Interactive Storytime - Season 1

1.

You are standing on a busy city street. Traffic is rushing past you in both directions, each vehicle whipping up a short, sharp burst of wind, punctuated by the sound of tires rolling along tarmac. The scent of wet pavement reaches your nose, as well as many other parts of your body which are unable to appreciate smells. The whole concept is just lost on them.

A. Walk North
B. Walk South
C. Check Inventory = 6 votes
D. Save & Quit = 1 vote
E. Check Surroundings = 5 votes
F. Squat = 8 votes

2.
>>Squat
You are slightly lower down now.
There are no notable changes in the situation.
Time passes by as you rest on the balls of your feet, legs folded in a squat. The smell of wet pavement is stronger now, seeping into your nostrils along with the new additions of soggy newspaper, discarded cigarette butts and half a chip. It doesn’t take long for your thighs to start burning with the exertion, so you start to bob up and down slightly, determined to keep squatting but seeking respite with at least a small amount of motion. The bob is slow at first, but starts to build momentum, bouncing up and down on the knees. You can’t help but carry on, the rush of your majestic oscillations taking over your mind and filling your heart with adrenaline. You feel like a god of being close to the ground, a titan of folded legs, a giant in the realm of bending. Passers-by give you looks ranging from concerned to terrified to furious, but you don’t care. Your bounces start to grow larger, more violent, more bombastic. But then reality bites back as a cold, hard sensation meets your buttocks. In your hubris you’ve touched your bottom to the wet pavement.

Trousers gain modifier: Wet Arse. -2 Charisma.
Underpants gain modifier: Wet Arse. -2 Self-Confidence

A. Stand Up = 3 votes
B. Cover Bottom With Hands = 3 votes
C. Check Inventory = 6 votes
D. Save & Quit
E. Worry About The Ironing = 1 vote
F. Pick Up Soggy Newspaper = 7 votes

3.
>> Pick Up Soggy Newspaper

Feeling humiliated by your damp rump your gaze falls instinctively to the floor, coming to rest on the source of the wet-newspaper smell. It looks like it has been there for some time, doing its best to absorb the previous rainfall but finding itself to be outmatched. You’re unable to account for why, but you take pity on the paper and have the irresistible urge to pick it up.
The damp sheets are cold to the touch and partially fall apart under your delicate grip. With some careful effort you manage to peel it off the pavement hold in front of yourself, still squatting. The addition of a paper to your squat results in the unfortunate impression that you might be relieving yourself.
An elderly woman stops to glare at you, affronted by the person squatting on the street and clutching a soaked mess of ruined paper to themselves as if it were a baby.

A. Glare Back to Assert Dominance = 2 votes
B. Check Elderly Woman’s Inventory = 4 votes
C. Stand Up and Walk Away North
D. Remain in Squat and Crab-walk Away South = 1 vote
E. Read the Paper, Unabashed
F. Throw Newspaper at Elderly Woman = 3 votes

4.
>> Check Elderly Woman’s Inventory
Looking down at the soggy paper you’ve claimed, you realise that there are hidden treasures everywhere if only you spare the time to look. The elderly woman’s gaze, you realise, might not just be the judgement of what she doesn’t understand, it could equally be envy for the fine paper hanging limp in your hands. And if that was the case, then she too might have recognised precious items in her travels, harbouring them for herself. Your mind, such as it is, is made up. Cramming the newspaper roughly into your trousers, you crab-lunge with alarming speed towards the elderly woman, hands clapping like fleshy claws and eyes fixed upon hers. Plunging one fist into her handbag and the other into the pocket of her cardigan you begin to rummage blindly for whatever you might be able to find. Despite your physical advantages, your chosen stance has taken a terrible toll on your thighs, and you are unable to resist as the elderly woman pushes you away and starts to scuttle off. But you learned what you needed to, and claimed a prize.

Elderly Woman’s Inventory:
Boiled Sweets (6)
Keys
Notebook
Radish (2)
Soggy Newspaper (6)
Sand (1312)
Successful Strike: +1 Self-confidence
Item acquired: Stolen Elderly Woman’s Lipstick
Successful Theft: +1 Duplicity

A. Attempt to Apply the Lipstick = 3 votes
B. Attempt to Apply the Lipstick to the Elderly Woman = 6 votes
C. Throw the Lipstick into the Road = 1 vote
D. Read the Paper = 1 vote
E. Stand Up Triumphantly, Holding Prize Aloft = 4 votes
F. Attempt an Action-Hero One-Liner, Having Vanquished your Foe = 6 votes

5.
>> Attempt an Action-Hero One-Liner, Having Vanquished your Foe
>> Attempt to Apply the Lipstick
VICTORY! You clutch the stolen elderly woman’s lipstick in one wet, slightly sandy fist and fix the back of her head with your best triumphant stare. As she totters away in confused horror you recognise this as the appropriate opportunity not only for gloating, but for humiliating her in defeat. You need to deliver the final blow whilst unleashing a devastatingly witty one-liner, summarising and revelling in her plight.
There’s no time to think; your quarry is making good her escape. Keeping close to the ground in your chosen squat you give a low-speed chase, crab-running and holding the lipstick forwards like a cosmetic rapier. The sheer determination you feel spurs you on through aching knees and thighs which have started to go distinctly numb. In a few hip-grinding strides you have closed the gap, another and you’re ahead, blocking her path with lipstick raised.
“Don’t run away! Lip-stick around!” you cry with manic fervour, as you squat-leap upwards and hook the elderly woman into a headlock. Her reflexes prove too poor for your lightning assault and she is unable to resist your grapple. Jerking her head around in futility she can only watch with wide eyes as you swipe the lipstick inexpertly across the space you define loosely as her mouth. Favouring speed over accuracy, and suffering all the more for her wriggling, you complete the job in mere seconds and release the headlock.
You look with swelling pride at your masterpiece, unable to distinguish your own handiwork from that of a professional makeup artist.
The elderly woman’s cheeks and jaw are more than 50% coated in bright red lipstick. The lips are largely untouched.

Artistic Genius: +1 Self-confidence
Battle Frenzy: -1 Serenity
Gloating: -1 Contrition
Sick Burn: +1 Sass

A. Attempt to High-5 the Elderly Woman = 7 votes
B. Make Good your Escape With the Lipstick = 2 votes
C. Apologise Unreservedly for your Brutish Behaviour = 1 vote
D. Apologise Insincerely for your Brutish Behaviour = 1 vote
E. Attempt to Stand Up = 1 vote
F. Ask the Elderly Woman if she ‘Got’ your Gloat = 2 votes

6.
>> Attempt to High-5 Elderly Woman
Riding the high spirits of your successful debut as a beautician, you feel a desire to celebrate that’s just as strong as your previous urge to humiliate a foe. The elderly woman is staring at you with disbelief and confusion, red-faced from exertion and the thorough painting you gave her momentarily before. She’s not your first choice of partner in celebration but, you reason to yourself, any port in a storm.
You raise one open palm into the air between you and the elderly woman, who flinches backwards in fear of a third assault.
You wait for a few moments, and then encourage her with an enthusiastic “Up top!”, looking pointedly at your own hand.
The elderly woman stares at you for a number of seconds, then takes the opportunity to snatch her lipstick back from your hand and start fleeing again.
You squat still, holding your hand up expectantly and convincing yourself that she is simply preparing herself for a run-up. As she grows smaller in the distance you start to wonder how much extra high-fiving force she’ll get from the additional run.
Time passes, and you become aware of the cold wetness on the rear of your trousers again. The soggy newspaper you crammed into your waistband has been wrung out like a sponge and soaked an additional side of your underpants. There’s still no sign of the high-5 you requested, nay earned. With a heavy sensation in your stomach you start to suspect that the elderly woman might not intend to turn around. Part of you tries to argue that she might just have forgotten how to rotate, but your heart’s not in it.
You have formally, officially, undeniably, been left hanging.

Left Hanging: -1 Self-Confidence, -1 Charisma
Item lost: Stolen Elderly Woman’s Lipstick
A. Mournfully Check Inventory = 1 vote
B. Dejectedly Attempt to Stand Up, Not Longer Deserving of the Noble Squat = 5 votes
C. Morosely Assess the Wetness of your Underpants = 3 votes
D. Shamefully Crab-walk South = 9 votes
E. Despondently Check Stats
F. Forlornly Read the Paper = 1 vote

7.
>>Shamefully Crab-walk South
Shame overcomes you. Your prize, so briefly held and only once enjoyed, was stolen back trivially easily. Your bottom grows cold and uncomfortable in a fitting metaphor for how the rest of you feels. This street was once so full of possibilities, harkening back into pre-history when you stood tall with straight legs, but that all seems terribly long ago now. There’s nothing for you here but the promise of increasingly wet underpants.
Your head hangs low and you start to crab-walk away to the South, placing huge strain on your already tired knees. Despite the melancholic sorrow in your heart, you still raise your hands above your head and clack them like claws; you still have some pride left, and won’t perform this motion half-heartedly.
Every step brings a fresh burn in your quads, which have been carrying your whole bodyweight for what feels like forever. Travelling sideways, as dictated by years of crustacean tradition, and filled with self-pity at the loss of your cosmetics, you fail to look where you are going. A loud, plasticky bang meets your ears as you feel your shoulder slam into something hard but slightly flexible. You crash into the automatic door of a supermarket, which failed to open quickly enough for you to enter.
You have discovered that the street runs from East to West.
You are currently blocking the doorway of the supermarket, still idly clapping your hands like a crab.

A. Read the Paper = 1 vote
B. Assess Ease of Looting the Supermarket = 6 votes
C. Stand Up, Maintaining Crab-arms = 7 votes
D. Check for Traps = 2 votes
E. Forward Roll = 3 votes
F. Check Stats

8.
>>Stand Up, Maintaining Crab-arms
>>Assess Ease of Looting the Supermarket (Bonus Action)
Squatting in the supermarket doorway, arms raised above your head as makeshift pincers, you recognise that should you wish to purchase anything you’ll need to be able to see what’s on the shelves. It then occurs to you that purchasing would require money, but looting would require only gumption and a clear escape route. Your eyes dart around from your low vantage point and do not see any security guards in the area, nor an alarm panel by the door. You assess the looting potential as ‘adequate, but dependent on immaculate sleight of hand and well-chosen actions’. Making sure not to draw attention to yourself would also help and squatting shoppers, in your experience, are ALWAYS the centre of attention. With the weight of two good reasons you decide that, although it has served you well, the time has come to end the squat rise up to your full height once more.
You close your eyes and grit your teeth, taking increasingly deep breaths to steel yourself for the effort you know is coming. Whatever nerves you had in your legs are long since numb, aside from the thighs which blaze still with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. Keeping your arms up to summon whatever support the crab gods, should there be any, can offer you, you start to push away from the ground.
Before you have risen by even one inch it becomes clear that this will not be happening. It’s not that the pain is too great to push through, that your knees will buckle, or even that you’re having second thoughts; your muscles simply have nothing left to give.
Improvising, you use one mighty claw to grasp the edge of the doorway and start to pull yourself up instead of relying on your treacherous legs. Immediately you snap your other claw onto the doorframe and re-double your efforts. Working together like a single entity, which they are, your arms and legs manage to overcome the one-inch barrier. A brief flash of hope passes through your mind as you feel yourself rising, only to be snatched away when your legs buckle underneath you. You collapse onto your already wet bottom, claws still held high.
Several minutes and many more attempts pass by as you struggle to regain your footing. Not contented with rendering your own legs useless with an eternal squat, you persist with the additional handicap of keeping your hands snapping above your head at all times. You try sliding your back up the doorframe but keep losing purchase and toppling to either side. You try a forward roll to land on your feet but there’s insufficient space in the doorway. Finally you roll onto your knees and, using your forehead as an additional point of contact with the ground, doorway and other shoppers trying to enter, you manage to stand up.
Panting heavily you feel the blood rushing back into your legs. Quickly you wish it would stop, as all your furious nerves turn back on, and turn on you.

A. Enter Supermarket and Scope for Loot = 1 vote
B. Exit Supermarket and Track the Elderly Woman = 2 votes
C. Read the Newspaper with Crab-arms = 1 vote
D. Deposit Newspaper Among the Groceries = 1 vote
E. Search for Rotisserie Counter to Dry your Trousers = 10 votes
F. Squat = 1 vote

9.
>> Search for Rotisserie Counter to Dry your Trousers
The world seems different up here. You’d nearly forgotten what it was like to see above bin-height. Once again experiencing the luxury of not having the wet rear of your trousers held taut against you, you vow to never go back to such a lamentable happenstance. The trousers must be dried.
You think to yourself about how it would be possible to achieve the requisite drying. Briefly you consider squatting back down in the street, but since that was the cause of all of your troubles in the first place, and understanding that if you go down again you might never be able to get back up, you disregard that notion. You wonder if the elderly woman might be sufficiently absorbent to dry you out, but remember that she has already bested you in combat once, and you might catch treachery from touching her again; the fact she left you hanging still stings. Refocusing yourself on the interior of the supermarket, you wonder if removing the soggy paper from your trousers might stop it soaking through your underpants. It would be safe enough nestled among the aubergines for a short while and you could pick it up later using a bag-for-life. But no-one should be left behind, not even wet paper.
You don’t know if there is a towelling section in this supermarket to dry your bottom against, but the smell of cooking chicken reaches you; there is a rotisserie, and that means there is warmth. Bingo.
You attempt to stride purposefully into the supermarket, but every muscle in your legs has pins and needles and your thighs are still in heavy protest. The best you can manage is a slow, shuffling stagger punctuated by whimpers with every footfall. It feels like wading through a pit of superheated thorns as you force yourself onwards past the fruits, weave through the root vegetables, and pass by the fresh herbs. You stop for a rest by the chilled meats, and then press on again.
Beyond the ready meals you see the deli counter, complete with orange-glowing rotisserie at the end; the promised land of de-humidified buttocks. Making efforts to look as inconspicuous as possible and stifling the whimpers into a quiet, muffled groan, you shuffle across to the rotisserie. The assistant behind the counter asks “Can I help you?” but you avoid eye contact in the hope that they will forget they noticed you. You turn your back to the counter and proceed to lean your buttocks on the heated glass. The window is slightly too high, causing you to tip-toe for adequate surface contact, but the discomfort is outweighed by the heat infusing the rain-slick seat of your pants. “Please don’t do that.” The assistant says, but you pretend not to hear. You don’t know how long your legs will last like this, but right now you find it hard to care.

A. Push Harder into the Glass for More Heating = 2 votes
B. Ask the Assistant to Turn the Heat Up = 2 votes
C. Scope for Loot from your Warm Vantage Point = 4 votes
D. Read the Paper with Luxurious Heating = 3 votes
E. Take the Opportunity to Check Inventory and Stats = 1 vote
F. See How Far you can Throw your Shoes = 5 votes

10.
>> See How Far you can Throw your Shoes
As a realistic, down-to-earth kind of person, you appreciate that the rotisserie window will take some time to dry off the seat of your trousers. Your mind drifts to ways you might be able to pass the time and, naturally, you start to wonder how far you could throw your shoes. You’re faintly aware of the assistant saying something to you but you’ve not paid attention to them yet and you’re not going to start now.
Lowering your arms for the first time since scuttling towards the supermarket door you pull off your left shoe with some considerable difficulty. As the tight leather pulls at the top of your foot and grinds against your heel you start to consider that unlacing them first might have been a good idea. But you’re no quitter, and are determined to finish what you’ve started.
The tussle between you and your shoe causes a lot of motion around the rest of your body, especially since you balancing precariously on the tip-toes of just one leg which is already incredibly tired. Your wet trouser bottom is sliding this way and that across the rotisserie window, leaving wet streaks of dirty pavement water wherever it passes. A cleaner pair of trousers might have polished this window to a mirror sheen, but your current apparel is not equipped for such a task.
Finally you succeed in freeing your left foot from its leathery prison. With a satisfied sigh, you place it gingerly on top of the rotisserie counter, still being careful to avoid the assistant’s gaze, and begin fighting your right shoe. This time, like a coward, you undo the laces first.
Standing on both legs again you are now armed with two aerodynamic shoes. You take one in each hand, weighing them up and rotating them to search for the best throwing grip. Eventually you settle for a hand around the sole, with the open top facing outwards as the vanguard. You swing both arms backwards simultaneously, knocking them into the deli counter as you do so, and then unleash an awkward double-throw. Several shoppers in front of you duck reflexively when they see you begin your barrage.
The right-shoe sails for a moderate distance before crashing into a display of yoghurts in the dairy aisle. Most of them simply crumple and absorb the impact, but a few large pint-pots are dislodged and hit the ground hard. A spray of white dairy erupts over the floor.
The left-shoe, much to your own surprise, sails out with more power and accuracy. It surpasses the distance of your right shoe and comes to a rest in a microwave-ready shepherd’s pie, the heel easily puncturing the film lid and sinking slowly into the mashed potato depths. You take an increased amount of pleasure in this, because the shepherd’s pie in question was in somebody’s trolley. Somehow, they fail to notice.
Overall, you are impressed with yourself.

Clean-up in Aisle 5: -1 contrition
Impressive Shot: +1 Self-Confidence
Equipment Lost: Shoes

A. Shout at the Trolley Owner to Return your Shepherd’s Pie Shoe = 5 votes
B. Ask a Nearby Shopper to Retrieve your Yoghurt Shoe
C. Assess Wetness of Underpants = 3 votes
D. Take the Opportunity to Check Inventory and Stats = 4 votes
E. Ask Nearby Shoppers for Information on the Elderly Woman = 2 votes
F. Offer a Nearby Shopper your Soggy Newspaper = 4 votes

11.
>> Shout at the Trolley Owner to Return your Shepherd’s Pie Shoe
Whatever the trolley owner is thinking about it must be incredibly interesting. After all, there’s no way they could fail to notice that you’ve just remotely stamped in their dinner unless they were VERY intent on something else. To your horror you notice that the somewhat dowdy gentleman pushing the trolley is taking it farther away and will soon round the corner, taking your potatoey shoe with him and into the unknown.
You decide that action is necessary, but have no intention of abandoning your personal drying facility yet.
“WAIT! STOP! I NEED MY SHOE BACK! IT’S IN YOUR SHEPHERD’S PIE!” You bellow at him, cupping one claw around your mouth and leaving the other aloft. The nearby shoppers who had been forced to dodge your bombardment efforts face you with a mixture of bewilderment and annoyance, but not a trace of pity or understanding. They were looking at you, a person who, by no fault of their own, was about to lose a shoe and they seemed to feel nothing at all.
The gentleman pushing the trolley turns his head for a moment to look at the source of the shouting and sees an enthusiastic set of gesticulations coming from the deli counter. He decides that he must have misheard what was shouted, because shepherd’s pie was no place for a shoe; everyone knew that the pie of the cobbler was steak and ale.
Disregarding the shout as something which needn’t involve him, he continues past the end of the aisle and rounds the corner into the Badlands of the bakery section.

A. Give Chase via Yoghurt Shoe = 4 votes
B. Give Chase Without Yoghurt Shoe = 1 vote
C. Blame the Deli Counter Assistant for Losing your Shoe = 3 votes
D. Throw the Soggy Newspaper at the Deli Counter Assistant = 3 votes
E. Rally Support Among Nearby Shoppers and Lead a Coup = 7 votes
F. Console Yourself by Licking Up Spilled Yoghurt = 4 votes

12.
>> Rally Support Among Nearby Shoppers and Lead a Coup
You can only watch as your left shoe disappears from sight, mostly because you refused to do anything else about it. You look to the yoghurty mess of your right shoe, then down to your exposed socks, and then back to the yoghurt. Try as you might to work out a way forwards, you know that one shoe cannot cover both feet. The supermarket has stolen the very footwear from you and left you in this lamentable situation, and the rotisserie has barely dried you off at all. To make matters worse, you’re uncomfortably aware of the deli counter assistant still bleating away in your ear.
In front of you is a group of shoppers looking angry and distressed. It’s obvious to you that they are feeling just as defeated and downtrodden as you are. Making just one person like you suffer for their entertainment was bad enough, but to do it to everyone and for them to keep coming back? It boggles you mind.
You close your eyes and take a deep breath. The crimes of the supermarket this time are too much to forgive. Their despotic empire must be brought to its knees.
“Peasants of the supermarket!” you shout, acknowledging that you know what they are. “Hear my words! Are you sick of being pushed around by these supermarket goons? Are you tired of being forced to queue at a single checkout, progressing at an item per day, whilst six more sit idle?”
You look across their faces. Many are incredulous, probably wracked with pain at those awful recollections and unable to process the idea of speaking out against the titans of grocery.
“I entered this supermarket as a noble crustacean with two shoes and a dream! Now I stand here with a wet bottom and no shoes, being forced cool off this rotisserie window with my icy behind for the pleasure of standing in my socks.” You preach, embellishing the truth to the point of outright fiction. Every emphatic argument you make is accentuated with a point or clack of your claws. “And I am not the only one who has been made persecuted. Not a minute ago I saw a man with a shoe in his shepherd’s pie! A shoe! And still he left to purchase it, because he knows that the store manager will unleash a terrible wrath if the poor man dared to speak up.”
“Look to aisle 5, and see the dangerous yoghurt spillage they have allowed to remain! Any one of us could slip and fall, injuring ourselves terribly. Do they care? Do you need to ask? Ignore if you must, but know that it could be you!” You point to a man holding a basket of vegetables. “Yes, you! Ugly vegetable man! Or you, frumpy soup lady! Or even you, haggard old witch!” Your claw points from shopper to shopper in front of you.
Murmurs run through the crowd, cunningly disguised by your co-conspirators to look like they were scared of, repelled by, or angry at you. They are clearly experienced guerrillas.
“They make us stand here, acting as human-cooling with damp trousers for their fat-cat rotisserie machines, while they sit in their ivory tower with dry underpants and a shoe per foot! When was the last time you saw the store manager with a wet newspaper crushed into his waistband?!” You shout, pointing at the damp paper cresting over your trousers. “Never, that’s when.”
“Rise up with me! Let us take this store back for us. And for our children!” Your eyes widen as you mention children and you nod your head leadingly, hoping that it will make the shoppers follow suit and agree. “We will storm their opulent “Staff Room”, redistribute the wealth from the warehouse, and burn the cereals aisle to the ground! For justice! For 2 for 1s! For my shoes!”
Finally removing your bottom from the rotisserie window you clack your claws aggressively and sprint deeper into the shop, knowing for sure that your people will follow. Unfortunately your ravaged legs are unable to lead, and your sprint deteriorates immediately back into the wincing, whimpering shuffle you had previous adopted. But you are still the leader of a rag-tag band of shoppers, and the time of the revolution is at hand.

