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17-noodlebird · 15 days ago

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World Six = The Farmlands Of Granny Smith’s Orchard

🍏🐴🌾🌽🧑‍🌾🚜🧺🌳🐄

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Jewel: Emerald

Power: Nature

Color: Green

Theme: Farming & Horses

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Objective:

Solve the crop failure crisis and famine at the family orchard, as well as solve some disappearance cases there.

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Chapter VI: A Few Bad Apples

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The sixth episode/chapter pays homage to the countryside farmlands we encounter during a typical road trip, as well as the rural area towns of those farms. It also pays homage to My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, specifically the grimdark fanfiction An Apple Sleep Experiment, as well as the 1974 horror flick The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the 2006 anime Higurashi: When They Cry.

The episode begins with our protagonists from Team Circus back on the road after yet another eventful adventure. Apparently, they've come to find out they've already made a pretty good name for themselves after managing to stop a petty con artist, a money laundering conspiracy, a genocidal king, a cruel headmistress, and a power-hungry chief — all with the span of a single year and five months! Now they're all wondering where else they could be going to, since for a few good hours now, they've been seeing fields of green all around them.

And that's actually kind of a good thing since for some inexplicable reason, Jax has been largely distracted by the fields, meaning that he won't be able to rub his chaotic energy off his fellow castmembers, especially Pomni, meaning no more road rage from Caine for now. Ragatha even notices just how peaceful and quiet the jackass jackrabbit has been for quite some time now, with everyone agreeing just how nice the van ride has been without the typical dysfunctional mayhem going on, even for Valerie, Bethany, and Lulu, whom the three have been on call via the communicator bracelets for at least 5 hours now. Though as nice as the tranquility is, Lulu is kinda bored of it, so she asks Jax what's on his mind.

Turns out the farmland fields galore from outside has made Jax a little homesick, though not for the circus, unsurprisingly. The fields remind him of when he was still in the human world as a youngster, working day in and day out on the family farm he used to live in. It's a bit selfish, he says, but he sometimes wishes he got to experience that farm life one last time and relive those peaceful days where he didn't have a care in the world. Though in hindsight, he could've just asked Caine for a farm-based adventure, as the ringmaster snidely points out.

Suddenly, a green haired girl by the name of Gemma pops in to say hi, and that they're in luck! It just so happens that their next destination of the amazing digital road trip is indeed The Farmlands Of Granny Smith's Orchard, and the rural town of that orchard known as The Farmlands! Jax beams up at this prospect, though the only people who are even remotely happy for him are Ragatha and Bubble. Everyone else is either indifferent or dreading the events that are yet to come. It's a pretty humble and quaint little town filled with friendly folks who all know each other, a population in the triple digits, and some small-scale stores, restaurants, and a whole lotta farms as far as the eye can see. The townies there are humanoid ipotanes with colorful horse-like hindquarters, including horse-like ears and fluffy tails. The gang decides to stop by at the local diner Pomni spotted nearby moments earlier.

As the members of Team Circus all hop outta the van and into the diner, everyone in the rural town of The Farmlands greets them with big ol’ friendly hellos and gestures of welcoming and hospitality, much to their shyness and awkwardness. Even the folks inside the diner greet them warmly with loud salutations. As grateful as they are for the unexpected recognition, they're only here for a quick brunch. Gemma, who has a knack for farming herself, takes the time to infodump some of The Farmlands’ culture and history while they order their food from the menu. Everyone is either intrigued or bored, with the only one showing the most gleeful interest being Jax, of course. He's eager about their next objective in The Farmlands, though Gemma has to forewarn him not to go looking for adventure, but rather to let the adventure find him. While all that's happening, a townie in the diner catches wind of what's going on and offers to greet them and introduce himself. His name is Henry Smith, and he's delighted to meet them. The others are pleasantly surprised and secretly grateful for the show of kindness from such a person. They engage in a bit of a deep conversation about the happenings in their lives (although Team Circus is careful not to reveal too much), and even Gemma gets in on the action, with the green-haired lass revealing that they had just arrived at The Farmlands to go see Granny Smith's Orchard; they heard that the best apples are harvested there. Henry reveals that he just so happens to be the son of Granny Smith, the founder of the apple orchard herself. As much as he'd like to brag about the apples being picked there, he admits that he may need some help with the orchard.

Jax perks up. “Help, you say?” he asks. The problem was only fairly recent, but apparently, the orchard hasn't been growing as many apples as it used to, and the harvest numbers are alarmingly low this year. And it's not just the orchard; there are other farms in the town that are also facing similar problems, including rotting cornfields, the carrots, tomatoes, and other fruits and vegetables being much smaller in size than what's usual, and even the livestock farms of The Farmlands are having a bit of trouble as of late. With this, the jackrabbit makes the oh-so-wise decision to proudly declare that they can be able to tackle anything no problemo; after all, they've just changed the course of history at least three times, defeating a couple of evil rulers from distant lands and even changing an entire school system for the better back in Craniumville. Everyone is outright embarrassed by the display of arrogance and all groan and clamor over this stupid mistake. Caine even chastises Jax for his rudeness, though Henry is quick to lessen the tension by admitting that he and his family already kinda knew who they were; why else would the townsfolk have been so affable and quick to greet them the first chance they got? It's a good thing Henry's such an outgoing guy, otherwise they'd be having a lot more problems than they already are right now.

In fact, he's willing to lead Team Circus to the rest of his family, who have a diner booth of their own a couple of feet away. They follow him, and are introduced to his other family members present: his brother Joe and his wife Holly, his nephew and niece: the twins Barnaby and Barbara, and his daughter Cora. They're all ecstatic to meet them, and upon being told that they're here to potentially help them out, they're all even more thrilled, as they too have problems with their respective farms. Joe is a butcher and rancher, Holly is a florist and crop farmer, and Henry himself is a beekeeper and orchardist, alongside his only daughter Cora and his mom Granny Smith, whose name is revealed almost immediately to be Anabel. His dad, the lovable kooky dork named Al, is a dairy farmer and cheesemaker who sometimes helps out Joe at the ranch. Henry is sure they'd love to meet him and Anabel as well.

While waiting for brunch to arrive, they all engage in a little jovial bonding time, with each of them telling their own little stories, the twins being mischievous, and Cora trying to keep the two at bay. It almost feels like reuniting with extended family in a way. At least Jax seems to think so. Gemma even gets a chance to interact with them a bit, much to the envy of the rest of the dimensional diplomats. The lively banter continues even after everyone's started eating. As they're all conversing with each other, the members of Team Circus learn not just about the mysterious crop failures (something that they have literally just encountered the previous episode, back in The Tranquil Paradise Of Harmonia), but also some missing people cases in The Farmlands. Nothing too serious for right now, but people have been keeping an eye out on everything and everyone, to make sure no one's up to no good, namely the tiny handful of folk who have, for one reason or another, gone psychotic; probably because of something they ate from a few days ago, perhaps.

