S2 Ep. 1 - Dungeon and D.A.D.D.I.E.S.
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This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow. Let's face it, we were all that kid.

So first, call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee with your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 in order. Additional terms apply. Dungeons and Daddies is a rowdy, horny, violent podcast for grownups. Content warnings can be found in the episode description.

We go to the Oak Garcia household where all of your favorite characters are hanging out in the living room. Then we go to the kitchen. And while Henry is doing abominable things to popcorn, Lark and Sparrow walk in. Hey, my beautiful boys. How's it going? You guys ready to see this Minion movie? Sparrow says, Father, I know we know that things have been different for some time and that since we've returned, Lark has been...

Shall we say sullen? But Lark, I believe you have an apology for father. Oh, Lark, that's so sweet. You don't need to apologize for anything, buddy. Lark comes in for an embrace. He says, I really do need to apologize, father. I am sorry. Sorry for what, bud? For this.

And in that moment, you feel a blade enter your back between your shoulder blades. A knife. It's not a very deep wound, but it hurts. And you feel it go all the way in. And he steps away from you and he just shakes his head and he goes, I'm so sorry, father. As you look into his eyes, you remember all the horrible things that brought you to this moment.

You remember coming to the Forgotten Realms and you being the first person to cast a spell to entangle a red cloak that he defeated. You remember using your Jezball skills to build walls of fire and stone around each other. You remember using the power of your mind and your colon to completely immolate David Boreanaz, even as he was screaming that all he had ever wanted was for the Lord of Chaos to spill the blood of the unsung hero. And as you think about that, you remember that as the door slammed on Willie Stampler, he had cast Ragnarok.

Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

Oh my god. What the fuck? Static. Oh god. Do we see it in the living room? Like, are we? Yes, everyone in the living room, everyone outside can hear it as a deep, bassy rumble actually begins to be heard all across the planet. After what feels like forever, you stop heaving up this black,

Oh, God. Oh, God.

beginning to grow larger and larger in the sky, and it begins to encircle the earth. The sky is turning this horrible black staticky color, and you know in this moment that the doodler has returned.

Welcome to Dungeons and Daddies, not a BDSM podcast. Or a Daddy's podcast. It's not about daddies. No, it is about daddies. It is about daddies, but daddies isn't what you think it is. Open your mind. This is a Dungeons and Dragons podcast that tells the story of the four grandchildren of Daryl, Henry, Glenn, and Ron on a quest to find their lost dads in a world forever changed by the events of season one. My name is Freddie Wong, and I play...

Cool teen. I get to reveal my teen name. Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift loves anime, loves survival. Taylor's rad fact is he doesn't have a backpack.

he has a go bag. He keeps everything in his like school backpack. He calls it his go bag, just in case. Is it a normal school backpack? It's just a normal school backpack. What's Taylor got in his go bag? It's got a lot of paracord and one of those crinkly blankets, one of those crinkly survival blankets and like a very, very loud whistle. Because if you're ever out in the middle of nowhere, it does you no good to shout. But if you want to, you know, auditorily get attention of someone, the whistle is the best way of doing it. And

And Taylor knows all of this. Hey, everybody. My name is Matthew Arnold. I play Lincoln Lee Wilson, schooled at home soccer kid whose voice is going to drop soon. Don't worry about it. It will. Little, I guess, rad fact about Lincoln here is that he is a year older than everybody because he was homeschooled, but he loved soccer so much and he was tired of playing soccer by himself. He finally convinced his overbearing dad, Grant, to let him go to a normal high school so he could join the soccer team. But it was a year behind everybody. So he's a year older than everybody.

He's a year older, a year wiser. How did he play soccer by himself? In the backyard, you know, a lot of helmets, a lot of safety equipment, very, you know, taken care of. He wore a helmet? Okay, I do have two quick rad facts. It was also that Lincoln fell in love with FIFA first. Like, he didn't know it was a sport. He just played the video game with Grant all the time and played FIFA first.

And then when he found out there's a real world of soccer, he got really into soccer. He's like, wait, this is a real version of this video game? It was like Blitzball from Final Fantasy X-Men. Wait, Dad, you're telling me that this one's real, though? Super Mario Strikers is a documentary?

Because Grant, his dad, is not quite a pro gamer, but you know, he was a millennial. He plays video games, so that's how they did a lot of content. Grant was not a millennial. Grant was a Zoomer. Oh, I mean, Zoomers don't play video games. Zoomers play video games too, Beth. Zoomers play video games more than millennials. As a millennial, I will not stand for this erasure of our generation. I want our generation to be erased. Thanos, get on it. Hey everyone, I'm Will Campos, and I play Normal Oak, a per- I just love

I just love that your name's Normal. A perky, peppy, chipper-cheery school spirit mascot kid. Normal is the school mascot of Teen High. I don't know what the name of this high school is. Sandimus High School. Sandimus High School. Teen High. Teen High, Will. It's the same high school that we did. The kids call it Teen High. Hear me out. What if their mascot is the teen? The teen. So what is your costume then? Just a larger teen? I love that your costume's a teen. Larger teenagers.

And no kid likes your teen. Okay, so he plays Teenie the Teen. There's no way I'm letting our mascot just be a teen. No, it's great. No, it's too late. Sorry.

This is a new season. We have new canon. He's a fucking teen now. A teen means something else. No, Beth. No, Beth. You're not the mascot. You're not the mascot character. Will, put this out in the world. You yes and this. I can't believe it. You know what? You're right. You're right. I spoke out of turn. All right. So, yeah. Normal is. I hate it too, Beth. Don't worry. I hate it so much. I hate it so much. I'm losing so much. It's like I don't like Radfast.

I'm not a big fan of rad facts. And then Teenie the Teen, I guess I can get used to. Hi, I'm Beth May, and I play Terry Marlowe, a once soft-spoken daydreamer rebelling into a goth punk seeker of darkness who is not like other girls after meeting her new stepdad.

Terry Stephen Stampler. That's right. Her mom's with a dude that's also called Terry. Instead of reverting to her full name, Teresa, she decides to embrace her inner demons and she becomes Scary Marlo. And that's the longest intro that it will be. It's going to be like super like snappy and quick for the rest of the season. Hi, I'm Anthony Burch. What up, Teach? If Anthony's 15 minutes late to the podcast record, we don't have to

I think I'm still the daddy master. Yeah, you're still our daddy. I'm not a ratty master. That sucks. No. I guess the rad fact for this week is going to be, though this is still a Dungeons & Dragons podcast, I've adjusted some mechanics and farted around some stuff trying to get just kind of a different vibe. So if you hear anything that feels like that's absolutely not a D&D mechanic, give it time. If this sucks, I'll change it. And if it's cool, then I knew better. And you can shut up. Let's do it.

So last season on Dungeons and Daddies ended with the summoning of an eldritch chaos god known as the Doodler. Larkin Sparrow Oak summoned him by drawing the blood of the unsung hero, their father, Henry. The three Oak boys vomited out a bunch of static that went into the sky, changed the sky in some weird way. Everything seemed like it was going to go very bad, like the world was going to end. And that's where we ended our previous season. And now we will open like this. 25 years later.

The black sun burns angrily in a crimson sky. Did Anthony write some of this out? Oh my god. I'm so excited. Yo, hold up. The black sun? Fucking hell yeah. I'm there, baby. Let me lower my seat. I can feel it. I just need to get closer to the edge. Yeah. Yeah.

Holy sh-- Holy sh--

It's Lincoln Lee Wilson.

Some people call him Link, short for Lincoln, and he's in trouble. He's going to detention, isn't he? He disappointed his dad. Oh, no. So like twice as bad. So the father of yours that is driving, Grant, says, I just want you to know I'm very glad that you've shown up for detention. It would have been very easy to not tell us that you had detention. It would have been very easy to sneak away. And I just want to say I really respect that you were up front with. I'm still disappointed in what you did, of course. Of course, of course.

I just want to say, well done, Link. No, no. You always told me trust is the one thing that you can't repair. So, you know, of course I wouldn't lie to you, Dad. I'm so sorry about what I did. Your other father in Shotgun, Marco, says like, no, no, you don't have to apologize. Remember, we don't apologize except to the people that we hurt. So it doesn't do any good to apologize to us. You know, it's about finding that peace within yourself and moving forward. Does that make sense, Grant? Grant's like, yeah, that's close enough. Yeah, sure.

I've already apologized to Mrs. Anderson so many times. That's very good. Marco says she may not forgive you immediately for that, and that's okay. We've got to let her be on her own journey, but you did the right thing. This is a good first step for you, and honestly, maybe this will do you some good. Your father and I haven't been the hardest on you, so who knows? Maybe some consequences and grants like content. It's okay. It's all right. I'm scared to see him go, too. Marco's like, I'm just scared about our little boy. If any street toughs come up to you...

In detention? Nope. You just run. You don't be a hero. You run. Dads, I already told you there's no bullies at school and everybody's really nice to me and I'm super safe there. So don't worry about me. Your father Grant says, I'm driving to the airport shortly. I'm going to be on my business trip for like a week. So I've checked with daddy. He says, pointing at Marco and says like, he's got all your meds ready and your food, all your meals are already prepped. I already put them in the fridge. All you got to do is heat them up and I'm going to be calling you every day on the metaverse. I'm going to see you every day there. And

We're going to, I know, 4, 3 p.m. I got 4, 3 p.m. I got the global clock that tells me what time it is, where you are and where I am. The Zucker clock. That's right. All hail the Zucker clock. I'll be back in meat space in a week. I'll be fine. It's just high school. I told you the first, it's been fine so far, dad. I'm okay. It's just high school is very big. There could be a lot of bullies. You know, our home, we had a nice little homeschool and everything was very, very safe. And I respected your decision to try to go to a bigger school. And I just want you to know that I'm a little worried.

And I felt like it's okay for me to be vulnerable with you. Absolutely. Just know that. Grant, I'm sorry. You're right. It's okay for you to be vulnerable. I'm sorry I wasn't listening to your feelings. You're absolutely right about that. I appreciate that.

but I am tough and my voice will sound tough at some point. Like you told me. And it's okay if it doesn't. It will. Okay, I should go. If I stay here too long, I'm not going to want to go. I love you both. Okay, see you. And both your bad dads. Daryl was right to not talk to his kid. And the moment I get out of the car, I look around for bullies. I was expecting like a pulls out shades, throws on leather jacket, runs switchblade. That's a role for checking for bullies. Give me a, give me a role, but give me a perception check.

Way to drop your dice, freshman. You still got 12. 12 bullies. 12 bullies that circle you. They go, well, well.

Well, well. Me and my 11 friends here looking for somebody to beat the shit out of. Hey, it's the varsity soccer team. Hey, guys. We're here on a Saturday. Oh, hey, wait a second. Aren't you on the team? You just tried out. I wish I was on varsity. Of course I'm not on varsity. The coach said it may be next year. I'm really tall. I am really tall. You are really tall. I'm very tall. I'm not on the team. Yeah, no, no. What are you guys doing here? Oh, wait. You guys probably practiced on Saturday. We practiced on Saturday.

That's why Sandy Miss High has the strongest football soccer team. I took a semester abroad in Britain. I'm cultured. I'm cultured and cool. What are you doing here? I got detention. You hear 12 voices going... And they automatically harmonize.

And they go, well, well, well, once you get out, maybe we don't care. We're just here practicing. You go to detention. You're tall and we appreciate that. But apparently you're not good enough to be on varsity. So bye. Really quick, guys. I try to put on a really cool demeanor. Can I do like intimidation or something? Yeah, sure.

I roll a three. So my dad always says, I think you should express your feelings and it would be nice to know what it is about me that makes you so likely to bully me and maybe I'll do better to not do that. And then we can be more friends because I think I'm going to be on your guys' team next year. So why don't you just give it to me? What don't you like about me? So with your three roll, as you're saying that, you hear two power windows roll down and both of your dads poke their heads out of the van because they haven't driven away yet. And they're like...

Like, hey, what's going on? Hey, Link, what's going on? Are you friends of yours? Are they being nice to you? It's us. It's his gay dads. Are you, is everything okay?

yeah this is the varsity soccer team and they're you know they're really nice right guys and they go yeah we're super nice nice to meet you dads and they look at you and they go the only reason we're being nice to you is because your dad seemed really sweet they are really sweet yeah that's not gonna do well for you though this is a cutthroat school no nice parents no nice I like hey no I like your parents your parents are cool but you I get piece of shit vibes from you hey dads look how fast I can run keep the window

rolled down and then I just run into a wall. The windows were down so that the dads are giving me protective cover from the boys. I'm going to run to the detention. Good job. Keep those knees up. Next, a silver sedan drives up in the front seat. A powerful feminine figure because all women are powerful is driving. This is Veronica Marlowe Stampler in the seat next to her turned around completely to face the backseat is Veronica's husband, Terry. Veronica says, Terry Jr. And

And the man in the front seat does not react because he knows he's not being addressed. Who is being addressed? Beth. Teresa Marlowe in the back is being addressed, but is certainly not acting like she's being addressed. She's not responding to that at all. And her arms are crossed and she is sighing very loudly, like every 15 seconds. So Veronica says, I'm sorry. Scary. Yes. Scary. Scary.

