1.2.2 Chopping Block, cont.

GalleryJohn: "Wow, that escalated as quickly as my work situation."

When Last We Met

Our heroes located Rogalio Lopez and his friend Adriana, and talked out the details of his fall from grace. They then talked him into attending the fútbol game at the stadium, fulfilling their promise to Señora Sanchez, Regalio's landlady. It's La Colonia versus Parkside at the newly renovated stadium; nobody can quite say who paid for it, though we all know anyway.

The leads we have to follow up on:

• Apples + Oranges - seems to own shell corporations that front meat packing plants and sit under them with even worse conditions
• Rogalio thinks there's more to the "accidental" deaths at his his former meat packing job for A+O.
• Appleseeds Soup Kitchens (owned by A+O), which work together with homeless shelters and seem to offer "extraction" services to identified individuals who do not like the Mythos they're saddled with (their "hitchhiker"); Angela at the location in La Colonia may know more.

And from previous episodes:

• Alex Duke, a cop who moonlights in private security who scares the La Colonia residents; frequently patrols areas where A+O locations are located
• Precinct 246 - the police precinct that doesn't actually exist (in progress)
• The Men in Gray (in progress)
• Briana's seeming ability to negate the powers of the mythic woman she was fighting, using her boxing gloves
• Hades (eventually, not the immediate priority)

Estadio Unido: Halftime

The game is exciting and the crowd is loud, and for a little while it looks like the afternoon will exactly as advertised — Rogelio in the stands, Lucia keeping half an eye on him, her son Santiago posturing his way through hanging out with the gringos.

Geoffrey spies a woman in the crowd who was wearing pants that looked just like the ones the luchadora was wearing. He turns to talk to Rogelio about the deaths at the meatpacking plant, and when he looks back up, the woman is gone.

Idly scanning the crowd, London catches sight of two familiar faces in Tío Tez's retinue. One is a high school classmate who he recalls as a nerdy academic. The other is vaguely familiar, a woman he thinks he recognizes as related to Tez's family, from his younger days. He glances at a play on the field, and when he looks back, the woman is gone.

Santiago excuses himself and goes off to find his friends. A few seconds later, Rogelio gets up too, says he's going to find food, and asks if anyone wants anything. Lucia suddenly gets seemingly uneasy, gazing after them.

Kevin picks up on Lucia's concern and excuses himself to get his own munchies, following Rogelio towards the concessions. He doesn't spot Rogelio, and he also doesn't spot the fútbol fan with a large Coke who crashes into him. Kevin takes a detour to clean himself up...

Nobody has returned to the stands, and Lucia is now visibly agitated. Geoffrey asks if she wanted something from concessions, and she smiles weakly and gives him an order. Geoffrey and John descend into the body of the stadium. Geoffrey clambers on top of something to get a better vantage point. He doesn't see Rogelio, but he does see the same a masked luchadora, back towards the high school campus high atop a building.

Geoffrey (on a partial success): "I think it was Rogelio. It might have been Rogeli-no."

They reach the concessions area but in the lines around them, Rogelio is nowhere to be seen. Getting equal parts concerned and suspicious, they meet up with Kevin, and make towards the athletics facility where Kevin spotted La Colibri earlier, in search of either the luchadora or their missing acquaintance...

Wren and London stay behind with Lucia, unwilling to leave her alone in the stands. Once it's clear something's really wrong, they reassure Lucia and exit through concessions, skimming the crowd for their friends on their way out of the stadium to where the luchadora was spotted earlier.

The Natatorium

Geoffrey: "Quick guys, human pyramid! Get on our shoulders, get up there!"

John: "...What?"

Geoffrey: "It's the best idea I've got."

The trail ends at a locked athletic building on the high-school campus. The natatorium, doubles as a community pool on weekends... but nobody really cares about that right now, because there's a scream coming from inside it. The luchadora can be seen desperately trying to pry open a window to get inside. Rather than creating a human pyramid to reach her, Wren opts to pick the lock. She always seems to have the right tools on her.

London: "Madre de Dios, ¿qué es esto?"

The darkened space inside reveals a bloodbath. Rogelio holds the body of a dismembered Santiago, and blood is spread across the pool deck like paint.

