Synopsis[]
Full transcript available here.
With another accidental catastrophe averted, The Pine Guard catch their breath and split up to take care of some mid-Hunt business. Aubrey takes some magic lessons. Ned reflects on his larcenous past. Duck makes use of the In-fur-mary.
We pick up where we left off, with Duck, who is currently being confronted by two highly confused goatmen with garden tools as Beacon is wrapped around another goatman's neck. Duck tries to get the two standing goatmen to stand down before Beacon cuts the third one's throat. The goatmen, apparently, are not capable of speaking in any human tongues, and it's unlikely they understood anything that Duck has just said.
Duck tries to calm the goatmen down; one of them doesn't buy it, and lunges forward, stabbing both Duck and the prone goatman through the shoulder with its shears. As the goatman with the shears comes around for another stab, a truck pulls up some distance away. Barclay comes out, holding keys in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.
Barclay: Uh, okay, so it’s goatmen this time? Duck: Yeah, apparently it’s, uh, goatmen.
Barclay briefly tends to Duck's stab wound, and after a brief discussion, they agree to smuggle the goatman back to the Lodge to give it medical attention. Barclay is a bit leery of doing so since this goatman is not a Sylph, but Duck convinces him. They put the goatman in the bed of Mama's truck, cover it with a tarp, and drive off. At the bottom of the hill, Aubrey and Ned have reached the station; Mark, the engineer, has had his headphones on the entire time, and hasn't noticed a damn thing that's just happened. He frantically gets up, sees the mess, and tries to use his radio to talk to the engineer on the other end; his radio has been soaked with coffee and has shorted out, though, so that's a dead end. Ned salvages some things from the trunk of his mangled car. While he's doing that, Sheriff Owens and Deputy Dewey rush into the station, and Owens is not pleased to see them.
Sheriff Owens: Aw, fuck.
Sheriff Owens is starting to get suspicious of them all, especially of Ned; all of them have been at the scene of very strange crimes in the area, and he's starting to think they're connected somehow. He asks Ned to walk down to the station with him to answer some questions about the incident.
Duck and Barclay have gone up to the Lodge; Barclay runs in ahead of Duck to see if Mama's there, and she isn't, so they take the goatman down to the cellar. Thacker is in the corner, and as they take the goatman down and put him on the table, he sits up and starts to pay close attention to what's happening. Duck does his best to clean up the wound by pouring alcohol directly on it. The goatman screams wordlessly and passes out.
Upstairs, chair legs screech across the floor and someone starts heading to where they are. Barclay runs upstairs and starts running interference on Agent Stern, who is trying to figure out what the noise was about. Duck is rapidly teaching himself how to do stitches.
Travis: Now, I am curious, how much of is this Duck not knowing what to do, and how much is Justin not knowing what to do? [laugh] Duck: I mean I’m trying, it’s little bit of, you know, I try to bring a little bit of myself to every character I play, Trav.
He manages to sew up the wound with some degree of success. Just as he's about halfway through, Minerva pops into existence in preparation for the day's training but is surprised to see Duck sewing up a goatman's shoulder. She is aghast that Duck is, apparently, tending to and healing a foe, and grows furious with him.
Minerva: [angrily] Your job is not to befriend your foe, Duck Newton, it is to vanquish them. It is to leave them no quarter, no hope to which to cling. Your calling is to paint your besieged homeland in the blood of those who would see your world destroyed! Now strike, Duck Newton! Duck: [also angrily] You listen to me. I’m gonna save this weird goat, and then I’m gonna try to teach it English or some shit [Clint laughs], and I can figure out what’s going on here. If you continue to push me to kill this thing, I will walk away from all of this. And if you need evidence that I am not kidding with you, look at the past fucking 20 years, Minerva. I’m gonna do this on my own terms. Now, unless you can hold a thread, I would ask that you leave me the fuck alone, and let. Me. Sew.