None of this Terry Jr. bullshit. I just meet this guy, and then, like, suddenly, I'm a junior? Like, he... I understand it's inconvenient that...

Your father, my new husband, has the same name as you, but we had to come up with some. I mean, yes. If you don't want to be Terry Jr., if you'd rather be Scary, that's perfect. I feel like you'd call your stepdad Terry Jr. because you're like, I was here first. Yeah, he's Terry Jr. I'm a seniority in this family. Yeah. So you just keep calling me Scary. Yeah, no, I will. Because I am. And Scary stares at Terry Jr. like, what?

really intensely. Upsettingly. Just stares. Terry Jr. goes, I'll ask again just to make sure because you didn't answer me the previous seven times I asked. I thought maybe you couldn't hear me, but is there anything that you need before detention or do you need pens or food? I made lunch and he produces a plastic bag. I don't care. I need you to stop asking me about like things and like start like understanding because like you're so infuriating. Like you don't even get like anything. God.

Oh my gosh. Terry goes, I would love to understand. And Veronica just goes, it's okay. She just needs time to, you just give her some time. I don't have time. The whole world is ending. Look at the windshield, mom. Look at the bug on the windshield, mom. It's like dead. And it didn't even really get to live. And neither am I. I'm just like a bug.

in the back of a car and I got this stupid face looking at me. - Terry goes, "Oh, I'm going on the trip and I don't want the last thing I say, we say to be, you know, her, her, her, I just, if you just take the lunch, I'll be really happy. So could you, could you maybe?" And he like tries to like, just into your hands with the plastic baggie of just a sandwich. - Scary takes it from his hands and then puts it on the seat and like leaves it there.

That's chill that you're going. Like, at least nobody's going to be like watching YouTube and crying over like top 60 inspirational sports moments or something stupid like that. I don't watch all 60 of them. I just watch the Miracle on Ice. Whatever, Terry. So Veronica says like, it's okay, honey. I'll be taking care of her while you're gone. But say goodbye, Terry, please, for mommy. Say my name. Scary. Say goodbye, Terry, please. Goodbye, Terry. Scary.

smell you later. She steps out and walks away. The window rolls down and Terry goes, you forgot your lunch. So I'll just, I'll leave it here. And he just opens the car door and puts it on the curb and then closes the car door and goes, okay, we're leaving now. And then pauses to see if you turn back around and say anything. I don't. Okay. And they drive away and the entire time they drive away, Terry's like looking in the rear view mirror to like keep his eye on you and make sure you're okay. And I try to get the lunch without him noticing me. Yeah. Give me a stealth roll.

I got a two. Okay, so you do it, but he sees you do it, and the last thing you see before the car drives out of view is him smiling a little bit. And then 12 soccer players come at you going, well, well, well. Look who we have here. Former soccer star Terry Marlowe. What happened, Terry? Did you lose your passion for the game? Because we could really use you back. Our girls team. Sorry.

Six of us are girls. I didn't mention it. We miss you terribly. No, I didn't lose my passion. It's like I got passion in other things, you know? Like more important things. Like what? Well...

Just like close your eyes and think about this. 12 soccer players close their eyes. You hear the fleshy clap of 12 eyelet slapping shutters. Freddie, I want you to design the fuck out of that. We're designing 12 slaps. Oh, yeah. All right. Butthole Ricochet. That's the name of my new band that I'm forming. And you guys. That's what you wanted us to imagine? Oh.

It's such a visual name. Yeah, but it's like from the heart and it's like about pain and real and it's like not this bullshit soccer stuff where it's like, that's a game. That's a game. I'm done with games. See you guys in detention or I guess if you're not going to detention. We're here to see you. You guys,

I just keep like practicing or whatever, but like, I'm going to go into detention. All right. We'll have fun at detention. They watch you go. A few minutes later, a convertible pulls up top down music blaring in the front seat, a strikingly beautiful and powerful woman because all women are powerful. Adjust their sunglasses, even though there's no real need for them. This is Cassandra Swift, former daytime TV star and parent to the boy sitting shotgun. She hands the boy a plastic bag bulging with soft corners. It seems to be filled with a shit ton of video game boxes. She,

She says, you can play these during detention, right? Like they let you play games? Hey, Taylor, I'm happy for you and I'm going to let you finish. But I just want to say that Glenn Close was the best dad of all time. Of all time. I didn't know you had that prep, that boo. Yep, yep, yep. Detention's so stupid, but I suppose it's just another obstacle on my journey.

Yeah, sure. It's another obstacle. Kurama! Yamate kudasai! And my self-driving car comes to a stop. Because it's the future, Anthony! I have asked you not to do that. I need to be in control of the car. We could get into accidents. I appreciate that you're learning Japanese, but please. I reset the car's language to Japanese so I could control it. I know you need to switch that back. I can't.

I can't follow the GPS instructions when it's saying stuff in Japanese. Good luck navigating the menus, mom. Perhaps if you took a little bit more time with manga and a little less time with movies, you'd be in a better position to operate your own vehicle. Oh, that actually gives me some good news. I did get an offer on doing some voice work for an anime for a dub for doing the voices for an anime dub. You love anime. I'm doing a voice. Nagisa Hayao, the ninja with the heart of gold, the one that she's like seven years old, like, I'm gonna do it.

this. Oh, no! She's not 70 years old. She's 6,000 years old. She's not 70 years old. She's 6,000 years old. They changed it, which is good for me because it's in my range. I thought this would be something we could bond over. It's like I don't even know you anymore, Mom. I can't believe it. Hand me my go bag. Your backpack? My go bag. Yeah, here's your back. She reaches in the back seat and brings you her backpack. It's very heavy. You hear just stuff clanking around in there. Taylor? What? Are there weapons in here? Shut up.

Everything's a weapon when you have the skill set. I'm going to unzip this real quick and make sure that we don't need you to get in detention for another reason. All right, and she goes through your backpack. Are there weapons in there? Okay, there's like a Leatherman multi-tool. She takes that out. Oh, come on, Mom. There's a knife in here. Make them like that, Mom. It comes with the knife. You're not going to explain that to the principal. They'll...

Fine. This is for your benefit. All right. She takes that out. And then like, you know, there's the paracord and, you know, various. She goes, there's no way you need this. Mom. Mom. Mom. Roll persuasion with that. Roll for mom. Mom. Mom. Wow. Plus zero. What's that like? Mm.

13. She walked into the right room. Yeah, she did. It's her room, her car. She goes, I will leave you a little bit. And she takes out all but like a yard of paracord and then tosses that into the backseat. Little does she know that with even one yard of paracord, one can fashion any number of survival mechanisms. You have a little ceramic chunks. You mean ninja rocks, Matt? Yeah.

Knew it. She would have seen those. She would have not have investigated my ninja rocks. I'm going to give her a D20 investigation. No, no, no. Ninja rocks just look like little... Is this really her first encounter? There's no way this is the first time. She knows what they are. Yeah, she knows. She's going to get advantage on investigating for any ninja rocks. Okay, so she got a five and a nine. So this time... This time... Pumps his fist. They're in the inseam of the... You stitch them into the box.

I'm one step ahead this time. So Ninja Rocks, I'm assuming are... So Ninja Rocks, for people who don't know, it's if you take spark plugs and crush them, the chunks of ceramic are hard enough on the Mohs scale that you can literally kind of, and we've tried this, lightly, an underhand light toss into any tempered glass window will shatter it.

Really? It's amazing. It's like a tiny pebble. You just barely throw it at like a car window and it just shatters. Don't do that. Yeah, don't do it. It's considered thieves tools in a lot of jurisdictions. Whoa. Because it shatters it very quietly. Like to the point where it's like if you did it like on a quiet night, there's a good chance that people will not even hear it. Hell yeah. Also useful tool for us to have maybe. That's why I want you to. That's great. Okay, that's cool. That's cool. Mom. Yes?

Who's my dad? Again with this. You want to do this right now. You have your detention starts in five minutes. You want to do this again? Well, I just got some mail from 23 and me the other day.

Yeah? What did it say? Well, it said that my DNA is actually not human. At first, I thought I screwed it up. I accidentally... It sounds like you screwed it up. But it seems kind of weird, though. Why would they even check for that? Why would they even... Right? That's what I'm saying, Mom. He definitely submitted, like, semen or something to 23andMe. Yeah, 23andMe in the future required me to jack off into a tube.

If you're going to try to use that to explain why you've been doing it so much, I tell you, I'm not buying it. I'm not buying it, honey. Is my dad part not human or something? It's just so weird. Anyway, I'm going to write a complaint. Your dad was a good man. He had to go away. I haven't heard from him. I don't know if he's still with us. I miss him every day. I'm sorry that he wasn't around for you. I'm pretty sure he was a guy. I think he was just a human guy. What?

I don't think you have alien ghost DNA or whatever it is from one of those mangas you were watching. Ugh, whatever. Bad luck with your audition, Mom. I hope you don't ruin my fave, one of the greatest canonical, greatest animes of all time. I'm actually... Speeding on the legacy of Hayao Miyazaki.

Yeah. I'm just going to go do my first session today. So you can go ahead and call Lyft to get home when you're out. Ugh. Or Lyft's helicopter in the future. I don't want a Lyft. I'd rather ride one of those Lyft turbo scooters. Those are dangerous. Whatever, mom. Okay. Well, I'll see you at home. All right. Love you, mom. Love you, too. Okay. Okay. Oh. Finally. What do the soccer players do for him? 12 guys. Well.

Wait, if it isn't Mr. Weeb. What's going on? What up, Cucks? Oh, you get a bunch of people who go, oh, as you call them, Cucks. Wait, can Cucks just be cool? Yeah, Cucks is cool. That is a really normal word. Cucks is the new bestie. And I dap all of them. I do cool. Oh, oh, oh, it's Taylor. It's Taylor. It's Taylor. You see any good anime lately? Taylor.

Only the best. You're subscribed to my sub stack, right? Absolutely. I'm going to write some reviews this weekend. Keep an eye out. Yeah, you're a connection to anime. There's just too many to watch, but you really narrow down the episodes that we can super watch. When we're all hanging out together, we watch I'm a Lonely Robot in Love, and then halfway through the story, it becomes a different sort of thing that's not quite as good as the first half. We loved it so much in the first half. All 43 episodes? Again, we watched the first 23 because it kind of gets bad.

in the middle. Yeah, it kind of drops off with the Costco storyline. Yeah, yeah. Not a big fan of it. But hey, without you, without your newsletter, we would have definitely wasted another 23 half hours of our lives. So thanks, man. You're the coolest person in school. No problem. Oh my God. No problem. And as I say that, I doff my pork pie hat.

Oh, no. The Fedora of the future. That's the beauty of the audio format is you can save off on a horrifying detail like that until the absolute right moment. And we can forget that you have a pork pie hat until you deign to remind us of it for the rest of the series. So we just declare, there's just the coolest kid in school. According to these 12. Yes, Friday's character is the coolest kid in school who loves anime, has a ton of sweet weapons, and his hot mom drives a convertible.

and gives cool video games and his mysterious dad is a demon. That's the teenager. Freddy is playing. Freddy is the main character. And then Taylor looks into the bag and kind of digs through the games and it's like indie game, indie. Oh, no triple A's. Whatever. It's just another day in the life of Taylor Swift. And then the anime intro plays like...

As you head into the school as your anime intro theme song plays in your head, a four-seater hybrid pulls up. A normal passerby might double take at it because the driver and shotgun seats seem to be taken up by the same man twice. Twins.

Twins, if you will. I'm Ron Serling. More than a few seconds examination reveals subtle differences between the two twins. One has deep stress lines around his eyes and a beard just on the wrong side of unkempt. The other sports a fragile, wavering smile and a close-cropped beard as well as glasses. Man, this family's fucked.

They think of their kid normal. In the back, a powerful woman finishes checking a lunchbox for the 70th time and passes it to the teenage boy next to her. The lunchbox says, swallows ice cream on it in big letters. And the boy is, what does he look like? He looks weird. He doesn't look like a normal boy. Yeah.

The two men... The same man twice. The witness outside of the car sees, in order, the same man twice and then a boy that's wrong. If I'm going to truly paint the scene, what you see is two twins, a strong, powerful woman, and Jimmy Neutron. Because what you see in the back is Teenie the Teen, the mascot of San Dimas High School, within the shell of that mascot is normal Oak. So yeah, basically imagine like a big...

Like a big head. And then like, yeah, a mascot, a big mascot head. Yeah. We know what mascots are. There's no mascot that has a small head. Imagine if you will, a mascot, a big human boy head. And then like a sort of like Bart Simpson ask t-shirt and shorts, but then like,

Imagine like sleeves that are flesh colored, flesh colored hands. And so that's a little cool curl on the hair. Spit curl. I like the idea that it is a Jimmy Neutron costume that has just, this is important to the public domain. Where are the eye holes? Are they like the, is it a grinning mouth? Is it an open grinning mouth? And the eyes are the mouth.