As the group barrels into the pool area, Rogelio looks up, obviously not himself. London takes a harder look and finally figures out "who" he is looking at – El Coco, a boogeyman who eats naughty little children in cautionary lullabies and stories. Reading their deepest desires, he realizes that the two beings – Rogelio and El Coco – want two very different things.

The man wants to be rid of whatever's taken hold of him more than anything in the world. The thing in control wants the girl, Josie, who was naughty (she wasn't supposed to be in the pool)) — but nowhere near as naughty as Santiago, who was assaulting her when Rogelio "stepped in" and, uh, took care of the problem.

And he's not done yet. After the split second of recognition, Rogelio tosses aside Santi's ravaged body and sprints to the side of the pool, where Josie has jumped in and is swimming frantically for the far end. Geoffrey tries to conjure something to slow Rogelio down — the Frog Prince, reaching for anything — and it doesn't take. Rogelio dives, swimming full speed for the wall after the girl.

They both make it to the wall and... disappear.

As Rogelio is making his getaway, the luchadora finally gets in through the window and surveys the scene. Adriana bursts through the open door, begging the group to leave Rogelio alone, callling the masked woman "La Colibri." (Finally. A name.) London hollers the name "El Cuyo" at the luchadora before kicking his boots off and diving in after Rogelio.

John grabs a nylon rope from the pool area, and they all follow suit as quickly as they can, swimming straight for the deep end.

The Gates of Tlālōcān

GalleryLondon: "There's no water polo in La Colonia."

GalleryGeoffrey: "There's no water polo. There's water YOLO."

By the time they reach the wall, the pool isn't a pool anymore. Pressure, darkness, the sound of pounding water. Suddenly they are in a dark underwater space, with the dimmest of lights visible above them. They hear another scream.

Geoffrey nearly doesn't come up — fully clothed, disoriented, with his lungs burning, he starts heading the wrong direction, down into the depths. John spots him heading the wrong way through the dark and hauls him back with the rope he wisely brought with him.

They surface into a cavern with the size and sacred air of a cathedral. A Mesoamerican pyramid rises out of the dark, a waterfall pouring down its face, and coiled at the base of it is a massive, snakelike guardian.

The sobbing girl approaches the temple wading frantically through the pool to the shoreline, trying to get away from Rogelio, who is pursuing her single-mindedly. As she sprints towards the shore, the snakelike guardian lunges at her, narrowly missing and causing a huge wave to sweep out across the pond, tossing the group around as they try to stay above the surface. It starts hissing fiercely in Náhuatl, which London recognizes but can't quite make out.

Geoffrey conjures Old Mother Frost astride her broomstick and the temperature in the cavern plummets. She freezes the waterfall... and the guardian responds by spewing fire at her. Wren, Kevin, and John attempt to take down the snake with ropes and sharp bits of stalactites and good ol' moxie, fighting from the shallows of the underground lake.

On the dry shore, London lunges to put himself between Rogelio and Josie, while Geoffrey tackles Rogelio. London grabs for Josie but she slips away, eventually winding up with Wren.

After a brief scuffle, Geoffrey reaches Rogelio and doesn't let go. The two lock eyes while Geoffrey tries to reach through El Coco to Rogelio, keeping him restrained while trying to bring him back to the forefront of consciousness.

Geoffrey: "This is not real. This is just a figment of your imagination. You are the one who's in control — not whatever it is that you're struggling against. Do not give in to it."

While Geoffrey holds the line with Rogelio, London talks down the serpent. In a painfully literal conversation, the serpent, Cuilhuexi, explains that it guards this gate to Tlālōcān, one of the Aztec afterlives. They have a long conversation where London apologizes for the intrusion, nerds out a little over Tlālōc and Tlālōcān, and the two of them brainstorm some more suitably ominous and dramatic but less deadly ways to deal with guests who wind up here by accident. The two reach a consensus – ask a question before you kill someone — and London leaves the serpent a way to reach them, should it ever be needed.

Cuilhuexi: "What has brought you to my shores?"

London: "There. Perfecto."

Coming up for air

The group makes their way back through the dark waters, unsure when they finally leave the enclave... but they find a way out through an abandoned subway station, half-flooded and boarded shut. They have the sense these tunnels go on and on. Prying off planks and digging their way through rubble, they wind their way upwards, they come up in a somewhat familiar location: — dig their way through and come up in a side street just off of the "old square."

Finally back in cell reception, Geoffrey sends Daniel a one sentence text:

I'm coming home.