Summer Breakdown is the second episode of season 21, Fantasy High: Junior Year.
Intro[]
"Last we left off, we were chasing down the Night Yorb, who now flees towards a portal deep in the archways of these massive wind-carved stones in the depth of the Red Waste. The Night Yorb, surrounded by its cultists, conveniently called Yorbies, that are chanting its name as it approaches the portal. [...]"
"We left with the Hangvan perilously in the air, tilting sideways, a rock tipped over to crush it in midair, and with a sickening gurgle from her stomach and a flash of yellowy light, Fig, in a blast of magic, sends the rock scattering and the Hangvan rights itself, bam, landing here back in pitched combat. The Night Yorb surges ahead. What happens when it makes its way to this place, we cannot say."
Synopsis[]
Round Two, continued[]
The battle from the previous episode picks back up on Adaine's turn. The elven oracle casts a Bigby's hand spell to grapple the Night Yorb with a grasping hand to reduce the Night Yorb's speed to zero in hopes of dragging it closer to help slacken the solar lasso and make it easier to reel in. Successfully grabbing the enemy, she clenches the hand to deal minor damage. Up next, Gorgug reels in the line and, with the help of Fig's cutting words and Adaine's second portent roll, reels it all the way to the van, then goes into a rage.
Kristen casts toll the dead for minor damage, just enough to bring the Night Yorb into bloodied status. This triggers the solar lasso's sigil to begin to glow, and the Night Yorb reacts in pain. Kristen also casts mass healing word to restore health to the whole party (except Fig, who doesn't need it; the Hangvan takes the healing instead). After Kristen's turn, the Night Yorb attempts and fails to restore its breath weapon, then multiattacks. Its bite strikes Adaine despite her mirror images, shield, and Riz's silvery barbs, knocking her out and destroying Bigby's hand. It drags the van forward, then makes wing attacks on Fig and Gorgug. Fig's Armor of Ayda strikes it with fire damage in response, which it is unable to halve thanks to the Hangvan's radiant headlights, and she retains concentration on her hex spell.
To close out the round, Duggan McCann drunkenly fires wildly at the Night Yorb, screaming Balthazar's name and dealing some damage.
Round Three[]
Riz shoots a grappling cannon from his gun to help hold the Night Yorb in place, but rolls poorly in securely knotting the other end of the rope to the van. Fabian plans to jump atop the van to act as a backup third sigilist. He shares a tender moment with Ecaf, almost kissing her before she tells him to wait until after the battle. Fabian then jumps out of the window and again seriously fumbles, falling beneath the Hangvan and taking significant damage being crushed under the wheels. The Hangman scoops him up again, and he shoots the Night Yorb twice with his hand crossbow.
The Night Yorb screams loudly and flaps its wings to kick up sand and grit, damaging almost everyone with a windstorm attack. Riz avoids damage beneath the steering wheel, and Fabian and the Hangman are outside the attack's range, but everyone else is significantly damaged -- downing Boggy and Baby, shattering Ecaf, and applying a death saving throw fail on Adaine. Kristen loses concentration on both circle of power and bless, while Fig retains concentration on hex but is thrown off the van's roof alongside Adaine's unconscious body. With both sigilists knocked off the van, things look suddenly bleak for the Bad Kids.
The Yorbies chant "The Night Yorb", healing it back out of bloodied status. Several Yorbies gang up on Fabian, knocking him to unconsciousness, but the Hangman is able to keep Fabian's body in the saddle. Another Yorbie jumps onto the van's roof and attacks the solar lasso, dealing half the damage necessary to sever it. More Yorbies fire ballista bolts at the van, striking once, but Duggan uses countershot to shoot the other bolt out of the air. A crowd of other Yorbies unsuccessfully harry the van as well.
On the Bad Kids' lair action, they debate how to steer the van and how to try to get the sigilists back atop it. During this debate, Kristen makes a door slam attack on the Night Yorb. In the end, Riz takes a hard turn to intentionally flip the van in order to position it on its side where the fallen Fig might be able to use the sigil from prone on the ground. The flip damages everyone in and on the van, knocking out Kristen, but also deals damage to the Night Yorb, bloodying it and sending it faceplanting into the ground to ensure it cannot move further toward the portal.