A. Storm the Bakery = 6 votes
B. Beseige the Customer Service Desk = 2 votes
C. Raze “Tinned Vegetables”
D. Pillage “Chilled Meats” = 2 votes
E. Lay Waste to “Frozen Goods” = 1 vote
F. Hide and Read the Paper While Nearby Shoppers do the Dirty Work = 5 votes

13.
>> Storm the Bakery
The first target is clear in your mind, shining like a signal flare against clouded skies. In any empire, monarchy or company you know that the seat of power lies with the bakers and the dairy farmers; after all, they are the bread and butter of society. Having already dealt a crushing blow to the dairy with your devastatingly impressive shoe throw, the bakery calls.
In a barrelling assault-shuffle you ‘charge’ towards the bakery counter with all the speed you can muster, in much the same way that a puddle of rainwater burns with all the fire it can muster. Not being a military genius you have every faith that your dash will still catch the bakers by surprise.
Although every step is painful, you know that a good general shows no weakness to their troops. You put on your bravest face and try to whimper in as commanding a tone as possible. With claws held forwards now you feel that you must look a terrifying sight; the crab king leading his rebels against the established oligarchy of the patisserie.
The shady, doubt-addled parts of your mind wonder if you should have tried to sit all this out with your trusty newspaper. It whispers with duplicity that the people can handle this, and that you will be able to emerge as their glorious leader once the danger has passed, but you shake it off. The paper can wait, as it has waited until now. You are always taking something from it, although that has exclusively been moisture, and you’re storing most of that in your underpants now.
You wonder if all of the shoppers were inspired by your words, or if some resisted your persuasion. There’s always a small dissenting element in any uprising, but the majority must realise their plight and take up arms. Then, together, they are free to persecute the dissenters once victory has been achieved. You consider that the large freezers, stripped of their cells, would make adequate gulags for any such traitors or remnants of the previous orders.
When you finally reach the end of the dairy aisle you are able to see the bakery counter, lurking behind bastions of bread rolls, doughnut displays, a mighty wall of birthday cakes, and those renowned mercenaries, the tortilla wraps. Bravely you run the gauntlet. The rolls try to distract you with sesame seed tops, but you fling them to the ground and stamp the life out of several 6-packs. Neither the jam nor the custard doughnuts are a match for your wheeling fists as they crush paper bags and squeeze oppressive fillings over the shelf. The birthday cakes, witnessing this destruction, try to act nonchalant as if they were mere observers; you give them a solid, shoeless kick for their cowardice.
You and the tortilla wraps nod to one another. They’re in it for the coin, and have no intention of dying in futility.
“TO GLORY AND PASTRY!” You bellow, assured that your prowess will have inspired your followers, and ambling towards the counter. There is a short queue of shoppers waiting for fresh breads, around whom you nimbly dodge to reach the glass display.
“Give me a boost over!” you order your followers, aiming to bring down the assistants before they have a chance to ask how they can help. No hands appear. You spin around, frustrated, and see that your army of rebels must have already been thwarted by the supermarket’s own secret police. They’ve done such a clean job that there’s only evidence of one shopper having followed you in the first place; ugly-vegetable-man is lying flat-backed in the dairy aisle, having slipped on the yoghurt you spilled earlier with your shoe artillery.
You have been left to conduct the revolution alone.

A. Continue Storming the Bakery = 6 votes
B. Try to Slip Over the Counter Unnoticed and Dry Trousers with Oven = 3 votes
C. Walk Away, Whistling to Prove your Innocence = 3 votes
D. Shuffle Back to Fallen Rebel
E. Blame Deli Counter Assistant for Bakery Carnage = 8 votes
F. Lament to the Bakery Queue About how Ugly Ugly-Vegetable-Man is = 1 vote

14.
>>Blame Deli Counter Assistant for Bakery Carnage
Panic rises as the reality of a solo rebellion sinks in. Without a boost, leaping over the counter would be both difficult and undignified, and if there’s anything you’ve championed over the last few minutes it’s dignity.
Time appears to slow down around you and you survey the wake of devastation the doomed supermarket uprising left. Squashed bread rolls are ground in the grout between tiles. Smears of jam and custard cover the floor like blood trails. Viscera from Victoria sponges, red velvet and thick icing alike are scattered barbarically across the shelves, obscuring the price tags and special offers. There would always be collateral damage, but it was supposed to be a means to an end, not the end itself.
You realise that someone needs to take the fall for this one, but you’re determined for it not to be you. The revolution needs its leader free for the next attempt, and being a martyr will serve no-one. From your admittedly frenzy-clouded recollection you feel sure that no-one would have noticed your face among the fray. Surreptitiously you wipe the remnant bread, spread and icing from your hands on the back of your trousers; the perfect hiding place for incriminating evidence.
With your own alibi now bulletproof, you search for mind for a scapegoat. Immediately your thoughts turn to the only person who followed you, ugly vegetable man, but he was known to have fallen early on during the coup. The battle of yoghurt slip was widely known and well documented. The queue at the bakery was also under constant surveillance by the bakery assistant. But then it occurs to you that there is one party so guilty in everything that letting them take the fall for you would demand no remorse: the deli counter assistant.
“Oh my goodness me!” you say. Hamming it up to the point of extreme believability, you claps the sides of your face in mock shock with your claws. “Look at this mess!”
Several members of the queue were already looking at you for what must have been entirely unrelated reasons. They don’t seem entirely taken in by your ruse yet, but that can only be because they’re still under the influence of the supermarket.
“When none of you were looking, right, the deli counter assistant snuck over here and went absolutely mental on the baked goods. There was a pretty sweet haymaker into a ring doughnut and a perfect roundhouse kick against a train-shaped “Happy Birthday!” cake, but overall it was complete brutality.” You allege, hoping that your attention to detail will fill the void left by a lack of even tenuous evidence. Another thought crosses your mind. “You should all charge over there right now and restrain them before they can strike again.” You suggest ambitiously.
You look over to the bakery counter to see if the assistants are leaping to action in defence of their territory, but note with irritation that they are simply looking angrily in your direction. One of them turns around and walks hurriedly towards some kind of phone or intercom on the back wall. You give your crab-hands a few pensive clacks.

A. Assume that the Bakery Assistant is Calling you a Cab and Wait Patiently
B. Sit in the Ruins of the Doughnuts and Read the Paper = 12 votes
C. Retrieve Yoghurt Shoe = 1 vote
D. Try to Track Shepherd’s Pie Shoe = 1 vote
E. Check Inventory and Stats Whilst Waiting for your Ruse to Sink in = 1 vote
F. Throw Soggy Newspaper at Bakery Assistant = 3 votes

15.
>> Sit in the Ruins of the Doughnuts and Read the Paper
With a patsy firmly set up to take the fall for your misdeeds and one of the bakery assistants busying themselves the phone, you decide that you have some free time to kill while events unfold. Having done a superlative job at initiating a revolution, and having survived your harrowing encounter with an elderly lady, you feel that you deserve a sit-down with a good paper.
Glancing about yourself, you search for a place to rest. As is typical of supermarkets, especially the dastardly bakery, there is no comfortable seating. There are no sofas to be seen, no chaise longues tucked away behind the baguettes, and not even a recliner by the cinnamon swirls. You are about to give up when you see something which holds far more appeal; the soft, squidgy remnants of your brutality against the doughnuts. You feel that nothing could be more appropriate than sit in a throne of your own glorious crusade.
Your crossing towards the doughnut stand is perilous. Thanks to the smeared remnants of cake across your socks the tiled floor of the supermarket is slick underfoot. Coupling with the limited motion you still endure from your ravaged legs it is hard to remain upright. But, thankfully, you make it to the doughnut stand and gingerly sit yourself down on one of the lower shelves, feeling the soft round pastries compressing under your damp and dessert-smeared trousers.
Wriggling slightly to make yourself comfortable and really bed-in to the detritus, you pull the soggy newspaper from your waistband.
Several minutes of crab-walking, dashing through a supermarket, resting your buttocks on a rotisserie window, and leading a bold rebellious charge have wreaked a terrible toll on the wet paper. Not famed for its structural integrity even when dry, the vigorous activity has led to a catastrophic amount of tearing, erosion, and sticking-together.
As best you can you unfold the paper to look at the headlines, and hold it directly above your head in your crab claws. From what remains you can see:
“Old Mo--- S-l- to –o-d Crow”
Most of the article is unreadable, having been lost in a picture bleeding through from the other side of the paper. You make an attempt to peel the first page away from the second, but instead tear a significant chunk of the top half of the paper away in a fistful of mulch.
Turning over to the back instead you see the remnants of a cartoon panel. The first two panels are lost to the cruel hand of time, or are possibly still stuck to the inside of your trousers, but the punchline seems to be a caricature of Big Ben saying “For Whom the Bell M6-Toll Roads”. You struggle to think of a context in which that would make sense, but dutifully laugh anyway.
Running your eyes over what remains, you can pick out a few lines regarding a correlation between carrot consumption and demand for carrots, a slanderous statement about the Lithuanian government, and an advert for shampoo.
There is nothing else discernible. With a swelling of pride you realise that this is the first time in your life that you’ve finished reading a newspaper.

Accomplished Scholar: +1 Erudition, +1 Self-Confidence

A. Boast to Bakery Queue of your Scholarly Achievement
B. Celebratory Forward Roll = 7 votes
C. Check Inventory & Stats for Anything Else to Read = 3 votes
D. Remove Cake-coated Socks
E. Ask Bakery Queue to Explain M6 Toll Line = 2 votes
F. Leave Supermarket, Scoping for Loot along the Way = 5 votes

16.
>> Celebratory Forward Roll
The wave of pride and excitement washing over you as a result of your major newspaper achievement is overwhelming. You don’t know whether it’s because you finally made the link between Big Ben and bells tolling, or if it’s the relief at succeeding in something after the failed coup, but you can’t contain the joy any longer. It needs a physical display of raw mirth.
Propped up as you are by the doughnut stand, your position is adequate to brace yourself for some celebratory gymnastics. You return the paper-halves to your waistband. With both claws held in front of you, you tuck your legs up slightly and then fling your body forwards into a cake-smeared roly-poly. The world rushes by in a blurred spiral, everything moving too quickly to focus on. You hear some gasps from the bakery queue, presumably dead-impressed by your acrobatics.
Suddenly a jarring metallic crash rings out in the bakery, accompanied by a pain in your feet. Your forward roll stops short of delivering you back onto your feet, and you find yourself lying flat on your back, with dislodged shelfing around you.
You lie still for a moment, regaining your bearings. Around you are spilled loaves of tiger bread, rolling away from their destroyed former home. You feel like it was still a passable celebration, but you would rather have completed the motion, and you would MUCH rather have been wearing shoes before kicking metal shelfing. The whole scenario, you realise, is somewhat embarrassing. The former revolutionary reduced to failed displays of gymnastics without a shoe to their name.

Item acquired: Soggy Newspaper Half (2)
Acrobaccident: -1 charisma

A. Abandon Shoes and Retreat from Supermarket, Scoping for Loot =2 votes
B. Retrieve Yoghurt Shoe and Check on Ugly Vegetable Man =4 votes
C. Track Shepherd’s Pie Shoe
D. Check Inventory & Stats to Take your Mind off Embarrassment =4 votes
E. Pick Up Fallen Shelf and Make Good your Escape =2 votes
F. Snake Along the Floor Towards Exit = 9 votes

17.
>> Snake Along the Floor Towards Exit
Although the forward roll was perfectly good and your failure was only due to poor furniture placement, you fear that it did not earn you any more respect from the bakery queue. Even worse, you suspect that the loud clattering of falling metal may have alerted others to your presence here. Despite a hard-fought campaign among the breads, you accept that the time has come to retreat, that you may fight another day.
Channelling the spirit of your favourite character from the Book of Genesis, you roll onto your stomach and begin to slither along the cake-slick floor, in the general direction of the exit. Your crab claws are still extended in front of you.
Gasps from the bakery queue indicate to you that despite maintaining a low profile, you have still been spotted on your way out. Snapping your head from side-to-side you keep a watchful eye out for the supermarket’s secret police, but realise that with every passing second they will be drawing closer. Although it pains you to be unauthentic in your movement patterns, you subtly use your elbows to help propel you along. The shame can be dealt with later.
Shimmying along a hard tiled floor, even with the boon of cake lubricant, is an uncomfortable business. It’s made all the worse by the contents of your inventory, which are now being pressed into your thighs under your full body weight. With a tear in the corner of your eye, you think of the good old days in your superior, crabby, squatted position.
Shaking off the trap of nostalgia you slither back past the end of dairy. The site of ugly vegetable man’s downfall is clear to see from a wide yoghurt smear, and you see your abandoned shoe lying far out of arm’s reach. There are also yoghurt footprints leading out of the aisle in both directions, a testament to the determination of other shoppers to continue despite adversity.
The additional yoghurt underneath your slithering body improves locomotion further. Before long you have managed to make your way back to grocery, with moderate bruising to your hips, knees, shoulders and elbows.

Elbow-assisted Slitherer: +1 Duplicity
Snake with Crab Claws?: -1 Verisimilitude
Trail of Smears: -1 Contrition

A. Search Grocery and Improvise Shoes = 12 votes
B. Scope for Loot Before Exiting
C. Run out and Track Elderly Woman = 2 votes
D. Run out and Walk East
E. Run out and Walk West
F. Hide Among the Legumes to Check Inventory & Stats = 5 votes

18.
>> Search Grocery and Improvise Shoes
You slither into the grocery section by the door, coming to a halt as you hit a rubbery, non-slip rug. Suspecting it to be a trap laid by the dastardly supermarket agents, you outwit them by ceasing to move like a snake. Standing up is less of an issue than last time you tried, but it’s still necessary to use your arms, which grab to the edge of a fruit stand for support. You put your fingers through some overripe pears in the process.
Seeing how easily the pears cover your claws and keep them safe from harm, you realise that although your shoes are abandoned, many yards away, you need not walk bare-socked into the outside world.
With the critical eye of master cobbler you survey the grocery section with determination, searching for suitable materials to improvise a pair of shoes. Your first attempt makes use of two disposable fruit bags, but they are too thin and tear before hitting the ground. Leaving the tattered remnants in place as makeshift gaiters, you then notice that there are many small fruits which would form a soft, comfortable inner sole. Fearing, however, that there is no supply of glue to hold them all together you abandon ship on that otherwise flawless plan.
You meander among the stands. Bananas would make perfect ice skates, but the floor outside isn’t frozen. Apples are too round, and there is no axle to turn them into rollerblades. But then you spy a display of pumpkins, sitting on a pallet at waist height.
All of them offer sufficient capacity for your feet, their tough skin makes a perfect sole, and the soft innards mean that comfort needn’t be foregone. Deep down, you are surprised that there isn’t already a booming pumpkin shoe industry, but you make mental note to invest in one yourself.
From behind you hear shouting. In matching blue jumpers and smart trousers you see the secret police of the supermarket. They are wearing their uniform like a visual threat, and coming straight for you. You have no idea how they might have recognised you behind your shroud of cake pieces, doughnut smears and yoghurt stains, but it’s unimportant for the moment. With a two footed standing jump you leap into the air, stamping both feet down into the top layer of pumpkins.
Your feet enter the pumpkins easily, sinking into the wet flesh. However you fail to stick the landing and overbalance backwards. Catching yourself before you succumb to the same downfall as ugly vegetable man, you hurriedly scurry back to your feet thanks to the adrenaline of incoming secret police.
You are now wearing pumpkin shoes.

A. Run for the Exit and Head West
B. Run for the Exit and Head East
C. Check Inventory & Stats for a Bribe for the Secret Police =2 votes
D. Act Inconspicuous and Saunter Out = 3 votes
E. Make One Last Attempt to Blame the Deli Counter Assistant = 2 votes
F. Run for the Exit and try to Track Elderly Woman = 9 votes

19.
>> Run for the Exit and try to Track Elderly Woman
Encased in the thick, waxy flesh of their new shoes, your feet feel cold and wet but confident and protected. With the supermarket’s secret police on the way after you, you run for the exit as fast as your legs will allow.
Without laces, and having made rather large holes in the top, it’s not trivial to keep the pumpkins on your feet. You adopt a straight-legged swinging gait to avoid lifting your feet straight out of the top, and make your way back through the doorway and onto the street. Each step rings with a dull, hollow sound like a damp drum.
Looking left and right you puzzle over where to go. Having not spared even the briefest moment to consider why you were out in the street earlier, where you had been going, or even who you were, you cling to anything that feels like a purpose. The elderly woman set you on this path of pumpkin-footed revolutionary action when she betrayed you. You gave her the making-up of a lifetime and she spat in the face of your kindness. She left you hanging, and now, with the newfound willpower to fight back against oppression, you seek recompense.
You’ve seen tracking in at least 2 films before, and as far as you can recall it involved staring at the ground for a few seconds and then screaming “That way!”. Leaping into action you fix the spot where the elderly woman disappeared, several metres away, with an intense glare. It’s much too far away to distinguish anything on the wet pavement, but you do at least still remember the direction in which she fled under the false pretence of a high-five.
Clopping purposefully, you take off to the West. In a few dozen yards you reach a crosswords. Staring at the ground you still can’t see anything which might imply where the elderly woman went.

A. Try to Remember Where Elderly Woman Went = 2 votes
B. Check Surroundings for Clues = 6 votes
C. Check Inventory & Stats for Useful Tracking Tools = 7 votes
D. Continue West = 1 vote
E. Turn North
F. Turn South = 1 vote

20.
>> Check Inventory & Stats for Useful Tracking Tools
Without any clear footprints to follow or an idea of where the elderly woman might have been heading you find yourself at something of a loss, unsure of how to proceed. Despite presumably filling your pockets earlier today, you still take a leap of faith and search them for anything which might be useful for tracking down an elderly woman whose face is tastefully covered in lipstick.
Plunging your crab claws in you discover:

Inventory:
Lint (30)
Phone (Battery: 0)
1 Set of Keys
36p
1 pack of 18 AA batteries
1 receipt for 1 pack of 18 AA batteries & a curly wurly
1 curly wurly wrapper
1 set of dog-tags
1 packet of hollandaise sauce
Soggy Newspaper Half (2)

Whilst you’re fishing around for treasure in your pockets, you are also overcome with the desire to check your stats. On a very deep, real level you have no idea what your ‘stats’ are, nor how you might go about checking them other than wondering how good you are at things in an abstract way. You’re a real person with emotions and moods, so your ability to complete tasks and your reactions to events will be heavily influenced by context and circumstances. To boil yourself down to a set of numbers against a discrete set of characteristics would be to oversimplify what it means to be alive.
Then again, trying to define yourself like that might help you to discover that you’re skilled enough to track down a member of the public without problems. You have a crack at it, accepting that you can probably stand up to a little bit of simplification.

Stats:
Charisma – 8
Self-confidence – 12
Sass – 12
Erudition – 12
Insolubility – 11
Contrition - 8
Serendipity – 11
Serenity – 10
Verisimilitude - 10
Duplicity – 13

A. Lure Elderly Woman by Shouting “Free Hollandaise sauce!” = 2 votes
B. Lure Elderly Woman by Shouting “Free AA batteries!”
C. Combine Keys with Dog-Tags and Batteries to Make a Tracker = 5 votes
D. Reminisce About the Curly Wurly = 1 vote
E. Flip 36p of Coins to Decide Which Direction to go
F. Guess that you Should Continue West = 6 votes

21.
>> Guess that you should go West
Actively ignoring the options available to you to increase your chances of catching the elderly woman, you decide via the ancient method of blind assumption that you should continue going west. It wasn’t based on a theory that she was running in a straight line, nor a perceived lure in the western direction. Just a gut feeling that of the three routes she might have taken, west is the most likely. You wonder silently if you’re subconsciously comparing her to the pioneers of the old west, but presume that the pioneers didn’t wear lipstick liberally across their lower jaw.
Moving once again in your pumpkin-footed, crab-armed gait you step into the road without looking, a move which seems to cause a lot of commotion. There’s the sound of screeching tyres, a frankly antisocial amount of hooter-beeping, and some muffled shouting.
You find it surprising that anyone might miss the fact you were about to walk into the road. Between your resolute gaze, generally commanding presence, and bright orange high-visibility pumpkin shoes you’re just begging to be noticed. Without any doubt in your mind you decide that any near-miss was completely the fault of the driver or drivers involved.