Obviously, being a rural town that has less than a thousand residents, the disappearance cases have caused quite the stir amongst the townsfolk, although Henry reassures the group that the police department and detective agency have already been on the case for quite a while now, so they've got nothing to worry about. The members of Team Circus aren't completely buying it, but are gonna take his word for it, hoping (and praying) that he's right and it's just a coincidence. Once they finish brunch, they all head outside of the diner and continue sharing small bits of their lives to each other.

Jax has made himself a new friend in Cora and is also obviously enjoying the company of the twins Barnaby and Barbara, much to the relief of Joe and Holly, who have been in need of a babysitter for quite some time now. After some pleading and debating from Henry, Joe, and Holly, they all decide that they'll take turns helping each others’ farms in the hopes of getting progress done faster in time for the harvest season. Gangle, Ragatha, and Pomni will help Holly with the flowers, fruits and veggies, Kinger, Caine, Bubble, and Zooble will work with Henry at his apiary, and Jax will go to Granny Smith's Orchard to help pick apples with Cora, Barnaby, Barbara, and Anabel. They'll rotate the next day, in the order they've chosen: Holly’s flower shop and crop garden, Henry's apiary, Granny Smith's Orchard, Joe's butcher shop, ranch, and slaughterhouse, and Al’s dairy farm and cheesemaking shop. Thataway, work can get done, the town's strong sense of community and teamwork will prevail, everyone will get to know each other better, and hopefully Jax will try to become a better person from this experience, seeing that he's finally back in his element and his old farmboy roots will set him straight once and for all. Key word being: hopefully. No trigger happy Jax, no problem! Team Circus happily accepts the requests from the Smith family, and head off to their respective groups, with Gemma being their helpful guide from the other side.

Those poor bastards thought it'd be easy, Gemma thinks to herself. They're gonna need all the help they can get from this, and their troubles haven't even actually begun yet. Cora, who's driving her truck over to Granny Smith's Orchard, is kinda enjoying the prideful bragging from Jax, however annoying everyone else from Team Circus knows it is, although one could argue he's just storytelling with a smile on his face. Barnaby loves Jax’s stories because of how action-packed it is, though Barbara has a really hard time believing it. Once they all arrive at The Farmlands Of Granny Smith's Orchard, Jax is presented to a lush land of apple trees galore, apples of all different kinds, and a large cottage with smoke rising from the chimney. Waiting at the cottage is Granny Anabel, who greets them all warmly with hugs and kisses. Jax secretly wished his biological family would have greeted him like that when he was a kid. After some small chit-chat, they all get to work on picking the apples, and they're not kidding about the crop failure crisis, as a majority of the apples have already been rotten beyond healthy consumption, save for a select few that are still seemingly intact and look good enough to sell and eat. While a mini-montage plays of Jax, the twins, Cora, and Anabel picking the good apples off the trees, and throwing away the bad ones. What's peculiar about the bad apples is that they have tinges of dark purple vein-like marks, which isn't normal for a typical rotten fruit. However, no one bats an eye on it and they all decide to toss it aside in a trash bag designated just for them specifically. If only they accounted for the raccoons getting in the garbage bags and eating the bad apples…

After leaving Jax alone to his devices at the orchard, Gemma decides to check up on Pomni, Ragatha, and Gangle with Holly and her beautiful garden from her communicator bracelet, and she, just like the other three, is in awe by the beautiful display of greenery. Flowers of many different colors decorate the garden, although less exotic than the ones back in Harmonia from the previous episode. Crops of all kinds, from carrots, potatoes, cabbages, broccoli, corn, tomatoes, and wheat, to strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, huckleberries, peppers, oranges, avocados, and a cornucopia of so many others in her arsenal. Talk about a green thumb! They also get started with picking the crops for the harvest and the flowers for the florist shop. Compared to Jax, Cora, Anabel, Barnaby, and Barbara, they have somewhat of a better time than them. All the while, they have a bit of a conversation about how nice it'd be to take a bit of a breather for a while after the last five adventures were filled to the brim with action and drama. Holly would love to hear all about their adventures, and the girls are happy to tell them a little bit about what they've been doing. Holly kinda assumes they're vagabonds wandering the world doing good deeds left and right, and they kinda let her believe that; besides, she ain't wrong. They have been gaining a bit of experience doing those good deeds and changing everyone's lives for the better for their respective societies, all while they went along with their road trip, even if the difference they make is only small.

Since Pomni has a bit more experience with retail, she opts to be at the front desk for the flower shop, serving customers their bouquets, and produce from the shop. And just like with the orchard, there's strange dark veins on the wilting flowers (specifically the sunflowers and daisies) and the wild berries (specifically the raspberries blueberries, and strawberries), and as a result, they're thrown away in a designated trash bag separate from the regular trash. It's also because of the tainted produce and flowers that there are fewer customers than usual, since the harvest is not as bountiful as the previous years have been. Meanwhile, Gangle and Ragatha are continuing to pick the crops with Holly, continuing their storytelling, and Holly is highly invested in it. Despite the huge amount of plants being grown in Holly's garden, there's still a concerning amount of tainted crops and flowers, even though the healthy surplus is still enough to get by for the time being. As the girls continue to work, the racoons from earlier are beginning to roam around the premises, not exactly looking rabid, but not exactly satisfied with their hunger either. They tear through the garbage bags filled with the rotting berries and wilted flowers, and they devour the berries in a futile attempt to satiate themselves, and then scurry onwards to their next target someplace else. All of this will be important later on.

Next on the itinerary Gemma set up for herself is Henry's apiary, where Henry works as a beekeeper and honey farmer. It's a beautiful looking collection of wooden beehives, roaming with honeybees as far as the eye can see. Henry explains to Kinger, Caine, Bubble, and Zooble his job as a beekeeper, collecting honey and honeycombs to be sold to the public. He also tends to the honeybees that live in the hives, ensuring their safety and prosperity under the protection of their respective colony queen, and to keep any hooligans away from them as much as possible. Of course, you can't beekeep without the proper protective gear, so they all decide to settle into their respective beekeeping suits and get this job started. It's no surprise that Kinger is among the most eager for the job, considering his hyperfixation with insects of all kinds, especially bees. As the gang all help out Henry in collecting honey and taking the honeycombs out of the beehives, Gemma takes notes of the previous two scenes, and sees that Henry's apiary is doing a lot more decently compared to the others, with no signs of dark veins on any of the honeycombs. Henry and Kinger and bonding over their shared love for the Bee Movie, with the latter having completely memorized the entire script by heart, much to the annoyance of everyone else. Just when things are going swimmingly, we are introduced to two new characters we haven't seen before: the O’Doherty twins, Shellie and Nellie. They've been known on the block to cause a bit of havoc in The Farmlands along with their mentor Erick Carlson, but this time, they're here to catch a bunch of pests and keep them from rummaging through the garbage outside; apparently they've gone mad with hunger, despite showing no signs of rabies, not to mention the fact that they've been biting people when provoked, hence, why the twin girls are not only being careful with manhandling them, but also trying to get rid of them and keep them from wrecking the trash bins and contaminating them. Shellie engages in some small talk with Henry while Nellie does her best to catch the raccoons and put them in cages. Nellie managed to capture two of the three hostile critters, but she has trouble with the third and is yelping for help from her twin sister. The third raccoon manages to make its way to the apiary and cause some chaos, while an unprotected Nellie tries to catch it, resulting in the honeybees being disturbed from their peace. Kinger, Caine, Bubble, Zooble, Henry and Shellie all manage to chase the raccoon out of the apiary, but at the price of Zooble being stung by a bee on their left arm amidst the chaos.

