# TYLER — SERIES X // INTERLUDE, UNNUMBERED ## "Ask the Frog (Not the Tree)" ### Build 0133 | Series X // Attempt Nine | RED GARDEN In-Game Cutscene Frame
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**SERIES:** TYLER: A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT A MAN WHO WON'T STAY IN HIS OWN YEAR **SERIES DESIGNATION:** SERIES X **EPISODE:** INTERLUDE, UNNUMBERED — "Ask the Frog (Not the Tree)." Founder, real-time: "and then do a followup in the garage 'ask the frog'" → "'not the tree.'" Fourth entry in the loading-screen cutscene format `x01`/`x02`/`x03` established — same garage, same crew, same no-stakes premise: footage generated because the gang exists, not because anything is actually on the line. This one dramatizes a piece of standing gang wisdom nobody has ever explained on camera before. **LOCATION:** The garage. Not established whose. Never is. **TIMELINE POSITION:** After "The Band Name." Ordinary Tuesday, by the same internal logic. **BINDING STAGE AT OPEN:** Not applicable. **BINDING STAGE AT CLOSE:** Not applicable. **EMILY OS STATUS:** CAST: STANDBY. Absent from this one on purpose, same as "The Band Name" — this is the gang being a gang, not the substrate being addressed. **SERIES X NOTE:** In-fiction: a loading-screen artifact again, shown between matches. This one answers a question the format has been sitting on since it started asking the gang things at all: why does the house rule specifically name the Frog and specifically exclude the Tree, when the Tree's own claim to secret-keeping is — on paper — the bigger one? **END LOG:** PENDING
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**CONSISTENCY CHECK:** - [x] Tyler does not complete a self-defining sentence - [x] The documentary is not called a ritual - [x] The Subscriber: not mentioned - [x] Chrono-Cube: not mentioned - [x] Emily OS: absent, correctly, per this episode's own note above - [x] Coin: not flipped — this episode settles a house rule by demonstration, not by chance - [x] No `docs/BACKSTORY.md` claim contradicted; invents no origin, custody, or recruitment order - [x] Frog and Tree's claims (time travel; keeper of the universe's greatest secret) drawn straight from `just_a_duck.md`'s original transcript, not invented fresh for this episode
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``` UI OVERLAY — TOP OF FRAME, THIN, PRESENT THROUGHOUT RED GARDEN — LOADING — "WHY WE DON'T ASK THE TREE" ```
## SCENE ONE — THE QUESTION NOBODY WANTED
``` INT. THE GARAGE, CHROME EVERYWHERE, SAME ONE AS ALWAYS — CONTINUOUS ```
Doc Wheel is holding two identical van keys and cannot remember which one starts the van and which one starts the thing they agreed never to start again.
**DOC WHEEL (TEXT CARD)** One of these is the van. I need someone who knows things to tell me which.
**TYLER** Try both.
**DOC WHEEL (TEXT CARD)** I tried both in a dream once. I'm not doing it awake.
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## SCENE TWO — THE INSTINCT, WRONG ON ARRIVAL
Duck, immediately, without polling anyone:
**DUCK** Ask the Tree. Its whole thing is "keeper of the universe's greatest secret." A van key is practically beneath it.
The Tree turns, interested, and delivers what is clearly a complete and confident answer, at length, in French. Nobody in the garage reacts. The UI overlay does not generate a subtitle. It has never generated one for the Tree. This is not a glitch. This has always been true.
**GHOST (TEXT CARD, still at the piano)** And that's why we don't ask the Tree.
**TYLER** That wasn't a no. That might have been the entire answer.
**GHOST (TEXT CARD)** Doesn't matter what it was. Matters what we can do with it, which is nothing.
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## SCENE THREE — THE HOUSE RULE, STATED FOR THE FIRST TIME ON CAMERA
**PIZZA (TEXT CARD)** There's a rule. Has been for a while. "Ask the Frog, not the Tree." Nobody ever filmed the reason, we just all started doing it.
**TYLER** Say the reason now, then. On camera.
**PIZZA (TEXT CARD)** The Tree's secret is bigger. The Frog's secret is usable. Different things.
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## SCENE FOUR — THE FROG, CONSULTED PROPERLY
The Frog, top hat as ever, is asked directly this time — not baited into volunteering, per house rule, apparently a whole separate piece of etiquette nobody explains either.
**TYLER** Which key.
**FROG (TEXT CARD)** I know the secret to time travel. A van key is not a mystery, it's an inconvenience.
**FROG (TEXT CARD, one beat later, holding up one finger)** That one. It's warmer. Keys that get used remember it.
Doc Wheel checks. It is, in fact, the van key.