Gorgug, remembering Ayda Aguefort's insistence he is the greatest wizard of the age, attempts to use the sigil to seal the Night Yorb, but fails. Stealthily reaching up from her prone position, Fig touches the sigil and successfully invokes it to trap the Night Yorb in the Hangvan's ceiling while deceiving Gorgug to think he had been the one to do it. As the Night Yorb vanishes, for the first time in months, day returns to Spyre. Duggan McCann collapses, claiming he's a vampire and died of the sunlight, although the Bad Kids doubt whether he's actually just drunk and sickened by the bright light.
The battle still isn't over, as the remaining Yorbies are still hostile. Fig revives Kristen with a healing word and eldritch blasts a Yorbie. In the chaos, Fig cannot bask in the team's success against the Night Yorb, seeing the hostile Yorbies, several of her friends still down, and remembering the phone message that school starts tomorrow with sullenness. Adaine fails her next saving throw, and her spectral dog, Moggy, rips the throat out of a Yorbie as Gorgug kills another. Kristen cures everyone (again minus Fig plus the van) with a mass cure wounds while doing a pushup, reviving Adaine and Fabian from unconsciousness.
Finishing the battle[]
Riz fatally shoots another Yorbie, then hides. An exhausted Fabian, without zeal and with "limp silk", kills another two Yorbies, including one of the ballista operators, at the cost of much of the Hangman's health in opportunity attacks.
Riderless, the Yorbies' insectoid mounts spit acid at Gorgug and two yathmags strike him as well. The other ballista shoots Fig, who casually smokes a clove cigarette in disinterest. More Yorbies jump down from a cliff wall, one of them fumbling and dying from the fall. The remaining yathmags nearly knock out Fabian, who, distressed and overheated, speaks to everyone about longing for ice cream at Basrar's.
Fig casts a fireball spell to destroy most of the enemies crowded near Gorgug and winks at him to give bardic inspiration. Adaine uses erupting earth to destroy the remaining yathmags, and Gorgug easily destroys the last two bugs near him. Popping out of trapdoors, two more Yorbies appear, sending Riz into hysterics over their tactical lateness. One misfires and shoots himself in the eye with his crossbow, while the other shoots Gorgug and is soon shot dead by Riz.
Kristen reaches into her back and pulls an ice cream sandwich from her pouch of endless ice cream, gets on the Hangman, and gives Fabian the ice cream. Eating with one hand, Fabian steers the Hangman with the other toward the last Yorbie at the ballista. Fabian tries to persuade him to stand down, but the Yorbie takes his ice cream and throws it in his face, so Fabian kills him with repeated stabs.
After the battle[]
"Where's Ecaf?" Fabian asks. Hoping to spare his feelings, Fig convinces him the mirror had declared herself a turncoat, betraying the Bad Kids while fleeing into the desert. The heroes somberly take stock of their injuries, exhaustion and fallen comrades. "How'd the battle go?" Cassandra asks, again ignored. The Hangman and Hangvan, both also terribly injured, reassure the Bad Kids that they can freely say the words "Night Yorb" now that it's not free anymore. The teens consider how this quest has taken up their entire summer vacation, leaving them unable to participate in activities like summer jobs, tinkering, and in Fabian's case, dance camp.
The Bad Kids right the Hangvan back onto its wheels and begin the long, two-day journey back to Solace, badly wounded and in silence as the Hangman chugs along, smoking and leaking oil. They drive all the way back through the Red Waste, through Highcourt, all the way up to the Baronies, passing through Bastion City on Sunday night -- so they can't even go to The Swan's Little Parade -- and finally rolling into Elmville, running basically on empty.
The Bad Kids stop for gas at the Arkon Gas Station and look across to Krom's Diner and impulsively decide to make a 3 a.m. meal there. Daisy Cubby, their waitress, congratulates them on their victory and thanks them for the return of the sun these past two days. The Bad Kids all get cottage cheese a la mode and reminisce about their freshman year before going their separate ways.