As soon as Henry uses his bee smoker to calm the swarm down, and the O’Doherty twins finally capture the third raccoon and put it in a cage, things seemingly begin to settle back down for a bit while the small talk between Henry and Shellie resumes, until Zooble starts complaining about feeling dizzy, which immediately escalates into them feeling chest pains and shortness of breath, all symptoms of anaphylaxis; turns out Zooble is allergic to bee stings! Luckily for everyone involved, Kinger, our resident entomologist, knows just what to do, and Henry has the supplies for this exact situation in handy. As soon as Kinger uses the EpiPen on Zooble, he and Henry get them to a resting spot in Henry's house to calm down, Henry makes a quick phone call, while Caine, Bubble and Kinger watch over a really distressed Zooble on the living room sofa, while the O'Doherty twin girls supervise everything with Henry's help. Apparently Zooble didn't know they were allergic to bees, and Caine didn't think it was actually possible for anyone to get allergic reactions in the digital world. Gemma makes a call via her own communicator bracelet to check up on the group, and she just so happened to witness the whole thing, including Valerie and the rest of the other dimensional diplomats, who have all been watching the events go down like a TV show from the comfort of their living room couch. None of the four members of Team Circus are amused by their (somewhat understandable) inability to do anything to help Zooble sooner, seemingly forgetting about the suspension of disbelief for a brief moment until Henry returns to where everyone else is, in order to tell them that Grampa Al and Uncle Joe are going to pick Zooble up and take them to the dairy farm, since thanks to their newly revealed bee allergy, they can't stay at the apiary. Everyone is disheartened with this news, but they're wholeheartedly understanding about it, wishing Zooble good luck in the process, including Gemma, who vows to keep a close eye on them from her communicator bracelet. When Grampa Al and Uncle Joe finally arrive, everyone bids their respective farewells to each other and wishes Zooble a good time at the dairy farm. From afar, however, we can see small blotches of purplish black in some of the collected honey jars, something that Henry unfortunately failed to notice in time, mainly because they're hard to spot with how tiny the splotches are.

As Grampa Al is driving, he and Zooble get to know each other a little better, and Al even sends condolences to the latter about their newly discovered allergy to bee stings. Zooble says there's no hard feelings in it however, as they, along with the rest of Team Circus, have gone through marginally much worse before coming here, and long before their road trip even began. Uncle Joe is a nice enough fellow to talk to, and he gets in on the conversation as well, all while Gemma diligently watches the group over like a hawk, along with the rest of the other groups on multiple holographic screens. Grampa Al gives some pretty encouraging advice along the way as well, especially things like learning not to be so hard on themselves (more on that for a different character later). At last, they reach the dairy farm, and everyone is hoping for a generally easier time, especially in regards to the critter situation just moments prior, but unfortunately, troubles persist within the dairy farm as plenty of the dairy cows are acting up, with some acting more aggressive than usual, and others looking like they've caught the cold. It takes a pretty good while to manhandle the aggressive cows, with Al cheering on Zooble and Joe like they're in a rodeo of some kind, much to Gemma's amusement. As soon as the cows are tamed, they then all attempt to milk them, with Al teaching Zooble the basics, and for the most part, everyone is successful, save for the few cows that could not produce any. However, the milk turns out to all be tainted, either tasting sour, or having bits of blackish purple spots in it, almost like mold (the kind of mold that grows on bread and fruits). This doesn't deter Al for a single bit, despite the situation, as he still has his cheese cellar, where it's been aging pretty well underground. The cheese appears to be the only livestock item that isn't affected by this mystery rot, and it looks stunning. They're perfect enough to be sold, as they've been sitting there, waiting to be sold, and ripening for at least 30 years before consumption. The cheesemaking shop looks equally beautiful, with a Bavarian theme going on in the atmosphere. And like with Holly's flower shop, the cheese is selling like hotcakes, albeit a bit better than the aforementioned flower shop from earlier. And among the influx of customers is another good ol’ family friend of the Smiths, Mrs. Karen Starr, The Farmlands’ resident country singer-songwriter. She's been around the block lending a helping hand to her community herself, alongside her husband Sam, and she was wondering if anyone would like to join her get-together at the pub from a few miles away. They're delighted to come over, especially since this is the beginning of the harvest season, and they look forward to congratulating the others for their respective successful harvests, not to mention today had been one hell of a day with all the rambunctious customers, abnormal activities going on in the community, and the Smiths having their own set of bad luck that they couldn't turn around in time.

During the golden hour, just as the sun is on its way to set, everyone reunites at Granny Smith's Orchard and they all talk about their time at their respective tasks, which include the tainted produce, the aggressive raccoons, Zooble’s brand new allergy to bees, and of course, the get-together at The Farmlands’ local pub hosted by Karen Starr to celebrate the end of the first day of the harvest season, probably as a means to boost morale in the small town and bring reassurance to those who are also suffering from a not-so-great harvest. Gemma and the gang from the other side are all diligently listening in on the reunion, and the green-haired girl is ecstatic to see Jax being a great older brother figure to the Smith twins, as Granny Anabel can attest to. They all decide that once the sun sets, they'll head off to the pub to relax for a bit, socialize with the other townsfolk, and meet more people in The Farmlands and get to know them better as well. And so, they head off in their respective vehicles once the sun begins to set on The Farmlands, and set a course for the local pub where Karen Starr and Sam Starr are at, known as O’Doherty Inn. Hey wait a minute, Shellie and Nellie are from the O'Doherty family!! That means their family owns this place, right!?

Heh, heh, WRONG! The O'Doherty family sold the Irish-themed pub to Erick Carlson, as revealed by Henry, who is close friends with the O'Doherty family, by virtue of the twin girls being best friends of Cora. As soon as they arrive at the O'Doherty Inn, they are greeted to a crowded pack of individuals lounging in the pub, which is themed to the country of Ireland, with a bar, pool table, and a small concert stage, where Karen and Sam are watching the guests diligently as their faithful hosts of the get-together. Team Circus and the Smith family all scoot into the crowd, with Henry and Joe ordering food for everyone in their respective groups, while the Smith twins stay with Jax as he finds more kids in the get-together that they can play with and everyone else hangs out with each other at their own leisure; plus, Jax grew a huge bond with the twins almost instantaneously, so it would make sense that he'd be in charge of them for just a little while longer.