Or are the eyes of the eyes like, where are the eye holes? Here's what we'll say. The eye holes are in the mouth, but there's not enough room in... The head is shoved pretty far down to fit in the hatchback Prius, I'm assuming. So Normal cannot see all that well right now, so he kind of fumbles for the lunch pail that his mom has handed him and says, thanks, Mom, I appreciate it. Your uncle, who's in the front seat, who's driving, Lark Oak, turns around and he pulls out a gun and he says...

And he says, so normal, I know you're going to detention. There might be some really dangerous kids here. I want you to just keep this in your backpack. And your dad, Sparrow, in the shotgun goes, no, no, what are you doing? You can't have a gun? Give me that. Oh, why not, Dad? Come on. All the cool kids are doing it in future hell America. No, you can't. He cannot have it. Can you imagine if he gets caught with that? He'll go to like, I don't know, double detention or whatever. And your mother goes, now, now.

a gun in American schools is detention. This is the 32nd amendment. So Rebecca says, what if the truth is somewhere in the middle? What if instead of taking the gun or not taking a gun, you take my pepper spray instead? And she takes pepper spray out of her purse and puts it in your hand and your uncle Lark is like, yeah, I guess, yeah, sure, that's fine. And Sparrow's like, that also seems bad if he gets caught with that, but oh God, I mean...

Do you really have to wear the costume into detention? But the costume's the whole reason I have detention. If I take it off now, then what's the point?

God, I look. OK, so have you have you showered? What is the I'm smelling something because you didn't take the mascot costume off when you showered. And I don't remember when you showered or if you showered in a month. And maybe you want to leave the costume in here so I can clean it and you can leave. And then I'll give you the clean costume when you get out of detention. But I appreciate your concern. But as I've explained to you, the punks over at Chaparral High School want to prank the mascot outfit and no one is taking it seriously, which is why I have

to wear it to protect it. If I leave it at home, who knows what's going to happen to it, you know? And to answer your question, it's been a while since I showered, but I am pretty much naked under here, so like, I'm not getting my clothes dirty, you know? The only thing that's getting dirty is the inside of the mascot costume. It says I'm the only one who's ever going to wear it because I'm going to be the mascot until I graduate the senior year and then I'll probably take it to college with me. Uh,

It doesn't matter. So, uh... Normal's a hero. Normal's a fucking hero. Normal's a patriot. Normal cares about the school. Sparrow opens his mouth to keep complaining and Lark waves him down and says, it's fine, he can keep the costume on. While he was asleep, I sewed some Kevlar into the front and the back, so he's probably safer in there than he is outside of it. He did feel a little death...

Come on, Uncle Ark. I need to be able to do flips in this thing. I mean, I know I can't do flips yet, but I want to learn. It's not going to be easy with lead bulletproof stuff in here. With Class 3A armor in here. Well, hey, if you feel like you can't do flips, then maybe I can teach you things that are not a complete waste of time, like hunting or survival or talking to girls or talking to boys or talking to anybody. Do you have a friend yet? Does your kid have a friend yet? No, he doesn't have a friend yet. Give him time. It's fine.

He's allowed to take his time. I would love it if you had a friend, though. Your mother and I are pretty worried about you. Look, guys, Teenie the Teen is the most popular teen at St. Demas High, and if I'm Teenie the Teen, people are going to like me. You just got to give it time. So Sparrow again goes, and Rebecca, the wise three-dimensional mom, says...

Says just, hon, just give him time. He'll realize. Teeny, go ahead and go off to detention. And we're so proud of you, Teeny. He's so wise. That's me. I also did a lot of stuff before I met your dad. I'm the one who founded this ice cream empire that is on your lunchbox. Swallows ice cream. That's me. My husband is an heiress.

Good for Sparrow. Well, I better go. The ice cream melts pretty quick in this thing. So I'm going to go and try not to splash it on the inside of the mascot costume. I love you guys. And I'm sorry I got detention, but I feel like it was a good cause of the reason. So I'm not that sorry. And then Normal takes the pepper spray from his mom and climbs out of the car. And then you head out of the car and whee!

It's a mascot. What's up, my cuckolds? You can't call us that. And I start doing like a cheer routine. I'm like, it's the boys soccer team. You guys are going to go all out.

way this year. It's going to be great. I just totally believe in you. Yeah, I mean, you know, honestly, the sight of you kind of takes the joy out of our school spirit. We're all teens here. We've got teen spirit, don't we? Yeah, no, we have a lot of teen spirit. It's just like you're a lot. I'm a lot. Well, this whole team's a lot. There's a lot going on and we're going to take all of that and bring it to state this year. Hands in the middle, everybody. Oh, God. And they all put their hands in the middle and they go, I'm sorry. It's just... Give me a T. We don't have to go through the whole thing. Give me a T.

Give me an E. E. Give me an E. E. How many E's did I do? You did two E's. That's team. That's teaming the team. Why you guys don't even know the math? We'll work on it. I thought we were just doing the word team. You want to do the, oh God, thank you. No, you should go to detention. It's taking so much self-control not to bully you right now. We're trying to be a positive force in school. I appreciate it. And then Normal walks off whistling the school theme, which is Bad Guy by Billie Eilish. And, uh...

They're fighting Nihilish. That's what we call a team. Oh my God. Nihilish, no. And he heads off to detention.

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You all open the door to the history classroom and you see Mrs. K, the history teacher and today's detention teacher, sitting at her desk playing on her phone. And she says, all right, everybody sit down. Time for detention. No fun. Welcome to the no fun zone. For a couple of you, you're seeing familiar faces by seeing each other. So Normal and Link, you used to see a lot of each other at like

these quasi-weekly get-togethers that your parents would throw you because your parents were friends and you would go to like grills and stuff like that. But as of lately, Normal, your dad, Lark, and Link, your dad, Grant, both have wanted you to sort of separate out a little bit more that you stopped going to these cookouts. They started getting protective. You got the vibe from both of your parents separately that the other kids might be a bad influence. So this is maybe the first time you've actually had the chance to be in the same room together in quite a while. Taylor Swift, 100% bad influence.

Who's the coolest kid in school, though, actually. Who's already got his feet up and is already playing his Nintendo. Yeah, and then I guess... They're called Nintendos in the future. Great. And then I guess scary, everybody here is more or less...

new to you because you just recently had uh terry jr come into your life link definitely knew of of scary because she's a really good soccer player lincoln oh hey linky binky linky binky fofinky yeah hey what's up i'm here to join the soccer team this year man what's up yeah i'm jv um cool i march over and sit right next to lincoln it's been so long since i seen you dude i know our dads are like but it's like you know i miss you boom boom boom and i punch him on the shoulder a bunch

Yeah. Well, that wouldn't hurt that much because he's Jimmy Neutron. It's me under here. It's normal. I'm the team. Can I roll for constitution to see if it hurt me? Sure. I'm very tall, but I'm very weak. I'm fast, but weak. Roll with advantage because he does have foam hands on. It was 19. Yeah. No, it doesn't hurt at all. I still say ow. Ow. Sure. Ooh. Hey, yeah. Sorry, man. Didn't mean to razz you, but what's going on? You know, not much. It feels like you've been avoiding me. Yeah. Well, you know, you're dangerous. Well.

I mean, your dad's or, you know, yeah.

Mrs. K goes, you're not supposed to talk in detention. Can you tell him that? Yeah. She's talking to me. Everybody, hey, hey, stop talking. We're starting detention. The fun stops now. You can't socialize. The fun stopped a long time ago. I write a note to Scary and try to throw it to her. Okay, roll stealth. Do people send notes now? Is that a thing? Did we just out ourselves as the oldest human beings of all time? Yeah, I guess it's like people text each other. You can't text Walt in class. I think you can. I mean, not Terry. I mean...

I feel like the first thing that happens when you come in is probably Mrs. K takes your phone. So, yeah. So Mrs. K rolled a natural one on her perception. I tell Mrs. K now there were 12 apes on this phone when I gave it to you. There better be 12 when I get it back. Yes, you successfully throw your note to Scary without getting noticed. What does the note say? There's a yes and no checkbox. Oh, my God. And it says, are you going to join the varsity team? They need you.

And I give a thumbs up. I write back and like scribbled hardcore, like writing, I'll think about it. Probably not though. And you don't give the note back? You're just coming out in the note after writing, I'll think about it on so he doesn't know what the answer is. No, I crumble it up. It was like pristinely folded, but I crumble it up and I throw it back. Okay. Do you want to do it sneakily or not? I don't want to do it sneakily. I want to do it because I'm really good at it.

Like, I'm just like a perfect throw. But I think that she probably will catch me. Let me roll for it. Okay. Roll for advantage because normal's big head is blocking the teacher's view right now. Yeah, that's it. I got a five. Okay, so with a five, you throw it. It lands on the ground and Mrs. K sees it and she goes, can we not with the notes? And she looks at you, Link, and she goes, she says, she'll think about it. No more notes, please. And she crumples it up and throws it. Did you just ask the scary girl out on a date? What? No. What?

what? Oh, yeah, right. So think about it. Good luck, man. That's so cool. You're already, you're already, you know, putting yourself out there. I really appreciate it. I support you. That's great. No, she's just like really good at soccer. I turn Jimmy Neutron's head around like backwards to look at Scary and I'm like, he's a

really great guy you should give him a chance okay everybody calm down calm down it's detention before we start your proper punishment i think you all should throw yourselves upon the mercy of detention and uh just maybe talk a little bit about how you're sorry about what you did and how you're going to not do what got you here again anybody feel free to go i'll go first okay

Yep. Ladies and gentlemen of detention, I ask you this. Is it a crime to love your school? Oh, no. I mean, Scary Junior, what do you guys think? I think it depends on what you think love is.

So, well, I mean, it's not a crime. We're not here because we're criminals. Well, did he fuck the school or did he just like it? Scary language. That's okay. I did not French the school, but I did try to protect our beloved mascot from getting punked because I support the teams at the school. Y'all are going to go to state this year because we're not going to let Chaparral down.

destroy this beloved institution and humiliate us by ruining the costume. So I can't say that I formally apologize, but I am sorry. And I do like big finger quotes with that, that I love San Dimas High School so much. But your fingers don't go all the way to the end of the like mascot's fingers. So just, you hold your hands up. You see two little fingers poking out of like one finger of the glove. That's great. So Mrs. K knows that it's probably not worth arguing with you further. This is probably not the first conversation you've had. So she goes, cool. Anyone else next? Yeah. Yeah.

Let me just start by saying, is it a crime to be drawing manga in class? I contend no. It was just a little bit of extracurricular activities in the middle of a boring math class, which nobody's going to ever need after this anyway.

It is a crime to disrespect your teacher and not pay attention in class. It is not a crime. Damn. Thank you, normal. That's why normal is my favorite student and why I'm not going to continue arguing with him. So yeah, I got caught drawing anime about my awesome life and how one day I'm going to be

the hero that this world needs because there needs to be some changes around here and I think I'm gonna be the one to do it you just fucked yourself because now that's something we have to have as bonus content on the patreon is the fucking manga that uh oh I'll draw it I

will go to here's what I'll do listener this is my pledge to you Freddie Wong a content creator to you listener dungeons and dad you content consumer consumer oh my god okay go on I will go on YouTube and look at how to draw anime eyes good

I will create a deviant art and this will be a manga pen. Somehow Taylor is even more Freddie than Clint is Freddie. It's like so, oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Apple doesn't fall far from the weeb. Damn.

All right. Anybody else? Okay. Let me get this over with because I don't even think I fucking, I mean, freaking belong here. But so I turned in a book report last week and it was about the diary of Anne Frank. I realize now that by saying that when I tried to self-publish my diary and... Keep going. Keep going.

What was wrong about the way you did it? That by focusing on my struggles, which are still like super dark. Your cons, if you will. Your cons, if you will.

Yeah, that, which is, like, even though my struggles are, like, super dark and nobody understands them and, like, really devastating, that maybe by, like, saying that in my Diary of Anne Frank thing and then also saying that she was, like, kind of being dramatic about, like, some stuff. You compared yourself to Anne Frank and said you had it worse than she did. Only, like, in my soul. Okay, do you feel sorry about that at all? I feel sorry for the both of us, me and Anne. LAUGHTER

Okay. Me and Ann. And I feel like we're kind of like, yeah, I'm sorry, whatever. Yeah, you belong here. And Link. What? Lincoln Lee Wilson, please. I think it's weird that we're all talking. We don't have to tell everybody what we did. No, I think you should definitely tell everybody why.

Why you're I think actually everybody already knows it. I assume it spread pretty quickly amongst. OK, I'm sorry. Yeah, I peed on a teacher's foot. It's not. You did. I didn't mean to do it. I should have his foot. I didn't hear who that was. That's metal. No, I didn't do it. I shouldn't be here. Like, are you suggesting that you should be allowed to pee on teachers at the wrong time? It's not my fault. Where was that?