A. Continue West Without Acknowledging Driver(s) =3 votes
B. Continue West and Shoot a Disdainful Look Towards Driver(s)
C. Enquire with Driver(s) as to Whether they Have Seen the Elderly Woman = 4 votes
D. Attempt to Key the Loudest Driver’s Car = 1 vote
E. Throw 1 Battery at Randomly Selected Windscreen = 2 votes
F. Stop and Reminisce About Curly Wurly = 5 votes

22.
>>Stop and Reminisce About Curly Wurly
Road safety was never your strong point, apparently. You are aware that you stepped blindly into the road, and that shortly afterwards a chorus of irate shouting and hooting erupted, but there’s absolutely nothing that you can think of to connect those two events.
Unaccountably the deafening sounds of driver-to-pedestrian parlay make your thoughts drift to the inventory search you performed moments earlier, specifically the curly wurly wrapper. It’s an empty shell of its former glory in these modern times, but all it needs to contain now is the memory…
You were hungry. Not excessively so, but enough that you had a hankering for chocolate and caramel. It almost placed itself into your basket as you walked around the supermarket, the same supermarket you returned to later for an attempted rebellion. No sooner had you paid for your goods than the wrapper was off and your teeth were in.
All in all, you were pleased with your choice. The initial sugary burst of chocolate provided the gratification you desired, and then chewy caramel gave it a longevity to keep the sweet euphoria going. It was the same for several bites. Just the recollection brings a smile to your face.
Your happiness, it seems, is not infectious. Somehow the beeping and shouting have become even more vigorous as you stand in the middle of the carriageway. You hear the sound of a car door opening.

A. Return to the Supermarket for Another Curly Wurly = 7 votes
B. Look for the Opening Car Door = 5 votes
C. Continue West = 3 votes
D. Change Mind and Walk South = 1 vote
E. Change Mind and Walk North
F. Change Mind and Walk East

23.
>> Return to the Supermarket for Another Curly Wurly
The chocolate nostalgia overtakes your whole being. Ignoring the sounds of car doors and drivers’ rage you spin on your pumpkin heels and march quickly back towards the supermarket. You are vaguely aware of some more shouting behind you, seemingly with more purpose to it.
You break into an awkward jog as your excitement grows. Impending caramel draws you in and accelerates you from outside your body, like a tractor beam of gooey sugar. The wet rear of your trousers chafes slightly as you jog but it’s worth the pain for the sweet joy to come.
As you grow close to the supermarket, you see the two blue-uniformed secret police officers who had pursued you out of the supermarket earlier. They are looking up and down the street. You assume that they are looking for you in order to apologise for making you in a political martyr, when all you did was protest peacefully about their lack of adequate drying facilities.
The secret police officers seem to notice you, which isn’t surprising if you assume that they are able to form even rudimentary short term memories. The incredibly bright orange pumpkin shoes don’t do any harm to their chances of spotting you either. You observe that they seem excited by your return and start to move towards you.

A. Keep Going, Opening your Crab-arms for a Reunion Hug = 5 votes
B. Turn Tail and Run; the Revolution Needs its Fighters to be Free = 4 votes
C. Ask Yourself “What Would the Elderly Woman Do?”= 1 vote
D. Make a Peace Offering of Hollandaise Sauce = 4 votes
E. Throw 36p onto the Ground as a Distraction = 2 votes
F. Rapidly Explain About the Curly Wurly Situation = 3 votes

24.
>> Keep Going, Opening your Crab-arms for a Reunion Hug
An apology committee is a most welcome sight after your persecution earlier. You’re so delighted by their presence that you spur yourself into additional speed, and open your arms for a warm hug to show that you forgive them. As your feet hit the ground ever harder you feel the pumpkins start to flex.
The secret police seem to be bewildered by their own emotions, apparently unsure of how to properly express the depths of their happiness at your impending hug. They each adopt a braced stance, presumably to better catch your hug and maybe even twirl you around in the air like all those romantic films recommend. Crab-claws wide, you fix them with a beaming smile.
When you are only a few paces away they shout at you to stop, possibly because they are worried that they don’t deserve your forgiveness. In your magnanimity your smile broadens, as if to say “of course you deserve this kindness”. This only makes them look even more nervous.
Leaping at the final second, assuming that the secret police will catch you, you crash into the chest of the secret police officer on the left, wrapping your claws around him in a crab-hug of raw, unbridled love and empathy. It’s so intense with affection that it knocks the officer onto his back, with you collapsing on top of him.
In much the same way that you experienced in the road a moment ago, there is a sudden wave of shouts and activity. The second officer starts to grab and pull at you, impatient for his own cathartic cuddle, so you obligingly release your grasp and turn around, standing up as quickly as possible to wrap him in an embrace. Immediately you feel his arms resisting in a way that goes beyond mere embarrassment; it’s decidedly hostile. With a cold flush through your body you realise that they were only pretending to seek your forgiveness to lure you back in. They probably even planted the memories of that curly wurly to keep you from drifting too far.
BONUS ACTION >> Make a Peace Offering of Hollandaise Sauce.
“I have some Hollandaise sauce!” you bellow in the face of the second officer, reaching in to your pocket for the item and hoping that it will make up for any political unrest you caused in pursuing freedom and human rights for shoppers. Nothing secures peace like the opportunity to enjoy not-quite-enough of a tasty sauce with dinner.
The heartlessness of the officers remains obvious, as they remain impassive to your generosity. The second officer is attempting to grapple you, whilst the first is regaining his feet. They are shouting something about getting the police involved, which you find confusing because they are already a form of the police. Perhaps they are seeking legitimacy for their corrupt regime, you think to yourself. This is clearly a dangerous game, too dangerous to keep playing.
BONUS ACTION >> Turn Tail and Run; the Revolution Needs its Fighters to be Free
Squeezing the sauce packet hard into the face of the second officer, he recoils enough for you to break free of his grasp and start to run back up the street in the direction of the elderly woman’s escape. No more than three strides in and the left pumpkin shoe breaks apart around you; just the kind of shoddy workmanship you’ve come to expect from that supermarket of broken dreams and exploited youth. Clopping along unevenly now, you hear the secret police continuing to shout, and daren’t look back to check for pursuit.

Item Lost: 1 Packet of Hollandaise Sauce
Rejected Hug: -1 Self-confidence Rejected Forgiveness: -1 Contrition Broken Shoes: -1 Charisma Distinct Smell of Hollandaise Sauce: Charisma -1

A. Turn South at the Crossroads and Look for a Hiding Place = 7 votes
B. Continue West at the Crossroads and Pursue Elderly Woman at all Costs = 2 votes
C. Turn North at the Crossroads and Look for a Rapid Escape Route
D. Offer 36p to a Passing Motorist to Pick you Up = 4 votes
E. Examine Dog Tags as you Run = 3 votes
F. Throw Newspaper Halves Behind Yourself to Deter Pursuit =2 votes

25.
>> Turn South at the Crossroads and Look for a Hiding Place
With a distinctive slap-clomp sound to your footfalls you reach the crossroads, where the previously interrupted traffic has started to move away again. Your presence sparks the resumption of some beeping, but they’re not willing to stop for the sake of berating you. Deep down, you have a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn’t stop for you if you stepped into the road, either. West is a no-go, but you are confident that with your expert tracking skills you can pick up the trail of the elderly woman later.
Turning south instead, you whip your head around in the hunt for a place to lie low and avoid the agents of supermarket supremacy. Dashing along the row of boutiques and small shops your clomping foot sounds wetter and weaker with each step. Outside of a hairdresser’s shop it finally collapses, leaving a mushy pile of pumpkin-goo directly in the doorway. You think of charging them for the privilege of providing a bespoke squash-based doormat, but that would give the secret police time to catch up.
To your left you notice a modest office supply shop next to a narrow alley. As with all city alleys, it is chock full of bins, dumpsters, discarded cardboard boxes, and suspicious damp patches. There also seems to be the traditional optimistically parked car wedged in there by machinations unknown. A long gutter drainpipe runs along the side of the building just inside the alley.

A. Enter Office Supply Shop to Hide
B. Enter Alleyway to Hide
C. Continue Running South
D. Check Office Supply Shop Doorway for Traps = 1 vote
E. Attempt to Shimmy up Drainpipe = 14 votes
F. Stand Exposed in Street and Examine Items from Inventory

26.
>> Attempt to Shimmy up Drainpipe
For the first time since you decided to squat down in the street, your head is clear in its purpose. The manifold voices screeching at one another over what you should do next very nearly unify into one moment, one message, of absolute clarity. You know that however far you run and whichever shop you dive into the secret police will be able to spot you. But there’s no way they’d think to look up…
Sparing a solitary thought to check the office supply shop doorway for traps you move into the alleyway and take a position in front of the drainpipe. It doesn’t look like a new fitting, instead bearing the cobwebs of age and green mossy stains of disuse. Seeing this dirtiness bolsters your confidence; clearly no-one else ever climbs this pipe, and therefore it will lead to a wonderfully secluded hiding place.
You wrap both crab-hands around the pipe and leap upwards, pulling with both arms to gain additional height. The ageing brackets which affix the pipe to the building wall give a disconcerting creak. The enthusiastic nature of your jump brings your feet up with a lot of energy, energy which is then transferred into the pipe when they hit it. You feel the vibration in your hands, which makes it all the less comfortable when your bodyweight is transferred wholly onto your arms. The weakened grip afforded by maintaining your mighty claws struggles to keep any form of traction.
When you attempt to push upwards with your feet, you hear another creak from the brackets. Despite the force you are applying, you move very little. Cumbersomely you release one hand and rapidly slap it back onto the pipe, slightly higher up. After repeating this process a few times you find your arms shaking perpetually with the strain, your already exhausted thighs crying in agony, and the ground only a few feet below you. In fact, you suspect that you are slowly slipping downwards, and every step you take merely maintains the status quo.
Suddenly, with a loud ‘ping’ a bracket above your head gives way and the drainpipe jerks outwards, away from the building. The next bracket down follows suit immediately, unable to take the strain on its own. With a grim dread you feel yourself toppling backwards, unable to prevent the inevitable.
Your landing is less uncomfortable than it could have been. Some of the black plastic bins break your fall, and your fall breaks the bins in turn. It is moderately unpleasant when the drainpipe strikes you on the forehead. The escapade is not quiet.
You are lying on your back in a pile of broken bin pieces and a bin bag, with a drainpipe on top of you.

A. Contemplate Life Choices = 4 votes
B. Stand up and Kick Drainpipe for its Betrayal = 3 votes
C. Stand up and Search Bin Bag
D. Take Broken Drainpipe and Continue South = 4 votes
E. Miaow Loudly to Throw Pursuers off the Scent = 3 votes
F. Forge a New Life for Yourself Among the Bins = 2 votes

27.
>> Take Broken Drainpipe and Continue South
As comfortable as you aren’t in the pile of refuse, it takes a moment for you to decide on the best course of action. You contemplate vengeance against the guttering and consider making a loud distraction, but they just don’t feel quite right. A sense of deep rumination on the choices you must have made in your life to lead you to this point starts to swell upwards. Lying in bins often causes this effect, you’ve heard. But before it can take hold of you, you leap to your feet. You’re a person of action, not of thinking about your options, even for a second!
Pushing past the parked car would be difficult and involve climbing, something which has recently outfoxed you. Back onto the street is therefore the only way to go. The secret police don’t seem to have found you yet, and it’s possible that they have given up the chase, but given their previous duplicity in the hug scandal you can’t ever be sure. You decide that you should be able to disguise and defend yourself, just in case.
You crouch down and lift the broken section of drainpipe, holding it awkwardly and vertically in front of yourself. It’s a little over eight feet long, by your estimation, but not very heavy.
The secret police are looking for someone who is without shoes, is covered in the detritus of various baked goods, and has pumpkin goop all over their legs. But they are not looking for someone matching that description who is also lugging around a large piece of guttering; the disguise is flawless! Now armed with a wide, hollow staff in case of emergencies you step back onto the street and continue south.
Looking behind yourself occasionally, you see no sign of pursuit by the secret police. You keep going for two or three minutes longer, without any idea of why you are walking in this direction or what you are now seeking to achieve.
A. Continue South: In for a Penny, In for a Pound = 4 votes
B. Turn West in Pursuit of the Elderly Woman = 5 votes
C. Examine Dog Tags Using Drainpipe as Pretend Telescope = 4 votes
D. Fill Mouth with 36p and Spit Coins at Passersby
E. Go Home with Drainpipe Loot
F. Return North to Main High Street = 1 vote

28.
>> Turn West in Pursuit of the Elderly Woman
Swinging your drainpipe up to rest against your shoulder you settle on a course of action; the elderly woman can’t be allowed to escape. She set you on this course of self-destruction with her judgemental looks and selfishness regarding lipstick and high 5s. If you give up the chase now you might never find her again. As it stands you think the chances of locating her are pretty good.
You swing around to face west, and in doing so crack a window behind you with the end of the drainpipe. After waiting for a gap in the traffic this time, and with an apologetic clack of your free crab hand, you step into the road and strike out after the elderly woman.
For ten minutes you continue walking west, crossing over several side-roads and passing various backstreet shops. There has been no elderly-woman-ground-sign to follow, no footprints, and no trail of droppings. You conclude that she must be a master of covering her tracks. It’s either that or she used a different road to this one, but that would be ridiculous. After all, you wouldn’t exactly be walking up a road she hadn’t used if you were trying to catch her.
The main high street is still a few roads to the north of your current location, but you know that you are approaching the end and heading towards a residential district. Unless the elderly woman lives nearby, there would be little reason for her to go too much farther than this. You are outside of a closed charity shop.

A. Turn North and Return to High Street
B. Continue West into Residential District = 1 vote
C. Slam Drainpipe Through Charity Shop Window = 2 votes
D. Check Dog Tags While you Decide What to Do = 6 votes
E. Look for Another Drainpipe to Climb
F. Stick Soggy Newspaper Halves to Charity Shop Window = 5 votes

29.
>> Check Dog Tags While you Decide What to Do
The uncertainty of how best to pursue the elderly woman is troubling for you, and for the first time, possibly ever, you take some time over deciding what to do. To keep your mind occupied when it should instead be thinking about the course of action, you rest the drainpipe against the charity shop window and examine the dog tags.
As you pull the tags and their chain from your pocket they jingle slightly, but not as much as you were expecting. Quickly you observe that this is because they’re somewhat gummed up with bits of torn, soggy newspaper. You wipe the dog tags on your trousers to clean them off, and succeed in swapping the ravaged paper for cake detritus.
The first tag is blank on one side, but on the other has a name engraved: Rev. F. Wilgrave. The lettering has been pressed in with some kind stamp but doesn’t manage to form a particularly straight line. It is in a tasteful sans serif font however, so you’d give it a 6/10 for presentation overall.
The second tag has writing on both sides. Reading one and then the other, it says: “16, Gerrin Avenue, Greater Washburn. 3rd window from street.”
In your admittedly limited experience of deciphering messages from neckborne accessories, you think that there is something to this. A code from the elderly woman? It’s possible that she slipped it into your pocket whilst struggling against the severe lipsticking incident. You have long since established that she was quite the scoundrel, so you wouldn’t put it past the old hag.
You put the dog tags back in your pocket, feeling the hard steel sink into wet paper. You feel that examining the dog tags has given you enough time to decide upon your next move, at last.

A. Turn North and Return to High Street With Confidence
B. Continue West into Residential District With Determination
C. Slam Drainpipe Through Charity Shop Window With Resolve = 4 votes
D. Look for Another Drainpipe to Climb With Assuredness
E. Stick Soggy Newspaper Halves to Charity Shop Window With Their Own Tackiness
F. Try to Go to Address from Dog Tags Without Shoes = 13 votes

30.
>> Try to Go to Address from Dog Tags Without Shoes
Abandoning your thoughts of vandalising a charity shop, an act in which you would have indulged for no other reason than the opportunity to do so, you look again at the address: 16, Gerrin Avenue, Greater Washburn”. You aren’t immediately familiar with Gerrin Avenue, but you suspect that if you got there you would be able to identify number 16 by either counting or some kind of glyphs emblazoned onto the front of the property. The only real challenge, then, would be getting to Greater Washburn, a city which you know to be miles away.
Your first thought is, naturally, that you could spend several days walking there. Given that you have already dispensed with the dead weight of your shoes, you feel that you have shed enough weight to become as streamlined as possible. However, without anything more than 36p to your name you are fearful that you’ll run out of money to pay for accommodation by the time a few days have passed. Possibly sooner.
Making the journey could require some thought, something for which you are not famed in these streets. You feel that the reputation is unfair as you clutch your broken drainpipe and feel the smeared doughnut jam soaking into the knees of your trousers.

A. Go Home and Prepare for Journey [Erudition check] = 2 votes
B. Wander Back to the High Street and Hope For the Best [Serendipity check]
C. Go to the Train Station and Try to Sneak Onto a Train [Duplicity check] = 6 votes
D. Try to Hitchhike [Self-Confidence check] = 2 votes
E. Bet Someone they Can’t Drive you to Greater Washburn [Sass check] = 5 votes
F. Sit in a Roadside Puddle and Look for Cars to Steal [Insolubility check, Duplicity check] = 2 votes

31.
>> Go to the Train Station and Try to Sneak Onto a Train
As your mind tries to make a brief attempt to take you home for some preparation you slap it back down hard. Anything worth doing is worth doing rashly whilst woefully underequipped for anything you might face. That has been your motto for as long as you remember, on the basis that you can only remember the last half an hour or so. There will be no returning home to get more shoes, charge your phone, or gather supplies. You know in the depths of your heart that you simply must depart immediately.
Whilst you don’t know a lot about Greater Washburn, you at least recall that it has a train link to the station nearby. Optimistically you tell yourself that 36p is more than sufficient for a return-trip passage on the railway, and make your wet-socked way towards the nearest train station.
Your thoughts drift to the elderly woman as you walk, each step punctuated by the hollow ‘thunk’ of the broken drainpipe you’re using as a walking stick. She must still be close, revelling in the glorious make-up artistry with which you blessed her and jealously hoarding the high-5 which you know to be rightfully yours. As you push through the high street crowds, or more accurately as they part disgustedly away from you, you scan the faces for a bright red chin but emerge disappointed.
The station entrance, on a side road leading from the high street, is at the top of a set of concrete steps. Your wet socks have mostly shed the pumpkin slop and cake smears after a moderate walk through the streets, but the ascent is still slick and perilous. Your toes are growing noticeably cold.
A small crowd of afternoon commuters are milling in the foyer of the station, between the barriers and the ticket machines. A long queue at the booth is distracting the attendants. You cross to one of the machines and discover, to your utmost horror, that 36p will not cover even the outbound leg of your journey. A ticket is well beyond the financial means at your immediate disposal.
Not to be deterred by meagre social and moral boundaries like ‘not stealing’ and ‘paying honestly for services, even when they are an unforgivable rip-off’, you look back to the barriers. The attendants are still well away, focusing on the queue, and a train has just pulled into the station. You decide that this is your chance.
Sauntering as nonchalantly as you can whilst carrying a broken section of drainpipe you approach the barriers and lean against them. Taking leap of faith you hop up with both feet and tip backwards, flopping gracelessly over the barrier and landing hard on the other side. By the good grace of random probability, and against all logic, no-one notices your amateur gymnastics.
After a brief period of rubbing at your now sore neck you reach back to the other side of the barrier and lift your broken drainpipe over. Performing the traditional train-commuter’s jog you make your way to the train and step aboard.
You are in a half-full carriage, clutching a length of broken drainpipe which scrapes against the ceiling and cannot be stood up at its full height. Some of the other train riders are looking at you judgementally.

