I've Never Seen a Gooch That Couldn't Be Improved

## Description

The Dragon Friends are in New York City, the land of many names, apparently. They’re hot on the trail of Glitter Gleam, the hallucinogeno visual artist who has taken Chiba by storm – and the last known associate of Johnny Playstation. Bobby has some recreational surgery. Philge sees a play. Freezo is a monster.

## Synopsis

Bobby has arrived at Dr. Mike Truck's clinic where he is surgically altered to resemble Raul Chamgerlain (which turns out to consist only of restoring his missing ear). Dr. Truck informs him that the surgery has been successful, but he was unable to do anything about the "mitocaric toxin embedded in the back of your spine". Truck shows an X-Ray showing a number of melting poison sacs sutured to the A10 Nerve running along the spine. Mr. Sour calls Bobby and explains that the poison sacs were implanted at the same time as their identity chips as a failsafe; Sour will provide the antidote only if the Dragon Friends obey him and complete their tasks within a week.

Meanwhile, Freezo and Philge have been enjoying shows and delights in New York, and Freezo has gone to Wall Street to buy shares in Voss-Saito corporation (while they are at a record low due to Johnny Playstation's departure). The three meet up and are taken by limousine to the Guggenheim to attend *Play State*, an exhibition of the work of Glitter Gleam, arriving a Glitter is giving her opening speech. After introducing the show, Glitter announces that Johnny Playstation is returning to Voss-Saito and working on a new album for them, and then disappears.

Bobby, as Raul, successfully deceives and seduces Glitter Gleam; Philge punches him in a fit of jealousy and is dragged away by security. Glitter invites him into her dressing room and opens the curtains, revealing the full moon - and causing Bobby to transform into Robert the jazz werewolf, who fails a saving throw and lunges at Glitter, breaking a window which triggers an alarm. Bobby/Robert attempts to persuade Glitter that his transformation is an artistic statement, and that he needs to know how she manages her trickery in order to do the same with his. Glitter hands him a note she received stating that Johnny has been taken to Freeside, and confesses that she has been working with Voss-Saito in order to ensure she will be part of Johnny's triumphant return, before disappearing.

## People

### Dragon Friends

* Philge
* Freezo
* Bobby Pancakes
* Baston

### Non-Player Characters (NPCs)

* Glitter Gleam
* Mr. Sour
* Bobson Dugnut
* The *Big Wizard Six*, a "psych progrock rap" group

## Themes, tropes and running jokes

* Gratuitous Lists - in this case, of names for New York.
* Cum Jokes - “Cum Island” is listed as a name for New York.
* The device of having poison sacs attached to a runner's spine is taken directly from *Neuromancer*, the seminal cyberpunk novel, but Mr. Sour is slightly crueler than Armitage was; the Dragon Friends' poison sacs will kill them outright, while Case's would only reverse the cure Armitage had previously given him to his inability to enter cyberspace.
* Right in the Gooch
* "Mitocaric" toxin doesn't exist (well, not in this world, anyway). In future episodes, it was corrected to *myocardiac* toxin, which would mean poison that causes a heart attack. However, Okay, That's a Persuasion Check later revealed that the effect of the poison is to cause the victim to shit out their skull, which would arguably make it *craniochezic*.
* Hello Bees - Bobby answers his mobile phone (not knowing what a phone is) and due to the buzzing ringtone mistakes it for a box of bees.

## Quotes

* "Look, you be fine in a week. My point is.. you be fine *for* a week, sorry, preposition very important there." -- Mr. Sour
* "We had very public fall-out. Me threw him off a balcony." -- Philge
* "Now, please art." -- Glitter Gleam
* "Her emotions are on edge, so she's battling with those two things in her mind. And maybe there's dice involved?" -- Philge / Alex Lee
* "A girlfriend is a friend who's more than a girl." -- Glitter Gleam

## Table Talk

* "Did 9/11 happen in this world?" "Yes, everything that happened.." "Dave, you just had the opportunity to stop 9/11. You were literally given the power to stop 9/11.." "I just couldn't be sure that something worse wouldn't come along."
* "But all of them could still be projections from somewhere else?" "Well *now* you're playing Glitter Gleam."
* "There's a spell on here that I don't know what it does, but it has a cool name so it might be the time. Sounds like a cool dance move, maybe. The Misty Step."
* Dave accidentally describes the Dragon Friends as traveling down the "winding streets of 11th Avenue" in New York, when New York is famous for being built in a grid pattern where all roads are straight. He covered this by explaining that much of New York was destroyed in a disaster in 2034 and rebuilt with deliberately winding roads because "grids are symbols of the Confederacy".
* During the description of Glitter Gleam's exhibition, several of the subjects of her art are given names that (like Bobson Dugnutt and Raul Chamgerlain) appear to have been drawn from a list of fake American-sounding names for baseball players that appeared in the Japanese SNES game *Fighting Baseball*.