In the alley behind the school because the boys... Look, it was scary. The boys... The school's one of those alleys around them. You're an idiot on the wall of our beloved school, Lincoln? I stay hydrated because I got to perform very well and I had to go to the bathroom and those...

They're mean in the locker rooms like they were going to give me a hard time. They came in like, oh, look, he doesn't even have hair on his face or whatever. And like he's tall and his voice sounds hilarious. And like I can't be doing that. So like I just went behind the back and I went to be like away from everybody. I wasn't going to show anybody anything. I was just going by myself. And then I don't know what she was doing. Why is the teacher back there? She should be working. God. Anyway, she scared me. I spun around and yeah, the piss, whatever.

I'm sorry. Thank you for apologizing, Lincoln. So who was the teacher? Annis Anderson. The one who did the hook on me in the hall. The urology teacher? We have a burgeoning urology department. It's the new trade of the future. It's like when your school has a shop class.

You have a urology department. Yep, that's all canon. Okay, everybody stop talking. It's time for detention to properly start. Six hours of total silence starting now. You hear the sound of like a control stick. Like Mrs. K, let's go ahead and roll stealth. Stealth, you mean the one I have plus three on 21?

Yeah, she doesn't hear it. Yeah, baby, guess what, bitch? It's another season of me owning your ass on the dice, bitch. Damn. I already hate season two. Yeah, she doesn't notice you playing games. So she's staying in the classroom? She's staying in the classroom with you. If we just have to be quiet, can I just, like, practice? Can I just, like, juggle in here? Hell yeah. Soccer ball, soccer ball. Can I just practice? No, that's not going to be quiet. I'm going to hear the thunk, thunk, thunk of you hitting it. Normal is going to roll a stealth check to see if he can whisper to Link. Okay. Go ahead.

I got a natural 20. So did she. Shit, really? Wait, what happens? What happens now? It means you think that she didn't hear and she hears and doesn't convey that she heard. Okay. But that means I lost. What is my natural 20 not good for anything?

Maybe she hears me, but... She thinks it's cool. Yeah, whatever you say, she thinks it's cool. Will, this is the most powerful OP move you could possibly do. Hey, Lincoln, do you talk to Taylor Swift that much anymore? No, I don't talk to you very much either. Well, I know. He seems weird lately.

Like, I haven't talked to him in a while. Like, you know, and I kind of miss not hanging out with you because we're buds. But like, I was kind of relieved to not have to hang out with Taylor anymore. Oh, that's a lot. You should tell him that. Don't tell me that. Why would I tell him that? Then he'd be mad at me. What are you guys gossiping about? What? You guys are gossiping. We're not gossiping. Teacher, I'm trying to be quiet. And there's a lot. I don't want to say who's doing it, but there's a lot of. Teacher, we got a pussy in here. We got a straight butt.

First of all, hey, that's two strikes on the problematic chart for you, honey. Oh, what happens? You cancel me? Yes, I do. You get canceled from school. Oh, I get called out, called out of school. Whatever. I've been called out by my own heart. Here at Santimus High, the teen spirit believes in calling people in, not calling them out. Yeah, no wonder you smell like teen spirit. Yeah, Mrs. K goes, man, that's really cool, that kid, to ask him if he still talks to that other kid.

I love it when kids try to maintain relationships with their peers. How cool. He gracefully slid in the exposition he wanted to so well. Your stock has risen in the eyes of Mrs. K. And yeah, you remember there was a time when Taylor Swift's mom would bring him around and would just sort of hang out with your parents for a bit and shoot the ship. But that time has passed. So the hours pass very, very slowly. Actually, they pass pretty fast when you're playing a visual novel.

For all but one of you, the hours pass very, very slowly. Nice. After a long, long time, all but one of you feel that something is off. Your

Your adrenaline slowly starts pumping and then gets faster. Your heart starts beating faster and faster. That's happening for me too. Because you're on a raid, yes. The visual novel is kind of the second act turn. In the future, they have raids in visual novels. I'm trying to level up our fucking experience. Your heart starts beating faster and faster. You're panicking and you do not know why. Probably because my dating meter is really low. Again, not you. The other three.

You feel like you're being chased by something. You feel like it's gaining on you. You feel like you were about to die. And then you realize it's not you. You're not the one feeling this. Your dads are. Somewhere, something awful is chasing them, all of them. It gets closer and closer. Well, I guess for you, scary, it's your stepdad, not your dad, dad. Do I feel this as well? No, you don't feel this. But.

But for the three of you, it gets closer and closer. And then there's a scream of four voices, all of your dads or stepdad or uncle screaming in unison. You, through your father's minds, feel yourselves watching them. And all of you, again, except for you, Taylor, know that for certain your fathers are going to die if you cannot find them and save them. And they're going to die soon. Normal, you feel your uncle and your father tell you to stay safe. Link, you feel your father tell you to take care of your daddy, Marco, and love him very much.

I throw up in the helmet. Is,

Oh, God. Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I got to go. I got to go call my dad. And I run out of the room. I scream, Dad. And I run out of the room. As you all head toward the door to run out of the room, there's a knock and then the door just opens and hits you in the head normal. And a man in a black suit now stands in the doorway. I run past him. He watches you go and says, stop. No. And I run. It's about your dad. Tell me I'm running. You just keep running? Stop.

Walk and talk, man. Come on. Where are you running to? I'm going to go run to talk to my dad to tell him about Grant. I got, I got what? The man goes and takes out a device from his coat pocket. Looks like a remote control and pointed at you and you die. Yeah. You evaporate. You feel something hits you in the lower back and electrical charge goes through your body and you go rigid and you fall to the ground. It goes, it's stop. Oh, what the fuck? Holy shit.

Holy shit. And he turns to Mrs. K and he says, I have, it's from the superintendent of the school. And he takes out a badge from his pocket and he shows it to her. And then he takes out a letter and hands it to her. And she looks through this as the man goes in the hallway and throws you over his shoulder and brings you back to the room. And Mrs. K says, oh, okay. Apparently the principal suggested community service in lieu of finishing out your detention today. So we've already been here six months.

Six hours! Yeah, and for the last, well, you've been here for three, and for the last three, I guess you're doing community attention. Normal pulls the, uh, Jimmy Neutron off his face, revealing his sweaty face, pimple marks, greasy hair, hasn't bathed in a week, covered in vomit, and says, Miss K, something horrible's happening to our dads, I don't know who this guy is, but he's probably involved, you gotta help us! So, roll, uh, persuasion. I got a four.

She got a five. So she goes, it's signed by the superintendent. It's got the C. It's just three more hours. You'll probably be like de-weeding the school lawn. Don't worry about it. Don't you know? You don't understand. No, I clearly don't. The man with the suit gets close to you and he whispers like, I can take you to your dad's. Why would I want to go to my dad? I mean, my stepdad, not even my real dad. Because if you don't, he'll die. Mm hmm.

I guess that wouldn't be cool. Taylor stands and confidently struts over to this gentleman, sticks his hand out for a handshake and says, Taylor Swift, and who might you be? I guess roll persuasion or charm or something to see if he wants to shake your hand. Eight. He does not shake your hand. He goes,

That's classified. I knew it. He opens the door wider and ushers you forward. He goes, we're headed to the parking lot. And he leads you out to the parking lot. And Taylor has a beaming smile on his face because this is all of his dreams coming true like he knew would happen. And he goes like, oh, yeah, I guess you can come too as he sees you, Taylor. Oh, brutal.

I do not notice this. I'm just strutting. You are led to a limousine. The man in the suit opens the door and ushers you in. Taylor tries to get in first. Does anybody try to stop him? No. Normal has grabbed a bunch of paper towels on the way out and is trying to scoop the vomit out of the helmet. Great. Wait, Mr. Classified, where the fuck are we going? You'll find out when we get there. It's not a long drive. What? You said we were going to do weeds or whatever here. Like, no. Where's my dad? Where's my father? It's classified. I'm not allowed to know. And you're allowed to know, but I'm not allowed to tell you because I don't.

know. That's some Tom Clancy ass fucking improv right there. Yeah, I do kind of remember hearing something about adults and strangers and not getting into cars when people say they know your dad. That was like the don't get into the stranger car video number one was like they come up and say they know your dad. Chill out, normal. It's fucking metal to get into cars with strangers. Hey, there's like sodas and like candies in this limousine, guys. There are a lot of sodas and candies. Maybe there's a body in the

While this is going on, Normal has pulled up a Stranger Danger video on YouTube and is showing it there. I'm like, yeah, see, like, there's see this creepy guy with his man. On the video you see the guy. It's the same guy wearing the same suit. He didn't even answer any, what's my dad's name? Your dad's name is Sparrow Oak and your uncle's name is Lark Oak. Well, but wait, we just, I pepper spray him. Okay, great. Roll dexterity to see if you can use the pepper spray properly. I got a natural one.

Okay, so you pepper spray yourself directly in the mouth of the suit. You pepper spray yourself in the face. Scary things that is the coolest thing ever. The guy just grabs you and tosses you into the car. He just tossed...

He just tossed normal. Were you in the car or did you not get in the car? No, I tried to run again. Everybody else is in the car though? Yeah. Taylor's definitely in the car. Yeah, Scary's in the car. So you hear chunk chunk as the car doors lock and he goes, and he gets in the driver's seat of the car and just starts chasing you down with the car. So go ahead and roll dexterity and see if you can evade his car.

That's a 17 plus three. That's a 20. Jesus Christ. I do some cool soccer moves too. He's tall and gangly and fast, right? Tall, gangly. Okay. Got some footwork. He tries to drive the car like right next to you and you just juke him very easily down a side street and you seem to have lost him for a second.

I guess what are you going to do now? Cause you're, you're not at the school. Hey, anybody out there, but where are the 12 soccer players? Oh, that's true. You lose the limo behind you, but then you hear the, the Trump of 12 pairs of feet as they come up and they go, well, well, well, well, it looks like somebody's trying to get out of detention. We believe in serving time as a sign. No, no, no. This guy, this guy, this is my dad's dying. And this guy's trying to go, I'm fuck you. You,

you guys are mean. Then they run. You can go ahead and roll something if you want to get a natural 20 and evade the grips of six people. No, I got 17. So yeah, six pairs of arms wrap around. You go, well, well, somebody doesn't want to go de-weed the lawn in school. We believe in having a well-weeded lawn because we're soccer players and it helps us get more traction. That's not what this is about. You want us to lose, you little jealous JV. Yeah, does the JV stand for jealous boy? I'm a freshman. Jealous virgin. What?

What? That's not about, what does that have to do with anything? Well, well, well, jealous virgin, it's time to pay the piper. You feel yourself get hoisted up by six soccer players and they go, you who limo guy. And they, they drag you out of the room. Here's the virgin you're missing. You take it. You take him to virgin jail. Holy shit. Virgin jail. The limo driver pulls up and rolls down the window. He goes, yes, I'm taking them to virgin jail. This is why my dad said, why don't you go to school? This is horrible. I love my dad.

I see. I was like, I pulled it. Oh, he's in the trunk. Yeah, they put you in the trunk. They go, ha ha, take him to virgin jail. And they slap the trunk twice and he goes, thank you. You're so helpful. I'm so glad I ran into you. And they go, anytime. Hey, why are you taking those kids? And he drives away. So the limousine drives for a little while. You are driven to a perfectly boring, nondescript corporate plaza. The kind with tons of small buildings all belonging to different offices like dentists and shit. The limo stops outside of a building with a sign reading DADDIES on it in all caps. Ha ha ha.

This doesn't look like a virgin jail. This looks like a BDSM fucking podcast. For emphasis, this is not a BDSM thing underneath it. Not a BDSM corporation.

The doors pop open, the trunk pops open, and you hear the man who drove you here say, get out, go inside. He just drives away, just leaving you alone. What? Oh, okay. He just leaves? He just leaves. What a pro. If he's just a limo driver to go to all that work of tasering people and chasing them down, A for effort. There's a set of glass double doors leading into this little building. Come on, everyone. Clearly, destiny awaits us, and it doesn't do us any good to turn away from it.

I guess, actually, I agree with you. Nice. Okay, so as you try the door, it is locked. You hear a sound. You try the door again, and it remains locked. Oh, don't worry. I got something for this, and I reach into my go bag. Okay. Get your ninja rocks? Well, yeah, you said it's a glass double door, right? A ninja rock that door. Okay, so as you reach into your bag to get ninja rocks, actually, everybody roll perception.

Got a four. Fourteen. Seven. Okay, so nobody sees anything. It's what you hear first that makes you turn. You hear the slap of bare flesh on concrete, and you turn around. Yeah, I said flesh. You turn around to see an infant. What? A human baby stepping towards you with adult posture, a straight back, long strides, no wobbling in its gait. What?