As the Starr duo sing some of the most popular country songs onstage, and everyone else having a good time, Jax and the twins decide to do some exploring while the bunny rabbit continues his search for a potential playmate for the small youngins. Barnaby is acting like a kindergartner high on Pixy Stix powder, Barbara has a creepy thousand-yard stare that would rival any horror movie phantom in the vicinity, and Jax is trying to make sure they don't run off in the pub and cause major havoc. The twins manage to sneak their way into an “employees only” area via a door that was neglected to be locked, and Jax is forced to go inside to retrieve the troublemakers, with said “employees only” area turning out to be the home of the O'Doherty family; it looks just as humble as any countryside house in the outskirts of The Farmlands, almost akin to that of someone's grandparents’ house that's been stuck in the 1970’s. Jax tries to be as quiet as possible when finding the twins, and just when he's about to be successful, he hears a conversation from behind one of the doors to an upstairs room, and it sounds like Nellie and Erick are trying to take care of Shellie, who from the strange exchange of dialogue, sounds like she's been racked with some sort of psychotic distress. The twins are also eavesdropping on the conversation, and according to the info they gathered from this, it turns out Shellie didn't come out of apiary unscathed either, but she tried her hardest to hide it from everyone else on account of Zooble's allergic reaction to the bee sting from earlier that day. Shellie had been scratched by the madness-riddled raccoon she tried to manhandle with her twin sister, and is in great pain from it. Erick is unsympathetic about the whole situation, but is forced to patch up the girl by Nellie, who's freaking out over her twin sister’s condition, which is apparently rapidly deteriorating, as Shellie is screaming about tiny maggots eating her brain from the inside for some reason.

Jax finds the Smith twins and retrieves them, attempting to silently sneak out of the home and back to the pub, only for those plans to get interrupted when he hears a slam from the room the O'Doherty twins and Erick Carlson are in, followed by the sounds of cracking wood. It seems that Shellie has escaped, and she is stark raving mad, eyes wide and head bleeding. Having never met Jax up until this point, Shellie assumes he's some mutated creature, a bunny-esque Slenderman of some sorts, and thinking the lanky rabbit monster is holding the Smith twins hostage, acquires a random kitchen knife, and tries to attack him, thinking that she'll save them both from the horrifying beast, and to the best of his abilities, Jax defends himself and the twins from the delirious young woman, using a chair to shield the twins from harm as Shellie aimlessly uses the knife to try and stab him. Erick and Nellie arrive in time to confront the madwoman, but unfortunately fail to apprehend her in time, resulting in Nellie creating a distraction to give Jax and the twin kids time to escape back into the pub, to which he complies.

Jax, Barnaby, and Barbara are able to get out of the house and back into the pub, safe and sound, with the twins exceptionally traumatized, and while he does his best comfort them both, it doesn't last long as he is confronted by the stern looks of Joe and Holly, the parents of the twins, with Henry looking more worried and sympathetic to the situation. Apparently, Joe had been waiting for them for quite a while now, and was even looking for them when food arrived on the table after he and Henry ordered it for the group. Jax doesn't bother trying to explain himself, remembering all too damn well what happened last time, back in the tropical bird island of Harmonia, only offering a bitter apology for ditching them, before Henry offers Jax a chance to explain himself, seeing that there's clearly more to the story than mere ditching, as seen with the terrified-looking kids. Confronted by the sudden offering of goodwill, Jax decides to actually explain himself; the twins snuck off to cause some chaos in the pub, and found themselves in the home of the O'Doherty family, and when he went to get them, they were attacked by a newly psychotic Shellie, and he tried to fend them off. Nellie and Erick are trying to manhandle her as we speak, he says. This raises concern from the three ipotane adults, since just earlier today in the local diner, Henry mentioned the disappearance cases and the handful of individuals who have gone mad during the disappearance cases. Jax also gives additional information about Shellie having been scratched by a raccoon that also suffered from some sort of psychosis, which is actually extremely important since Holly adds that plenty of the missing townsfolk were also attacked and/or had eaten something contaminated, possibly the tainted foods from the bad harvest. Henry opts to go onstage to announce a very important update in regards to the bad harvest season and the disappearance cases in The Farmlands, and this causes an uproar of concern at the people in the pub, including the rest of the Smith family and Team Circus. Gemma bears witness to it all, especially since our protagonists have finally moved out of the calm and into the storm. Unbeknownst to Team Circus and the Smiths, there's going to be tons of distrust amongst The Farmlands from here on out, with concerns and fears that their own loved ones are going to end up attacking each other, or if other people are going to get poisoned by the bad harvest, resulting in the madness.

As the two groups walk out of the pub, they all figure out what to do amongst themselves while Joe is talking with Sam Starr, husband of singing sensation Karen Starr, relaying the brand new information presented to them moments prior. Turns out Sam's the sheriff of The Farmlands, with Joe having to tell them about his new findings. Sam concludes that it's going to take an entire town effort to find those missing people, get to the root cause of the sudden cases of hysteria, and save the harvest from being a total failure, and that includes our fellow tourists, Team Circus. But first, that means everyone, and Sam means everyone, is going to have to set aside petty rivalries and neighborly disputes in order to do so, something of which they all agree to, the Smiths more so given how the members of Team Circus look more pissed off, even if extremely subtle about it. Sorry, guys; you'll have to catch that break some other time. Henry, noticing how tense and downtrodden our protagonists are, reassures them that everything will turn out alright in the end, and that the town's teamwork spirit will never fail. All that really does is make them hide their disdain even more. The only people who are even remotely comforted by Henry's words are Bubble and Jax, and unfortunately, the latter seems to be quite the target of scorn right now.

It's there that both Henry and Sam realize that none of the members of Team Circus actually have a place to stay, so our esteemed sheriff opts to take them to his place, as a small gesture of gratitude for the help they provided today. Gemma keeps vigil of everything that's happening, and opts to be Team Circus’s helping guide for this particular location of their amazing digital road trip, providing help and emotional support like a video game assistant who gives out tips and reminders in a tutorial. When Sheriff Sam takes Team Circus over to his house, which is a cozy three-story cottage out in the open fields of The Farmlands, Team Circus bids the Smiths goodnight for now, as tomorrow is gonna be another arduous day.

A little while later, Sam's wife, Karen arrives home with the food Joe had previously ordered, having taken it to-go after everyone apparently forgot about it in the chaos that happened with the O’Doherty twins in the pub. The dinner is… nice enough, for lack of a proper way to really describe how awkward everything has gotten. Even when Sam attempts small talk and icebreaker conversations, the atmosphere continues to remain strained, with the only person even remotely interested in anything Sam and Karen have to say is Jax, who is actively engaged in the environment of his surroundings, even if the adrenaline from earlier is dying down. Gemma does her best to contribute, attempting to boost morale amongst the group, with the Starr couple giving a little insight about their lives and their individual backstories… but it doesn't do anything to improve the mood.

If anything, it slightly worsens, since everyone else (sans Bubble, for some reason) thinks Jax, Sam, and Karen are not taking the situation as seriously as they should; the crops are scarce, making a food shortage and famine more and more likely in The Farmlands, people are either going missing or going crazy, and now thanks to that “lovely” little incident back at the pub (thanks, Jax), morale in the farming town is gonna decrease tenfold!! Sam wonders why everyone is being quick to put the blame on the purple bunny dude, seeing as from what Joe told him, he's actually been babysitting the Smith twins when things got out of control with the tiny terrors escaping his grasp and trespassing into the home of the O’Doherty family. Pomni explains that they've known the bastard for far longer than they have and that none of them have any idea just how terrible Jax can be when let loose, something that Gangle can attest to. Jax attempts to justify himself by saying that after some reflecting and soul-searching, he's been thinking about a proper place to start over and try to make up for all the shit he's ever done to his acquaintances, and he figured that now that he's in his element, he figured now would be a good place to start; plus, he did great with the kids, revealing that he used to watch over his younger siblings whenever his parents were busy with the farmwork back when he himself was still young.