Minerva is shocked by Duck's ferocity, and blinks out of existence - but then she returns a couple of hours later, after Duck is done sewing, looking pale and shaken as possible for an incorporeal, faceless being to look. The same blues music he heard the last time this happened[1] is playing in the background. Minerva quietly explains that while she had been trained for a century in the art of training a champion, she did not expect Duck to be so stubborn about it. Duck explains that after years of learning how to live with the woods and be satisfied with his place in the world, he knows himself and knows how he stands. Minerva explains why she is so emotionally invested in Duck's success.
Minerva: My— my home, Duck, my planet. Mira-Lavineax Orbital Body Five. Or Five, for short. It’s a bit of a mouthful— it was, it too was connected to another place, far-flung from our own world, and like your world, ours become tethered, and the beings that poured through that fissure, Duck... We lost, and we kept losing. And that is why my passion manifests as fury, Duck. I know your toil, and it makes me tired.
Duck says that he understands where she's coming from with this. As they near the end of their conversation, he mentions that he's still having visions.
Duck: Yeah, um… they’re kinda back and forth on whether or not they’re helpful or not, but I’m still getting them. Minerva: And your latest vision? Duck: Uhhh, yeah, it was a real barn burner, [laughs] honestly. A meteor destroying everything. It was pretty intense. Griffin: She takes a step back and she says, Minerva: Are you abs— Griffin: And then she vanishes.
Cut to Ned, in the Sheriff's office. Sheriff Owens starts to interrogate Ned about the past couple of days, specifically about the Pizza Hut Incident[2] and the tram.[3] Ned rattles off some flowery, expansive lies, in an attempt to keep the Sheriff from stumbling on the trail of what the Pine Guard has been doing. Sheriff Owens, however, is having none of it.
Sheriff Zeke: You were at the tram and you were at Leo’s, I bet you had something to do with H2-Woah debacle that happened a few months back, too… all I wanna know is what’s going on in my town, Ned, so I can stop it. If there’s anything you know, anything that can help me out, anything that sounds beyond belief… I’ve tried everything else. I’m all ears, Ned Chicane.
Ned tries to let Sheriff Owens know what's going on, to the best of his ability without revealing too much. Sheriff Owens seems like he's buying into what Ned is saying, but eventually starts to believe that he's wasting his time; he bids Ned a curt farewell, lets him go, and storms out of the holding room. While Ned's in the holding room by himself, Clint and Griffin take this opportunity to dive into Ned's past as a crook, specifically the night he met his future partner in crime Boyd. Ned and Boyd met when they were robbing the same house in Connecticut; when the cops showed up, Ned picked the lock to let them escape, and they both ran down a nearby hill to hide from the cops. Boyd is described as a tall, athletic, hard-looking guy with a chiseled jaw - "a badass," according to Clint - and he turns to Ned and gives him a smile.
Griffin: And uh, he uh, he looks up, and makes sure the coast is clear, and he comes back down to you on the hill and gives you a thumbs up and says uh - Bob: That was a bit closer than I uh, I like to come to the fuzz. Um, alright, you seem trustworthy… as trustworthy as we come. Griffin: And he offers you a hand and he says - Boyd: Boyd Mosche. Ned: Hello Boyd, nice to meet you. My name is Arturo Copperthwaite. Griffin: He shakes your hand, and he laughs, and he says - Boyd: No it isn’t.
[Money Zone]
As promised, Aubrey is in Sylvain that night to train with Janelle. They are in Janelle's chambers, as usual, and Aubrey stops the magic lesson before it begins and asks Janelle to take away her magic.
Aubrey: I don’t wanna do it anymore; I can’t control it, and I just end up hurting people that I love and I don’t— I don’t wanna do it anymore. Please.
Aubrey and Janelle discuss the magic that Aubrey possesses. According to Janelle, her magic is unique, completely unlike anything that Sylvain has seen before because Aubrey relies on reflex and impulse to cast whereas Sylphs do it differently. Janelle explains that in order to have better control over her powers, Aubrey will have to learn how to communicate with the planet's power reserve better, in order to make it do what she wants with finer control. And she must also stop doubting herself, too.