It is entirely naked except for a diaper, and it is walking towards you fast. The slap of its bare feet on asphalt getting quicker and quicker. It stares blankly at you. Does anyone see that baby? Hello, baby? That's the most fucked up thing I've ever seen. You're going to be a soccer player one day. Look at that walk. What a cute guy. Hey, what's up, buddy? It opens its mouth. It bears two rows of fully formed adult teeth. Oh, no. It gnashes them together faster and faster. It flies into a dead sprint.

Like the T-1000s. I'm going to try and throw these ninja rocks at the window. How many are you going to use? I will say that I had like, let's do like a 1D4 and that's how many I have. Okay. And then I will roll for one of them. So I had in my pocket three of them. Because you have three. Roll a D20. If you get more than a 10, it'll break the window. 11. Ooh. So at 11, the window cracks. Quietly. It doesn't shatter entirely, but there's a hole in it. There are cracks in the facade of the window. The baby keeps running at you. I want to kick it.

Like a soccer ball. So one thing that we're going to change mechanically is you're not going to have to roll to hit him. You're just automatically going to hit him and you're just going to roll your damage. So just give me a D4 roll and we'll see how much damage that does. Link is definitely like, looks back at his carry and be like, oh, she sees the one-star kicker. That was really good. Good kick.

Three. Oh, no. The tip of your foot finds purchase in its round baby belly and your foot. Tip of my foot? Am I a fucking toe kicker? Come on, I'm a soccer player. Oh, you're a soccer player. The fucking laces, baby. I'm JV. I'm not a fucking idiot. It's the flat of your...

The inside of your foot? No, the top. The top of the foot. The laces. Okay, so the laces of your foot impact on the soft, bouncy belly of this baby. And it goes... But now your foot is right within grabbing reach of it. Uh-oh. I don't want to kick it away. No, you don't kick it away. It does that anime thing where its feet dig into the ground.

And they're like fucking like just tear up asphalt as it holds you back. It feels like the center of gravity of this baby is way lower than it should be. Like this baby has way more mass than it should for its size. It's like kicking a medicine ball. It's kicking a medicine. It's exactly what it feels like. It's like kicking a medicine ball. Was it Ally McBeal with the CG dancing? Yeah. Early days. The baby reaches forward with its small fat fingered baby hands and grabs your ankle and its fingers sink into your ankle like fast.

and initially it doesn't hurt, and then it hurts a whole lot. So you take three damage, Link. Link, your soccer foot! He only has one, man. That's his golden foot! That's the soccer foot! I know good soccer players can kick with both feet, but I'm learning, I'm trying. Oh, God, ow! That's a third of my health, by the way. I want to try to kick the face. All right, so you kick it in the face, and... The moment she's whining, I'm like, I should have kicked the face.

the face. I'm going to slide tackle the face. So I'm actually kind of coming up like, you know what? I'll do fucking cleats up a dirty side. Dirty slide tackle to the face. So essentially I'm hitting her with the bottom of my shoe. Okay. So that'll do another D4 damage. Three.

Okay, three. You feel the baby's skull compress as your heel punctures into it, but then you feel the baby's skull reforming itself around your foot. And you feel something wet and warm as its mouth gets a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger, and it starts to encircle your heel, and then the rest of your foot is like, and it's trying to swallow your foothold or at least get your entire foot in its mouth. Wow, it really just has to happen to Beth's character. What? Oh.

Oh, no, I didn't think about it that way. Wait, what? Let's do any feet stuff. All right, Normal, would you like to do anything? Normal removes the big Jimmy Neutron head and wants to bring it down with thunderous force onto the baby such that I kind of like disconnect your guys' feet from it and trap it under the helmet. I feel like we're trying to pull away. Yeah, you guys are trying to pull away. I'm trying to break the connection and trap it under the helmet. I have to say the idea that you put that mask back on

after throwing up in the kitchen. I cleaned it out. With paper towels and no soap or water. With paper towels and a little bit of spit.

Oh, God. That smells really good after a while. It was a Diet Coke in the limousine, and I poured that in there and used it to scrub it. Okay, so give me a... I feel like that's kind of sleight of hand to very specifically get him. I got a nine. Okay, so he'll roll opposed. You got a two. Ooh! Stupid baby. So you can't roll fucking dice, so you trap this baby. And it spits out Scary's foot as it sees that coming, and it goes...

It's like that one guy in the pod race before he explodes. You bring the mascot helmet down and trap the baby inside for a second. You suddenly hear a voice over the radio say, Get inside! Get inside! And the doors snap open, and then they shatter. I look at the broken glass, and I look over, and I'm like...

I've opened the door. Get on inside, everyone. I run, but because I'm not leaving this mascot helmet behind, I do pick the mascot helmet back up as I run. Then it tries to, well, I guess it chases after you. I feel like maybe I pick it up and like there's no baby on the ground because it's like splintered itself on the inside that I haven't noticed yet. That's funny. Good news, guys. The baby disappeared.

And then I put the helmet back on. And you hear breathing above you in the helmet. And your eyes slowly move up and you see the baby spread eagle with its arms and legs like keeping itself suspended at the very top of the thing. And it's looking at you with very big eyes and then it drops onto your head and starts like clawing at your face. Oh, God. Norma, lose that fucking mask. I dive and try to take the mask off. All right. Give me a dexterity roll or something. That's a 20.

You get the mask off easily, and it's just the baby is just clawing on Normal's face. It smells like vomit, so I also punt the mask over the fence. Roll a d20. You protect the mask! Oh my god. Strength roll? Yeah, strength check. Yeah, you kick it over the fence. And then I'm going to wind up my big heavy go bag and then try and hit the baby off of Normal's head. Okay, roll dexterity to see if you hit the baby and not Normal. 10.

10. Okay, so with a 10, you hit normal in the temple, and it doesn't actually hit the baby at all. I think it's both. Probably both. 10 in the middle. Yeah, I guess it's both, but like... Does he have to roll for damage against my head? The 10's bad, Freddy. It's bad. Shut up, Matt. Yeah, roll a D4. That's how much damage normal takes. One damage. Oh, jeez. Not quite what I planned, but come on. Let's get inside. So as you're running into this building down carpeted hallways, a woman appears in front of you in the hallway and says, Down!

and takes out a blue marble from her coat pocket and throws it. And it hits the ground, explodes, and a blue acrid smoke fills the air. The baby growls, grabbing at its eyes, gnashing at the empty air. It lets go of your head, normal, and it starts swinging around blindly trying to grab each of you. And she goes, kids, come with me if you want to not die. Come on, come on. There's a baby.

Yeah, I know, I know, I know. You just need to follow me. Come on, follow me. So she leads you to an elevator and ushers you all in and then presses a button. She says, I am Chief May Hales of Daddies. And that name was sent in to us by May Hales. So thank you for your name, May. And when the elevator doors open, you are not where you were before. I guess that's how elevators work. But like...

This elevator brought us to a different place. This magic room took us to a different room. Oh my God. I don't know where we are. Wait a minute. Lady, what's going on here? We were just in the place and now we're in a different place. Wait, wait. Link stays in the elevator. Link stays in the elevator and he presses the door close and Link's like, wait, it can't do that. It can't, can it? He presses the door open.

And in the same room, there's nobody pressing any buttons for four. After the sky turned red, knowledge of elevators vanished from the earth. Specifically that, everybody lost, yeah. So this is the only elevator in the world. Wait, is it that knowledge of them, or they actually, like, it's like every time we see an elevator, we forget. All elevators disappeared, and everyone forgot what they were. Why are these shafts in the middle of buildings? We don't understand.

Okay. Yeah, it's just a distraction. We should just build another stairwell here. Why do they have closets that are kind of bouncy? That's weird. Because this is a room that goes up and down and leads to other rooms. That's maybe the least interesting thing you'll learn while you're here. Normal throws up again. No more stairs. I'm sorry. I should have predicted you wouldn't be ready for that. I forgot about the elevator thing. I forgot nobody knows about elevators in this world anymore. I like them. That's what we call an up-down room.

Nobody knows about up-down rooms anymore. So basically on the ground floor, it was all carpeted and corporate and there were like pictures of like flowers and playing like future Phil Collins music. Future Phil

I'm sorry, this room moves. Why would it move, lady? That doesn't make any sense. You know like stairs? You know how stairs work? Yeah. What if you didn't have to take every individual step? I know, but what if you moved instead of the stairs? Wait, no, yeah, the stairs don't move. So the stairs move instead of you. You know, like stairs, it's like you're moving, right? But this, it's like...

I'm subject to the whims of the up-down room, a room that reflects my moods. Up, down, and sometimes just staying still. Right, you've got a handle on this very quickly. But yeah, that's what this is. She takes you out of there, and as you enter the new floor, the walls are suddenly very austere and white. Like your mom. My dad. My mom is short and brown.

Lincoln has pulled out a penny and he's like really looking straight down that little gap between the elevator and the floor. And he's like staring at us like, how far down does this go? And he drops a penny down there. They have cash in the future? They do not. They drop a paperclip. He drops his Cash App card. I dropped my Cash App down there. So for... I dropped my Cash App.

So you stand there waiting to hear the plink as it hits the bottom of the elevator and you keep waiting for about 30, 45 seconds. And she's like, we need to start walking. So it's just a carpet down there. And as you leave the elevator here, ding. Oh my God. It's a very long way down. Every time you take a step, you can feel it echo throughout this hallway, this like very blank hallway. And she goes, this is the Department for the Acquisition, Destruction, Deployment, and Investigation of Extra Normal Stuff. Daddy's for short.

And she starts... That's what the acronym was on the front of the building. Yeah, this is that building. It's the same building. This is us. But we weren't in the same building. We walked in that room. So again, the up-down room...

takes you from a room and then moves down or up to a different room. Rooms are stacked on top of one another. It's just stairs. So you're saying we're below the building that we were in before. Yes, correct. So are we in China now? No, it's the same building. It's not that far down. Why is it everything upside down? You know what? Just imagine it's not the up-down room. It's the stairs room. And he grabs the lady and shakes her and he goes like,

Then why didn't we take the stairs? Are there stairs? There are stairs. Can we just verify that we're in the same room? I'm going to freak out. I'd like to verify that we're in the same building. Fine. Follow me. And she takes you the opposite direction. She was going. She goes, okay, we're following the fire exit signs. And she goes, stairs. All right, cool. Watch me. And then she opens up the door and then walks up the stairs. It goes, follow me. Come on. Yeah. And leads you up back to the room you were initially in. And she goes, okay, we just do this the first time because so much easier. We'll do it again. I'm not going in that

I'm going in that room again. No, no, we'll do it again. I'll show you how much easier it is. I'm going down the stairs. We're taking the stairs, lady. Okay, well, I'll meet you down there and I'll show you it's safe. I don't care. Yeah, yeah, do that. Okay, so she goes and she goes to the elevator. The moment she's gone. The moment she's gone. We got you. Taylor looks at the teens and goes, this is our chance to get deeper into this place. Taylor.

So there's 69 buttons in the elevator and there's 69 flights of stairs. I thought she was taking the elevator. But you see a fire escape sign on the wall that mentions there are 69 flights of stairs here going downward. So we're already on the top. We gotta go to the 69th floor and get that cash app back.

So based on the number of stairs that we just walked up, how many floors down was the floor we were originally on? You're on floor 3B as in like basement, underground floors. 3B. I mean, I walk down, I go down the stairs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can't stop us, guys. We can check out all the other rooms. What did Scary do? Scary stayed in the elevator. She thought it was really cool. Okay, well, you guys go down to floor 3. And when the doors open, you don't see Taylor. Yeah, I was going to say, the door's open and she stands outside and she goes, and now we have to wait for your friends to come in.

out of the stairwell. They are not coming out of the stairwell. You can hear it echoing from the door. Let's keep going. I was just trying to run back to her. I just refused to use the elevator. That's all. So you exited on the floor. Yeah, I exited on her floor. Okay. Yeah. And she goes, okay, you wait there. Don't ever put me in that thing again. It's like an airplane, but in a building. Hate it.

We'll wait here. We're fine. We'll wait here. Can you please? Yes, please do. Taylor, you run down the stairs and you hear two men in suits coming up and I'm going to bust down the door that whatever that floor. Okay. So you'll be on somewhere between floor three and floor 20, right? Floor 20. Floor 20. So yeah, let's say you made it down five flights of stairs while they made it up. Yeah, go ahead. Oh,

Okay, so you're on floor 11 when you see two men in suits rushing up from the stairwell. I guess this will be as good as any. I really hope that Freddy dies this time. So you kick open the door and before you, you see a room that is so big that you have trouble conceiving of it for a second. It seems so large and so cavernous. And as you look up, you see a spiraling trail that leads down the cave wall. Almost like a drill bit kind of thing. Like the Ruminant Kanto. Yes.

Yes. Actually, yeah. Yes, like that. Just like the room in Encanto. Multiverse. And it goes along the edge of this cave. Every so often along this wall, you see a door that is locked from somewhere, and you just came out of one of these doors. And to your left and your right are doors that have, one has a golden lock on it, one has a silver lock, and...