Gemma and Bubble are the only ones who fully believe him, while Ragatha and Gangle are iffy on the prospect, and everyone else except the Starr couple think he's full of shit for even trying anymore. Jax promises that this time will be different (Zooble ends up snarking “We'll see about that, champ.” under their breath all the while), saying that he'll do as much farmwork as possible and stay on his best behavior. It's like he won't even be there! Zooble likes the prospect of Jax staying out of everyone's hair, so they relent. And because of that, so does everyone else… Caine is the most reluctant to do so.

After everyone finishes dinner, Karen Starr gives a riveting motivational speech about the importance of community and teamwork, all that cliché codswallop. Everyone appears to be disinterested and doesn't actually buy into the speech, except for Ragatha, who has a knack for being an asskisser to literally anyone she encounters, and Jax, who is genuinely invested in what's next in store for him and the rest of Team Circus come morning light. As soon as Karen concludes her one last attempt to boost morale for the night, she and Sam bid everyone sweet dreams, and that they'll see them in the morning. With Karen and Sam heading off to bed to get some good shuteye, Sam notices an argument erupting amongst Team Circus; turns out they've been waiting for the Starr duo to leave their sight so that they could berate Jax for almost getting himself and the Smith twins killed, not to mention the fact that The Farmlands are now in danger of becoming divided via paranoia as a result of what happened out there. Jax tries to defend himself, saying that he was trying to get the twins out of trouble after they ran off into a restricted area of the pub. And how come it's somehow his fault that everyone reacted to the news so poorly, especially given how just earlier this morning, Henry had already explained to them that there were already a small few people who had gone insane from a bad case of food poisoning, with Holly later confirming other attacks occurred in the town!? Why wasn't this already widely known information across The Farmlands when Shellie attacked him and the kids!? Plus, moments before Shellie attacked, she was apparently getting treated for an injury sustained by the raccoon from back at the apiary. Caine asks why Jax would even bother eavesdropping on other people's personal matters, to which Jax asks back why eavesdropping being bad is more important than the safety of everyone in The Farmlands.

Kinger is able to remember the O’Doherty twins from back at the apiary and the raccoon incident back there, so he believes Jax. He even notes that it was indeed strange that the Smith family would know about the hysteria cases beforehand, but not everyone else. Of course, no one can argue with a wise “king” like Kinger, so they all drop the accusations for now. Everyone takes time for the logic fallacy of the missing people and the psychosis cases to settle in while they all get ready for bed themselves, with Caine vowing to keep a watchful eye on Jax as a warning to the rabbit man not to pull anymore tricks up his metaphorical sleeve while they're still on the road trip, and the latter agrees, albeit terrified of what Caine might do to him if he fails to comply. Everyone else is absolutely dreading the inevitable “plot twist” and yet another betrayal by someone they just met, as it's apparently a pretty common theme on this road trip of theirs. The moment they all enter their shared bedroom, with only two king-sized beds on each opposite side, all eight members of Team Circus receive a notification for their sixth objective on their communicator bracelets, much to everyone’s exhaustion and exasperation. Gemma decides to keep watching the group until they're asleep.

In case no one noticed, Ragatha is obviously the most ecstatic to be having a sleepover in the countryside with all of her friends, even though just the previous episode, everyone was also sharing one singular room back in Harmonia, one back at the resort, and one at Chief Laylow’s house. Gemma offers some words of comfort while everyone gets themselves situated. To lighten the mood, some small bedtime shenanigans ensue, as per the norm for any good sleepover, with Ragatha starting a pillow fight between Jax and Pomni, and everyone else joining along the fun (except Caine, who just wants to go to sleep for the night). After Gangle’s comedy mask is broken in the commotion, the cranky ringmaster angrily informs everyone that it's bedtime and that everyone should really get some sleep for tomorrow's big day (oh, come on, dude; it was a pillow fight! What did you expect would happen!?). They all comply and haphazardly tell each other goodnight. Gemma decides to do the same while Valerie continues to keep an eye out on everything in her place. Perhaps even after everything that’s happened today, maybe things will hopefully turn around for the better?

A few hours pass into the night, with all the dimensional diplomats sleeping soundly in their living room area, with Gemma snoring on the couch, and Valerie trying her best to stay up and make sure nothing bad happens to Team Circus. Apparently, at around 2:45 AM, he's been struck with a bout of insomnia. Even in the almost 2 years since Jax first met the dimensional diplomats, A,K.A., their ticket outta this dump of a digital world, he still feels like he hasn't gotten anywhere close to making up for all the shit he's ever done, especially after Caine gave him a much needed (and pretty violent) wake-up call to do better after Gangle gained the courage to tell him about what he's been doing all this time, and only mere months before the big road trip too, no less. He ultimately decides to calm his nerves by taking a nightly stroll, like he usually does back in the circus. Somehow, the calming aesthetic of nature always soothes his worries whenever he has a lot of things on his mind. Jax steps outside the cottage to a beautiful night under the stars, with a porch swing outside he can sit on. The stars outside are a lot more riveting and lifelike than the child-like drawing-esque stars from back in the circus. And while it does somewhat ease his fears, he's still tense about everything. His mind appears to be racing, possibly because the small bits of adrenaline are still there from the attack, so he steps back inside to make himself a warm glass of milk to go to sleep. Unfortunately, he's not quiet enough to be discreet about it, and ends up catching the attention of Sam Starr, who catches the lavender-colored hare watching the microwave.