Successful Infiltration: +1 Duplicity
Learned Terrible Truth About Train Fare: +1 Erudition, -1 Serenity, +1 Verisimilitude
Stolen Journey: -1 Contrition
Me and My Buddy “Drainpipe”: +1 Charisma

A. Take a Seat for Yourself and Another for the Drainpipe
B. Stare Down Other Commuters
C. Hide in the Toilet in Case of Conductors
D. Introduce your Drainpipe to Other Commuters = 7 votes
E. Ask Other Commuters if Anyone has Seen the Elderly Woman = 4 votes
F. Whistle = 5 votes

32.
>> Introduce your Drainpipe to Other Commuters
Your eyes flit from face-to-face in the train carriage, and each one of them seems to be directed at you with the same dark expression. It’s an ugly look, but one that you recognise from the rest of your day’s adventure: envy.
Every one of those revolutionaries in the supermarket was envious of your fiery martyrdom, the elderly woman was surely envious of your makeup artistry, and the other commuters are envious of your dazzling section of broken drainpipe. You can see the thoughts seething and festering behind their eyes, making up despicable half-truths about you as some kind of karmic retribution for your good drainpipe fortune. Thankfully, you have an idea for how to smooth things over.
“Everyone! Let me introduce you to my good buddy ‘Drainpipe Von Staffen’.” You exclaim to the carriage in general, beaming with your best personable smile. Standing nearby to you is a middle-aged man in a grey suit. He is looking at you distrustfully.
“You sir! Why don’t you say hello?” You offer, swinging the top of the drainpipe around towards him with the not entirely relaxing sound of broken plastic scraping against the ceiling of a train. The pipe stops slightly short of the man, as the bottom end slams into the back of a seat and can go no further.
“Don’t be shy.” You encourage as the man flinches away. He looks fearfully at you and tenses up, ready to fight or fly as required, and there’s no aerial headroom available.
“Um, hello.” He says with a furrowed brow, directing it towards you rather than the drainpipe itself. You think this is slightly rude, but accept that he’s probably intimidated by the pipe’s charismatic presence.
“Hello, I’m Drainpipe. It’s lovely to meet you. I would love to have your rainwater flowing through me and into the drain, or into your neighbour’s kitchen window.” You say through the side of your mouth, raising the pitch of your voice and adopting an unidentifiable accent reminiscent of someone who’d had a German accent described to them whilst drunk at a party but never heard one in real life. The man looks away and sidles farther into the carriage.
You turn to look for another commuter to introduce. Most have averted their gaze in much the same way as the first gentleman, but a young woman is too slow on the uptake. You catch her eye before she can turn.
“And hello to you too, miss!” Drainpipe says, jerkily and jaggedly turning to face her. A thick black line on the ceiling traces the path that the pipe has taken around the carriage. “Do you have roof run-off for me to deliver to the ground?” You struggle to maintain the accent when saying ‘deliver’.
“Stay the hell away from me.” The young woman snaps, nostrils flaring.
“Oho! Right you are!” Drainpipe replies, screeching loudly on its return towards you. Your arms feel tired from drainpipe’s short but vigorous period of activity in the carriage. However, it has apparently laid the envy of the other commuters to rest.

A. Celebrate by Wallpapering the Carriage Door with Soggy Newspaper
B. Break Glass with Drainpipe Von Staffen Despite Lack of Emergency = 3 votes
C. Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen if it has Seen the Elderly Woman = 7 votes
D. Discuss the News with Drainpipe Von Staffen
E. Take a Seat for Yourself and Another for Drainpipe Von Staffen = 2 votes
F. Check Train Route Map = 5 votes

33.
>> Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen if it has Seen the Elderly Woman
With a measure of privacy now that the other commuters are too overwhelmed by the raw magnetism of Drainpipe Von Staffen, you lean back against a divider, still holding Drainpipe steady. It’s a bit redundant since it’s jammed against the ceiling, but you feel a need to keep some kind of physical connection. You shoot it an awkward smile every now and again.
A minute or so passes and you feel a need to break the awkward silence between yourself and Drainpipe Von Staffen. You are good buddies as declared to the carriage earlier, and you feel like it should be easy to carry a conversation. Looking at the floor, you search your mind for a good topic. Your presumably differing views on the weather, specifically on the pros and cons of rain, could be a good discussion point but perhaps a little clichéd for train-talk. What Drainpipe had been up to before your meeting would be another option if it weren’t for the fact that you knew it had been connecting the gutter to the drain, the same as it had been doing every day for many years prior. It would also bring attention back to your awkward first impression of failing to climb to the roof.
Suddenly, like a new streetlight outside a bedroom window, a flash of light spills into your mind. There’s a critical question to ask Drainpipe Von Staffen.
“Drainpipe?” You say to gently attract its attention. It turns to face you, which reminds you of how tired your arms are and startles the other commuters with another ceiling scrape.
“Yes?” Drainpipe replies. The accent is a little different this time, almost like it was partially forgotten.
“I’ve been looking for someone, and you’re the kind of in-the-know street-smart player who might know something useful.” You say, maintaining a mystique to really draw Drainpipe’s attention in whilst flattering it to encourage co-operation. You have to fight hard to suppress a smile at how devastatingly smooth you are.
“And who might that be?” Drainpipe answers, trying to maintain its cool aloofness in the face of such a juicy topic.
“She goes by the name ‘The Elderly Woman’. About this big” you hold one crab claw at around your neck height “and she is sporting quite possibly the best make-up in the country. Probably too subtle for most people to notice, but you’ve got eagle eyes.” Another solid compliment.
“The Elderly Woman? She a romantic interest of yours?” Drainpipe counter-questions, looking you in the eye with a mocking expression on the moss and cobwebs dangling at head-height.
“No! Get your head out of the gutter, Drainpipe.” You chastise, biting your lower lip to keep a straight face through the brutally delivered wordplay.
“Good one.” Drainpipe congratulates you, recognising your brilliance. “I think I saw her last outside the supermarket, shambling with a particularly traitorous gait. It was like she was running away from someone who really deserved a high-five, after actively deceiving them into thinking they’d get one. If it were up to me I would douse her with rainwater until assured of her penitence.” Drainpipe explains.
You curse internally. Drainpipe knows nothing more than you do, which you find surprising. The other commuters look up at you occasionally with confused fear. They’re still too bashful to maintain eye contact with either you or Drainpipe.

Loud Carriage Conversation: -1 Charisma
Sole Recipient of Drainpipe Von Staffen’s Majestic Attention: +1 Self-confidence

A. Commiserate by Wallpapering the Carriage Door with Soggy Newspaper
B. Take a Seat for Yourself and Another for Drainpipe Von Staffen = 1 vote
C. Check Train Route Map = 2 votes
D. Make Fake Phonecall Using Mobile Phone with Depleted Battery
E. Ask if Other Commuters Have Spare Shoes = 3 votes
F. Challenge Drainpipe Von Staffen to “Rock, Paper, Scissors” = 4 votes

34.
>> Challenge Drainpipe Von Staffen to “Rock, Paper, Scissors.”
Minutes pass in the carriage, with no sounds aside from the train on its tracks and the occasional screech as Drainpipe Von Staffen shifts against the ceiling. You spend some time mulling over whether Drainpipe was being honest about its elderly woman knowledge or not, but you can’t bring yourself to truly accuse such a good buddy of trying to deceive you.
Drainpipe has also been quite, presumably preoccupied with its own thoughts. You decide to break the silence again and pass the time.
“Hey Drainpipe: Rock, paper, scissors. On three!” You declare, turning your body towards Drainpipe. Drainpipe turns towards you slightly, sliding across a light and shattering the bulb. It does not break your concentration.
“One” you say, raising and lowering your fist in time with the count. You catch the look in Drainpipe’s moss.
“Two” you continue, as is the general practice. This time you raise and lower both fists, charitably agreeing to provide a hand for Drainpipe, who lacks one of its own. Drainpipe trusts you to act honestly.
[High Duplicity]
“Three!” you finish, opening your hand into the shape of a pair of scissors. You look down excitedly to discover that Drainpipe has chosen paper.
Drainpipe looks at you with a moment of distrust. It could have sworn that it had wanted to choose scissors, but it accepts that perhaps the message wasn’t clear. Such eventualities must be accepted when relying on your opponent’s hand to play.
“Best two out of three?” Drainpipe Von Staffen suggests. You ponder for a moment and finally agree.
Five minutes pass, and you are winning 15 to 4. Drainpipe Von Staffen feel like the statistics don’t stack up, but having had no formal mathematical education, nor any semblance of a mind, it can’t quite finish the thought. You are the victor.

Betrayed Drainpipe’s Trust: -1 Contrition

A. Take a Seat for Yourself and Another for Drainpipe Von Staffen
B. Check Train Route Map =2 votes
C. Move to a New Carriage
D. Search Carriage for Loot = 7 votes
E. Stand Patiently and Wait for Journey to End
F. Stand Impatiently and Wait for Journey to End = 2 votes

35.
>> Search Carriage for Loot
Riding the high of your ill-deserved victory over Drainpipe Von Staffen you look around the carriage to check for the admiration of the other commuters. All of them continue to look anywhere but at you and your radiant companion. You do notice, however, that a lot of the seats appear to be empty, since the main rush hour has already passed.
For a few moments you wonder why so many people are standing in the middle of the carriage when there are free seats available. One or two of them might be afflicted with seat-crippling haemorrhoids, maybe three at a push, but not this many, so there has to be another explanation. Quickly you conclude that the seats must have something on them preventing their use as a chair, bringing with it the potential for good old-fashioned looting.
“I’ll be back in a moment.” You say to Drainpipe Von Staffen, who makes no motion to stop you. Wedged as it is into the broken light fitting, it stays standing once you let go.
Stepping between the two uniform rows of seats you take in the unpleasantly patterned upholstery chosen by this train’s manufacturer. Your best guess is that it was a rejected curtain design and the samples had been purchased as an affordable seat cover solution. On the first row of seats you find nothing lootable, but there is a distinctly wet patch. You’re tempted to lean in for an investigative sniff, but your better instincts stop you. Instead you lean down and check underneath the seats, finding a crisp packet and an empty paper cup but nothing more.
The next row of seats is half-occupied by a teenage boy in a dark hoodie. His feet are resting on the seat opposite, underneath a “No Feet on the Seats” sign, and his attention is lost out of the window. You peek under his seat and find nothing of value.
In the third row you find your first treasure: a dry and entirely undamaged newspaper. Without hesitation you snatch it up and cram it into your waistband on the opposite side to your soggy newspaper halves.
Feeling like a colonial archaeological explorer, raiding lost tombs for their priceless artifacts, you search the rest of the carriage with a disrespectful vigour. The search ends with you claiming several more precious trinkets for yourself.

Items Acquired: 1 Dry Newspaper, 2 Discarded Biscuits, 13p, 1 scarf, 1 pair of broken headphones

A. Split Loot with Drainpipe Von Staffen
B. Take a Seat for Yourself and Another for Drainpipe Von Staffen
C. Take a Seat for Yourself and Another for Drainpipe Von Staffen with Teenager
D. Read Dry Newspaper to Other Commuters
E. Stand Impatiently and Wait for Journey to End
F. Plug Broken Headphones into Phone with Depleted Battery

36.
>>Take a Seat for Yourself and Another for Drainpipe Von Staffen with Teenager
You return to Drainpipe Von Staffen much richer after your scavenging trip. One pocket bulges with the scarf you’ve roughly crammed into it, a good third of the fabric hanging out down your leg. You nod to Drainpipe, and although it doesn’t nod back you can sense its acknowledgement. It seems that there are no hard feelings regarding the “Rock, Paper, Scissors” incident.
“There are some empty seats. Shall we?” you ask Drainpipe, indicating towards some of the free chairs you looted.
“Ah to be sure, to be sure.” Drainpipe Von Staffen answers, making reckless use of other European dialects. Its accent has subtly changed once again,
With a shrill screech accompanied by the tinkling of glass fragments you drag the broken drainpipe into the body of the carriage. In the narrow aisle between the rows of seats you find it more difficult to manhandle Drainpipe Von Staffen, its head and feet regularly catching on the luggage rack and the seats. It doesn’t take long for you to get tired of the slow progress, and you plonk yourself down next to the teenager. You drag Drainpipe into the seating too, effectively barring off the seats from the aisle. The teenager looks up very slightly and then looks back out of the window to avoid any danger of eye contact.
What you expected to be a cushion is more like a slab of rock upholstered with a series of smaller rocks. In pursuit of greater comfort you wriggle and jostle the seat, using ever-greater force as the hard chair holds firm. Your enthusiasm is shaking the teenager significantly, prompting a series of lightning-fast irritated looks.
“Are you not joining us Drainpipe?” you ask, pointing towards the spare seat opposite yourself. You can’t quite picture how on earth it would be possible for the drainpipe to rest upon the chair.
“No, it’s nice to stretch my legs after being tethered to the outside of a building for years.” Drainpipe tells you.
You look over at the teenager, who has now committed to a horrified expression at your conversation with your best buddy. It looks like the ugly face of uneducated prejudice, judging you for your friendship with members of a non-sentient, non-living piece of drainage. You decide to reach out to the youth, aiming to teach him the lessons that his education system have failed to impart.
“Biscuit?” you offer, holding out one of your discarded biscuits.
The teenager jumps to his feet in revulsion and tries to push past you and Drainpipe Von Staffen.

A. Try to Slip the Biscuit into the Teenager’s Pocket = 5 votes
B. Try to Trip the Teenager = 7 votes
C. Check Route Map = 2 votes
D. Let the Teenager Pass and Check his Seat for Loot
E. Try to Pickpocket the Teenager = 1 vote
F. Ask the Teenager if he has Seen the Elderly Woman = 5 votes

37.
>> Try to Trip the Teenager
You find the burst of speed and activity from the teenager to be disturbing. It’s a significant departure from his previous behaviour of sitting still and quiet, and is therefore not to be trusted. In fact, you consider, you just offered him fifty percent of your precious biscuit stock and his reaction was to flee. Something doesn’t add up. With a horrifying realisation the thought crosses your mind that he could very well be a spy for the elderly woman. She’s not been elusive from you, she’s been behind you all this time and following you while you tried to follow her. It’s the only explanation.
The teenager struggles to get past Drainpipe Von Staffen, who is bringing his years of rugby experience to bear in blocking the teenager’s path. Your mind turns over the various possibilities of what he might be reporting to the hag. Your new company, your plentiful pocket papers, your lack of shoes; anything to give her power and an advantage over you. If you could capture him, however, you would be able to question him on the location of his vile mistress.
As he makes a move to duck underneath Drainpipe Von Staffen, who is now thoroughly jammed into one of the overhead baggage compartments, you stick one leg out to trip the teenager. Unfortunately, the slick remnants of caked goods and pumpkin juice soaked into your trousers leaves their surface slick and frictionless. The teenager’s own leg slides over it effortlessly, but the force causes you yourself to slide off the seat and land on your back, wedged between the seats like an upended tortoise underneath a displaced section of guttering.
You hear the inter-carriage doors open and shut as you struggle to right yourself. Drainpipe Von Staffen doesn’t seem interested in bending down to help you, but you forgive that oversight on account of its lack of articulations.
The teenager has got away from you for now.

A. Comfort-eat Both Biscuits
B. Offer one Biscuit to Drainpipe Von Staffen and Eat the Other
C. Check the Teenager’s Seat for Loot
D. Try to Nap for the Rest of the Journey
E. Check Route Map
F. Wipe Trousers Clean on Seats

38.
>> Comfort-eat Both Biscuits
Once again those in the agency of the elderly woman have evaded your grasp. Feeling the humiliation of defeat at the hands of a child and your own slippery apparel, you disappointedly clamber off your back and onto your seat. Drainpipe Von Staffen looks down without judgement.
You consider tearing off and destroying your trousers for holding you back yet again, but the melancholy flares up with an apathetic lack of motivation. You can barely bring yourself to wrestling with the waistband before you give up and sag into the seat. Drainpipe Von Staffen averts its gaze out of respect, and you make no attempt to attract its attention.
Sadly you thrust your hands into your pockets and feel part of the treasure you previously gathered throughout the carriage. Up until now, you tell yourself, your impulse control has been utterly impeccable. Every action has been carefully vetted to ensure that it is practical, efficacious, and above-all moral. But this last failure has eroded your willpower, and the feeling of discarded biscuit against your fingers is too much to resist. Your mind briefly flashes back to the Curly Wurly, deepening your desire for biscuit.
You snatch both discarded biscuits up to your mouth, cramming them in together in pursuit of maximum comfort. As you start to chew you realise that the train floor is not an adequate food storage solution if freshness is the ultimate goal. Musty train air has made the biscuits stale and soft, offering a disturbing chewiness where there should have been a satisfying crunch. Worse though is the thick layer of dust which would have been obvious had you taken even a moment to look at them.
If someone had asked you to imagine the taste of a train floor your mind would have crafted a flavour which, in comparison to the one currently on your tongue, was the very definition of bliss. As it is, you grimace with confused horror as the biscuit taste fills your mouth. You keep chewing out of principle and choke down a swallow so as not to embarrass yourself. This has brought you no comfort.

Unpleasant Taste: +1 Erudition, -1 Self-confidence
A. Check the Teenager’s Seat for Loot
B. Remind Drainpipe Von Staffen not to Eat Food from Train Floor
C. Take Teenager’s Seat and Look Wistfully Out of the Window
D. Try to Nap for the Rest of the Journey
E. Check Route Map
F. Read Dry Newspaper

39.
>> Check Route Map
Your mouth tastes like a bin. Not a nice, clean, new bin in the shop that you might lick to inform your purchase, but the bin which surprises you in the early hours of the morning when you hear the binmen approach and tries to send you back to sleep. Such is the power of the flavour that it dulls the rampaging thoughts inside your head and leaves only disgust.
You shudder for a few minutes, holding yourself together and trying to keep your constitution in check. As the wave of nausea starts to pass, your thoughts begin to filter back in. The first one back surprises you. It’s something which has been nagging at the back of your mind, quietly but persistently, vying to be listened to through a sea of chaos.
Apprehensively looking upwards to the banners running along the length of the train, you scan across the route map, searching for either the station from which you left, or for Greater Washburn. Your eyes dart around in a jagged, erratic pattern as the names of stations you don’t recognise pop out at you. Drainpipe Von Staffen appears unconcerned as you struggle to find your bearings.
After a few minutes of frantic searching you realise that the station at which you boarded this train is not represented on the route map. It is a route map for an entirely different line which, on closer inspection, would appear to be from a Spanish speaking nation.

A. Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen if it can Read Spanish
B. Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen if it can Breathe Spinach
C. Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen if it can Feel Spinning
D. Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen if the Spanish Know of Spinach
E. Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen if it Spinach Understands Spinning
F. Ask Yourself if you Need a Nap

40.
>> Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen if it can read Spanish
You spend a few minutes staring at the Spanish writing on the banner, trying to work out what any of the words mean. Whilst you don’t really understand why anyone would print a train route map in Spanish in an English speaking country, you can’t argue with what’s in front of you.
Finally giving up after failing to convince yourself that “alivio de hemorroides” means “Greater Washburn” you turn to Drainpipe Von Staffen, your stalwart companion, for any assistance it may or may not be able to offer.
“Hey, Drainpipe? I don’t suppose you can read Spanish?” you ask, hoping that its miscellaneous continental European accent implies a grasp of other languages.
“Why yes I can, my little el cuarto de baño de los condenados.” Drainpipe replies in what you believe to be a perfect not-quite-Flemish accent.
“Awesome, can you read that banner to me please?” You point up to the banner with its cryptic glyphs.
“Let’s see.” Drainpipe Von Staffen says without turning around. Your arms are a bit tired for that. “It looks to me like it’s an advertisement for a piles treatment, themed to look like a route map.”
You stay silent for a moment, contemplating Drainpipe’s assessment.
“It says it has a 99% success rate in three days. Might be worth a go even if you’re not afflicted.” Drainpipe continues.
“Hmm, no that’s OK. Thanks.”
“There’s an actual route map above your head, though. Looks like we’re...” Drainpipe pauses to count on the fingers it doesn’t have. “6 stops away from Greater Washburn.”
“6? Tremendous. Thank you Drainpipe.” You say with satisfaction and relief.
“Not at all mi canasta de mimbre cartilaginoso.” Drainpipe Von Staffen reassures you warmly.