The trail continues down deeper and deeper and deeper, and you can't see the bottom. It just gets dark before you can fully reach the bottom. We cut back to for just like this blank hallway with teenagers just hanging out. Normal has drawn what he thinks is the layout of how an elevator works on the wall. And it's like, I think it goes like that. And it's completely wrong.

It's like a car going upstairs. It's like a room-shaped car going upstairs. It's a room coming up and down stairs. I think that's an elevator. When you said that, like, an airplane is like an elevator is like an airplane, a building inside, like, airplanes are, like, kind of buildings, aren't they? Yeah, an airplane is really just a building with wings, Link. Yeah, well, I don't... Okay, why are you coming at me? What's happening?

Cut back to Taylor Swift. So you see all this. You see these doors. There's one next to you that has four jeweled locks on it that draws your attention. And you feel deep in your heart something powerful is in here that I can use. I pull out my ninja rocks. Okay. And I throw it at the jewels on the door. Okay, it doesn't do anything. Shit, there goes one of my ninja rocks. But to your right. Pick it up. That's to your left. Pick it up. Just pick it back up. That's fine. To your right is a door with a copper lock on it. You almost feel like this whisper of like, hey.

Hey, man, man, there's something good in here for you. Come on, just pick the lock. I'm going to look at it and then forgetting that I'm being chased, I'm going to try and like kind of tug on the lock and see if I can shim the lock using any number of improvised tools in my go bag. Okay, give me a slight hand roll. 13. So with a 13, you try to lock pick this door. You shim it and the lock pops open, but then you feel...

something from within the lock react poorly to your attempts to open it. Okay. I'm scared now because Anthony has reached next to him and he has a bunch of index cards. Cause he was all like, Oh no, I didn't even plan for you to go in this room. Oh no. And he's got fucking stuff for it. Jeez Louise. So just to paint the picture, folks, Anthony has three stacks of colored index cards. I drawing one now from the pink stack.

voiceover narration. You think out loud for the entirety of the next adventure. Oh no. So, uh, as you open this door though, you also inside what seems to be a small green humanoid person who in one hand is beckoning you forward. And in the other hand is holding what looks like a phone. Uh,

What the fuck? He goes, hey, come here. Come here. Help me out. I'll give you this. Come here. Come here. What kind of phone? It looks like an iPhone 20. That's 10 iPhones ago. Yeah. No, it's kind of old for your eyes. It pretty much looks just like the iPhone right now. It looks like it's old. It's slightly. There's 12 camera lenses on the back. I'm like, whoa, it's like a mini Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z. It's just.

Uh, sure. Yeah, whatever, man, whatever. Come on, come on. Yeah. Help me out of here. I can't just grab me by the hand and then walk me out of here. Come on. What's your deal? Piccolo. Uh, they put me in prison for bullshit reasons. Cause you know, Piccolo is like a small flute. You're already myself. This is my voiceover narration. This is my head. This is what you're hearing. It's funny because Piccolo is already a small flute. Just take my hand and lead me out of this room. That's all I need. Uh,

Hell no, what's in it for me? This! This is the four seconds of fame. It's an item that allows you to record four seconds of audio or video. Those four seconds will then immediately show up on the social media feeds of every human being on planet Earth. Oh my god, what? And I know this? That's what he tells you. I grab his hand so fucking hard, bro. Okay, so you lead him out of the jail cell, and he goes, Yippee, I'm free! And he hands you the four seconds of fame, so now I'm giving you this card.

I have gotten a yellow card here. And as he says that, the woman who you met and then the two armed men burst in through the door behind you and they go, no, no! And he goes, yes, yes! And he snaps his fingers and he vanishes entirely. And they go, oh, no! As they're doing that, I quietly hide the phone from them. Just take a video of this cave and put it online. And I turn it on, I turn it around, and I record myself selfie mode in this room. And I go...

What up, Taylor Stans? If I disappear... Are you counting me down? Yeah, you need four seconds. What's up, Taylor Stans? It's your boy Taylor Swift here. They've got me in some governmental... Okay.

So immediately, push notification, full thumbnail and everything. It's me like with my hands. Well, you can do audio or video. So I'm assuming you did video. Oh, you did video. You don't see, you hear nothing. You just see his face against the wall.

It's on my YouTube channel, which all of a sudden has a bunch of people watching it. Yeah, all of a sudden you get 8 billion views. But it has no audio. It has no audio. Wow. Wait, does this break? Because at the bottom it says break roll 15 charisma. So the way that these magic items work that I've made is that you can use them as much as you want, but after you use them, they have the chance to break. So because that's a charisma item, you're going to roll a d20 and add your charisma modifier. If you don't get higher than its break number, which in this case is 15, it breaks forever, and you have to rip up the card. It's a 12, so that's not... So that...

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See store for details. So the woman takes you all into her office and she sits you down in four seats that she is. Well, three seats that she's assembled and she brings another one in for Taylor. Taylor's already in one of the seats. He's in the center most facing and he's already kicked back. The main character seat. Yeah, the main character seat. Okay. Well, Lincoln is just stands in the corner.

Okay, that's fine. It's time to talk to you about the reason that you're here. We're at war with an enemy who has already won. Oh, well, what's the point? What are we doing here? Let me keep going. I didn't come here just to say one sentence. I have a thing. Oh. There's something. You know what? I've got a whole... This will explain... You know what? I'm not going to bother. This will explain it. And she takes out a video cart with a TV on it, like the kind in school that meant you were going to watch Magic School Bus instead of do work. We're going to watch Magic School Bus? You're not going to watch Magic School Bus.

And she presses play on it. That show got dark after the red shift happened. Oh, man, yeah. The new seasons are weird. I still get nightmares, bro. The one where she goes inside the kids' repressed trauma, that was a dark one. That was awful. Oh, God. People said it was like the best episode of the show. And the swimming pool freaked out. And that dog died.

Can I press play on the DVD player? Yeah. Okay. So she presses play on a DVD player. An old pistachioed man with white hair appears on screen. None of you recognize him. Is he hot? Yeah, Anthony, is he hot? Uh, no. Okay. He was not hot when he was young and he's not one of those that breaks late. Whatever.

Hi, my name is Ron Stampler. Welcome to Daddies, the department for the acquisition, destruction, deployment, and investigation of extra-normal stuff. A Ron Stampler business enterprise. If you're watching this, then we failed.

The doodler is still loose in our reality, and we're too old or too dead to continue to fight against it and its, uh, homies, its accolades, if you will. This video is to remind you that you're not crazy. The world really is broken, but it can be fixed.

Now that said, please don't involve our sons, especially my son, Terry Jr. I mean, I guess I care about the other sons too. They'll want to join daddy's, but keep them out. They shouldn't be responsible for our mess here. The video feed cuts and is suddenly replaced with the image of normal's uncle, Lark Oak. There's someone right over this DVD? Uh-huh. Okay. Okay.

He says, "If you're watching this, then we failed too. We're dead or missing and the doodler is still loose. I wish I had a great plan for you, a hundred contingencies, but I've only got three things to tell you. Firstly, if all is lost, implement code purple. It worked once before, maybe it can work again. You just may not like what you find. Secondly, stay away from the obsidian door. Thirdly, no matter what happens, do not involve our children. Normal, Link, Taylor, they shouldn't be responsible for our mess." And the video cuts out. Okay, so now that that's done,

What the fuck is going on? You're the bosses now. All of you are the joint chiefs of daddies. So this is your office now. Congratulations. You're my boss now. Tell me what to do. What do we do? Okay, first things first, lady. What the heck? Like the video said, this is the Department for the Acquisition, Destruction, Deployment, and Investigation of Extra Normal Stuff, or daddies. And your dads ran it. They were the chief agents. My dad didn't run a super... You got me confused. Sorry, your dad and your uncle. You got me confused with another normal oak. My dad ran a shitty vegan ice cream store. This is crazy.

You saw him in the video. Well, your uncle. Your dad and your uncle worked together on this. My dad's a librarian and an author. He wrote one book, and he's a librarian. Your dad is a sniper.

I've seen your dad kill monsters with a gun. He's a good striker on FIFA. What are you talking about? Well, my stepdad is like a total moron and like an idiot and then embarrassing. Embarrassing maybe. The other two not so much. I mean, your dad's, I mean, not you, she says, pointing at Taylor. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know who my dad is. She grimaces.

But he goes, no, your, your dad's and in one case, uncle wanted to protect you from the knowledge of what's going on. Like, you don't remember this, but I do because I'm in my 30s. Oh, God, I feel old. But like when I was like five, all the sky changed from blue to red. Everything went fucking weird. And that's because your dad's like accidentally unleashed this weird chaos creature, this god called the doodler. Our dads turned the sky red?

Indirectly, kind of, yeah. Everybody thought that the world was ending for a while and everything seemed insane. But after a while, it seemed like, oh, actually, all that really changed was that the sky was turned to this weird color. Except people didn't know. People like me, she says, pointing at herself manically. I was on the internet all the time and I saw there were way more cryptid sightings. There were way more missing persons. The conspiracy theories were going nuts. And I knew something was going on. And that's why your dads hired me to work for them. Because I'm a fucking go-getter and I saw beyond the veil. I saw that something's fucking weird now. They recruited me from 8chan.

They were protecting this town from incursions by acolytes of the doodler. Like every so often there'll be an incursion and something will happen. And the doodlers like acolytes or people who are obsessed with the doodle, or maybe the doodle themselves. I don't really know, but something weird will show up and start fucking up people and trying to eat them or destroy them or whatever the hell. And,

they were the ones who stopped them. And if you don't stop them, then they're going to take over the town and eventually the world. So they were basically keeping the world all together, but they're gone now, but you're the best thing I have. So now you have to do their job. I'm sorry. I raised my hand. Yes. Lincoln. Uh,

Here's a problem I'm having. Maybe you can help me. One, you're an adult. So that means I should probably trust you and you're probably smarter than me. So that's good. But two, you're saying that in order for this to be true, my dad would have to lie. And my dad has never lied to me his entire life. So you see the predicament like that's not possible. Totally. Yeah. No, I get it, man.

What did your dad tell you about Santa? Oh, the first memory I have of Santa Claus is he sat me down and he explained to me that Santa is not physically real, but could be real. And then it was kind of up to my choice to decide whether or not I want to believe it and support my decision either way.

Well, shit. I didn't really care. You haven't told us. I mean, so where's our I need to see my dad. Where's where's my dad? Is my dad part of this? The video mentioned me. That's true. The video did say something about Taylor. Oh, yeah, it did.

And you're Taylor. Yeah. And you don't have a dad? Well, I mean, obviously I have a cool dad. I just don't know where he is. Oh, I don't know. I mean, maybe by researching this stuff going on with the doodler and all that stuff, you'll find your dad. I don't know. I got hired relatively recently. So you're saying we got to do a bunch of work and

And then maybe we'll be the ones to save the world. I'm saying saving the world is the work. She says, first, you're going to need these. And she hands each of you a badge with your name and a picture of you on it. And she says, at any time, those badges you have around your neck, they might vibrate. And that'll let you know that there's been an incursion and that you have to basically drop everything and stop it. Because if the doodler gets enough of a presence in this world or does enough fucked up shit, then a lot of people die.

I mean, we're just kids. So how about we just don't do it? How about we go to the cops to find our dads? There's got to be like grownups that do this stuff, right? There were. They were your dad. That was it? There were just our four dads? Your dad's had the power? Have your dads ever told you anything about daddy magic? No, my dad is totally lame. I just can't wrap my mind around the fact that the dude who is like

Weeping at like top six Steph Curry plays like he was like this really old NBA player, but he was able to play into his 80s because of some sort of. Fuck me. Anyways. And then he made all that money from that golf show. He's a miniature golf guy, right? Yeah, he may. He plays miniature golf and then curling and cornhole. So like he was a big member of the National Cornhole Federation. Anyways. Yeah. Yeah.

So you're telling me that same guy, Terry, is also like in all this like metal monster stuff? Yes.

Don't threaten me with respecting my stepdad, okay? Okay, fine. Our dads were adults, but there's other adults. Like, why don't we just go, like, Sheriff Johnson. Like, he's an adult. He's better than we are. You know the name of this sheriff? Yeah, he's a really nice guy. What do you mean? You guys don't do any work around the community? This is a town of, like, 50,000 people. I mean, good for you being involved in local politics, I guess. I don't know the name of our state senator. If you know the name of the sheriff, it's because he's definitely done something illegal.

No, Saturday's when we go clean up the park and the rivers. You guys don't do that? Did you say clean up the narc, narc? Okay, whatever, Scary. My point is, like, there's other adults that could do this. It's not about adults or not adults. It's about do they have the daddy magic. So your parents, if they didn't teach you about the doodly, they didn't teach you about daddy magic, but there's some magical energy that they have that's powered by, I don't know, love or, like, affection for your kid or your dad or whatever the fuck, and that'll allow them to... Ugh, boring. I don't like it either. I don't care. Oh, that's so sweet. Oh, I mean, my dad's probably the most powerful dad. Oh, God, shut up. So...