Jax expects Sam to be pissed that he's awake in the middle of the night, but instead, he shows concern; turns out he can't sleep either. The two have a quiet conversation and Jax tells him what's on his mind, about how lost he's been feeling for a while now, something he's been trying to hide from his friends for a really long time now. It's there he reveals that he may have not been the nicest person in this friend group, but he's gotten so used to taking on the role of the resident asshole that he believes that it's too late to try to be anything else. He's been picking on his friends as a means to distract them from the despair of being permanently trapped in a place that isn't their home; he's lost so many people from this prospect that he's been trying to save those remaining through some really unorthodox means, since he once discovered that triggering a person's other emotions, including fear and anger, could bring them back to their senses for a little bit and keep them alive. When Sam asks what Jax means by that, he gives some small insight to the lives of Team Circus: a terrible person trapped him and five other people into world that's completely unfamiliar to them, and two natives of this world (that's Caine and Bubble) are doing everything they can keep them from going insane and turning into an eldritch beast that destroys everything it touches. There were others here before him and his friends, but they're all gone and he and his five friends are the only ones left. He's been coping with it all by losing himself to a depressingly nihilistic point of view, indulging in the vices this world has to offer, and leaving nothing behind in the process, pushing everyone away from him in a flimsy attempt to protect them and himself from the prolonged inevitable, whether it's Jax or someone else. Of course, Jax does everything he can to keep the details as vague as possible, because of the true nature of the situation (more on that MUCH later). Sam is a bit confused as to how anyone would think it would be a bad thing for Jax to go out of his way to protect the ones he cares about, but Jax says that he used to think he was doing everyone a favor until he was told that this was not the way to go, that he should be nicer to everyone, all that jazz. But when he does, no one's convinced he's actually trying to be better, as though they think he's a lost cause or something, so he relapses back and forth. And it's not like these guys are goody two-shoes either, considering they've got their own baggage to deal with: Gangle always suppresses her actual self in favor of a fake persona that'll please everyone (and even that's debatable as to how much everyone likes it), Ragatha is such a pushover that she can't even stand up for herself or everyone else, and yet unintentionally manipulates those around her to stave off loneliness, Kinger can't even let go of the past, clinging on to it like a security blanket leaving him perpetually in the dark, Zooble can't stay cooped up in their room wallowing in their own woes forever and needs to get out more and actually socialize, and Pomni needs to get a clue and realize that not everything is about her. He just never had a chance to tell anyone all that; the last thing he wants to deal with is another screaming match that's basically just “boo hoo hoo, you're not the only miserable person here; they have it so much worse than you”, the whole shebang. It's a lot for Sam to take in, but he nonetheless listens to semi-ramble. He can't offer much advice about it, however, other than to keep trying his best. Jax has already begun to feel drowsy from drinking the warm milk, so he heads off back to bed and prays for tomorrow to be better. Sam wishes him goodnight, as does Jax.

Outside, meanwhile, we are greeted to a crazed Shellie O'Doherty, having escaped the clutches of Nellie and Erick hours ago, and aimlessly wandering the furthest reaches of The Farmlands. She appears to be looking for something, or perhaps someone, possibly her next target of prey, considering her previous one had evaded her. Her head also looks like it's been drenched in blood, with signs of excessive scratching and headbanging present on her. Whoever her next victim may be is something everyone will have to prepare for tomorrow. All the while, Shellie is tunelessly singing an obscure country song to calm her nerves, to no avail. In her hands, she holds the same kitchen knife she used to attack Jax previously. Shellie continues to lurk in the open fields until dawn.

The morning twilight light arrives at 4:45 AM when Cora’s truck arrives at the Starr cottage to check up on everyone and more importantly, fetch Jax. Obviously, everyone else is asleep when this happens, although Cora is polite enough to knock on the door first to see if anyone's still home. Karen is the one to answer the door and greet Cora into the cottage. The young Smith woman wants to take Jax on a mystery solving trip, asking civilians of The Farmlands for any more clues that may help solve the harvest problem for good. The Starr woman then summons a tired Jax from his slumber. Sensing the action is back on, Valerie wakes Gemma from her sleep as well, and the latter gives them a rather early good morning as a result. With the help of the resident sheriff of The Farmlands, Sam Starr, Cora was able to gather some small bits of evidence over the hysteria cases and disappearances of a handful of the townsfolk, with four top suspects: the leader of a notorious biker gang Blake Blade, the sleazy owner of O’Doherty Inn and caretaker of the O'Doherty twins Erick Carlson, the sweet-on-the-inside-and-sour-on-the-inside pie maker with a penchant for mood swings Polly Sheppard, and the mysterious ne’er-do-well asylum escapee Joshua Smallville. Jax questions the choices presented in front of him, with Cora citing to him that looks can be deceiving sometimes; a seemingly nice-looking person could turn out to be an enemy, and a scary-looking person could turn out to be a friendly person. Basically, the usual subversion of expectations. To answer Jax's questions from last night, The Farmlands dismissed the hysteria cases as being mere rumors, but the Smiths knew better considering they've witnessed some of their own close loved ones experience the same tragic phenomena, with Grampa Al even being rendering partially inconsolable from it, and they've been wanting to get the information out there for quite a while. It was a team effort from Sheriff Sam Starr, the detective agency, and the police department, but the details were unfortunately kept hush-hush to keep The Farmlands from plunging into fear any further. Jax doesn't think that keeping The Farmlands in the dark was really such a great idea, but he can't question any further as daylight is approaching and he and Cora haven't got any more time to waste. Jax, Cora, and Sam all hop in Cora's truck and begin the investigation.

The first round of evidence is the tainted apples, which unfortunately were never properly disposed of, thus allowing some of the vermin to grab a hold of the rotting apples and get poisoned. Jax is rightfully embarrassed over the oversight, saying that Granny Anabel had told him to separate the apples from the regular garbage so that the trash pandas wouldn't get a hold of them, not really asking to specify if they should be disposed of in a different area or not. Turns out that the apples were supposed to be used as evidence, and it's also revealed that there are other orchards in The Farmlands that are experiencing the exact same problem Granny Smith's Orchard is facing: apples with dark veins on them, unlike standard rotting apples. However, not all of them are as careful as Granny Anabel is, as many of them previously didn't buy into the harvest problem being connected to the disappearance cases and the psychotic incidents. This is where their first suspect, Mrs. Polly Sheppard, comes in. Many of the apples of The Farmlands are used to make Polly's famous apple pies, and it's possible that some of the crazy townsfolk ended up eating the bad pies beforehand, unknowingly or otherwise. Cora, Sam, and Jax make their way over to Mrs. Sheppard’s house, who is initially hostile about the whole situation, thinking she's being arrested for a supposed crime she may have committed (whatever that crime was, the world may never know), only to be informed that it wasn't that at all; they just want to do a little interview in regards to the connection between the disappearance cases and the bad harvest. Mrs. Sheppard obliges and comes with the three back to the sheriff's office. At the sheriff's office, Sam, Cora, and Jax all give out basic questions, including Mrs. Sheppard's whereabouts during the disappearances, any relationships with the missing people, and any relationships with those still around. Mrs. Polly Sheppard answers this as honestly as possible: Polly was making her pies to sell to her pie stand like she usually does, not paying attention to the batch of apples that were quickly going bad, and even peeling off the dark veiny areas to make them look like they're still fresh (yeah, that's not really reassuring in the slightest), and she never really knew anyone close to her except her darling husband, but she does have a fairly salty rivalry with Granny Anabel Smith, as the two were often known to have some really unpleasant banter over whose apples were better. Aside from the fact that she and Anabel are having beef with each other as competing orchardists, Polly basically just admitted to having sold contaminated pies to the public, meaning chances of more people going crazy are now higher than previously anticipated. The three of them vow to keep an eye out on Mrs. Sheppard from now on, and Sam orders to stop selling any more pies altogether until the bad harvest and disappearance cases are resolved. Polly does NOT take this well at all, but chooses to be civil about it for the time being. Unfortunately, none of our characters know about what's to come for the bitter piemaker…

Jax, Cora, and Sam all return to the cottage where Karen and the rest of Team Circus are at, with the rest of the Smith family also present. Gemma is able to inform everyone else about the whereabouts of Jax that morning, after a frantic search occurred offscreen. Another conversation occurs between the Smith family, the Starr couple, Team Circus, and Gemma; it starts out as angry exchanges of worry (especially from the older members of Team Circus), followed by what Jax, Cora and Sam were up to, in that they are part of an investigation to find out the culprit between the disappearance cases. They believe that the bad harvest is related to the disappearances and the psychotic hysteria cases, and were able to find four possible suspects in the investigation, one of them being Erick Carlson. It also turns out the Smiths were the only one who took the disappearance cases seriously, on account of Grampa Al being broken up by a friend of his going missing, which complicates things further for our esteemed members of Team Circus. In the end, everyone decides to help out in the rest of the remaining harvest season, as was promised from yesterday. It's ultimately decided that Jax will help out with Holly's garden and then Al’s Dairy Farm while taking Barnaby and Barbara with him a second time, Gangle, Ragatha, Zooble, and Pomni will help out at Granny Smith's Orchard alongside Cora, and Kinger, Caine, and Bubble will go to Joe's butcher shop, ranch, and slaughterhouse for assistance (oh boy, this should be interesting). Everyone heads their separate ways shortly thereafter.

