“What are our characters’ motivations?” Kimberly asked.

“Good question,” I said.

I thought for a moment. There were countless movies where things like motivations were dropped leading to the conclusion of the story. By that point, the audience is usually invested enough to not even realize that the protagonists could just walk away.

“They’re headed to the hospital,” I said. “That’s the only set piece in that direction. We just so happen to have someone who is severely injured. Combine that with our innate curiosity or sense of justice and we’re golden.”

Truthfully, I didn’t know what my character would be thinking right then and I didn’t care. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins so fast I could hardly think. I kept hearing a sound I thought was the rushing sewers, but I soon realized it was just my own blood rushing I was hearing.

I took a few deep breaths.

We had gone Off-Screen as soon as Second Blood ended. We were just outside of town square.

There were people everywhere. It was a massacre.

“Guys,” Dina said. “We have to stop.”

“We’ll lose them if we stop,” Antoine said.

“Look,” Dina said. She pointed back to town square. We were quite a distance from the collapsed sewer where we had climbed up, but there were many holes just like it throughout the entire area.

She was pointing to a mound of mud and cobblestones near a tilted statue in the center of town square.

“The time capsule,” Kimberly said.

Dina must have noticed it because of her Outsider’s Perspective trope. It jutted up from a mound created by the flood.

Its lock was still attached, but the capsule had warped badly from its tumultuous unearthing.

“I can bust through that,” Antoine said. “It’s broken. Look.” He put his hand on one of the panels that had been used to build the contraption. “The weld is busted. There’s a crack big enough to get my hand in.”

“Weird,” I said. “You’d think it was too early for us to get this.”

And I was right.

He placed his fingers in the crack and started pulling. He wasn’t wrong. The structure really was broken.

He was making progress. He pulled against the metal. Whatever help I could be, I tried to be. It felt like we were bending it. I could feel it straining on my hands, even though there was hardly any place to put them.

“Somethings in there,” Antoine said. “I can almost see it. Kimberly, reach in here when we pull back.”

She knelt near the large metal structure and began sticking her hand in. Just as she did, it started to vibrate.

It was a familiar rumble.

I managed to say, “Dammit, it was a trap,” just as the mound of dirt near the capsule started to rise and something underneath it began shaking.

“Now Carousel is playing dirty,” Isaac said.

With a pun like that, he must have lost a lot of blood.

We had gotten greedy. And we would pay the price.

“Run!” I screamed as if the others needed to be told.

On-Screen.

The mound of dirt continued shaking. The faces on the back of the giant frog started to be revealed. It had buried itself. That was how the capsule had been unearthed. We had just woken the beast in a way we had never intended.

“Time out!” Antoine screamed just as Chase and Fight Scene flipped on at the same time.

Suddenly, the mound of dirt with a horrific frog underneath stopped moving.

I normally wasn’t around for Antoine to use his Time Out trope. How fun.

“Is there an advantage to running into the carnival area?” he asked. “We could lose it in the buildings.”

He had a point. If hiding was our best bet, the mess of overturned carnival booths and amusement park rides was a good bet.

“We may have to try that to keep Isaac alive,” I said.

The frog would attack the person with the lowest Hustle. That was Isaac and Cassie.

“Sacrifice me,” Isaac said. “I’m not good for anything right now anyway. Let me die for you.”

Cassie was fully crying and embraced her brother tightly.

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“It’s okay,” he said. “He’s a big boy. Might not even have to chew to swallow someone my size. I’ll get to see what else is in there.”

It wasn’t a bad suggestion. I was a little relieved that he was the one to suggest it. I might have even agreed with him if Kimberly didn’t have a better idea.

“Look at the statue,” she said.

I immediately understood what she was saying. The tower was tilted way off its base. Like the capsule, some of its welds had been broken.

Kimberly’s Savvy was tied with mine at that moment. She had picked a learned background as a nurse using Convenient Backstory and she had put her hair up in a ponytail to activate Does anyone have a scrunchie? That transferred much of her Moxie into Savvy as well.

Her plan just might work.

I wasn’t sure her plan would work. The frog was PA 45. Every time we had been that over leveled we had made a point to avoid confrontation. Her plan involved facing almost head-on.

“Ten seconds left,” Antoine said.

“We can’t hope to kill it,” I said. “But we might be able to slow it down.”

“It can’t have high Savvy, can it?” Dina asked. “It’s a frog.”

I shrugged. Sounded right to me.

“It does have dumb looks on its faces,” Isaac said.

“Three seconds,” Antoine said. “You all know what to do!”

And…

On-Screen.

The mound of earth started shaking again and the frog emerged, human skin, bones, and organs, all exposed.

It opened its eyes.

Incapacitation. I couldn’t move, but I knew it would pass.

The statue wasn’t twenty feet from the frog.

“Oh damn,” someone said.

It nudged forward. At its size, it would be to the statue in a single hop. The margin for error was very thin.

“Run!” I screamed as the frog shook itself and started evaluating new prey.

I turned tail and ran. Antoine was already behind the statue.