They could tell when an incursion happened and they could tell where it was. Like there was no technology other than just what was in their souls or hearts, I guess. And like, because you're their kids and because they all love you. And then I guess also you, Taylor, I don't know, maybe your dad loves you somewhere, wherever he is, but like maybe you'll know too when an incursion happened. Well, Ms. Hales, I saw spooky vision. I'm pretty sure my dad's in trouble. It sounds like this is related to that. So just point me where I got to go and we'll do it. We've got spirit. Yes, we do. As I like to say. So like, what do we do? Well,

This lady doesn't know anything. No, be quiet. You got to get it together, bro. Why are we even listening to you? My dad lied. That's like the only thing. Link. Taylor slaps Link. Ow. If this is the only way I'll meet my dad, then dang it, I'll do it. I don't know where you're getting that. This might not relate to your dad at all. I don't think this has anything to do with your dad. I really don't. But look, Link, it's crazy. There's a lot of stuff going on. I'm ready. I'm ready. Put me in, coach.

Link, Link, listen to me, man. Okay, let me try to fucking put this in soccer terms or something, right? So it's like either you can like sit on the sidelines and cry about it or you can step up for your team and your dad and get into some really dark, angsty shit like the rest of us. Yeah, no, I'm going to go on the field. I might just be crying while I'm on the field. Okay, that's fine. You can cry. Just, okay. Okay, so first thing we need to do probably is go to the pay window. Follow me.

So the room you enter is pretty much entirely empty except for the fact that there's a very large puddle on the other end of the room.

And for some reason, that's where your eyes go to first. Then as you raise your eyes to see what caused that puddle, you see a large wall that seems to be made entirely of raw meat that has a large hole in the middle that you with horror realize is a mouth and that there's saliva dripping from that mouth over sharp teeth with chapped lips and a big old tongue comes out and licks the floor and licks its lips and stuff and it goes, oh my God, it's face from Nick Jr. Oh no. Yeah, Nick Jr. the rat turned into that. Oh my God.

What? Yeah, that's right. Make sure you don't run it. His face alone survived and it turned into that wall. Oh, God. New meat, new meat. You will need this.

four pieces of paper come out and Agent Hales says, so we're at war. This is daddy's. And for some reason, in order to actually get any equipment, we have to buy it from the vending machine downstairs and it only accepts these dollars. I don't know. I don't know. I started working here like two years ago. I don't know. I'm still getting the hang of it. Two years is a long time to get it. It's a long time. Do you have any idea how much the average high schooler has to learn in two years, lady? Like, that...

Following on deaf ears, frankly. I was an assistant. I learned a lot about the work that they don't do, and I learned how to get away with doing as little work as possible. I don't understand why things work. Yeah, it was me and just those four guys, and they would leave, and I would just stay here and play whatever the future equivalent of Candy Crush is on my phone. No, I get it. Maybe you could have been learning during that time. Oh, fuck off!

You're my least favorite one. So anyway, these are daddy Warbucks. You need to hold on to these. I've made physical versions of these that I'm going to give you now. So we got to keep track of stuff? Yes, you can now keep track. You, the players in real life, will keep track of the stuff you have. Now we're going to go downstairs and I'm going to take you to the vending machine where there's like stuff that you can use for your, I guess, missions. Okay, follow me. Agent Hales takes you downstairs to a massive warehouse-like space. It is brightly lit, but from lights you can't see. It's like somebody turned on the Fulbright in a level designer. That's for nobody. That's for

It's like a big light box. It's like somehow like the walls are just light. Can you describe the level of anti-aliasing going on? Is there Z-buffering happening? The bow is turned all the way up. Is there fong shading? There's this very big, very brightly lit empty warehouse and in the middle of it is just a normal sized snack vending machine. Oh my god. Hey normal, that vending machine is exactly your size. Fuck you. Cut.

that out. No, that's good. That's going in. As you approach the vending machine, you actually see that like, oh, it's not really normal size. It's just kind of like far away. It's actually quite big. And looking at the vending machine. That's how perspective works right now. I know I'm explaining very basic human experiences to you. Just kidding. That one is weird.

way too big. There are a bunch of things that you can buy from this. There are brass, silver, and gold keys. There's also jeweled keys that seem to be pretty expensive. There are healing potions, there are weapons and armor, and there is a lockpick on the very bottom that seems to cost a lot. They all have different Daddy Warbuck amounts they take that I have put into our Discord. My God.

Okay, which one of these help us find our dads? Yeah, is there like a dad detector in here? What is this? So these keys, there's a dungeon beneath us full of both monsters that your dads have captured and also potentially useful items that they've captured, sometimes both in the same room. And those keys will open doors that lead to those things. That's where I was. Yes, that's exactly what you did, actually. You picked a lock instead of using a key, but if you want to get into one of those rooms without getting a curse, you use a key. Okay.

And as she says that, your badges all vibrate and come alive on your chest. You feel within you a surge of presumably what this woman referred to as daddy magic. You feel power well up within you and fill your entire body. And each of you in this moment become the Dungeons & Dragons character archetypes that you built into your sheets. Oh, hey.

You can feel yourself gain spells or abilities. Are you saying we have a mighty morphin' Power Rangers-ass moment right now? That's so wild. Yes. I would say Sailor Moon, but yeah. From our ID cards? Yes, basically coming from your ID cards. Like, you don't actually, like, turn into, like, a guy with armor and shit, but you can feel yourself get whatever. I turn into a teenager who thinks he's a cleric. Yeah, pretty much. Like, you can now, you know, use those spells that you have on your character sheets and stuff. What is everybody? What are you, Scary? I'm a warlock. Oh. Ooh.

So yeah, scary. You feel the dark magic of a patron god that gives you your dark powers and you feel that awaken within you and you become scary the warlock. Oh, can our ID cards like reflective? Like as you as it hits the light, it literally says warlock. Like that's like their code names for each other. Oh, warlock. Yeah, that's kind of cool. Oh, it looks like a call sign. I'm a paladin. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So you feel a good and just light welling up within you, Link, that

Fills you with the desire to protect and heal and help people. And that is the spirit of a paladin. Maybe you guys can call me pal, like short for paladin. Like, what's up, pal? I'm not doing that. Hey, pal. I'll call you pal. Normal looks down at his badge and sees the word cleric on there. We blast into Normal's POV and a light pierces through the clouds of his soul and fills him with beautiful light. And it's the spirit and it's the school spirit. And that's the spirit that he worships that brings his mighty powers forth. And then Taylor looks down at his badge and he's like, oh,

He's like, oh man, mine says park ranger. Oh, ranger. Where did he get the park from? Oh, it was a smudge. There was some gravy. So you feel within your soul the power of... Aragorn. Yeah, Aragorn ass bullshit. You feel being cool and the guy who's in the corner of the tavern in dark and you fucking have a hood over your head, like that whole fucking vibe, that shit, that's you. Kicking things, breaking toes, you know how it goes. You feel a ranger within you. And also...

After that wave of magic and dopamine has passed, you feel peril. You sense it in the air. You feel that at the San Dimas Elementary School, something is awry. You have an image of a child. Thank you, Fred. I was just trying to give a little bit. You see an image of a child. I look at Taylor. Was this like the vision you guys had?

No, we didn't really... I didn't make a dumb sound like that when I had my vision. It was a dumb sound. It sounds cool. This is the vision you do have. So you sense the elementary school and then you see a child who's wearing a shirt that has something kids like on it, on the shirt. And he's...

Paw Patrol. It's like I'm there. Yeah. Like Paw Patrol. The Paw Patrol reboot. The gritty Paw Patrol reboot. Paw Patrol Port of Call New Orleans. Yeah, there you go. There's Paw Patrol vending machines that are bigger than they first seem and kids in shirts. Didn't you used to listen to that podcast, Dungeons and Daddies? Yeah, the world building really took a nosedive. It was just too immersive. I felt like I couldn't extricate myself from the tapestry that they wove with their words. So,

So a kid wearing a Paw Patrol, a port called New Orleans shirt is crawling out. See, it's funny now that we've all done it. It's crawling out of a building and he looks up and you could see on his face that all these wrinkles, like he's really, really old. He has the body of a child, but he looks like he's 80. Like the Kira boy. Exactly like the kid from the movie. Like the kid from Akira. Oh my God.

And then that dissipates. And Agent Hales goes, what did you see? Did you see it? It didn't work? It was like a kid, like a kindergartner, but like was really old and looked like sick and like dying. Oh, OK, that's good. That's weird. That's not good. It's bad. It's bad. But it means that your ability to use daddy magic to locate weird doodler shit is working. So, yeah, that's that's an incursion. We have to like go. All I know is that the kids of San Dimas Elementary are the future kids of San Dimas High School.

Which means there is connected to the glory of our school as we are. So for future generations, for our school to prosper and also to, I guess, help get our dads back, we better get over there and see what's going on. So this is what my dad did all the time? Yeah, not all the time, all the time. Yeah, but you would go home and stuff.

If you're going to go out in the field, you might need some stuff. I don't know. The only thing I need is this right here. I said that Grant was an author, so he wrote one book as a librarian, and it's How to Be a Good Teenage Boy. Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah. There appears to be a real book here. The only thing I need is this. Oh, my God. I know my dad wrote something about being brave, and it seems like we've got to be brave right now. What does it say about bravery? Let's get pumped up here. It says...

Oh. It says you don't always have to be brave. It's okay to ask for help. Your dad sounds like a total pussy. Um...

Okay, well, May, really quick. So while we're doing this, first order of business as your boss, help search stuff about our dads while we go do this. And so hopefully when we come back, you got some more information. Okay, I can do that. That's a great idea. Yeah, can you do that? Don't just sit around and Google mangas that haven't been translated yet all day. Yes, I'll play Candy Crush. And play games on your phone.

That's the first order of business is the boss. I'm going to, I mean, you can't stop me from playing games on my phone. As your guys' boss, don't ever fucking talk to a woman that way.

I'm sorry, scary. In May, you better fucking get to work. Ladies, ladies. No, it actually. Yeah, scary. I'm OK with you. Actually, I feel a little bit more comfortable if you're the I don't want to be the boss. I don't want to be the boss. I'm the boss. I'm not the boss. I'm not the boss. I think you're the boss. Nobody.

gets to not be the boss. All four of you are the boss. So I slap the four daddy warbucks against the vending machine and I say, give me the rowdiest, raddest bunch of keys this money will buy. Okay. Also, are there any like good snacks in this bad boy? Like, are there like... Yes, there is one Snickers bar. How much is that? That one is six daddy warbucks. Wow.

Wow. Holy shit. So you put your four daddy warbucks against the vending machine, and rather than accepting them through the dollar slot, it just absorbs all four of them and spits out two brass keys. We can use these in the dungeon. Hey, team of teens, hands in the middle. Are you guys ready to do this? Yeah, yeah. Let's go. Let me just say real quick. Thanks, everybody, for gathering here today. Okay, we got to go. Lincoln starts running.

Are you going to take the elevator or the stairs? Stairs. I'm not going on that thing. Okay. So then as you go down the stairs, the floor directly beneath this one, you feel an incredible intelligence on the other side of that door. That is, Oh, I'm smart now. No, you don't, you don't become intelligent. You feel, you sense an intelligence on the other side of that door.

Why am I on the other side of the door? There's a sign on the door. You're not on the other side. The intelligence is on the other side. You're on this side. Clearly you don't have the intelligence. There's a sign on the door, next to the door that says whale. There's a sign that says dungeon that has an arrow pointing down. So if you want to go to the dungeon, you keep going down, but there's also a hyper-intelligent whale behind this door, Daryl.

I mean, Lincoln. I'm just cracking up. It's just a handwritten sign. It's not handwritten. It's official looking. That's even funnier for some reason. They're like, all right, we got to get this sign printed. We got to get a nice sign printed that says whale. I'm stuck between like, you gave me like the fire hose. You're like, run to the fire. Then as I'm running to the fire, you're like, by the way, there's a door that says whale on it. I'm just saying, you said I'm setting up the space. I'm being consistent.

about the way the space is built out. I'm telling you that there's a psychic hyperintelligent whale by this door. You don't have to talk to him. You just have to fucking know he's there. It's Alan Rickman

Rickman and Die Hard looking at like the list of things. He's like, it's built whale. I shouldn't go talk to it, but like it's also you explain that it's there. Do you want to do something with the whale? No, no. Okay. So you open the door to the dungeon from Dungeons and Daddies. You told us there's no way to move forward.

I'm trying to add momentum to this expository fire hose of information. You're the one who was like, stop the adventure to look at a whale ant. I didn't say look at it.

And I said it was there. You described it so alarmingly. If I came back after the mission was done, I went, oh, by the way, there's a whale there you didn't notice? That would be obscene. It's a big building. And I could have just taken a path not next to the whale. No, there's only one stairwell up or down. So what do you want to do? You want to spend the keys? You want to go rescue the kids? What the fuck do you want to do? I say we use these keys and let's go save some kindergartners. We got two keys and some old kindergartners. I say we blow these keys into some fucking hot lock.