Jax is impressed by Holly's huge garden filled with all sorts of plant life he could think of. Initially, he has only heard of how vast Holly's arsenal of produce and flowers was from Ragatha and Pomni, and sees that they weren't lying. However, there are more than several produce and flowers that are wilting and showing those same dark veins as the apples, including many of the vegetables. Jax opts to dispose of the tainted plants in a separate area, and keeping a few more as evidence for the investigation. Holly has trouble with the flower shop as now sales are slowing down as opposed to the fairly decent sale from yesterday. All the while, the twins are keeping themselves busy with their own assortment of mischief while their mom isn't looking. While figuring out what to do in their boredom, Barnaby spots Jax organizing the crop garden harvest, and he and Barbara offer to help out, in spite of their young age and small stature. Glad to see them again, Jax accepts the help. In the meantime, Barnaby asks a few questions as to what Jax and the others are up to, and he answers that after last night's fiasco, Jax and Cora, alongside sheriff Sam Starr, have been going on an investigation to solve the disappearance cases, which he and the rest of the Smith family believe are directly related to the bad harvest and the tainted farm products. The twins both wanna join in on the investigation, but Jax says that it's adult work, and that the kids shouldn't have to worry about all that stuff. Unfortunately for him, after last night's attack by Shellie, the twins are now well aware of what's actually going on. Back over in the flower shop, customers left and right are having altercations with each other, and Holly herself is doing her best to stop them. There's even customers demanding refunds after their flowers have all died within less than a day (you could argue all flowers die eventually, but they don't normally kick the bucket as quickly as the tainted flowers do), which Holly can't offer since the flower shop is trying to stay afloat. Even more strange is that no one seems to be complaining about any tainted produce, which should be a cause of concern since eating any of the affected produce could be toxic, like what happened with the raccoons from yesterday and some of Mrs. Sheppard's pies, almost like they're addictive. The altercations have even started because of the customers trying to grab as many of the tainted berries and vegetables as possible, all while finding them even tastier than the fresh ones. Holly will have to let Jax know about this.

And she does. As the kids are helping out the rabbit, Holly presents Jax a new find she managed to catch: somehow the tainted farm products have all of a sudden become more addictive, despite clear signs that they're not safe to eat. It would appear that the people of The Farmlands simply don't seem to care at all that in spite of the enhanced flavor, they could get poisoned and go psychotic in the process. She says that people have been fighting over them like wild animals! Jax is beginning to think that maybe this is more than just paranoia amongst the townsfolk that stirred within The Farmlands, but he ultimately decides to put a pin on that for later, as he still has work to do. By the time Jax is finished organizing the produce and flowers from the garden, the purple rabbit man and the twins get into some hijinks of their own at their own leisure in the second mini-montage of the episode. Who knew that Barnaby also had a knack for pranking people?

It's a good thing no one in Team Circus knows what a dynamic pranking duo Jax and Barnaby are since Holly and Grampa Al manage to catch them in the act of yet another practical joke planned by the young ipotane boy. Al is there to remind him that it's time to leave the flower shop to help him out at the dairy farm. The twins are disappointed that he has to leave so soon, until Jax offers to keep the twins with him again so that they can stay with him a just little while longer. No one objects to this; after all, the twins get along with Jax the best and he's shown to know their needs and wants the best out of everyone, even their own parents. After some last exchanges for the day, Al takes Jax and the twins to his dairy farm. Just when the problems at the dairy farm couldn't have gotten any worse from yesterday, all four of the characters are greeted to a really harrowing sight: the dairy cows have died last night; every last one of them.

The sight of death strewn around the dairy farm is enough to spook the twins a second time, and Jax tries to steer them away from the commotion while Al audibly mourns the cows in the background. He takes the twins out to the green pastures while he figures out what to do about the now completely depleted dairy farm. He presumes that there are plenty of dairy farms in The Farmlands that are more than willing to give some of their cows to Al to keep the business going, thinking that this might solve his problems. Unfortunately, when he attempts to suggest the idea of borrowing some of the cows from the other dairy farms to keep the place financially stable enough to see another day, Al yells at him for not reading the room and taking into consideration how attached he was to his dairy cows. Even when he does apologize for his insensitivity, it doesn't stop Al from punching the jackrabbit in the face, leaving him with a black eye. Gemma bears witness to it all, and asks Jax if he's okay, but he shrugs it off, saying that he'll be fine; he just needs to be more careful next time. Still in a state of shock, with a small tinge of sadness found in his expression, he goes back to the green pastures where the twins are, and lays underneath a tree, contemplating what to do.

Next up, Ragatha, Gangle, Pomni, and Zooble are at Granny Smith's Orchard picking the apples with Granny Anabel and Cora, and they all exchange a bit of banter with each other, highlighting what Jax told them about the orchard and the Smith twins. Gangle is the only one who is elated with Jax's healthy relationship with the twins, with Zooble dampening the atmosphere by saying that it's not gonna last long. Cora and Anabel are off-put by everyone's ability to only see the worst in Jax except for Gangle (for understandable reasons, but it can go too far sometimes, even if no else one really notices or cares if it's going too far, and especially since none of the members of Team Circus are actually so above it all themselves), since they have yet to see him fuck up in front of them. If only they knew what transpired back at the dairy farm… Tensions only rise with the reappearance of Mrs. Polly Sheppard, who is still sore from having to halt her pie business after being exposed for selling the contaminated pies to the public. It's there we actually see the rivalry between Anabel and Polly, and it's a shouting match that's equal parts Anabel calling Polly out for her recklessness, and Polly being an arrogant dick, claiming that her apples will always be better than Granny Smith's Orchard's apples. Cora chimes in saying that it's just apples; how could one particular brand of apples be better than the other? This mistake results in a physical fight almost breaking out between the old women, and it's only stopped by the group effort of Pomni, Ragatha, Zooble, and Gangle, with Cora simply standing there embarrassed. After everyone is able to separate the two, Polly haughtily leaves the orchard, vowing to find a way to make Anabel pay for everything… whatever that means. None of the characters realize yet that this is only the beginning of the disgraced piemaker going off the deep end.