A. Spend the Journey Wondering why the Piles Advert is Targeted Exclusively at Spanish Speakers
B. Spend the Journey Worrying about the Ironing
C. Check Teenager’s Seat for Loot
D. Spend the Journey Checking the Stats of Other Commuters
E. Spend the Journey Speculating on the Elderly Woman’s Agenda
F. Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen to Tell you About Itself

41.
>> Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen to Tell you About Itself
You have 6 stops of time to kill. Many of your instincts are to while away your time introspectively, contemplating the larger problems in life such as the targeted advertising of piles treatment, ironing, what elderly women are up to and other such important matters. But your gaze rests idly on Drainpipe Von Staffen, the tubular enigma with seemingly endless talents but terrible luck at “rock, paper, scissors”. Curiosity burns in your mind, more intensely than any desire you have had to learn anything about yourself.
“So Drainpipe, what’s your story? How did you end up clipped to that building?” You ask with an expression of innocent interest.
“Now that’s a long tale.” Drainpipe says with a tone of voice that implies there would be a wink if it had eyes. Its accent is closer to the original attempt again. “Six stops might not be enough time.”
“It can be abridged if necessary.” You reply.
“Well, where to begin then… let’s see… I was born back in early 2006 to Moira and Jason Bentworth, owners of small stationery and office supplies shop just off the high street. They were kind parents for the most part, peeling away my cellophane packaging with care and delicacy, never using a knife which might scratch my outer circumference, and giving me all the support they could with a number of fixing brackets.
Many of my earliest memories are of mother and father embracing me to put me in place against the brickwork of their shop. They’d take it in turns to hold me while the other marked up points to drill screw-holes for the brackets, laughing and joking with one another. I remember seeing another long, dark shape behind them, resting against the bins. I don’t think I was self-aware enough at the time to really grasp what the shape was, and it wasn’t until many years later that I realised it was another drainpipe, possibly their previous child lost to causes unknown. It’s funny how life can drop in these little elements of context and perspective after so long.” Drainpipe pauses pensively, lost in the thought of his unknown sibling resting against the dumpster.
“The first few nights of rain were easier than I had anticipated they would be. Mother and Father’s preparations had meant that I didn’t need to put in any effort at all. Between that and my natural instincts for allowing non-viscous materials to pass through my hollow core and into open drains below, I found that being a drainpipe was easy and honest work, even for a youth. I vividly recall Mother telling Father with pride how there were no leaks, no cracks, and no misalignment anywhere. Part of me wonders if those were the maladies which befell my predecessor, but speculation achieves nothing.
I was educated in an International School in the east of Brussels, a refined institution which taught me much of European history, foreign languages, natural sciences, mathematics, and many other disciplines. I struggled with many of the team sports, accustomed as I was to working alone in the drainage game. Many of the other students boarded there, but I commuted in each morning from the shop and returned each afternoon.”
You imagine a young Drainpipe Von Staffen boarding a ferry in its school uniform, and find that the mental picture comes naturally.
“I had to take days away from my tutoring, of course. On mornings when rain was falling, or predicted to fall before my return, I would have to remain with Mother and Father to fulfil my duties. I didn’t resent this responsibility, and my parents would read to me of whichever subjects I was missing, but there was undeniably an effect on my academic performance which then had to be made up with after-hours study. Luckily, being made from PVC, I had no need for sleep even then, so I had sufficient free time for my revision.”
You hear a high pitched screeching as the train starts to brake. You look through the window to find that you are pulling into a station. Five stops left.
“You can well imagine that the commuting and lost days at school isolated me somewhat from the other students. Where they were all together every moment of every day, like some kind of obscure extended family, I was a mere visitor in their world, an outsider of sorts. I firmly believe that had I not towered over them, as I was already a clear 26 feet in height, they would have tried to push me around. As it was my stature saved me from the worst of what children have to offer. Even the names they made up for me failed to stick, on account of my SlickTech™ Moss and Leaf Litter Repellent Coating.”
The train starts to pull away again, and you start to regret volunteering yourself to both listen to and speak for Drainpipe Von Staffen for all of the remainder of the journey. Your throat is starting to feel a little dry.
“For that reason, really, I didn’t have many school friends. It’s easy to speculate on what might have been different and get lost in what-ifs, but I don’t let myself get sucked into that trap. My lack of friends might, in actual fact, have been the deliverance of the rest of my life. You see, one of the senior teachers, Mr Lyssaire, noticed my separation from the other students. I think he mistook it for aloofness on my part, seeing the other students as both literally and figuratively below me, but realised after further observation that I was just different from everyone else. On more than the physical level I mean!”
You laugh politely, as per the unwritten but somehow still signed social contract. Drainpipe’s accent is growing less consistent.
“Mr Lyssaire engaged with me on a social level that the other students wouldn’t, and it is from him that I really started to learn my way around other people. It turned out that Mr Lyssaire wasn’t always an educator by trade, but he had always educated others in a certain sense. Although he never gave me the exact details, I know that he was, in times gone by, the advisor to a powerful world leader. It was his position to give this leader the tools they required to navigate the quagmire of political relations, and he didn’t always have the luxury of facilitating moral decisions. Through our continued engagement he started to transfer to me those skills and tools which he had picked up. Whilst I might not have been able to socialise with my peers, he ensured that I was equipped to immediately and completely fill any room with an utterly overwhelming and irresistible charisma.”
You notice some of the other commuters looking over at you with furrowed brows. You worry that they might think you’re talking to yourself, rather than conversing with Drainpipe Von Staffen, so you lean forwards and peak your fingers towards Drainpipe to make your interest and attention completely clear to all observers.

A. Continue Listening to Drainpipe Von Staffen
B. Pretend to Listen to Drainpipe Von Staffen, but Really Space Out for the Rest of the Journey
C. Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen Politely but Firmly to Stop
D. Pretend to Listen to Drainpipe Von Staffen, but Subtly Check Teenager’s Seat for Loot
E. Speculate Blindly on Mr Lyssaire’s Past
F. Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen if Mr Lyssaire Could be the Elderly Woman

42.
>> Pretend to Listen to Drainpipe Von Staffen, but Subtly Check Teenager’s Seat for Loot
“My private lessons with Mr Lyssaire were the making of me. As much as the knowledge imparted to me by the other teachers was useful, Mr Lyssaire’s reconstruction of my public persona, and on some level my whole character, had much more of a lasting effect.” Drainpipe continues. Although you asked for this and want the other commuters to believe that you are listening intently, you have started to lose interest.
Now occupying the seat vacated by the elderly woman’s teenage thrall your attention starts to drift back to your nemesis. She is out there somewhere, perhaps exercising the same Machiavellian control over the people around her that Drainpipe Von Staffen was taught at school.
“Many of the other students gradually started to rein back their vilification of me as I subtly manipulated their perspectives on me.”
You nod as if you are listening, but shift slightly in your seat, feeling for anything which the teenage spy might have secreted away underneath the upholstery. You believe that you’re being subtle enough to disguise your motions as an attempt to scratch your behind on the chair.
“I began to utilise the Lyssaire’s teachings in my life at home as well, practicing my charm on the alley-people who passed by my drain.” Drainpipe continues, oblivious to your distracted concentration.
You slip one hand down to the seat when you feel something hard and round underneath the fabric surface. Excitedly you resolve to find out what it is.
“Water flowed more easily down me. People passing by looked upon me with favour. Even you decided to take me with you.”
Slipping your keys from your pocket, and doing a passable job of muting the jingling, you thrust the sharpest of your keys into the fabric. With a melodramatically over-acted and clearly fake sneeze you try to cover the tearing sound as you drag the key through the fabric like a rudimentary and blunt knife.
Drainpipe pauses its story and you look diretly into the place where its eyes might have been if it had any. It continues.
“Office supply sales started to creep upwards…”
You slip one hand into the seat and feel something metallic, warmed by your buttocks. You grasp it with one hand and pull hard, feeling a ripping sensation as it comes free.
You leap to your feet to provide easier access to the ruptured seat, and yank free a spring.

Item acquired: Seat spring

A. Examine Spring for Evidence of Elderly Woman
B. Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen to Check Other Seats for Springs
C. Apologise for Interrupting Drainpipe and Ask it to Continue
D. Sit Deeper into the Torn Seat to Check for More Loot with Buttocks
E. Hide Spring in Scarf to Examine Later
F. Ask Other Commuters to Search for Springs

43.
>> Ask Other Commuters to Search for Springs
>> Examine Spring for Evidence of Elderly Woman
You’re faintly aware of Drainpipe Von Staffen’s voice, escaping through the side of your mouth, continuing its story. However in your distracted state you are only able to pick out the odd word here and there. It sounds like Drainpipe’s concentration is also elsewhere.
“Managed to convince gutter of hegemonic despotism…”
You stare down at the spring, and look to the other, untorn but otherwise identical seats. There could be many more of these lurking in the train, and who knows what the elderly woman was planning to do with them. You decide that it is critical to find all of these springs, whilst simultaneously determining whether or not it presents any threat or boon to yourself and Drainpipe Von Staffen.
“Everyone! There are springs or spring-like devices in the seats! Quickly, find however many there are and get them out!” You cry, in some hybrid between your own voice and Drainpipe’s. Assuming that the other commuters will immediately leap to your aid because of your association with Drainpipe Von Staffen, you turn your attention to examining the spring.
“Stapler sales boosted from manipulating religious oligarchy…” Drainpipe mumbles.
You turn the spring over in your hands looking for any markings or branding which might betray the elderly woman’s intentions, or any evidence that it has been held close to a well-lipsticked face. Finding nothing, you instead manipulate the spring’s form, finding to your surprise that it pushes back when you compress it and even makes an unpleasant squeaking sound.
“They appear to be tools of resistance! They also make a hideous screech! Exercise extreme caution and we might yet escape the elderly woman’s trap!” you advise the other commuters urgently. They all appear to be stunned by the intensity of the situation; that’s the only explanation you can think of for their inaction.

A. Launch Solo Mission to De-spring Seats
B. Sit in Springless Seat and Lay Low
C. Attempt to Crush Spring
D. Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen’s Opinion on the Spring
E. Throw Spring at Window
F. Ask Drainpipe to Continue Whilst Repeatedly Squeaking Spring

44.
>> Launch Solo Mission to De-spring Seats
The other commuters still fail to act on your commands. Silently you curse the raw intensity of the hypnotically charismatic duo that you and Drainpipe make; everyone else is paralysed by your mere presence. If the elderly woman’s sabotage is going to be stopped, you’ll have to do it alone.
Wasting no time, not even apologising to Drainpipe Von Staffen for interrupting its story again, you lunge over to the seats opposite and start to rip at the fabric with the sharp end of your liberated spring. A staccato ripping fills the carriage as the spring catches then bounces free then catches again, several times over. It takes a few frenzied slashes to open a gash into the upholstery, but you eventually manage it and see the top of another spring poking through some laughably thin padding. You tear it free, clutch it in your off-hand and then get to work on the next seat, tearing away with both spring-laden crab claws as Drainpipe watches on.
Your springs catch on one another more than once, enough to negate any increase in speed offered by digging with both hands. Before long though you are in possession of three springs.
For a good ten minutes you continue your purge of the seats, disarming whatever nefarious trap the elderly woman had planned for the innocent denizens of the carriage. The train makes a stop in the middle of your rampage, and several new commuters board the carriage, only to turn around and beat a hasty retreat when they see you. You assume that they recognise your impassioned counter-terrorism efforts and are taking the appropriate action to save themselves.
By the time you’ve disarmed every chair in the carriage your arms burn with exhaustion, and you sink back into your first mutilated chair next to Drainpipe Von Staffen. The carriage is blanketed in seat debris.

Item Acquired: Seat Spring (27)

A. Wear Springs as Bracers and Anklets
B. Combine Springs with Batteries
C. Combine Springs with Dry Newspaper
D. Build a Spring Crown for Yourself and Another for Drainpipe Von Staffen
E. Examine All Springs for the Rest of the Journey
F. Gather Seat Debris

45.
>> Combine Springs with Batteries
Wondering if the true power of the springs can only be unlocked by coupling them to something else, and reasoning that the closest thing you have to a chair is your set of AA batteries, you resolve to combine them. Fishing the batteries out of your pocket, you use your other hand to clear space in the pile of spring on the small plastic table surface in front of you.
The cardboard battery packet puts up some staunch resistance to your attempts at battery liberation, but with calculated use of the teeth you manage to rend it asunder and plunder the goods. With three batteries removed, you cram the rest of the packet back into your pocket.
You look down at your two components and puzzle over how to bind them together. Both of them are made from hard, smooth metal which isn’t well known for its adhesive properties.
“You could try bending a spring around a battery.” Drainpipe Von Staffen suggests, looming over the table.
“Yeah, I suppose.” You agree, trying to bend the spring into a cradle for one of the batteries. The spring decidedly wins that battle.
Opting for a new approach you a space in the centre of the table and lay a circle of alternating springs and batteries. It’s a difficult business with the rocking of the train and the fact that everything with which you are trying to work is cylindrical, and several of your attempts are scuppered by the assembly rolling off the edge of the table. Notably, the couple of times the train comes to a stop and then pulls away again cause a great amount of disruption.
Finally, however, you manage to get everything stable and in place. You look down at the ring of sprung batteries and it does nothing but taunt you with the elderly woman’s persistent mystique. Drainpipe maintains its vigil over the construction, so you feel an obligation to maintain your own observations as well, but your heart has left it a little.
Gradually you start to hear a quiet hum. It fades in from the background of the train’s motion, but eventually grows louder and more distinct, clearly coming from your creation. With renewed interest you peer closer, and see that the ends of the springs are starting to glow a soft red. The red spreads and grows into a brighter orange, bringing with it the unmistakable smell of burning plastic.
Your mind fires into overdrive, wondering what this is supposed to mean. Is it a message from the elderly woman that something which comes in threes is about to burn you? Is it a warning to stay away or she’ll catapult you into a fire? There seems to be no way of knowing.
A few sparks and short-lived flames flash from the table, bringing your attention back into the present moment. Drainpipe Von Staffen has no wisdom to add, presumably mesmerised by the lightshow.
Once the springs have melted half-an-inch into the table, the batteries finally fizzle and give up. The carriage smells horrible.

Scientist!: +1 Erudition

Items lost: Spring (3), AA Batteries (3)
Items acquired: Singed Spring (3), Exhausted AA Batteries (3)

A. Stuff Seat Debris into Melted Spring Divots
B. Build a spring Crown for Yourself and a Singed Spring Crown for Drainpipe Von Staffen
C. Wear Springs as Bracers and Anklets
D. Hide Evidence of Melting
E. Put Exhausted Batteries in Drainpipe Von Staffen’s Head
F. Ask Drainpipe Von Staffen What the Elderly Woman’s Message Might Mean

46.
>> Build a Spring Crown for Yourself and a Singed Spring Crown for Drainpipe Von Staffen
You lean backwards into your seat and reflect upon your handiwork. You have saved the whole carriage of commuters from the tyranny of the elderly woman and her teenage minion. You have gathered great treasures from far-off seats. And after those great miracles you surpassed yourself by creating fire from nothing but steel and chemical potential energy. The crab king as, undoubtedly, proven his divine right to the throne, and every king needs a crown.
Whipping out your new material of choice, you set about bending, twisting, and manipulating metal. Your fists and wrists start to ache quickly, still tired from your merciless campaign against the seating. In your mind you have a clear vision for how this crown should look; the delicate curves of the spring forming a pseudo-filigree and sharpened tips raised upwards.
Sweat beads run down your forehead as you exert great forces on the springs and they exert equal and opposite forces back on you. Newton’s third law is working against you; to be expected since Newton would be very old, and so is the elderly woman.
After a lot of strain, another train stop, and some improvisation around your original, deeply flawed mental designs, you complete what you are willing to call your Spring Crown. You prepare to place it on your head but stop short when your eye catches Drainpipe Von Staffen. It is trying to look nonplussed but you know that deep down it wishes for a crown too. In your heart of hearts you can’t deprive your best buddy, your charismatic muse, of equally resplendent headwear. But it needs to be distinct.
Learning lessons from your previous attempt, you take the three singed springs and twist them into a scorched replica of your own headpiece. Once completed you raise it high for Drainpipe’s coronation. Despite the screeching of Drainpipe’s head against the ceiling, this solemn occasion is marred only slightly by the necessary manhandling of your buddy to get its head down to crowning level. Panting a little you slide the crown over Drainpipe’s head, allowing it to come to rest on the first fragment of bracket.
You jam Drainpipe Von Staffen back against the ceiling and place your own crown onto your head, making the train over 100% more regal.

A. Get off at the Next Stop
B. Get off After One More Stop
C. Get off After Two More Stops
D. Get off at the Next Stop and Travel Back One Stop
E. Get off After One More Stop and Travel Back One Stop
F. Get off After Two More Stops and Travel Back One Stop

47.
>> Get off After Two More Stops and Travel Back One Stop
You sit up a little straighter in your chair and look at Drainpipe Von Staffen, who looks right back at you. Crowned together and ready for anything, you both practice looking regal. Drainpipe adopts the ‘Stoic Viceroy’ technique of remaining very rigid and still, whilst you favour the ‘People’s Monarch’ style, modelling the cup-and-splay wave technique and thin smile.
Just as you settle into a rhythm with your waving, the kind of steady beat which would allow a monarch-in-motion to acknowledge an acceptable proportion of any gathered crowd, the screeching brakes of the train signal its arrival at Greater Washburn station. Getting up and grabbing Drainpipe Von Staffen would mean disrupting your newly acquired royal abilities, and you find that prospect to be unwelcome.
There are multiple ways to solve any problem, as well your pumpkin-stained feet can attest. One can always travel in a straight line by taking three sides of a square. It’s possible to make every left turn via several rights. And you adopt the same principle with the train, electing to ride for an extra stop and then come back on another locomotive. Two additional stops worth of waving practice will make you into the calibre of world leader that the Crab King deserves to be.
As the doors close something outside of the window catches your eye. A heavy knitted cardigan. A long navy skirt. Sensible puce shoes. A back turned to you with a slight hunch. In and amongst the crowd you can only catch brief glimpses and scant details, but it is unmistakably an elderly woman. With a short lurch the train starts to pull away. You lean from side to side to try to get a better view, anything to determine whether it is THE elderly woman or just AN elderly woman, but the rail network seeks to protect that secret. No matter how quickly you wave your hand, the train does not slow.
You distractedly wave for the five minutes it takes to reach the next station. As the train slows you grab Drainpipe Von Staffen around the waist, not really in a manner befitting royalty, and grind its head against the carriage ceiling to make your escape. Another train is already on the opposite platform. You lift Drainpipe off the ground, its crown clattering against the bracket and the tall, hollow body, and sprint for your carriage. Several commuters are nearly impaled by Drainpipe, having adopted full ramming speed, but without a single casualty you make it onto the next train.
You stay standing for the trip, showing your subjects that humility is not beyond you despite your regal status. It’s also difficult to manoeuvre Drainpipe back into a position where it won’t fall down every few seconds.
Finally you pull up to Greater Washburn station again. You waste no time in pushing out of the doors with your buddy, clonking a few other train passengers on the way, and dash to where you saw the suspected elderly woman. There is no sign of her, nor any evidence of a tasteful application of lipstick.

A. Enquire at Ticket Office Regarding Elderly Woman
B. Consult Drainpipe Von Staffen on How to Reach 16 Gerrin Avenue
C. Search Train Station for a Shoe Shop
D. Attempt to Exit Station Whilst Subtly Wiping Trousers on Other Passengers
E. Report Some Vandalised Seats on your Previous Train
F. Equip Dog Tags and Scarf

48.
>> Attempt to Exit Station Whilst Subtly Wiping Trousers on Other Passengers
In the window of a nearby shop you catch sight of your reflection. You see nobility. You see dignity. You see the mighty Crab King, one claw still raised, standing triumphant with everyone’s best buddy Drainpipe Von Staffen. Your paired crowns set you apart from the lowly peasants filling the station, but there’s still something wrong. Looking slightly lower you are able to finally see the full scale of the ravaging your trousers have experienced during the course of the day. Barely a thumb-sized patch of clean fabric is visible among the cataclysm of drying cake, smeared icing, doughnut stains, sugar, grease, pumpkin juice, and mossy green from Drainpipe Von Staffen’s blessed body. It is not becoming of crustacean royalty to be so filthy.
With the suspected elderly woman out of sight, but never out of mind, you have only two immediate concerns: exiting the station and cleaning up your ruined legwear as best you can.
As is the style around these parts, another set of barriers stands between the street and the platform. Through it, flowing like a mighty river of lowly peons, are more commuters heading towards their tawdry destinations.
Getting through the barriers would involve a ticket, something which you actively worked against acquiring previously. Getting the stains off your trousers would involve having a lot of clean cloth and perhaps some water. Whilst there are no tickets nearby to be conveniently acquired without pickpocketing or mugging, there is at least a solid flow of clean cloth. It just so happens to be wrapped around other people at the moment.
Deciding that you’ll probably work something out when the time comes to actually pass through the barriers, you set off into the crowd of commuters to take care of your laundry. Using Drainpipe Von Staffen as a crude baffle to direct the crowds around yourself, you take a distinctly hip-active gait, swiping your thighs, calves and pelvis against anyone who passes close by to you. A middle-aged man gets a heavy streak of Victoria sponge across his suit trousers. A young lady is given the gift of pumpkin-gore on her ripped jeans. You thrust a damp, doughnut-covered behind into an elderly gentleman, knocking him off-balance and into a display of postcards with a tell-tale stain across his back. The crowds are thick enough that no-one notices the clearly purposeful way in which you’re making contact, but several people move to avoid Drainpipe Von Staffen, inhibiting the full dry-cleaning for which you were searching.
You reach the barriers. The crowd of people leaving is far thinner than the crowd entering the station, and sneaking along directly behind someone proves difficult with Drainpipe Von Staffen in tow. More than once he gets jammed across the barrier, much to the chagrin of your loyal but uppity subjects in the queue behind. You give up on that avenue of escape to avoid drawing attention from the station attendants.
Remembering the saying that lightning nearly always strikes twice, you repeat your favoured tactic of leaning backwards against one of the incoming barriers. Choosing your moment carefully, you try to look as if one of them has elbowed you out of the way, leading to an acrobatic leap into the air and over the barrier with Drainpipe Von Staffen still clutched in one crab claw. It’s not elegant, but somehow your ruse works a second time. Somewhere in your mind you decide to one day make an anonymous tip to the rail company that their attendants are slacking on the job.