As they split up, Fig adds to her lie about Ecaf, telling Fabian the mirror had said she was meant to be just in-and-out but got emotionally involved, which she regretted. After Fabian leaves, Gorgug uses mending to repair Ecaf, and Adaine stores her in the jacket of useful things. The five Bad Kids pinky-bond over saving their friend Fabian from falling in love with a mirror.
Returning home[]
Fabian heads back to Seacaster Manor with the Hangman. Suitcases and luggage are packed up at the front door. Hallariel and Gilear greet Fabian on their own way out to a cruise vacation, which Gilear won in a surprising stroke of luck on a raffle ticket he accidentally obtained while being in a store while it was being robbed. Hallariel shares that Gilear has proposed to her, and the cruise is to celebrate their nuptials. Hallariel congratulates Fabian on his quest and encourages him to continue his heroic deeds as his father would want him to. Now that he's turned 18, he will begin receiving money from his trusts, and Hallariel is leaving Seacaster Manor in his care while she and Gilear are gone for "a couple months or a year". As they leave, Gilear discovers he has been randomly selected for a transport credit, and they joke about Gilear's sudden abnormal luck.
In his first act at the head of Seacaster Manor, Fabian searches for the fridge and gets a glass of milk. He goes upstairs to check out the gifts his mother left him, including three huge rain barrels that contain three pirates who play a birthday ditty for him. They've been contracted for a full year but will do nothing but play a birthday song, and refuse to do anything else and speak to their union rep when Fabian requests the song be played in any other style. Fabian hits the hay.
Gorgug drops Riz off at Strongtower Luxury Apartments. Riz finds his mom, Sklonda, fallen fast asleep in the middle of her legal studies, with a big conspiracy-style board detailing a legal case in which she's defending one of the organizers of the Frostyfaire Folk Festival, an annual folk music festival; her client is accused of embezzlement while running the festival. Sklonda wakes up and congratulates Riz on his victory, telling him he looks like he's grown a lot older and looks like his dad. Changing the subject, she mentions that in quitting the police department, she's found she's losing her pension, which will make it a lot harder to pay for Riz's college. Riz assures her his grades are great and he can get scholarships, but the question is what adventuring academy all of the Bad Kids can get into. Sklonda gently approaches Riz with the point that his friends are all at very different financial and academic situations from him, and it's not fair, but he might have to work extra hard on extracurriculars to guarantee he can cover his college with scholarships. She assures him she'll do all she can to make sure he can have a good life. Instead of going to bed, Riz stays up putting together a board with all his friends' GPAs planning out how they can all get into a good college together.
Gorgug putters back to the Thistlespring Tree, where his parents, Wilma and Digby, greet him, congratulating him on his artificing and looking in excitement at his work on the solar lasso. Gorgug shares the success of the quest, but mentions that "a couple of cohorts" were lost, including Ecaf, whose betrayal he had forgotten was just a lie. The Thistlespring parents express their pride before remembering to tell Gorgug that Zelda's dad had stopped by to drop off Gorgug's things after they broke up. "You'll deal with it in the morning," they reassure him. They also mention in excitement that around Gorgug's birthday, they're planning to host the Frostyfaire Folk Festival at the Thistlespring Tree. The family sets plans for quality time working together to repair the Hangvan, and Gorgug heads to bed, accidentally shattering it as he flops down.
Adaine, Kristen and Fig walk the short distance from Krom's Diner to Mordred Manor, where everyone there -- Sandra Lynn, Jawbone, the ghost of Zayn Darkshadow, Ragh and Lydia Barkrock -- greet them with a belated three-way birthday party and a hot, fresh cake. When asked how they knew when to have the cake ready, Sandra Lynn says she has tracking on all their crystals, and asks why Fig's is still in the Red Waste. They FaceTime Squeem, who's walking across the desert, and Sandra Lynn immediately hangs up.
