Season 2 - Episode 68: A Smelly Situation

## Synopsis

Bjorn, Henry, and Sammie head to the hospital to do some investigation. They talk with the teenage girl and her father first. The girl says that her boyfriend broke up with her and she hasn't stopped crying since. The now ex-boyfriend is also in the hospital. They go to talk with him only to find he's asleep and talk with his friend instead. His friend says that the boy smelled something strange before he started crying too. At the teen girl's house, they look around for any clues and find a set of tracks that lead into a puddle in the nearby woods. They bring back some of the water for Miguel who tells them the water is tears. After doing research in the library with the clues they have, they discover the creature is a squonk - an odd creature that can dissolve into a puddle of its own tears when frightened and may be able to turn other people into puddles of tears.

## Episode Description

The heroes look into the situation of the crying kids.

## Key Events

* Bjorn, Henry, and Sammie do some investigation at the hospital and find that the teens started crying two days ago and haven't stopped since. The teen boy reported smelling an odd ammonia smell before he started crying.
* At the teenage girl's house, they discover a trail of three-toed footprints that disappear into a puddle.
* The crew does research at the Fort and discovers they're looking for an unusual squonk - a creature that is known to be hard to catch as it dissolves into a puddle of tears as a defense mechanism.

## Summary

Bjorn suggests they head to the hospital to gather more information. They hop in a boat and head over to the docks on West, then get in Sammie's Jeep to drive over to the hospital. They walk up to the front desk and Bjorn flashes his FBI badge to the receptionist, telling him they're here looking into things for Jolene. The receptionist tells them the kids are in Room 204 and 207. She tells them to try and keep the visit short as they're not doing well.

Bjorn, Henry, and Sammie walk into 207 and Bjorn, again, flashes his badge to a distraught, bearded man and tells him they're here on behalf of Captain Holland. The man lets them inside and they see a teenage girl, around 16 years old, named Alice Becker sitting in the bed softly crying. Bjorn walks over to the bed to talk to Alice and asks if anything out of the ordinary happened and the girl says nothing she can think of except that her boyfriend broke up with her. Alice says she started crying at the break up and hasn't been able to stop since. Alice's father tells Bjorn that the other boy that's here in the hospital with the same symptoms is Alice's ex-boyfriend.

Bjorn, Henry, and Sammie walk over into the other room to talk to the teen boy. When they walk in, they see him laying in bed. He has tears rolling down his face but seems to be asleep. There aren't any adults in the room with him, just another teenage boy sitting in a chair beside the bed. Bjorn greets him and tells him they're here on behalf of the police. The boy introduces himself at Paul and says the boy is bed is his friend Jamie. He says that Jamie was brought in first because he has bad asthma and the constant crying made his asthma flare. Paul says he hasn't noticed anything strange except for the whole crying thing, he says Jamie was actually happy to be breaking up with Alice, not sad.

Henry starts to ask Paul some questions. Paul says the break up happened in Alice's back yard, Jamie said that Alice started crying first and then Jamie smelled something bad and started crying. Paul says that Jamie said the smell was kind of like pee. Then Jamie called Paul to come get him when he couldn't stop crying and his asthma flared. As Henry and Bjorn are chatting with Paul, Sammie walks over to Jamie and puts her hand on his forehead like she's checking his temperature. As she puts her hand on his head, she realizes his skin is wet and clammy. She then uses magic to look into his memories. She sees Jamie trying to comfort a crying Alice and then all of a sudden smell a gross, ammonia-like pee smell. Then Jamie starts to cry and sob uncontrollably before he calls Paul. Sammie pulls back to herself and then takes a step away from Jamie.

Bjorn, Henry, and Sammie step out into the hall to talk and swap information. Bjorn says they should check out Alice's yard but will probably need something to plug their noses. They get permission from Alice's father to investigate their property, stop by a pharmacy to get some masks to block the smell, and then go to Alice's house. They arrive at a small house in the suburbs on East. In the back yard, there is an old swing set and a porch swing under an arbor. The yard runs against a forested area.

Bjorn and Henry look around the forested area but doesn't spot anything. Sammie walks through the memory she experienced in Jamie's mind. She finds a spot in between some bushes that has an odd set of tracks - the prints are three-toed with oddly oblong steps. They lead up to a puddle of water and then disappear. Sammie points the tracks out to Bjorn and Henry and that they disappear into the puddle. She says it reminds her of their first case where the tracks disappeared into water, implying the creature may teleport through water. Sammie gets a water bottle from her Jeep and then fills it with the water from the puddle. Bjorn suggests they head back to the Fort and give the water to Miguel for analysis and start to do some research.

The three of them head back to the Fort and Bjorn and Henry fill Miguel in on what they've found so far. Sammie hands over the water bottle for him to analyze. They head to the library to start doing some research. As they're reading, Miguel wheels in to tell them that the liquid they gave him is just salt water. Sammie asks if it could be tears and Miguel says they could be, but it would require a lot of tears to make a whole puddle. He also tells them the smell isn't coming from the liquid. Miguel wishes them luck and then rolls out of the library.

In his research, Henry finds out that this is a creature called a squonk. The squonk is a hard creature to catch because any time it's frightened it dissolves into a puddle of its own tears and seems to teleport or appear somewhere else. Sammie finds that the squonk doesn't seem to injure others and there aren't reports of it causing other people to cry, however someone tried to catch a squonk and then dissolved into a puddle of their own tears. It's unclear how this change occurred, they were known to be looking for the squonk and then found as tears later. They get the feeling that this squonk is unusually powerful compared to the normal squonk. Thankfully, the creatures don't seem malicious, only wandering around feeling sorry for itself.

## List of Appearances

* Bjorn Olafson
* Henry Marlowe
* Sammie Overbrook
* Alice Becker
* Paul
* Jamie
* Miguel Rodriguez

## Roll Tracker

**Andrew Level Up:** Changed to "The Protector" playbook.

## Trivia

Regarding whether this is a "new" playbook for Wesley and how many times he's leveled: he has been The Expert for 5 complete arcs and has only failed 16 times since then.