A. Consult Drainpipe Von Staffen on How to Reach 16 Gerrin Avenue
A. Look for a Map Outside the Station
B. Attempt to Hitchhike to Gerrin Avenue
C. Sprint North
D. Sashay South
E. Saunter East
F. Moonwalk West

49.
>> Consult Drainpipe Von Staffen on How to Reach 16 Gerrin Avenue
>> Moonwalk West
Free from your imprisonment in Greater Washburn train station, you step onto the street. There’s a flow of foot-traffic in either direction and, beyond that, a flow of traffic-traffic travelling along the road. Somewhere, lurking in this city, is Gerrin Avenue. All you have to do is find it.
Weighing up your options for how to find out about an unfamiliar city, you naturally choose the only logical course of action: asking your best buddy, the political mastermind, all-round schmoozer and crowned royalty, Drainpipe Von Staffen.
“Drainpipe, do you know the way to Gerrin Avenue?” you ask. A few people turn their heads in the belief that they misheard you, but turn away again quickly when they discover, much to their disappointment, that they heard you perfectly well.
“Let me see…” Drainpipe says in a new variant of his old accent. “I spent some time in Greater Washburn when I was in the employ of the Duchess of Washburnshire, and I learned the layout of the streets fairly well. I daresay that there have been new constructions since then, however, and Gerrin doesn’t ring a bell per se.”
You glance up to see that one of the ticket attendants in the train station is looking at you suspiciously. Quickly you turn back to Drainpipe Von Staffen.
“Gerrin is a colloquial term for the feeling you get when you make up a fact that just so happens to be true, so it’s probably a road in the Lies Estate to the north of here. If I recall there was a plot of undeveloped land just beyond Fib Street, so we should probably head that way.” Drainpipe speculated.
“Got it. Thanks.” You respond, seeing the ticket attendant still watching you. Panic starts to rise. Perhaps the elderly woman tipped the station staff off about you. She might even have bought their loyalty. They could be reporting back to her right now, and if they overhear that you’re heading north they may very well try to head you off.
Thankfully, being a tactical genius and an expert at feats of subtlety and nonchalance, you quickly think of a way to mask your intentions.
“Great advice, Drainpipe Vo.. erm, I mean Gutterpipe El Sancho. We SHOULD go east to that drainage convention.” You say loudly enough for those in the station to hear, giving Drainpipe a wink.
“Follow my lead.” You mumble to Drainpipe, who gives you an acquiescent blank stare with its lack of a face.
Looking due east and pulling your best ‘not at all doing anything suspicious’ face you rest Drainpipe Von Staffen against your right shoulder and start to moonwalk to the west. Those fools in the station will see you heading east and believe you are going that way, especially with the bamboozling motion of your moonwalk. Couple that with the great deception you just pulled in which you said outright that you were going east and the con is 100% bulletproof. Even the elderly woman couldn’t see through this one.
Without dancing shoes, you find that friction is the secret enemy of the moonwalk. Your damp socks snag and pull on the pavement, and before long you start to hear the tearing of fabric. Regardless, you believe that your movement if fluid and believable. It’s a clear 30 metres to the nearest street corner, but eventually you make it. You see no evidence of anyone from the train station following you, however you did pass a map of the city around 10m from the train station.

A. Spin Around and Continue Moonwalking North
B. Make a Daring Dash to Check the Map
C. Attempt to Hitchhike to Gerrin Avenue
D. Disguise Yourself and Drainpipe with Newspaper and Scarf
E. Use Keys to Scratch “Elderly Woman” into the Side of a Battery
F. Check Surroundings for a Shoe Shop

50.
>> Make a Daring Dash to Check the Map
>> Check Surroundings for a Shoe Shop
In a rare moment of self-doubt, and an even rarer moment of Drainpipe doubt, you question whether or not you know exactly where you’re going. Until this point you’ve placed full faith in your ability to navigate the unknown based on nothing but guesswork and stubbornness, but Greater Washburn has given you pause to think about things. You nearly fell victim to the elderly woman’s traps on the train here, and then there was the incident with the overly attentive train station attendant. Clearly these are dangerous times, and therefore they cry out for dangerous measures. You elect to check a map.
It’s not a long way to the map, but you also don’t have a long time to get there if the attendant really is out to get you. Luckily, rushing will give you the element of danger and urgency which has thus far typified your approach to travel.
Breaking out at a full sprint you head for the map. Immediately you realise why Olympic sprinters elect not to carry a section of drainpipe which is taller than they are during their races, even when that section of drainpipe is as charming as Drainpipe Von Staffen. Drainpipe’s long tail-end inhibits the motion of your legs, slapping hard against your knees and shins with every stride. Its mid-section bounces against your clavicle, and its head threatens to smack your own in its wild motion. Still, you can’t bring yourself to put it down and make it walk unaided. After all, it would get sore feet without shoes.
The thought sticks in your mind. It echoes around the halls of your thoughts, disrupting the metaphorical air and causing flickers in the figurative torches that light the way. Your own feet are freezing cold, damp from all manner of things, and starting to feel uncomfortable as the socks wear down. After all this time and all this heartache, you finally decide that enough is enough. You find the strength to forgive yourself. You decide to look for a place to acquire new shoes.
Not breaking from your painful and unimpressive run, you look from side-to-side to check for the presence of any kind of shoe shop in the vicinity. You pass by an old-fashioned pub, followed by a Chinese takeaway, a clothing store, and a bookshop, but no shoe shops, on your own side of the road. On the other side however, you see a branch of ‘Laced with Spite’; the discount shop for the misanthropic shoe wearer.
All around you the crowds are parting and shouting angrily, as most crowds seem to have done throughout the course of the day. They fail to recognise their crowned Crab King and Viceroy Drainpipe, instead mistaking you for a filthy-trousered, shoeless wreck whose pockets are literally bulging with springs, charging along the street with a drainpipe battering ram. Obviously, these people really are deluded.
You reach the map and stop with a hard impact as it crunches into you. Drainpipe bounces harmlessly off its surface and clonks you one last time on the noggin. Shaking off the collision you scan the map for any sign of Gerrin Avenue, looking in an erratic, disjointed pattern rather than taking a systematic approach.
Several minutes pass, rendering your urgent run redundant and somewhat laughing in the face of your earlier fears regarding the ticket attendant. Eventually, however, you manage to find Gerrin Avenue. It’s a moderate distance to the west, although you convince yourself it is slightly northwest in order to avoid calling Drainpipe Von Staffen a liar.

A. Visit Shoe Shop, Hoping that 36p is Enough to Buy Shoes
B. Visit Shoe Shop, Scoping for Loot
C. Visit Shoe Shop, Aiming to Barter
D. Visit Shoe Shop and let Drainpipe Von Staffen do the Talking
E. Acknowledge Shoe Shop, and then Moonwalk West Again
F. Sashay East in Search of the Drainage Convention you Made up Earlier

51.
>> Visit Shoe Shop, Hoping that 36p is Enough to Buy Shoes
With your target firmly located you take another look at how you’re planning to get there. Whilst moonwalking is the gods’ own gait, second only to the noble squatted crab-walk, your socks have been proven not to facilitate it. By no fault of your own, as you recall, your shoes were lost to you during the supermarket crusade, one falling to the yoghurt and the other being stolen away in a shepherd’s pie by dark forces. It may finally be time to rectify that situation.
Without looking you walk into the road and cross to the shoe shop, with a few cursory hooters sounding a litany to your bravery. The windows boast a proud display of leather, faux leather, synthetic, and faux synthetic shoes. Some have heels higher than your ankles, others broad soles and flat toes. Generally speaking, it’s a pretty straightforward selection of shoes.
Satisfied with your initial scan of the offerings, you feel confident to commit yourself to a full perusal of the store. Continuing your wave of rationality, or perhaps a crisis of conscience, you enter with the full intention of actually paying for something for the first time in a long time. You just hope in your heart that 36p is enough to buy a pair of shoes, lest you fall back into your thieving ways.
Shelves run the length of the store walls, crammed full of various styles and sizes of footwear. In the body of the shop, several islands of racked shoes cry out for purchase, and a couple cry out quick deliverance into an incinerator or similar vessel of annihilation. You don’t know how anyone has the barefaced cheek to design a rhinestone slingback with a triple-heel, let alone stock it once the arcane horror has been made manifest, but it speaks ill of the store owner’s morals.
You spend a few minutes browsing the racks for anything which might be suitable for moonwalking, squatting, and long distance walking, but the amateurs who run the establishment have neglected to set out a display for those requirements. You and Drainpipe pass comments to one another, judging the poor quality of some pairs, poor designs of others, and lamentable store layout. Drainpipe repeatedly bangs its head on the low hanging lights and sweeps whole racks of loafers onto the ground with its long legs.
Hearing the sound of tumbling shoes, an assistant rushes over.
“Can I help you?” she asks, not sounding so much helpful as accusative.
“What do you have for 36p?” you ask directly. You’ve seen several extortionate price tags around the shop, but feel that 36p should be sufficient for at least a pair of sturdy boots.
“Half of a pair of laces.” The assistant answers, not at all blown away by your vast wealth.
Counting on your fingers for a moment, you calculate that a single lace will not provide sufficient cover for both feet. But, like a poorly secured shelf, something hits you. You looted additional funds from the train!
“How about 49p?”
You raise one eyebrow to show that you’re both serious and charismatic. Drainpipe quietly approves.
“Half a pair of laces and 13p change.” The assistant replies, looking deeply unimpressed, or perhaps suffering with cramps, and utterly impervious to your devastating charms.
“I don’t think you can help us with anything then!” Drainpipe tells the assistant haughtily. “Unless you can suggest a shoe for the moonwalking crab king who might, on occasion, have cause to walk for several miles?”
The assistant stares at you, rudely ignoring Drainpipe’s question and seemingly pondering on something.
“I’m getting the manager.” She says, before striding towards a back room.

A. Wait Patiently for the Manager to Apologise to You
B. Loot a Pair of Uncomfortable Looking Loafers
C. Loot a Pair of Diamante Slingbacks
D. Loot a Pair of High-Heeled Wellingtons
E. Loot a Single Slipper and a Single Work Boot
F. Loot as Many Shoelaces as You can Hold

52.
>> Loot a Pair of High-Heeled Wellingtons
>> Loot as Many Shoelaces as You can Hold
You watch the assistant leave in a hurry and fear that your ostentatious behaviour may not have curried favour. If the crabby girl spoke true then even your mighty fortune is insufficient to procure footwear, but you know that your feet, as they are, will be unable to withstand the journey to Gerrin Avenue.
Deprived of any other options, your mind turns back to the darkness. The rows of shoes around you cease to find themselves hidden behind a paywall and become fair game, ripe for the looting. Everything in the store is at your disposal. The choices are manifold, with every variation in style, colour, size and shape represented somewhere in the treasure-trove, but one clear winner stands out above the rest. It is more practical, more stylish, more convenient and almost certainly more comfortable than any other pair in the shop.
You and Drainpipe run in the direction of the counter to the wet-weather display. Reaching to a shelf just above head height you wrap your free crab claw around a thick high-heeled boot of rubber, rising up to knee height and coloured in a tasteful baby blue. Running up the outside of the calf is an intricate design of a rose growing through a human skull. The skull appears to have a bottle-opener embedded in it, perhaps in a metaphor for the end which will reach anyone who over-indulges in kitchen utensils. Whatever the imagery at play, you find it irresistible. Drainpipe headbutts the neighbouring boot down for you, aiming to help in any way it can.
You snatch up the second boot, clutching them both in your non-Drainpipe arm and prepare to leave, when the display of shoelaces by the counter catches your eye. The assistant made a point of telling you how expensive these laces were, probably in an effort to make you want to purchase some for the status they would afford you. If looting is on the cards, then you would be a fool to leave them here.
Changing tactic you place the boots down and cram your feet into them. The drying cake along the calves of your trousers causes them to stick and ride up, so that they bunch above the top of the boot and your bare leg sinks in. The left boot goes on without too much of a battle, but the right seems less willing. With no time to waste on fitting it properly you force your foot down harder and then hobble towards the counter.
With the frenzy of a starving man you snatch up pair after pair of shoelaces, stuffing them into your pockets among the springs and then going back for more. Plastic and cardboard racks go flying as you rip away their lace charges and baskets fall empty to the ground. With the rich pickings immediately available to you run dry you move to the nearby shelves and start yanking laces free from shoes and boots on display. It’s hard-going with only one hand and Drainpipe Von Staffen is busy keeping an eye out for the manager, but you manage to grab a few extra pairs before the sound of the back room door opening grabs your attention.
“Cheese it!” you say to Drainpipe as the two of you run for the door with the clopping of a half-worn pair of wellington boots.
“Wh- Stop right there! Thief!” shouts an unfamiliar voice from behind you, making all sorts of baseless and cruel accusations and judgements about your character. Given that the manager is such a rude person you feel no shame in stealing from their store.
With one boot only partially fitted your gait is slow and uneven. Your foot stops just above the ankle of the boot, and the rest of it folds underneath your foot with flapping sound. It would disrupt your balance enough alone, but the high heel of its counterpart doesn’t provide the stability to which you have become accustomed. With a few near misses which were only avoided by Drainpipe Von Staffen’s quick thinking in bracing you against the shelves with its head, you make it to the door.
With escape secured, you spare a second to formulate an alibi.
“When you weren’t looking the deli counter assistant snuck in and stole a bunch of laces and wellingtons! Don’t worry though, I’m running after him now!” you shout into the store. The manager looks, if anything, even more furious. It’s probably rage that a rival shop has stolen from him, you tell yourself.
“I’m not sure the bakery counter assistants are so innocent either.” Drainpipe adds. Genius; its own alibi is also bulletproof now.
You sprint west along the road and turn north at the crossroads to hide behind the corner of a building with your spoils.

Item acquired: Shoelaces (34)
Item equipped: Practical High-Heeled Wellingtons

A. Moonwalk West Quickly to Evade Manager in Style
B. Run North and Look for a Better Hiding Place
C. Stand at Corner and Ambush Manager with the “Hidden Drainpipe” Technique
D. Combine Wellingtons with Springs
E. Offer Passersby a Shoelace Bribe to Mislead Manager
F. Tie Drainpipe to Yourself with Shoelaces

53.
>> Stand at Corner and Ambush Manager with the “Hidden Drainpipe” Technique
You lean against the building panting. Your trousers are bulging with springs, scarves, papers and shoelaces, but the spoils of your quest also spoil your gait and make it difficult to move your thighs. The additional weight of Drainpipe Von Staffen makes the task even harder, but you recognise that abandoning your not-quite-lifelong buddy is not an option. For these reasons, you know that you won’t be able to outrun the shoe store manager like you did the supermarket’s secret police. The only choice is to stay and fight. Luckily, you don’t need to fight fair.
“Hey Drainpipe, get ready. We’re going to use the ‘Hidden Drainpipe’ technique!” You tell it, swinging it off your shoulder.
“Hidden Drainpipe!? We haven’t used that since the pursuit through Morocco… it’ll be just like old times, eh friend?” Drainpipe responds. Its surprise is plain to hear in your voice. “We’ve felled many like this before, and we’ll do it again!”
You aren’t sure what Drainpipe is talking about, but it seems thematically appropriate so you don’t question anything openly. You hold Drainpipe horizontally across your body.
Peeking around the corner, you see the manager closing on you quickly. He seems to be slightly out of breath not even close to being out of anger. You suspect that this man has an irrational hatred of people looting and vandalising his store, and therefore needs to be taught a lesson in remaining calm.
You pull your head back in from the corner and count in your head, timing the manager’s arrival. You can hear his footsteps getting closer quickly. Only a few seconds left.
“Take this you managerial menace!” you cry, thrusting Drainpipe out as the manager crests the corner and catching him in the knees with a hollow, resonating ‘thunnng’.
“Haaaa!” Drainpipe joins in with a newly booming voice.
The manager, carrying a reasonable amount of momentum, pivots over his head with a guttural wail and crashes into a bin, narrowly saving himself from collapsing into the road.
A wave of gasps rings out from the crowd around you. You realise too late that it will be hard to argue it was self-defence given that you just ambushed a man whilst belting out a tremendous battlecry. Even if the crowd doesn’t turn on you immediately, there’s no way you’d get away with looting the body.
Instead, you check the road quickly and start to run west with Drainpipe Von Staffen in tow.

A. Take the Next Turning and Look for a Hiding Place
B. Keep Running West
C. Ask Drainpipe to Remind you About Morocco Whilst Running
D. Take Next Turning and Combine Wellingtons with Springs
E. Combine Springs with Shoelaces Whilst Running
F. Take Next Turning and Disguise Yourself and Drainpipe von Staffen

54.
>> Take Next Turning and Combine Wellingtons with Springs
>> Ask Drainpipe to Remind you About Morocco Whilst Running
A distinct ‘Thup-Clump’ sound rings out from your footfalls along the street. You weave through the crowds, swinging Drainpipe Von Staffen this way and that to avoid a series of collisions. At the next turning you tuck yourself around the corner and try to catch your breath.
“Drainpipe…” you say breathlessly. “… you’ll have to remind me about Morocco. The details seem to have slipped my mind.”
Leaning Drainpipe against a wall, its favoured story-telling stance, you sit on the floor and try to address the partially equipped wellington.
“Morocco was an exciting time. Terrible in ways, but exciting.” Drainpipe starts grandly. “If I’m going to recount it then we’ll have to go back to the beginning, when we were on the cargo plane heading south out of Seville.” Drainpipe Von Staffen’s voice sounds as if it’s also out of breath. You decide it’s probably all the adrenaline of taking down the manager. “It had been a cold morning, colder than we’d expected, but the anxiety kept us distracted enough from the chills. We’d settled into our seats, wrapped in those thick service jackets for some form of insulation, and made ready for take-off”
Looking at your feet whilst listening to Drainpipe’s reminder, you identify the issue with your right wellington, namely that it was made for a left foot. Your left wellington also appears to have been made for a left foot. Brief considerations that perhaps these were a niche product for bad dancers skirt through your mind, before the slow realisation creeps over you that most shoe shops only display one half of a pair.
“The cargo vessel wasn’t exactly up to the class of modern air travel, but it was sheer luxury compared to what we were used to, wasn’t it? The cockpit of a late-war fighter was made far more from need and practicality than a desire for comfort. Having space around us rather than instrumentation seeking to drown out our very thoughts with flight data was novel. When the familiar sound of the engines kicked in I’ll admit I felt a bout of nostalgia, and for a brief instant I was back in the skies with danger swarming all around me. I don’t know if you felt the same, but it was bittersweet for me.”
Not one to give up just because a job has been poorly planned and executed, you commit yourself to the wellingtons. Their raw practicality more than outweighs a little discomfort or a poor fit. Taking a crab-grip on either side of the boot, you pull hard towards yourself whilst pushing aggressively with your foot. There’s a brief slip as your foot slides a little farther in.
“Now you might recall that there was some bother with the starboard engines as we crested the Moroccan coastline. I could hear it in the rhythm, a skipped beat which came ever-so-regularly and a tell-tale sign of danger.”
You give another hard push, this time bracing the high-heeled sole against a lamppost. Holding your ankle straight and reacting quickly to bends in the boot, you gain another half-an-inch.
“I wasn’t in the least surprised when the crew told us of the emergency landing. As you probably saw, I was all too ready to grab a parachute and leap from the great doors at the rear, but the pilot was confident in his control.”
Your foot is jammed in the ankle of the boot. Grunting with exertion, with Drainpipe mirroring you sympathetically whilst speaking, you push, pull and manhandle the wellington around. Finally, with a sharp release followed by a slow sinking sensation, your foot slides into the incorrectly shaped cavity of the boot.
“You must remember that descent; the slow spiral which took us down to the disused airstrip. Or, at least the one we thought was disused. It would have been tense for any less experienced than ourselves. With the benefit of hindsight I suppose we should have been tense after all, but for other reasons.”
Suspecting that Drainpipe isn’t going to be giving you a concise answer, on account of how concise it hasn’t been to this point, your mind immediately wanders to another way of keeping yourself busy whilst the broken section of drainpipe speaks. You look down at your wellingtons in all of their practical glory, affording you protection from the elements, low surface area for reduced friction in your moonwalks, additional height from the heel, and most of all an elegant posture for your calves. They might be covered by thick rubber, but you’ll know that what lies beneath looks fantastic. You do, however, think of a way in which they might be improved.
“It was a smooth landing considering the rough approach, but I was still grateful for the padding on our seats. Once we’d come to a halt there was that crewman who spent far too long fussing over the door until I had to go and help him, do you remember? Turned out that the handle had warped slightly, but with all of us working together we managed to lever it open.”
Taking some of the springs from your pockets, you test how sharp the points at the end are. You remember that they were suitable for slicing upholstery back on the train, and suspect that they have enough grunt to be used for further modifications. Bending your legs until the soles of the wellingtons are somewhat visible, you pick a vaguely central point of the toe section and start to push at it with the spring-end.
“But the dust when we finally got the doors open. The dust! Surely you must recall how it swirled into the fuselage and enveloped us. Everything inside was turned into an orange-red parody of its former self. And when we pushed out of the doorway to get some kind of fresh air there was the shock of where we’d landed.”
The thick rubber soles present a moderate degree of resistance but you make steady progress, turning the spring like a corkscrew until it’s embedded by a full turn. Satisfied after a few test pulls that it’s well gripped, you start work on the second spring, this time in the heel section.
“The jeeps. The armoured vehicles. The crates of goodness only knew what. It was an unfortunate choice of landing zone to say the least, wasn’t it? I can remember the look on your face clearly when you realised that the airstrip wasn't disused, just misused. I daresay the smugglers must have been shocked to hear us coming.”
The second spring is quicker to fit, having learned from your previous attempt. You also turn it less gingerly since there’s a whole high-heel’s worth of sole to play with before rupturing to foot level. You look at your handiwork with pleasure and shake your foot to watch the springs wobble.
“Of course, as you recall, they were perfectly ready for us by the time we got out. Guns pointed at our heads and barking orders in their language. It was like the battlefield all over again. Even more so when the pilot took them by surprise with his pocketed revolver. I never did get used to hearing guns without the muffling of a cockpit.”
A little concerned that you still have no recollection of the clearly traumatic events being recounted by Drainpipe Von Staffen, and relatively sure that you’d remember seeing a Moroccan smuggler shot in front of you, you shrug and start work on the second wellington. There’s still no sign of pursuit in relation to your manager combat.
“I still don’t know how neither of us took a hit during the run for the jeep. It was quick thinking of you to grab those keys from the fallen smuggler’s waistband, but it all feels so macabre in hindsight. I don’t think I’ll never forget the look on the co-pilot’s face when we started the engine and I ran the tall chap with the scarred cheek down, the surprise that he wasn’t dead after all. Not that the pilot was so lucky.”
With both wellingtons now augmented into their most practical form yet, you struggle back to your feet. Completely unforeseen, you discover that balancing on four distinctly uneven springs jammed into high-heels is more difficult than walking barefoot, and have to steady yourself against the wall next to Drainpipe.
“It was only when we approached the outskirts of the town that I realised we were being followed. I suppose the smugglers thought we were going to give them up to the authorities and wanted to stop us. Even to this day I can’t forgive myself for turning into that blocked road. They were so quick to pull in behind us, I had no chance to secure our escape. I didn’t know at the time that the jeep would be able to crash through the wall, but I think we were under a lucky star.”
You risk a few trial steps, taking your hand off the wall then slapping it back when you lose balance. Gradually you think you are working out how to hold yourself.
“Though we were freed and had effectively made a road block for our pursuers, there was no way we could stay in the jeep. It couldn’t have cleared the rubble even if the bonnet hadn’t been crushed. Can you remember the confusion and the terror as we followed the co-pilot through those twisting serpentine streets? The surprise of those merchants as we burst through with a group of vagabonds close behind? It was a picture.”
Drainpipe is yammering on so much that you manage to teach yourself to stand unaided, and then to take steps without wobbling and toppling over. Concerns over how easily you might break your ankle don’t even cross your mind.
“We’ve been over it a hundred times but I still think it was your idea to perform ‘Hidden Drainpipe’. I suppose it was born of necessity, knowing that we couldn’t run forever. The co-pilot kept running as a distraction, and we lurked behind that sandstone archway. I think I memorised every imperfection and every crevice of those blocks while we waited. It can only have been seconds but it felt like forever.”
A tentative test bounce doesn’t, surprisingly, lead to a broken bone or a concussion. You inelegantly maintain your equilibrium and footing, but inelegance doesn’t negate your success.
“In my wildest imaginings it couldn’t have gone better, the way that the first smuggler pitched over, his feet rising high enough to kick the chap behind him in the jaw and knock him out cold. The third can’t have known what was going on before you slammed my head into his throat and crashed me onto his gasping head. A triple-threat wiped out in mere seconds. We were then and are now a force with which to be reckoned. That’s what happened in Morocco, old friend.” Drainpipe says with a note of finality, finally done.
“Ah right, yeah. Thanks” you say distractedly. Part of you can’t reconcile this post-wartime story with the fact that you only met Drainpipe Von Staffen a few hours ago, but you assume that it’s just a mental block and will remember in due course.
A small group of people is staring at you as if you’d done something unusual, like recount a war story to yourself in a clearly spurious accent whilst jamming scrap metal into poorly fitted and mismatched footwear. You worry that they might all not be the whole ticket.