With school only in a couple of hours, Sandra Lynn offers to let the kids call in sick to get some rest. Kristen and Fig are eager to do so, but Jawbone pulls them aside and awkwardly broaches the subject that they're both dangerously close to expulsion: Kristen has left the god YES! to die without telling the school she'd changed to Cassandra, and Fig has never attended a bard class while auditing whatever she feels like instead and not getting credit for any of those classes. Jawbone says if they want to drop out of Aguefort, there's nothing wrong with that, as they're doing great at non-academic pursuits. But if they want to try to get class credit for those pursuits, he says Arthur Aguefort normally could be persuaded, except that he and his daughter Ayda are on vacation on a daddy-daughter bonding time travel trip (which Ayda finds "deeply loathsome") and won't return until around the end of the school year. Fig says she wishes she could've been back sooner to send Ayda off, and Jawbone shares with her a set of trilobite fossils found in the backyard, arranged by Ayda billions of years ago to say, "Miss you, love you, XOXO Ayda".
Jawbone tells Adaine they got word that because her mother is still alive, she won't get any inheritance. He also tells Fig that her agent, Lola Embers, said the cancellation of the Fig and the Cig Figs tour means she owes the record label a hefty sum of money and needs to record a sophomore album by New Year's. Fig bemoans the scant lyric ideas she's assembled so far. Jawbone also mentions the devils from the Bottomless Pit are also looking for her.
As Kristen heads to bed, Ragh stops her and mentions he just got back from questing with Tracker in Fallinel. He says Tracker wanted to get in touch with Kristen, and he offers to tell her what he knows of what's going on with Tracker. Kristen wants to get her school life in order first and tells Ragh to take a rain check.
Adaine gets back up to her room, where her sister Aelwyn has moved out while Adaine was gone. In her absence, Aelwyn has painted the walls with abjurative runes and left Adaine a key to her new apartment in Clearbrook. In her note, Aelwyn explains the runes are a nemesis ward, which will protect Adaine in the room from being attacked by anyone unless they defeat Aelwyn first.
Fig heads to bed, and as she reflects on the hurdles ahead of her, her stomach gurgles -- this time, painfully. She goes to speak with Sandra Lynn about it, speculating that she may have made a deal with a devil of acid reflux. Sandra Lynn notes the icing and cottage cheese stains on Fig's shirt, and Fig decides she must just be feeling weird from what she's eaten. Sandra Lynn reassures Fig that even if she's not doing well academically, Sandra Lynn was the same way in school, and she's doing fine in life now. She does, however, suggest that Fig recast her thinking about school and try to find value in her classes themselves despite her reflex to rebel against the school admin's requirement that she attend. On the way back to bed, Fig steps in a bucket of wet cement that had been accidentally left out in renovations. Her combat boot and part of her lunch-lady-hairnet fishnet stocking are stuck in the bucket, and she takes the whole bucket to bed with her, her stomach still gurgling.
Finally, Kristen checks her crystal before bed and sees 40,000 likes on a post from the Wolfsong Revival, Tracker's religious movement, that shows Tracker evangelizing to a crowd with an elven maiden sitting partially in her lap. They've got double the followers since Kristen last checked and look to be doing great. "How are our socials doing?" Cassandra asks, and Kristen realizes their only followers are the other Bad Kids (minus Fabian) and Craig, and most of their posts are only getting two likes, from Craig and Riz. Their best post has five likes: Craig, Riz, Kristen's personal, Gorgug, and Fabian after Gorgug told him to like it even though he doesn't follow the account. As Kristen drifts off, Cassandra groans in pain and a ribbon of red seems to appear. "It's OK," Cassandra says. "I might only have two followers, but it's better than YES!, right?"
Locations[]
Characters[]
The Bad Kids[]
Returning[]
- The Night Yorb
- Duggan McCann
- Ecaf
- Wretchrot
- Boggy the Froggy
- Moggy the Doggy
- The Hangman
- The Hangvan
- Cassandra
- Daisy Cubby
- Gilear Faeth
- Hallariel Seacaster
- Sklonda Gukgak
- Arthur Aguefort
- Ayda Aguefort
- Ragh Barkrock
- Lydia Barkrock
- Zayn Darkshadow
Mentioned[]
- Balthazar
- Pok Gukgak
- Zelda Donovan
- Lola Embers
- Arianwen Abernant
- Tracker O'Shaughnessey
- Aelwyn Abernant
- Craig
- Princess Naradriel