Isaac and Cassie were right in front of me. I ran as fast as I possibly could. I could hear the frog gearing up to jump behind me.

Something flew past my ear. Before I saw it, Antoine had drawn his gun and fired three shots into it.

The tongue. The frog wasn’t following us. We were close enough for it to just grab us and slurp us up. It had withdrawn its tongue from the gunshots, but soon enough, it was firing again.

I grabbed Cassie and Isaac’s arms and pulled them to the ground. The creature’s tongue barely missed us.

“Antoine!” Kimberly screamed. “Push this over.”

The frog leapt. In seconds, it was right behind me. It could crush me with one foot.

I couldn’t see what the progress was on the statue. I was on the ground on top of the Hughes siblings.

The statue was on the verge of toppling. All it needed was a strong enough push and it would topple.

The frog was directly in its path. The statue was big enough to believably injure the thing. We just had to hope its Animals are Psychic ability didn’t kick in and give it the good sense to move.

The frog’s tongue came out again. This time, it wrapped around Cassie.

“Push!” Antoine screamed.

The statue didn’t budge.

Bang!

A loud shot rang out from somewhere.

Bang!

I looked around at the source. That’s when I saw him. Kurt Willis, GI Paragon, limping at us from across the square.

He held a gun larger than his leg and he was firing it at the giant frog.

The bullets weren’t doing lethal damage, especially with the creature’s PA and tropes, but it did just enough to make it withdraw its tongue and hop away from the bullets.

It rubbed up against the statue.

The statue fell directly onto the frog’s back leg. I heard a snap.

“Get up!” I screamed at Cassie and Isaac. We were close enough that when the frog struggled to be unpinned by the statue, we would be crushed.

We managed to get up and scramble out of the way as the frog leaped away, clearing twenty feet in one jump. I had assumed the frog had broken a leg, but I wasn’t sure. Its tropes helped protect it from damage, but I had distinctly heard a snap.

Willis continued firing shots at it as it left. Then, he said, “I don’t know if Halle killed Geist, but I have a sneaking suspicion he isn’t innocent.”

He was still wearing his borrowed shorts and shirt, but the shirt was torn. As Cassie predicted, he was covered in blood. His high Grit made the wounds a minor inconvenience. He had a bandolier full of large bullets wrapped around his body like a sash.

“Sorry I was late,” he said. “Got swept out into the river. Had to get my cannon from my car.” He tapped the large gun in his hands. Cannon was a good name for it. It was neither a shotgun nor a rifle. It was huge, too big for a real-life police officer, but just right for a fictional one.

“How are you alive?” Antoine asked.

“I’m two hundred pounds of hard to kill,” Willis responded. “Now someone tell me what the hell is going on.”

Off-Screen.

We didn’t actually need to fill him in. I got the impression that he had run this scenario every which way it could be run.

“Man, you guys are coming right along,” he said. “Might get something close to a perfect run. If my cigars hadn’t gotten soaked, I could have lit one after the frog ran off. That would have sealed things, don’t you say?”

Willis homed in on Antoine and started correcting his techniques. His lack of quips, bullet counting, and general choreography were up for criticism. He must have been watching us for a while.

I was just glad we got a chance to take a breath.

“So you all tried to open the capsule, huh?” he asked with a laugh. “I suppose you learned your lesson. Everybody does eventually.”

Antoine nodded.

“So all I got is one question left for you all. Are we going for the solve here? I see you're chasing the doctor for a finale back at Hallowed Heart. You know we can just run away. If we get out of the city the movie ends. Of course, a lot of the footage gets cut if we do that, but we don't have to risk getting things wrong.”

That was so tempting. Those frogs were incredibly disturbing and the hybrids in Halle’s arsenal could freeze your blood with a look.

But I needed answers.

“We're going to solve it,” I said. The others nodded in agreement. Isaac didn't but he was too far gone.

“We’re going to the hospital?” he asked with a laugh that turned into a cough. His stitches were bleeding. “I’m in no shape to go the hospital.”

He might not survive the finale.

“Most people don't solve this their first time,” Willis said. “The clues are things your characters are supposed to already know going into the story so you have to learn it before the Omen. Usually, folks solve it the next day after it's over and they’ve had time to think.”

He stretched as he talked. We were in for a fight.

“This story doesn’t feature the players as much as most of them do, but if you solve it, you’re the headliners. I'm excited to see what you got.”

We had played a story like that before, Permanent Vacancy. That story, or at least the version we played, was mostly about Samantha and her dad. We didn’t show up until halfway through the movie.

This one must have been the same. The villains were featured prominently. That likely meant the audience would have more clues than the players, which could explain why this story felt like we were on a tour through a mystery, not actually solving it. It was a cold case. The clues were hidden by time.

That wasn’t without precedent for old-school mysteries where the detective didn’t even show up On-Screen until the second act.

The question was, could we figure it out with the information we acquired? I hated the idea that Isaac had been maimed. I couldn’t let it be for nothing.

“Let’s get a move on, soldiers,” Willis said, chuckling. With a glance at me and Isaac, he added, “It’s time to meet your maker.”