Item lost: Springs (4)
Item lost: Practical Wellingtons
Item acquired: Unreasonably Practical Wellingtons

A. Bounce West on Unreasonably Practical Wellingtons
B. Moonwalk West on Unreasonably Practical Wellingtons
C. Ride Drainpipe Von Staffen West like a Hobby Horse
D. Try to Hitchhike West to Gerrin Avenue
E. Walk West Carefully Whilst Fashioning a Drainpipe Harness from Shoelaces
F. Ask Confused Crowd if They’ve Seen the Elderly Woman, then Go West Regardless

55.
>> Ride Drainpipe Von Staffen West like a Hobby Horse
Although you have severe doubts regarding the veracity of Drainpipe’s claims about Morocco, you do feel closer to it based on the hypothetically shared experience. Knowing that you have a long journey ahead of you, you feel that carrying Drainpipe as if it were a common piece of guttering is an insult to the strength of your friendship. You need something to bring you physically closer in reflection of your emotional proximity.
“I think we should ride in style” you say to Drainpipe Von Staffen. Drainpipe gives you the impression that it would be winking and smirking if facially equipped for the task. Taking it off the wall, you lean Drainpipe forwards at a shallow angle and swing your right leg over, straddling it like a hobby horse. It takes a few moments to get situated and comfortable, but you eventually feel that you’re ready to progress.
“Good to go?” You ask Drainpipe Von Staffen.
“You know it.” It replies sassily.
Bending your knees and wiggling your hips, you brace for the first leap and then let rip, bouncing along the pavement towards the road. With a great surplus of Drainpipe’s body both in front of and behind you it’s difficult to keep your hobby horse balanced and steady, but you decide that to be everyone else’s problem. If they can’t see you coming then they deserve to be struck.
A hollow plastic impact rings from behind as you land, Drainpipe’s foot-end tapping onto the ground. It makes no sound to imply it’s in pain, so you decide to carry on as normal, leaping over and over again until you establish a rhythm with your sprung wellingtons. Several pedestrians feel the clonking wrath of Drainpipe slamming down onto them, or worse bounding forwards into them like a plastic battering ram, but you manage to leap away in time to escape.
It doesn’t take long for your thighs to remind you how much you ravaged them with your prolonged squat earlier. You push through the pain, but by the time you reach Gerrin Avenue you fear that your legs are made entirely from blood and sadness. Drainpipe is barely out of breath.

A. Proceed Along Road, Continuing to Hobby-Horse
B. Dismount Drainpipe Von Staffen and Nod Respectfully, Then Walk Along Road
C. Double-check Dog Tags
D. Disguise Yourself and Drainpipe Von Staffen Before Proceeding
E. Search Road for Clues About Elderly Woman
F. Let Drainpipe Decide on the Best Course of Action

56.
>> Let Drainpipe Decide on the Best Course of Action
After what feels like a whole month of trying to get here, even though it’s only been a couple of hours, you finally stand at the end of Gerrin Avenue. It stretches away from you, a typical road flanked with semi-detached suburban homes, green verges, and an extended chicane of parked cars.
Still panting you find it difficult to settle your mind on what to do; with five immediately obvious and equally valid options occurring to you there’s nothing to stand any one of them apart from the others. Whether it’s the nerves preventing you from making a decision, or just a case of every option being so unreservedly brilliant that you can’t discard any of them, you stand paralysed.
“Everything OK? Just catching your breath?” Drainpipe Von Staffen asks.
“I’m just… it’s hard to know how to proceed right now.” You reply. There’s a moment’s silence before you speak again. “What do you think we should do?”
“Me? I’m just a simple Drainpipe from an office supply shop. It’s easy to get mixed up in this crazy world of private tuition, political advising, ill-fated cargo plane journeys, and fare-dodging, but somehow we always end up on top. I’d say that we should head on to our destination directly, but take the time to conceal our true identities in case it’s a trap.”
“A trap?” you ask with some surprise. It’s not clear how you could be surprised by anything Drainpipe Von Staffen says, but there you are.
“You’re following an address you found on the back of some dog tags in your pocket. It could easily have been planted by malign forces, so I think some caution is justifiable.” Drainpipe explains.
“Hm. Maybe you’re right.” You reply. Drainpipe can always be relied upon to have your back.
You search through your pockets, rummaging amongst the sea of springs and shoelaces which stand in your way, to look for anything which might be used to mask your identities. It’s difficult to pull anything out past the coiled metal and tangling strings, but you refuse to empty your pockets out just to have to repack them again before moving on; that could waste precious seconds which the elderly woman or other antagonists might use against you.
Finally you manage to extract what you need.
You make your way along the street, glancing sideways at the house numbers as you go. On your side of the road and immediately next to you is number 96, and past it you come to number 94. You’re on the right track and keeping a close eye, but nobody would suspect that you had ulterior motives, walking along with a newspaper held up in front of you as if you’re reading it. Cunningly you’ve poked out two eyeholes using one of the springs, so you can even see where you’re going. To anyone from the other side, all they would see is a front page photo of Ainsley Harriot staring out at them with marvellously life-like eyes.
Resting against your shoulder again is Drainpipe von Staffen, with a fetching scarf wrapped around the place you have arbitrarily decided to be its neck. The loose ends trail behind slightly as you both head forwards, giving it the appearance of a glamorous Hollywood star.
You move along the pavement incognito until you reach the gates of number 16, set into a dense hedge which stands at head height. The gates themselves are made of metal and painted black, with a large ‘16’ plaque on the right hand side.

Perfect Disguise: +1 Self-Confidence
Public Ainsley, Secret Drainpipe: +1 Duplicity

A. Case the Joint from the Street, Looking for Windows
B. Close Your Eyes and Run at the Gate
C. Check Surroundings for Witnesses and Clues
D. Walk Past and Examine from the Side
E. Attempt to Open the Gate and Approach the House
F. Attempt to Open the Gate Stealthily and Sneak Around the House

57.
>> Attempt to Open the Gate Stealthily and Sneak Around the House
You and Drainpipe both take a look at the latch between the gates. It seems to be a simple bar on a hinge, extending from one gate and nestling into a notched bracket on the other. Neglecting the opportunity to check for anyone who might be watching you gently lift the lever and push on the right gate.
Slowly the gate begins to open. The old metal hinges threaten to squeak but you manage to summon the presence of mind to slow down even further and rob the noisy fixtures of their volume. Drainpipe gives the gates a stern shushing for good measure.
You push until there’s an opening just wide enough for you and Drainpipe Von Staffen to pass through, and you step onto a path of pavement slabs. Once you’re fully clear, you close the gate again, since as far as you can recall you were not raised in a barn. Drainpipe thinks that it probably was raised in barn, but you overrule the intention to open the gate again.
Ahead of you lies the house known as 16 Gerrin Avenue. It’s mostly unremarkable as far as semi-detached houses go; a white front door, orange brickwork, and a terracotta tiled roof. You notice, however, that there are no windows on the front side of the building. With grave concerns over how much natural daylight the residents might not get, you sneak off the path and onto the lawn. It appears not to have been mowed recently, with blades of grass reaching up to the ankles of your spring-loaded wellingtons. Dodging between patches of wildflowers, anthills, and broken down lawnmowers you make your way around the right hand side of the building.
A row of four windows stretches away from you. Where the wall meets the garden there is a muddy border of small-leafed bushes growing slightly untidily against the side of the house. A few piles of discarded bricks, pieces of guttering, scrap wood, and garden cuttings are scattered around the garden, telling the tale of someone who occasionally has good intentions of tending to the gardening, but rarely displays a complementary desire to see things through to the end.

A. Peek into First Window
B. Peek into Second Window
C. Peek into Third Window
D. Peek into Fourth Window
E. Loot Brick and Throw it at Random Window
F. Loot Garden Cuttings

58.
>> Loot Garden Cuttings
You have spent hours getting to 16 Gerrin Avenue. You’ve stowed away on two trains, you’ve stolen from a supermarket and a shoe shop, you’ve vandalised both of those shops in the process, you’ve attacked a store manager, and you’ve improvised the most practical set of footwear known to humanity. Even after all that commitment, all that work and danger, you cannot contain your natural instinct to loot anything not nailed down. Turning away from the house you’ve been striving towards, you face the pile of slightly old, drying garden cuttings. One man’s botanical detritus is another human’s treasure, apparently.
You step over to the pile of garden cuttings and examine it for anything particularly valuable. Drainpipe also leans in for a look.
“Mostly grass cuttings and brambles.” Drainpipe assesses with obvious disappointment.
You keep peering in and push some of the top layer away with your wellington springs. A few vines from the drying brambles tangle around your springs, and you dance a familiar gardener’s jig to kick them away. Underneath the layer of grass and brambles you unveil a hidden treasure trove of further grass and brambles. There seem to be some thin twigs and branches from a trimmed hedgerow poking through too.
It may not be valuable. It may not be useful. It may not even be desirable, but you’ve stolen for less of a reason before, and by golly if someone’s going to leave their organic litter around you are going to take it. Reaching in with your free crab-claw you grab a handful of grass clippings and stuff them into one pocket. Rammed full as it is with shoelaces, springs and other valuables, the clippings fail to make their way very far in, and you have to engage in a lot of emergency tucking to prevent the grass from spilling out onto the ground.
Your free hand is slightly green from the clippings. Drainpipe watches you in silence, and then nods sagely to signal its approval once you’re done.

A. Peek into First Window
B. Peek into Second Window
C. Peek into Third Window
D. Peek into Fourth Window
E. Leave a Green Handprint on the Third Window
F. Combine Shoelaces and Spring

59.
>> Peek into Third Window
Your violent thirst for looting slaked for the moment, you return your attention to the house that drew you all this way. The neat row of windows faces back at you, each one inviting you to peer into its glassy depths and marvel at the wonders housed within. You remember well the instructions on the dog tags, however. “Third window from the road”. Whatever the mysterious dog tags were guiding you towards, it was behind that pane.
You wrap your grassy crab-hand around Drainpipe Von Staffen and pace slowly up to the window. It’s dark inside, so you can’t see anything from a distance other than the reflection of yourself and your good buddy. Having been through so much together, between the failed climbing attempt, a harrowing train journey, a daring wellington robbery, and some kind of smuggler situation in Morocco that you don’t quite remember properly, you’re glad that this climactic event can be faced with its company.
The glass is cold against your fingers as you lay a hand upon the window. You start to lean in and hear a sudden ‘clunk’ as Drainpipe bravely headbutts the pane whilst trying to get a closer look. Shushing it gently, you lean your own head closer until your nose and forehead make contact. Gasping, you realise that you can see nothing at all behind the glass, as if light itself is unable to exist inside. Leaning harder into the window under the suspicion that an increase in pressure would grant an increase in visibility, the window swings inward and seems to make the darkness flap in an oddly familiar way.
It takes longer than you would care to admit to realise that you are looking at a set of black curtains.
Waiting for no-one, as is its style, Drainpipe Von Staffen leans in and pushes the curtain aside with its head, unveiling a sparsely furnished room. The floor is bare boards, the walls are a neutral beige colour which probably has a pretentious name like ‘eggshell dawn’ or ‘pimento insurgency’, and a pair of wooden chairs.

A. Climb into Room Quietly With Drainpipe Von Staffen
B. Climb into Room Alone, Leaving Drainpipe on Guard Duty
C. Climb into Room and Send Drainpipe Von Staffen Back for More Garden Cuttings
D. Climb into Room with Drainpipe Von Staffen, Shouting a Cover Story
E. Check Window for Traps
F. Check Torso for Traps

60.
>> Climb into Room Alone, Leaving Drainpipe on Guard Duty
The lightly furnished room invites you in. You were directed to this window for a reason, and you decide that it can’t be a coincidence that the gate and the window were both unlocked for you. For a moment you wonder what kind of glazier the builders hired; windows are never fitted to open inwards by anyone competent.
Although there are two chairs in the room, you can’t shake the feeling that someone is planning to meet you here. The sight of Drainpipe Von Staffen’s infernal majesty might spook them, and it would be a shame to spoil the meeting after they went to the effort of planting bespoke dog tags on you.
“Drainpipe, I think I should head in solo to scope it out. You stay here and guard the window. If anyone catches on then holler for me, OK?” you ask it, with a note of sadness in your voice. The prospect of splitting up from Drainpipe Von Staffen, even for a short time and even shorter distance, is not something you find to be welcome in your heart. You appreciate, however, that it is necessary.
“Right you are, old friend. I’ll keep my eyes drained for any danger and utter a guttural scream if my vigil is interrupted.” Drainpipe replies, lacing its statement with puns for the sake of morale. It’s putting on a brave face, but you can tell that the separation is hurting Drainpipe just as much as it hurts you.
With an appreciative nod you pat Drainpipe with your free hand and then lay it against the wall, facing outwards across the looted garden.
The windowsill is just above your waist height, but the additional bounce afforded to you by your unreasonably practical wellingtons makes it an easy hop. With a clatter your springs hit the wooden flooring inside the room, and the curtains flap around your body. With both crab claws once again free you push them aside and step into the room.
The room is eerily quiet except for the scratching and scraping sounds coming from your springs on the bare wood. Each step sounds like it’s devaluing the flooring, but you take an ‘ignorance is bliss’ approach to checking that.
Slowly you pace towards the chairs. In most respects they are identical, simple wooden chairs, with slatted backs and thin cushions on the seat. However, one of them is embossed with a chicken and the other with an egg.
A rattling sound snaps your attention to the doorway leading deeper into the house. Someone is turning the handle.

A. Hide Behind the Curtains and Tip Off Drainpipe to the Danger
B. Resume the Squat of the Crab King to Assert Dominance
C. Wield the ‘Chicken’ Chair in Preparation to Defend Yourself
D. Wield the ‘Egg’ Chair in Preparation to Defend Someone Else’s Self
E. Attempt to Quickly Combine Springs with Shoelaces
F. Sit on the Floor and Read the Dry Newspaper

61.
>> Resume the Squat of the Crab King to Assert Dominance
Your heart rate spikes immediately at the sound of the door. It’s been years since your phobia of doors, hatches, and hinged lids has reared up, and for a moment you fear that it’s back. But then you remember that it’s the notion of a person behind it that has you panicked.
Danger, or at least confrontation, is approaching. You know that it’s critical to appear as strong, confident, and intimidating as possible. There’s only way thing for it.
Raising both arms above your head, your crab claws held with renewed vigour, you lower yourself down slowly into an intimidating squat. Unfortunately your pockets are so strained, bulging, and overfilled with scrap metal and other precious loot that the pressure on your trousers is incredible, as is the force with which springs are being pressed into your thighs. The best you can manage is getting your legs parallel to the floor, leaving you less like a crab and more like someone caught short at a train station.
The thought of standing back up again doesn’t even cross your mind. You’re no quitter, and so mighty are your squats that you could intimidate someone with the merest hint of a bend to your legs. No matter who comes through the door, you’re prepared.
No sooner are you stable than the handle turns fully and the door starts to swing open towards you. You clack your claws together in anticipation.
A foot steps into the room, masked by a tartan slipper. It’s connected to a trousered leg, which rises up in black fabric folds to a black shirt, tucked in neatly. The assemblage of body parts takes a step in to reveal it does indeed have an arm on either side of the torso, and above that very same torso is a white clergyman’s dog collar.
The face of your host is slightly stubbly, gaunt, and tired, but there’s something trustworthy about it. It’s looking down at the ground initially, but soon sets about conducting a dramatic turn-and-reveal as the man starts to speak.
“Well at long last you’re h…” he stops as he sees you. The self-confident smile fades into confusion and then disappointment. The arms which were on their way to being held wide fall limp to his sides. He lets out a short but heavy sigh.
“What did…” he looks down, eyes scrunched, and pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand as he sighs again. “What did you do to end up like that? Do I even want to know?”
He looks at you, giving the distinct impression that he’s fighting annoyance. Before you have a chance to speak, he walks back out of the room, closing the door behind him.
A few seconds pass as you stare at the back of the door, and then it opens again. It appears that the vicar has psyched himself up to face your mighty squat this time.
“What did you do this time?” he asks. It sounds like equal parts of a question and an accusation.

A. “I braved the train of traps!”
B. “I defeated the secret supermarket police and led a coup!”
C. “I had a close call with the elderly woman!”
D. “A shoe shop manager tried to withhold shoes from me!”
E. “I did what I had to! What anyone else in my position would surely have done!”
F. [Offer Receipt for Curly Wurly Without Any Explanation]

62.
>> [Offer Receipt for Curly Wurly Without Any Explanation]
>> “I had a close call with the elderly woman!”
The man of the cloth, and apparently of the arrogant demand regarding your recent experiences, stares at you and waits for an answer. You look back at him and decide to hit him with the hardest, most compelling tale of your day which will earn his respect and perfectly explain your appearance.
You decide that there is only one adequate explanation, and push your hands into your pockets to search for a tell-tale item. Unfortunately they don’t get very far, finding themselves block by a damp, slightly warm and decomposing mat of grass clippings. Not willing to be held back by your own immense wealth, you drag the grass out of your pockets and allow it to fall to the ground until you can grasp your true prize.
“What?! Why do you have grass clippings in your pockets?” the vicar asks with mounting horror. “Don’t just throw it on the floor! Is that from my garden?!”
Maintaining silent eye contact with him the whole time, you produce a crumpled and grass-stained receipt and hold it out.
The vicar looks at you dubiously and takes the receipt, reading it quickly before uttering another of his trademark sighs. You try to convince yourself that it’s an impressed sigh instead of a disappointed one, but you don’t really believe it.
“You bought some chocolate. I don’t see how that explains anything about your appearance. Or why you are squatting like that. Or why you’ve grabbed grass from the lawn and dropped it all over the floor!”
Using your expert’s intuition you recognise that the vicar isn’t satisfied with the answer you handed over. It worries you that this vicar doesn’t recognise the inherent divinity in the Curly Wurly, but there is one more fundamental force of nature that he must recognise. It is the exact opposite of the Curly Wurly. It is the antithesis of goodness. And it is one with which you have tangled.
“I had a close call with the elderly woman!” you say, allowing the leaden weight of your words to fall on the vicar like tiles being stolen from the church roof.
Rather than being crushed by the gravitas, the vicar sighs again.
“Please, just take a seat.” He says wearily, indicating at the chairs.