Janelle: You have to lean into this power, Aubrey, if anything else, walking away is not going to do you any good. A dull knife is far, far more dangerous than a sharp one. Does any of this make sense? Aubrey: Yes… but... it doesn’t change the fact that I’m afraid.
Janelle walks over to the window and tells Aubrey about Sylvain.
Janelle: There are those that believe that the centuries of assaults on ours world from yours has left Sylvain weakened and unable to support the life that clings to her surface. There are those that believe her affliction is terminal, that the planet is dying, that the corruption that lies beyond our cities gates is just one of the many symptoms that accompany the... sunsetting of our world. Or maybe it’s already dead. Maybe we are just siphoning the last bit of warmth from—
As she talks about the planet's possible demise, the Interpreter comes in and tells Janelle that Woodbridge wants to meet with the full council about a rationing adjustment. Janelle agrees to go but stops to tell Aubrey one last thing before leaving.
Janelle: You are unlike anyone I’ve ever met. Your powers, [laughs] your powers rival my own, Aubrey. And you have been doing this for approximately 15 minutes. If I had what you had, I know I would have fixed this kingdom a long time ago. Your power is rare, and I know it is scary, but it is a beast you must tame, for the sake of both of our worlds.
Once Janelle is gone, she starts to speak to Aubrey, but her words are not matched up to the movements she's making with her mouth. Aubrey is taken aback at how impolite the Interpreter sounds. She finds her own way out of the castle, but as she leaves, alarm bells start to ring, and the guards directing panicked people tell her that something is trying to break through the wall at the edge of the city. Eventually, Aubrey is in the courtyard alone and makes up her mind to touch the crystal.
Travis: [determined] I would like to touch the crystal now, Griffin. Griffin: Why don’t you act under pressure for me? Tell me how are you touching the crystal? Travis: Just like, so lightly, just like, because on one hand, okay, let me explain myself. On the one hand, Aubrey knows that she’s like, not supposed to. And like, after the kindness that Janelle has just shown, doesn’t want to like, ruin anything. But on the other hand, I think she really has it in her head that interacting with the crystal in some way will like recalibrate her, or power, its... something will unlock, or something she’s supposed to do.
She touches it, and it sucks in her entire hand; she is overtaken by the feeling that she is dying and suffocating. At one point she is able to free her hand and falls backward into a massive field of wildflowers in all different colors that definitely weren't there before. Aubrey sits up and catches a glimpse of her reflection in the crystal. Her left eye is still a hazel brown, but her right eye has changed.
Griffin: Your right eye is now this dark orange hue, with like a starburst of lighter orange just around the pupil. And you catch a glimpse of your new eye color in just this one large smooth facet of the crystal, and its new tint is nearly fading away in the gemstone’s brilliant orange expanse.
The next morning, they regroup at the Pineguard HQ. Duck takes his friends down to see the goatman, who is now handcuffed to the table; Aubrey is wearing sunglasses to hide her new glowing eye. They try to come up with ideas as to what to do with it, and how to figure out what its plan is. It starts to wake up as they talk, and stares at them in silence for a long while; after failing to talk to it, Aubrey decides to communicate with the goat using magic.
Griffin: Uh… okay. This is a— I’m guessing a Use Magic, what would this sort of— what category are you assuming this would fit under? Travis: Um, so there’s actually part of Use Magic that is Speak To… let me see where it is... Griffin: [leaned back from mic] Communicate With Something You Do Not Share a Language With, holy shit! Fucking holy damn! Travis: I’ve been waiting to use that shit this whole time!
A faint orange light pulses out of where Aubrey touches the goatman; after a while, it looks around at them all in a panicked way, but then its gaze stops on Duck.
Griffin: And with that the goat man stands up from the table and sort of gets yanked back by the handcuff attached to its wrist and looks at you Duck, and he smiles and he says— Goatman (Billy): [clears throat] Duck!
Featured NPCs[]
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References and Footnotes[]
| TAZ Amnesty Episodes |
|---|
| Setup
Hunt for the Beast: Hunt for the Water: Hunt for the Calamity: Hunt for the Countenance: Finale: Italicized episodes are Lunar/Lodger Interludes. |