**DOC WHEEL (TEXT CARD)** ...Huh.
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## SCENE FIVE — THE UNICORN ASKS THE OBVIOUS FOLLOW-UP
**UNICORN (TEXT CARD)** Wait. If the Tree's secret is bigger, why does asking the Frog actually work and asking the Tree doesn't?
**DUCK** Because a secret you can't get out of someone isn't information. It's just a shape they're making.
**FROG (TEXT CARD)** I've been saying variations of that for as long as I've had the hat.
**GHOST (TEXT CARD)** The Tree's ability is *called* "Grand Secret." Mine's just called "Mid-Piano," and you can at least use mine to figure out where I am at any given moment. Some of us named our own limitations honestly.
The Tree, unbothered, says something else in French. Still no subtitle. It does not seem to be trying to be understood this time, which the UI overlay treats as its own small confirmation.
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## SCENE SIX — THE RETRIEVAL CART, ARRIVING ON SCHEDULE
The Retrieval Cart arrives, unbidden, carrying a small hand-lettered sign: **"ASK THE FROG."** No one asks who made the sign or when. It is, per house rule, already the answer to a question nobody finished asking.
**DOC WHEEL (TEXT CARD)** Put it up by the van keys. Permanently, this time.
**TYLER** "This time" implies a first time.
**DOC WHEEL (TEXT CARD)** There's always a first time. I don't remember most of them.
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## SCENE SEVEN — THE RULE, CONFIRMED PROPERLY
**FROG (TEXT CARD)** For the record, I'm not offended it took a mixed-up van key to get this on camera. I'd have preferred something with real stakes. But I'll take the credit either way.
**PIZZA (TEXT CARD)** Uninvestigated is still available as an EP title, and this episode did not use it, so it remains available. I check every time.
**TYLER (V.O., last line, doesn't complete a sentence about himself, per standing rule)** Nobody explained the rule until today. It just kept being true every time somebody tested it. That 's usually how the real ones get filmed.
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## TAG — THE SIGN, GOING UP
``` UI OVERLAY, FULL SCREEN "ASK THE FROG (NOT THE TREE)" — CONFIRMED, PER THE GANG, NOW ON A SIGN ```
Doc Wheel nails the sign up next to the van keys, exactly where the garage's chrome catches the light worst, guaranteeing nobody reads it and everybody keeps asking out loud instead. The Ghost resumes playing. The Tree keeps talking, to no one, in French, subtitle-less, apparently content that its secret stays exactly as grand and exactly as unusable as it was at the top of the scene.
*SERIES X // INTERLUDE, UNNUMBERED — END*
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## LORE RECEIPT — CUSTODY LOG, UNNUMBERED ENTRY
**Filed by:** Eastwind Owl Field Archive, cross-filed with RED GARDEN's own asset log **Classification:** GANG HOUSE RULE, ORIGIN DRAMATIZED. No `docs/BACKSTORY.md` claim touched — this entry sits after roster formation and after "The Band Name," invents nothing about origin, custody, or recruitment order. **Object of record:** The house rule "ask the Frog, not the Tree," dramatized here for the first time on camera, drawn directly from both characters' real, already-shipped RED GARDEN kits (`packages/simulation/arena_ai_bridge.c`) rather than invented fresh:
| Hero | Q | W | R | |---|---|---|---| | Frog | LOOP BACK (rewind own position + HP) | BORROWED TIME (refunds an ally's next cast) | THE SECRET (vanish, untargetable a while) | | Tree | VINE LASH (root + damage nearest foe) | UNTRANSLATED (passive, no effect here) | GRAND SECRET (self-root, armor + heal) |
The joke was already sitting in the ability table before this episode existed: Tree's own W is mechanically named **"UNTRANSLATED"** — a passive that does nothing when checked — the same property this episode dramatizes as "speaks in French, never subtitled, delivers nothing anyone can act on." Tree's R, **"GRAND SECRET,"** is bigger-sounding than Frog's R, **"THE SECRET,"** by name alone, exactly matching Duck's wrong instinct in Scene Two that the bigger-sounding claim should be the more useful one. Frog's actual kit (a self-rewind, a refund for someone else, a vanish) is functionally interactive in a way Tree's kit (root, hit, heal, stay quiet) structurally isn't — the house rule was already true in the game files. This episode is the first time anyone said it out loud.
Eastwind note: same control-case status as "The Band Name" — no crisis, no roster stakes, filed anyway, on the theory that a gang's unstated rules are exactly the kind of footage that makes it a gang rather than a roster.
*Clean builds first.* *Then custody.* *Then everything else.*
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**INTERLUDE, UNNUMBERED — END**
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