Mid-Piano Presents: The New Guys

*RED GARDEN — LOADING — "MID-PIANO PRESENTS." Transcript, unedited, as recorded on whatever was running in the garage that day.*

**TYLER:** So we're doing this.

**UNICORN (TEXT CARD):** We are a band with a podcast now. This was always the plan.

**TYLER:** It was not always the plan. It became the plan four minutes ago.

**UNICORN (TEXT CARD):** Four minutes is a long time to have a plan.

**DUCK:** Before we start — for legal reasons — I am a duck. I am also a secret agent working for the government. Both things are true and I will not be taking questions about which one is more true.

**TYLER:** Nobody asked.

**DUCK:** I'm getting ahead of it.

**TYLER:** Okay. We've got new guys. Three of them, plus one guy who's two guys. Let's just — Loki, you first, since apparently you've technically been here the whole time and nobody noticed.

**LOKI:** That's not quite —

**TYLER:** The document had Sigyn's whole bio and just a blank where you go.

**LOKI:** I'm aware.

**TYLER:** For *years.*

**LOKI:** I'm *aware.* Look — you want the honest answer? The honest answer is I was never missing. I was the reason the entry about her made sense at all. You don't write "held the bowl for as long as the myth demands" about somebody holding a bowl for no reason. There's a reason. The reason just doesn't need its own paragraph to be doing work.

**TYLER:** That's either the coolest thing anyone's said in this garage or the most obvious cope I've ever heard and I genuinely cannot tell which.

**LOKI:** Correct.

**PIZZA:** Can I say something.

**TYLER:** Go.

**PIZZA:** He swapped places with me mid-sentence just now to see if I'd notice.

**LOKI:** I did not.

**PIZZA:** I am on fire and I am *still* more consistently who I say I am than this guy.

**LOKI:** That's the bit. That's genuinely the whole bit, thank you for setting it up so well.

**TYLER:** Moving on before this becomes the entire episode. Gary. You're new. Nobody put you in a lore document with a hole where you should be, you're just — a guy.

**GARY:** I'm just a guy.

**TYLER:** With a clipboard.

**GARY:** With a clipboard I am not, strictly, authorized to write anyone up with.

**TYLER:** Has anyone told you that.

**GARY:** No.

**TYLER:** Are you going to ask.

**GARY:** Asking would mean finding out. I watch a bridge. That's the whole job. I watch it very well. I have never once left the post to go get a better angle on something, which — I want that on the record — is the entire kit. I don't chase. Everyone else in this roster has a dash or a blink or a swap-places-with-your-enemy-mid-conversation move —

**LOKI:** Once. It happened once.

**GARY:** I have a clipboard and extremely good eyesight. That's it. That's the whole toolkit. People ask me why I don't just walk closer to hit things harder and I tell them: this isn't a track meet.

**TYLER:** That's — okay, that's actually a good line.

**GARY:** I've had a while to work on it. The bridge is quiet a lot.

**TYLER:** Flute Debt. You collect on stuff. What stuff.

**FLUTE DEBT:** Every wrong note anyone's ever played near me. I don't announce when I'm starting the tab. That's the part people get wrong — they think the debt starts when I say something. It starts the moment the note's wrong. I just collect on my own schedule.

**TYLER:** So if I played, hypothetically, a genuinely terrible guitar solo in this exact garage four years ago —

**FLUTE DEBT:** You'd know.

**TYLER:** I don't know anything.

**FLUTE DEBT:** Ask again later.

**TYLER:** That's not your bit, that's —

**BACON/PUCK, IN UNISON:** That's our bit.

**TYLER:** Great. Great, we've got two guys sharing one bit now.

**BACON:** We're not two guys.

**PUCK:** We're extremely one guy.

**BACON:** Extremely.

**TYLER:** You just said that at the exact same time as different words.

**PUCK:** That was the demonstration. You're welcome.

**TYLER:** Which one of you is actually talking right now.

**BACON/PUCK:** Ask again later.

**TYLER:** I hate that that works on me every time.

**UNICORN (TEXT CARD):** I have a question for the group.

**TYLER:** Go.

**UNICORN (TEXT CARD):** Does anyone in this garage have an ability that isn't, structurally, a way of not directly answering a question.

*Long pause. Genuinely long. Nobody in the garage says anything for what the timestamp confirms is eleven full seconds.*

**DUCK:** I have telekinesis.

**UNICORN (TEXT CARD):** That's not what I asked.

**DUCK:** It's what I'm offering.

**TYLER:** And on that note — that's the episode. New heroes: confirmed real, confirmed evasive, confirmed capable of turning a five-minute segment into a referendum on whether anyone in this band actually answers a direct question. We'll have you back once somebody commits to a bit for longer than it takes to say it.

**LOKI:** I'll be here. I was always going to be here.

**TYLER:** *(to camera, or whatever the garage has instead of one)* We're Mid-Piano. Ask again later.