A. Sit in the “Chicken” Chair
B. Sit in the “Egg” Chair
C. Gather Grass Clippings and then Sit in the “Chicken” Chair
D. Gather Grass Clippings and then Sit in the “Egg” Chair
E. Sneak to the Window and Surreptitiously Ask Drainpipe Which Chair to Choose
F. Ask for your Receipt Back First

63.
>> Ask for your Receipt Back First
>> Gather Grass Clippings and then Sit in the “Chicken” Chair
Your gaze follow the vicar’s hand towards the chairs but you return it quickly to the receipt in his fingers. You feel deeply uncomfortable about not having it back.
“Sure, but I can I have my receipt back first please?” you ask, holding out your own grass-stained hand expectantly. Your eyes rise to meet the vicar’s, which have found yet more room for disdain, disappointment, and distress.
“Yes. Of course. It’s vitally important that you have it in case you want to return 50p of chocolate to a city an hour away.” The vicar says, apparently having an epiphanic understanding of your perfectly good reasoning, even if his tone of voice doesn’t quite tie up. He doesn’t realise that you’ve already consumed the chocolate bar in question, but you withhold that information for now; knowledge is power.
You look from your hand to the receipt and back again, and finally the vicar actually goes through with the process of returning your important paperwork.
“Thank you” you say, turning your attention to the next of your belongings which has made an escape from your inventory. You make another attempt at squatting lower, gritting your teeth through the pain as you snatch up grass clippings from the bare floorboards.
You risk a glance up to the vicar’s face, which is a mask of conflicted emotions. One the one hand he’s glad that you’re clearing up your own mess, but on the other he still seems perplexed by your possessive lust for garden waste. Waiting patiently despite flared nostrils and a twitching eyebrow, he watches you gather up your treasure without a word. Guiltily you notice green staining where your clippings fell, but you try to ignore it and hope that the vicar will do the same.
Once your pockets are sealed with grass clippings again, you look at the two chairs available. Without being able to remember which one you saw first, you need a new selection method. The egg chair is not without its charms, since sitting in it would imply that you have a tough outer shell and contain plentiful albumen. However the chicken chair implies a caring, ‘mother-hen’ personality and accurately reflects your penchant for pecking at seeds on the ground. You’re also fairly sure that you could run around without your head, be hypnotised by a chalk line on the ground, and shout really loud at sunrise, so it’s just a much better fit for you than the egg.
Crab-walking as much as your strained pockets allow, suffering an agonising pain every time you move your thighs against the metal springs in your inventory, you approach the chicken chair and place your much-less-soggy-than-before rear onto it.
“Ah. You have chosen the symbol of the Eagle.” The vicar says with a rehearsed grandeur that’s been tainted by a weary disappointment in his audience. “You must be a hunter of facts, peering with a hawk-eye and striking at dizzying speeds.”
You frown slightly at his mispronunciation of the word ‘chicken’.

A. Ask the Vicar Who he is
B. Ask if the Vicar will Sit in the ‘Egg’ Chair
C. Ask if the Vicar has Seen the Elderly Woman
D. Correct the Vicar on his “Eagle-Chicken” Mistake
E. Ask Why you are Here
F. Smile and Silently Wait for the Vicar to Continue

64.
>> Smile and Silently Wait for the Vicar to Continue
>> Correct the Vicar on his “Eagle-Chicken” Mistake
The vicar stands over you waiting for some kind of reaction, but you are paralysed by discomfort at his bird-identification faux-pas. There’s nothing you can think to say to him whilst his mistake is hanging in the air between you. You can’t believe that he’d think those two creatures looked even remotely similar to one another. Hard as it is to accept, you can only conclude that he really does struggle with those letters and sounds.
You lean back and smile politely, for fear that you’d be unable to restrain yourself from insulting him if you said anything. Instead, you simply wait for him to continue with his assault on ornithology.
“Well… you seem to have lost the eagle’s screeching call. But perhaps we got off on the wrong foot.”
You keep smiling, gritting your teeth. He called it an eagle again.
“I am glad that you have made it here, and I can overlook confusing happenstances like littering my floor with lawn mown grass. But I really need to understand how you came to be in that state…” he holds an open hand out in your direction, pointing it towards your heavily soiled trousers, spring crown, and absurdly practical wellingtons. “It’s really not what I had expected from someone to choose the eagle.”
“Chicken!” you blurt, unable to hold it any longer.
“I beg your pardon?” the vicar says, not sounding much like a beggar at all. He must, therefore, have been a chooser by the accepted logic.
“It’s pronounced ‘chicken’. The bird on this chair. Not eagle. No-one ever has eagle drumsticks for dinner.” You say, immediately doubting your own claims. Eating eagle drumsticks sounds like the exact sort of thing the elderly woman would get up to. “You must feel a little silly.”
The vicar stares at you with wide eyes, his mouth hanging open slightly. Gradually his whole head starts to tilt to one side like an ordained puppy, struggling to comprehend what he’s hearing. It looks to you like he’s realised his enduring mistake and is coming to terms with the embarrassment.
“It’s definitely an eagle. I had it carved on there specifically. I don’t know why you’d think I needed someone to act as my noble chicken, and frankly I don’t want to. But you seem to have entirely missed the point of this enterprise.”

A. “And you seem to have missed the point of how to identify a chicken.”
B. “What is the point of the enterprise then?”
C. “We can get a third opinion. Drainpipe!”
D. “Why do you need someone to be an eagle for you?”
E. “To be fair, I'm crab before I'm either an eagle or a chicken." [Clack claws] “Why don’t you sit in the egg chair and calm down.”
F. “Why don’t you sit in the egg chair and calm down.”

65.
>> “What is the point of the enterprise then?”
You struggle to accept what you’re hearing. Somehow this man of The Lord who has invited you to sit on a symbol-inlaid chair expects you to believe that the correct way to pronounce bird names isn’t the point of being here. You wonder how he ever manages to get served in any restaurant when ordering endangered species instead of commonly farmed meats.
“What is the point of the enterprise then?” You ask, challenging him to adequately justify bringing you here if not for saying ‘chicken’ correctly.
“Seriously?” he asks back, eyebrows tilting upwards in distressed confusion. You stare back with a stare that shows you are always deadly serious, underneath your crown of stolen train-seat springs.
The vicar rubs at his face with both hands for a moment. You suspect that he’s trying to think of a good cover story for his outlandishly poor vocal skills.
“The point of the chair exercise is for me to make an inference regarding your personality traits based on the symbolism which appeals to you.” He says with frustrated desperation, as if talking to a fool. You’re not sure where this is going, because your charming and refined chicken-like personality is nothing to do with his illiteracy. “And the point of bringing you here was to assist me in an investigation regarding the church funds. Why would I hire a private investigator for any reason other than to investigate something?”
You listen carefully, but still can’t work out what his has to do with his poor knowledge of bird emblems. It sounds like he’s gone off on a strange tangent.
“What does a private investigator have to do with a chicken on a chair?” you enquire.
“Just forget about the eagle, OK?” the vicar says with more aggression than before. Maybe it’s a sore spot for him and point it out was insensitive, you think.
“I don’t think you’d want to hire a private investigator who forgot important details just like that.” you counter-point.
“Nor would I think to hire one who would put me through this charade and turn up looking so deeply conspicuous, but we’re here now.”
You start to realise something, slowly.
“Am I a private investigator?” you ask the vicar. It’s a genius move; if you are an investigator than it’s perfectly in character to ask questions about things, and if you’re not then you can be forgiven for not knowing details like that. You hope that Drainpipe Von Staffen was able to hear your masterstroke of verbal acrobatics.
The vicar frowns at you. The furrowed lines on his brow seem to multiply, each one increasing the magnitude of his displeasure, without any sign of slowing down. He holds this expression for over ten seconds.
“Yes. That’s why you’re here.” The finally says, very slowly and deliberately.

Crab-king P.I.: +1 Charisma, +1 Insolubility

A. “Ha! I knew it! I was just testing you.”
B. “Am I here to investigate the elderly woman?”
C. “Do you need me to investigate why you can’t say ‘chicken’?”
D. “Have you hired me to investigate the case of the missing springs in a train carriage?”
E. “I’ve already investigated the garden clippings thoroughly.”
F. [Count Fingers] “How many fingers do private investigators have?”

66.
>> “Ha! I knew it! I was just testing you!”
>> “I’ve already investigated the garden clippings thoroughly.”
You raise crab claw to your jaw and stroke your chin thoughtfully, contemplating the vicar’s strained response to your question. You like the sound of this private investigation lark, on account of having already done some pretty superlative work in locating 16 Gerrin Avenue and rendezvousing with Drainpipe Von Staffen, your contact for all things.
“Ha! I knew it! I was just testing you!” you state boldly, feeling no qualms about lying through your teeth to your new presumed client. “You can rest easy for the moment, shepherd of the congregation. I’ve already investigated the garden clippings thoroughly.” You boast. From the back of your mind, a jealousy swells, fearing that the vicar might try to wheedle out some information regarding anything of value to be found among the pile of organic refuse. “But, erm, there was nothing of value.” You add in suspicious tones, subtly tucking your hard-won grass clippings further into your pocket.
The vicar, apparently predisposed to have far too much breath in his body, sighs again.
“I am all too aware of that, but shockingly enough I don’t need you to investigate the pile of clippings that I myself pulled together the other day. In fact I would much prefer it if you didn’t go around making a mess of my garden after I spent so much time raking and clearing it in the first place.” The vicar responds.
You stifle a gasp. If the vicar is so wealthy as to be able to discard the valuable grass clippings that you looted earlier, and will keep a tight hold onto thanks to the finders-keepers rule, then he must be offering a substantial sum for whatever job he needs done, you decide.
“Yep. Exactly. Nothing of value there. We’re both accustomed to finer things than even the most priceless grass mulch” you bluff, still blown away by your good luck in finding such treasures. “But fear not, for whatever you need of me I will gladly accept. After all I’m no chicken.” You tell him, placing a slow and deliberate emphasis on the final word. Elocution is something you consider to be a fringe benefit of hiring you.
“I won’t tell you again that it’s an eagle.” The vicar says darkly. You are pleased that he has decided to make a promise not to be mistaken in front of you again.
“That’s excellent news.” You congratulate. “And I won’t drop grass over your floor again.”
Turning away from you and taking a deep breath, you can only assume that the vicar is trying compose himself under the weight of extreme gratitude.
“Right.” He says, turning back to you. “On to business. Church funds have been going missing for a few months now, and I can’t bring myself to run another ‘repair-the-roof’ fundraiser. It’ll be the third one this year. I suspect that the volunteer secretary, Ellen Gertie, is involved but I can’t prove anything, nor can I be seen to distrust my team of helpers. That’s why you’ve got to investigate the case for me.” The vicar tells you, notes of regret playing around his voice.

A. “Let’s talk payment first of all.”
B. “Do you suspect a link to the mysterious grass stains and scratches all over the floor?”
C. “What makes you suspect Ellen Gertie? Has she said something like “I’m stealing money from the church”?”
D. “Do you have any other leads? Woodchucks not chucking as much wood as you’d expect?”
E. “Is that why you can’t afford to pronounce ‘chicken’ correctly and have to make do with fewer-lettered alternatives?”
F. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much crime does Ellen Gertie normally commit?”

67.
>> “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much crime does Ellen Gertie normally commit?”
It might be paranoia talking, or some kind of self-doubt, but you get the impression that the vicar isn’t totally sold on your ability to investigate the case of the missing church funds. He must have unreasonably high standards, you decide, because anyone else would have been deeply impressed by your ability to sneak in through a window and correctly identify a carved chicken. You decide to tackle this with solid professionalism, and ask the hard-hitting questions straight away.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how much crime does Ellen Gertie normally commit?” you question, peaking your fingers and leaning forwards as you speak. This presses the springs in your pocket against your thighs even more, and is deeply uncomfortable. You grit your teeth through the pain.
“Lord give me strength.” The vicar mutters. You can tell that he’s kicking himself for not asking that question himself. “Ellen doesn’t normally commit any crimes. She would have been arrested if so, and she certainly wouldn’t be the secretary of the volunteer committee.”
You consider his words for a moment, still trying to ignore the agony in your legs.
“So… what? A four?”
“A one! She doesn’t normally commit crimes.” Says the unduly emotional vicar.
“Hmm. She’s good.” You say, quietly impressed by the robustness of Ellen Gertie’s cover. Unless, you think suddenly, she’s a red herring, or perhaps a front for something more sinister lurking in the background. “This will need some investigating.”
“I know! That’s why I hired you! We’ve covered that at length.” The vicar says, sitting heavily into the ‘egg’ chair with head in hands. You hear him take a deep breath.
“Excellent memory, your worship. Have no fear; I’ll get the church funds back and bring the perpetrator to justice.” You claim boldly, with very little reason to feel such confidence.
“Please don’t call me your worship.”
“Sure thing.” You agree amenably, accentuating your willingness to get along by ‘pow-pow’ing your crab-claw finger guns at him. Assuming the vicar to be softened up by your friendliness, you press on with the questioning.
“Are there any other suspects or places I should look? Was someone seen in a black and white striped top with a bag which bore a pound symbol on the side? That’s a classic look for a thief.” You interrogate, dropping in that nugget of wisdom to grant yourself some illegitimate legitimacy.
“Shockingly enough we haven’t been struck by a cartoon villain, no. In principle any one of the volunteers could have got to the money, but Ellen is most likely to have been able to do it unnoticed.”
“And that’s what makes you suspect the old hag of this dastardly crime? Her subtly and her presumed extreme ugliness?” You probe.
“I never mentioned her appearance at all!”
“Then why did I pick up on it?” you ask slyly, raising one eyebrow.
“The same reason you picked up my grass cuttings probably.” He snaps irritably. “Regardless, I noticed shortly after the money went missing that she suddenly had a better class of doily in her home. Thicker material, more intricate edging, better lace, that sort of thing. Her cardigans have been obviously more decadent too.” The vicar tells you. As he lists the changes he’s seen in Ellen Gertie’s lifestyle and apparel he fails to maintain eye contact, looking away and placing one hand on the back of his neck.

A. “Say no more. I’ll make sure Ellen burns and you get your money.”
B. “I’ll need an advance on my payment for expenses. Spring-wellingtons don’t come cheap.”
C. “I’ve heard all I need to, but my partner might have some questions. DRAINPIPE!”
D. Stand up, Crab-claws Raised High, and Head for the Window
E. “Take this spring as a guarantee of my services” [Offer one Spring]
F. “One last question: have you seen the elderly woman at all around here?”

68.
>> “I’ve heard all I need to, but my partner might have some questions. DRAINPIPE!”
You lean back again, partly to look like you’re deep in thought about the case but mostly to release the intense spring-pressure on your thighs. Looking at the ceiling, so as not to betray the relief on your face, you realise that you’ve neglected the opinion of someone very tall. You won’t be taking this case alone, and it’s not fair to deprive your partner of their chance to question the victim.
“I’ve heard all I need to, but my partner might have some questions. DRAINPIPE!” you call, directing your voice towards the window.
The vicar flinches in his chair, startled by your sudden shout and pulling his face into a suspicious frown.
“There was no mention of a partner. Where are they hiding? What’s going on here?” the vicar asks with deep worry. “I can’t afford to pay two investigators.”
“I left my associate on guard at the window.” You inform the needy client. “My fee won’t be increased by their presence, don’t worry.”
Both of you stare at the curtains flapping slightly at the open window, waiting for Drainpipe Von Staffen to emerge. After several awkward seconds you remember that Drainpipe doesn’t like to move solo, preferring to proceed only when reunited with you.
“One second, your holiness.” You say, scurrying over to the window. You poke your head through the curtains and see, right where you left it, Drainpipe Von Staffen leaning against the wall and keeping a disciplined vigil over the garden.
“Ah, there you are. I thought I heard you call. All’s quiet out here.” Drainpipe says, laying your mind completely to rest.
“Top work, Drainpipe. We have a case though! You’d better come in and speak to the client in case you want to know anything else.” You tell it excitedly. The sounds of the vicar shifting uncomfortably in the ‘egg’ chair reach you from behind.
“Right you are.” Drainpipe accepts, leaning towards you as you take a grip and pull it towards the window. With a clunk of plastic against glass Drainpipe’s head hits the pane. “Take that, window fiend!” it cries triumphantly. You can barely contain your admiration at how Drainpipe keeps its combat skills razor sharp with near-constant practice.
Leaning awkwardly out of the building you lift Drainpipe’s feet and push them away from yourself, leaning it lower to thread through the gap in the window. There isn’t a lot of clearance around either side of the window, leading to several gouges being cut in the lawn by Drainpipe’s feet and several collisions with the window frame.
“What’s that?” the vicar asks, but you ignore him. He’ll find out soon enough.
Having finally got the angle right you walk backwards into the room, holding Drainpipe by the head and drawing it through. With a little over a foot of its body still to come, its head strikes the back wall and leaves a black mark.
“Stop bringing a drainpipe into my house!” the vicar shouts, betraying a level of prejudice that makes you feel ashamed for him.
With a scraping sound you drag Drainpipe’s head around to slip its feet through the window, slapping them onto the floorboards with a resonating twang.
“There we go.” You say happily, lifting Drainpipe as upright as possible. Its head hits the ceiling before achieving verticality, but the effect is still impressive.
“Vicar, this is Drainpipe Von Staffen, my most trusted associate and good buddy.” You introduce.
“Nice to meet you, vicar.” Drainpipe says respectfully, despite the bigoted outburst from moments before.
The vicar simply stares at the broken section of drainpipe you’re supporting. Whatever words come to him seem to disappear just as quickly, leaving nothing but silence.
“I hear that we have a heinous crime to solve. A despicable case of embezzlement from the clergy and arrogant displays of ostentatious doilies. Well worry not, for we will resolve the matter without issue. You’ll have the name of your perpetrator and our assurances of discretion throughout.” Drainpipe says professionally through the side of your mouth.
The vicar looks at you, narrowing his eyes. There’s a slight twitch to one of them.
“Please, if you would be so kind as to direct us towards the church, any relevant locations therein, and perhaps escort us around the location from which the money was taken, we would be most grateful. If any further details should happen to come to you on the way they would be most welcome.” Drainpipe continues, not to be put off by the cold reception he’s receiving.
“The only reasonable conversation I’ve had out of you is coming via a drainpipe…” he mutters, hanging his head. After a few seconds it lifts. “Nice to meet you too, Drainpipe. I will of course show you around the church and the church hall. I’ll also show you the strongbox from which the money was taken. But that will have to wait for an hour or so; I’m afraid I have a prior engagement to attend to in a few minutes. Perhaps you could wait for me at the church itself? It’s only a five minute walk along the road. There’s a cafeteria nearby as well if you’d prefer to wait there.”
You and Drainpipe look to one another to confer.

A. Head Towards the Church
B. Head Towards the Café
C. Offer to Wait in the Garden
D. Make a Sanctimonious Statement About Not Judging Others
E. Ask Drainpipe’s Opinion on the Chair Emblems
F. Offer the Vicar a Spring ‘For Protection’

69.
>>Head towards the café
You and Drainpipe lean your faces, or your face and Drainpipe’s section of smooth piping, together to decide on the best course of action. Knowing how this situation always unfolds in films and other media, you make a series of muttering sounds without ever uttering a complete word, and Drainpipe does the same. Occasionally you both shoot a glance towards the vicar to inform your discussion, and then go back to muttering.
From across the room, you can hear the vicar’s patience straining. With every passing second another fibre of his restraint twangs apart, bringing the guillotine blade of his holy wrath that much closer to sailing effortlessly through your neck. Drainpipe, who appears to be mostly neck, would be particularly aggrieved by this.
Finally you turn back to the vicar and reveal the result of your deliberations.
“We have decided to wait at the café nearby to the church. We shall meet you there in approximately one hour to investigate The Case of the Ecclesiastical Embezzlement!” Drainpipe declares, proudly.
Without waiting for the vicar to reveal just how utterly blown away he is by his reverence of you both, you make a dash for the window once more. Drainpipe expertly manoeuvres its head through the gap this time, and only kicks the wall once on its journey out. As you cross over the sill, one leg on the floorboards and the other dangling above the lawn, you turn back to the vicar and give him a wink and a salute before pushing yourself back into the garden.
“Well, Drainpipe. Let’s get to that café. Maybe we’ll catch sight of this dastardly Ellen Gertie on the way.” You say to your partner.
“It really is like the old days, eh? Rumbling a crook, getting our mitts on treasures, and all the spring-loaded wellingtons we can stuff our feet into!” Drainpipe agrees nostalgically.
Hefting Drainpipe Von Staffen back onto your shoulder you walk purposefully towards the gate. Faintly, from the window, you think you can hear a voice saying something about using the door instead of the window, and then an angrier voice saying something about floorboards scratched to pieces by springs. You disregard it as the ravings of an infuriated clergyman. You have more pressing matters to attend to: the case awaits!
​
END OF SEASON ONE