Yeah, let's do it. The dust in your smell is very, very old. She goes, yeah, this is Raighten's dungeon where we keep all of our weird shit. So yeah, go for it, kids. It's kind of like a storage space. Who wants to open the door? I'll do it. All right. So you are going to pick one of these cards and we'll see what's inside. And then I'll roll to see if there's a monster inside that room as well. This one.

I rolled a two on my monster table, which means that the starve to death corpse of a lizard man is in there. You're saying lizard men are real. I'm, I'm pretty unfazed by anything I'm seeing at this point. So I'm just going to take this later. You guys want to just go in and get the thing and bring it out. I take the lizard man corpse. I throw it off of the, like, Oh my God. I clear it out. All right. Uh, yeah, you hear a clatter to the ground where it shatters. Um,

And yeah. So what item did you find inside this room? Dust my hands and I go, it's called die another day. You roll a D 20 and find out how you die. You can't share the result with anyone. Lower rolls are worse. Obviously, no matter what happens, the vision you see must come to pass period.

Not that you two can alter what you see. What the fuck? That's so horrible. Put that away. Okay, let's just not use that. That's great. Let's don't use it. Wait, so you have to pick it up? Like, how does it work? You have to choose to use it.

Damn. So what is this object? Like, what does it look like? It is a magic D20 that when you touch it, you can feel that this is what it does. That if you choose to roll it, it will show you how you die and will lock that death into fate forever. What the fuck? Holy shit. I hate that. This is the scariest thing I've ever seen. I very gently set it down. Yeah.

Do you want to just leave it there? You don't have to take it. This seems like not a good thing to have, guys. No, it's not. But maybe we give it to somebody else or something. Like, maybe it's worth something. I mean, yeah, maybe we'll meet someone who wants to know how they're going to die. Just wrap it up in, like, bubble wrap or something. I'll put it in my go bag.

So do you want to use your other key? Yeah. I hope we get something more useful than that. I think that would be useful. Just so you know, the brass keys, the ones that are cheapest, tend to be things like this that are fucking wild and weird. Or maybe you can find a clever way to use these, but they don't have an immediately obvious use. The things that require silver keys are tactical. They are more useful, but they're not like direct violence. Well, we should be known that early.

We just have to save some kindergartners. And then the gold key will get you things that are just straight up. They're called violent items. They will just do damage and hurt things and stuff. I like that. So you're going to open another brass door and I'm going to roll to see if there's a monster inside. Okay, normal. This one looks good over here. This door is giving me a good energy. I feel good about this one. 18. So inside there is a living ancient gold dragon. Oh, cool. There's a dragon in here. Wow. Oh my God.

massive massive room the chaperone dragon is the mascot over there guys take a look at this lincoln runs back up runs away is this a nice dragon uh roll perception

I got a natural 20. So with a natural 20, you can tell that all this dragon likes to do is protect treasure. It's friendly to anybody who's not coming after its treasure, and it can be easily swayed if you can give it something that it believes is more valuable than what it is protecting. Hey, dragon, you want to know how you die? Do that. Roll persuasion. 13. All right, I'll roll, I don't know, wisdom saving throw against it.

It also got a 13. Damn. Do you want double or nothing, dragon? How would I double or nothing knowing how I die? Lincoln, realizing this dragon is not dangerous, slowly peeks his head around the corner. I just don't even know why we need to persuade you. We were all arguing about which one of us should take it because if you knew how you die, that's pretty great because you would know. Let me ask you this. Do you know someone else who would want to maybe know that?

Because this dice freaks me out. Plus, think about how hilarious it would be if someone comes in here and tries to steal it from you, and then they roll it, and then they're going to get got killed by an ancient dragon for stealing their treasure. That's like a perfect ironic trap. I feel like that's convincing enough. You don't have to roll again. You were right on the cusp. You tied. So that's good. So he goes, all right, give it over. And he takes the dice from you, and he hands you. Are you going to roll it? What? Are you going to roll it?

Do I want to roll it? Oh, no. I don't know. Let me think. He's going to roll a wisdom saving throw to see if it's something he wants to roll or not. So 10. Dad in the middle. I can go either way. Right in the middle. I could go either way. I could maybe roll it. I could maybe not. Now it's going to be a 50-50. If it's evens, I'm going to roll it. If it's odds, I'm not going to roll it. I guess you don't have to decide right now. It's evens. I'm going to roll it. Okay. Daddy's looking for old-age-ish beds surrounded by his loved ones. Here we go. Here we go. Gold dragons have big beds? Oh, man.

16. All right. So he sees something and he goes, nice. Damn. Pretty good. Okay, so can we have like whatever here? Yeah, so here you go. And he hands you. What does he hand you? I got the ring of invisibility, but also blindness.

A small glass ring that when worn grants the wearer complete indivisibility at the cost of complete blindness. Both effects remain active as long as the ring is worn and become inactive upon removal. Ooh, that's clever. It's by Eli Goldwag. Thanks, Eli. Wow. Looks like we're all ready to go. But, like, you know, we need a ride. Yeah, sure. You can take the company van, I guess. Oh, none of us can drive. Can you drive? You can drive? Scary, can you drive? Like...

Legally? Yeah. I mean, of course. What other type is there? Illegally? Yes, I can drive. Okay. So, Link, you notice when you head out to the parking lot that your dad's van is here. And as Scary presses the key fob, it lights up. So the company car is essentially your dad's van. How did he get to the airport? Kill me. It's a minivan. It's so safe. What are you talking about? It's got lots of room and there's snacks in the back?

Yeah, well, a ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not where ships get laid. What? Okay, well, are you going to drive it? Yeah. Don't dent it. Okay, no righty-tighty. Let's see here. All right, you guys like fucking metal, right? What type of van is it, Anthony? So, yeah, you see your dad's Nissan Quest. You want it black? What color do you want?

it what colors did the Nissan Quest come in that's the real question well I mean what this new one yeah what color did it come in in 2040 or wherever we are no but it got discontinued this is a classic car this is a classic this is like the dad in Ferris Bueller's Day Off with his Ferrari that he washes with a diaper it's definitely like Grant takes this thing who do you love you love a van a gross beige color is pretty good

Yeah. Like champagne. It's like a champagne. Sandstone. Your dad's champagne Nissan Quest. It's still got all the custom trim from 2016, including like a built-in PlayStation 3. Oh, sweet. We can play Killzone. Because yeah, this is a pre-self-driving car car as well. But also like out of character, like how much has Scary driven? Probably not at all. At all? No.

But I just rolled a 17. Yeah, boy! You get there with really no problem. Yeah. 17's better than I drive on a daily basis, and I'm an adult. The car, like, lurches, like, into the... There's, like, a tense moment where, like, a red light, like, a cop stops next to us and, like, looks at us, and we all look at him, and the cop's, like, gives us a little, like, shrug, and then just, like, drives off, like, oh, my God, that was so close, guys. Dude, we almost got arrested. We almost got arrested.

So you head to an elementary school. You head to the elementary school, the Sandimas Elementary School. The exterior of the school seems to be pretty normal because it's Saturday. There are basically no cars in the parking lot, but you can hear activity within. So by normal, it looks like a school at 6 p.m. So it's like nobody's here. Yes. But you hear a heavy breathing inside. You hear...

beeping you hear a bit of moaning you hear the whirring of machinery and a rhythmic like stomping is there are there any windows we can look at yeah there's like you know how like in schools they have those little like windows inset into the door yeah in schools they have windows like it will use his incredibly tall head what can you see his tall body on the top of it

From the angle you're at, you can see a very long line of kindergartners that is leading up to what looks like a opaque phone booth with a monitor attached to it that have so many wires coming and going from it that it hurts your eyes to even look at them.

On the other end of the room, you can see something running on a treadmill at a blistering speed. The something is vaguely humanoid, but the more that you look at it, the less that humanoidness becomes vague and the more it becomes just like incorrect. At first blush looks like a person, but the more you look at it, the less person-like it looks. The veins on its neck are bulging, they're about to burst.

Sweat drips down what you assume is her skin in waterfalls that splash the ground and with a hiss evaporate into the air. One of the veins in her forehead pulses bigger and bigger until it bursts, the open vein flapping in the air like an untended garden hose. Oh, God. Her tongue lashes up and lassos the end of the vein, guiding it into her mouth where she sucks the fluid out of it, rehydrating herself as the vein slowly grows flaccid. What the fuck? She spits out the vein and the vein retreats back into her head, sliding under her forehead skin like a blanket.

She breathes heavily, horrible breaths so bassy that you can feel them in your chest. You realize now that's what that moaning was, was her heavy, horrible, bassy breaths. If I print out this description, will you sign it for me? Ha ha ha ha!

She's also, her fingers are tapping at three different sets of keyboards that are mounted to her treadmill, and the wires are trailing from those keyboards to the phone booth. Ghostly white. He goes, there's just a teacher. He's watching TV in there. We should probably, we should just go. All right, let's go in. All right, sounds good. All right, yeah. There's just a teacher. I open the door. Oh, God, no, everybody. Okay, do you all go in? Yeah, we just bust in. It's just a teacher. It's a safe adult. Okay. Okay.

There's a monster! As he opens the door, he's like, there's a monster. As you step in, two things happen. A, Lincoln says there's a monster. B, you see all the things I just mentioned to Lincoln. And C, the doors slam shut behind you and are barred. There's a line of kindergartners leading towards this phone booth. And on the other end of the phone booth,

there are a bunch of old people just sitting on the ground, just looking very tired and looking very sad. So the woman on the treadmill is looking at the monitor on the phone booth, and on the screen, you see an old woman who is huffing and puffing. She's running as fast as she can to what looks like a bank and cashes a check.

And the teller goes, hey, congratulations, madam. Your balance is now $1 million. And the old woman looks into the camera as if she's being filmed. She goes, time. The woman on the treadmill presses a large red button on the treadmill. And a number appears on a large electronic board that folds out from behind her. And it says 68 years, two months, three days, 12 hours, 34 seconds. And the woman, the runner, looks at this and she goes, okay, so that means you are in...

seventh place, subpar, you will remain this age. And she presses a button on one of her keyboards and the phone booth spits out the old woman that you saw on the monitor. The old woman goes and sits down with a bunch of other old people that also look like kindergartners. And the runner, she goes, you're going to sit there until this entire marathon is over. Now, who else wants to speed run life to see who gets a million dollars quicker than anyone else?

It's just a matter of time till we make it.

We gotta pick ourselves up and say, not today, no, not today. Before tomorrow makes the air we can't change. We gotta pick ourselves up, not today, no, not today. We need your sorrow, come back tomorrow.

Dungeons and Daddies is Matt Arnold as Lincoln Wilson. Anthony Burch is our DM. Will Campos as Normal Oak. Beth May as Scary Marlow. And myself, Freddie Wong, as Taylor Swift. The theme song is On My Way by Maxton Waller. And there's a full version available on his band camp. Take a look at the episode description for a link. It's pay what you want.

Brian Fernandez is our content producer. Ashley Nicolette is our community manager. Esther Ellis is our lead editor. Travis Reeves provides additional editing. Robin Rapp is our transcriber. Special thanks this week to our patrons Eli Goldwag and May Hales for providing names for characters and items. This show is supported by a Patreon full of cool cats. Folks like Nicholas Smith, Dylan Gerald, Gigoro, Derek Robinson, Logical Nonsense, NotBlueFalcon, James Donaldson, Alex...

If you want to support the show, the best way to do it is to join our Patreon at patreon.com slash dungeonsanddads. There's tons of bonus content. We do an after show where we talk about each episode the week after release. We have a Discord where we do live listens. There's bonus videos.

There's bonus audio. There's bonus multimedia, including two standalone one-shot series in the Call of Cthulhu and the Star Wars RPG system. We also just hit a Patreon stretch goal, so we'll be doing a cutthroat Regency Adventure miniseries featuring four eligible bachelorettes who must use their wits

to attract a worthy husband before their rivals do called sons and sons ability. That Patreon stretch goal will be available to every patron at every level. So head on over to patreon.com slash dungeons and dads to learn more. Our website is dungeonsanddaddies.com. Our store is store.dungeonsanddaddies.com. There's a bunch of new merch in there if you haven't checked it out in a while. Twitter is at dungeonsanddads.

Subreddit is Dungeons and Daddies. Welcome everyone to season two. Our next episode comes out Tuesday, February 8th. We do new episodes every other week. And by the way, the off weeks are where all the Patreon content goes. Just saying. Thanks for listening and we'll see you in two weeks. We gotta pick ourselves up and say, not today, no, not today. Don't need to sorrow, come back tomorrow. I

We don't have to talk about it. Great. That's what my diary's for. Not that anybody's allowed to read it. But if they ever did, oh, what they'd find. What would we find? Like fanfic? No.