there for some time.
Dimbly thanks them and goes on her way, cautioning the crew that St. Fiachra's was heading into some dark times and they'd best get out of town while they could.
The team agrees to check out Miss Marble's office, and with her keys locks up the Bannock & Boobrie and unlocks the office. The office shows signs of struggle - several struggles, in fact, some of them old enough that the scuffs and scratches left behind were full of dust. They check through the filing cabinets in the office, finding that documents relating to certain guests' stays in town had been doctored - sparsely in past decades, but ramping up significantly in the last year, with Johnson Bronson's name among those whose guest records had been altered.
Walking around, they discover a hollow space hidden under the rug - and I learn in real life what distinguishes a rug from a carpet. Beneath the rug is a trap-door, with fingernail-tracks dragged through the flooring towards it.
After some debate, they decide against cowardice and descend down the trap-door, and find themselves in a cave. They use the thread from Billy's sewing kit to keep track of their path, and use the bug-repellent candle once more to light their way. Going deeper into the cave, they find it unnaturally lush, with moss and suchlike increasing the deeper they got, and almost-animal veins threaded through the greenery. The party speculates that they have entered into the scrotum of a kaiju - a sort of giant, Japanese monster - and agree that the real kaiju is in the White House.
They come to a larger cavity within the cave. They spot vegetable growths resembling the silhouettes of people, and Shorty cuts off a sample from one and see if the rest react. Fortunately, they do not. He notices that the growths have threads of some black substance growing through them.
The Private EyeNTJs follow a groaning sound and find Pepto-talk curled up under a small outcropping and bleeding to death, looking quite mauled. Pepto-talk tells them they fell down their diarrhea-hole in the flophouse and ended up in these caves - and then while trying to find a way out was attacked by a monster.
A humanoid figure appears at the edge of their candle-light during the conversation. After a failed attempt at dialogue it attacks - revealing itself to be a malformed elderly person, with innards similar to the tuna that Chuck pulled up last session where its skin's been damaged.
After a tussle in which Shorty's throat is nearly torn out, Billy knocks the thing's head off with a baseball bat. Examining the head they find it's got teeth made of vegetable ivory, which is a real thing look it up. Shorty takes a sample of the head as well, and they go to check on Pepto-talk.
They discuss plans to rescue Pepto, but it becomes clear the poet is on their last breaths. They regale the group with their final poem:
"Fixin' the material conditions,
That was my mission.
I found the sub-structure,
It made me go grrr!
I'm gonna die..."
And then expire. The Private EyeNTJs take Pepto's journal and make sketches of the cave, the growths, and the monster, and put the samples Shorty had taken into a plastic baggy Pepto had been keeping joints in.
Exploring the cavity, they find it branches into three other paths - one going deeper, and two going off from the sides. The vegetation gets even denser on the deeper path, so they take one of the sides.
Blah blah blah, they walk through the cave for a while, blah blah blah, and eventually end up in an artificial chamber below the brewery. They find dollies and barrels in the chamber, the barrels containing the algae stuff that Shorty had seen in the brewery yesterday. Climbing the ladder to the trap-door, they hear two inebriated men standing guard in the room above. Shorty uses the imitation skills he learned in the circus to mimic the roar of a lion, scaring the guards into going into another room - they don't know what's beneath the brewery, only that it's dangerous and that they should never go down there.
Ascending into the brewery, the party finds themselves in a store-room, with lots of empty beer cans discarded about and some improvised weapons leaning against barrels and boxes. They head back to the Bannock & Boobrie through the cave, and looking over the map of the cave they'd made in Pepto's journal find that the deeper paths converge below St. Fiachra's church.
Outside the inn they are called into an alley by Dunkey Blart, one of the town's evil delinquent children. Dunkey confides that the adults of the town have been replaced with changelings by fairies, and that fire is one of the only surefire weapons against them. He asks their permission to load up their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire with improvised explosives, so that it can be rammed into the church where the adults are gathering & detonated. They turn down the children's plan, but remain open to working together on other schemes.
The session ends with the Private EyeNTJs driving back to the Blue Giant Crew's flophouse, to return Pepto-talk's beat poetry journal, notify them of Pepto's death, and offer their condolences. There they reunite with Quasar Mike, as well as meet other BGC members Stim Jackson and Wheeler. Quasar Mike is put off at first by the party's Protocols of the Elders of Zion-esque story of conspiracy and underground tunnels, but quickly comes around. The group shares Pepto's final, samurai-like death poem, and the Crew make plans to turn Pepto's diarrhea hole into a shrine & art gallery dedicated to Pepto & their work.
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