Lastly, we are introduced to a brand new location in The Farmlands that wasn't seen yesterday: Uncle Joe’s ranch. Like with Al’s dairy farm from yesterday, Kinger, Caine, Bubble, and Joe all have an extremely difficult time trying to tame the aggressive animals; even feeding the chickens, horses, and pigs has become a perpetual warzone!! And the non-aggressive animals all look like they've caught the cold, but unlike the dairy farm, there are actually a few handful of animals that appear perfectly fine and healthy, including some of the cows, which Joe is able to utilize for the slaughterhouse. They then head to the butcher shop where in the kitchen, we see yet another disturbing sight, and this time, it's the raw meat spasming on the countertop where the meat is prepped. It turns out the spasming meat also has the same dark purple vein-like marks that the other harvest products have. Joe is extremely sure that it's not supposed to move like that, or at all for that matter, so he and Kinger do everything they can to get the bad meat to stop moving. Meanwhile, Caine and Bubble offer to take up the duty of selling the meat in the butcher shop, and considering the state of things in The Farmlands right now, customers left and right are either being ungrateful and entitled idiots, or are fighting amongst themselves, with Bubble having to take care of everything himself, and Caine slowly dying inside from the chaos. Due to most of the meat being unsalvageable as showcased by the dark veins and spasming, sales are absolutely dreadful, worse than Holly’s flower shop and Al’s cheesemaking shop combined. Oh dear.

After the commotion dies down, Henry stops by to visit Joe in the butcher shop after being informed of the meat situation. So far we have these pieces of the puzzle: eating tainted foods causing hysteria, animal attacks causing victims to go insane from the poison, rotting fruit that are apparently addictive, farm animals dying from the poison, spasming meat, and apparently a culprit behind it all. Joe and Henry talk about each other’s rough days, as well as new findings that could get them closer to solving the bad harvest and disappearance cases. Henry is also gathering as much information as he can from the other farms in his family, including Al’s dairy farm and the case of the deceased cows. Henry also informs the four of them that Sam and Karen have asked them all and the rest of the Smith family and Team Circus to meet up at the cheesemaking shop for a rundown of everything that's happened so far. They do so, with only Gemma noticing the threatening death glare emitted from Caine.

At the cheesemaking shop, everyone in the Smith family and Team Circus gather round and debrief their time helping out in their respective areas of The Farmlands, with Gemma joining in once again to help out as much as possible. Zooble notices the black eye on Jax and points and laughs at him; no one dares to stop Zooble, since everyone else also believes he got what was coming to him. Jax just looks defeated and embarrassed about it. Cora finds it cruel, but Caine reassures her that this is normal, since whatever injuries he receives, he always asks for it, with Pomni and Zooble agreeing with him. Cora then asks Jax what happened, and he answers that he made the insensitive mistake of suggesting that Grampa Al borrow the other dairy farms’ cows in order to keep the dairy business going when it was revealed that Al’s cows all died, to which Al angrily responds to this notion that his dairy cows could never be replaced; he considered them his own children and now they're all gone. Everyone in Team Circus flocks over to comfort the old farmer, and then all glare at Jax for what he did. For a guy trying to find a proper redemption path, Jax sure does feel like he's going absolutely nowhere with it. It's a good thing humans are known for being exceptionally persistent, otherwise he would have given up right then and there. He even finds solace in the Smith twins, which is just about one of the only small wins Jax has right now. Another positive he notes is how prosperous the cheesemaking shop is compared to the other Smith-owned farms in The Farmlands, which, strangely enough, Sam believes this to be a cause for concern.

It's already an established fact that Grampa Al is something of an eccentric man, but with a soft and sweet side, as Zooble points out. Sam, on the other hand, thinks he may be hiding something, which Jax is kinda skeptical of, considering the only evidence they have right now is the pristine condition of the cheese in Al’s cheesemaking shop, and the uncharacteristic anger brought on by grief. Jax suggests that if they're quick to point the finger at Al, maybe they should collect more evidence first; plus, they still have three more suspects to interview for the investigation. Karen agrees, and business resumes at the cheesemaking shop, with Jax, Cora, and Zooble taking up front desk duties for the time being. It lasts into the night.

When nighttime approaches and the cheesemaking shop closes, the Starr couple, Smiths and Team Circus all just kinda hang out with each other, with Al absolutely refusing to talk to anyone at all. Jax feels really bad about it (oh wow, what a turn of events; if only his “friends” gave a damn about it lmao), but he knows that apologizing didn't work the first time, as showcased with his black eye, so he backs off. Cora and Henry head over to where Jax and the Smith twins are, and the three have a small conversation and they share about each other's days. The same way Jax reveals his mistake from earlier today, Cora reveals her own mistake that happened; while Granny Smith was having a verbal match with Mrs. Polly Sheppard over the quality of their apples, Cora went out of her way to tell them that it's just apples, believing wholeheartedly that the quality of apples are merely subjective, regardless of who grew them. Jax is taken aback, since Cora isn't technically wrong in that department, but unfortunately, the people of The Farmlands take pride in their own farms and take everything personally. Sounds like the friendly town of The Farmlands is not really all that friendly after all. Being an area of less than a thousand residents, you'd think everyone would get along with a lot of the townsfolk knowing each other, but as Cora reveals, and Henry confirms, there are more enemies than friends amongst the small farming town, which is a disheartening fact to hear, since they weren't always like this. At one point, everyone in The Farmlands got along just fine, but after mysterious circumstances, everyone became separate and distant with each other and with the rise of the bad harvest and disappearance cases, the tensions escalated into full-on fighting matches and bitter rivalries. The Smiths and the Starrs were basically the only ones who got along at this point. Sensing the boredom in both Barnaby and Barbara, Jax suggests they all go on a nightly stroll and see the stars outside. Henry, believing that's a great idea, takes his daughter Cora with him while Jax and the Smith twins head outside. Cora lets Sam Starr know where they're headed off to on the way out.

The nightly stroll is as peaceful as the pastures itself, with the glimmering moonlight showing off the dewdrops on the grass and the cool breeze swaying. While Cora and Henry have a beautiful father-daughter bonding moment, Jax feels a sense of tranquility with the rustic nature of The Farmlands, holding the hands of the Smith twins, who are both in awe at the amazing display of the night sky. They walk far enough from Al’s dairy farm and cheesemaking shop to a small cornfield in the outskirts of The Farmlands, and Henry decides to stop there. Jax hides his discomfort over the presence of the cornfield to the best of his ability, apparently having never gotten over his fear of corn after all this time. The stargazing gets interrupted when for a second time, Barnaby and Barbara run off into the cornfield, and Cora and Jax are both forced to retrieve them. It takes a good while for them to do so, but they're able to catch the sneaky twins right in the nick of time before everything spirals downward real fast.

Jax and Cora hear rustling from within the cornfield, followed by the quiet rambles of a familiar voice. The four of them are able to slightly interpret the rambles to know who that person is: Mrs. Polly Sheppard still holding a grudge over the events that transpired that morning, along with a second voice vowing to hunt down the rabbit monster at all costs. That second voice is none other than Shellie O'Doherty. Jax, Cora, and the twins are horrified to see them both in an even worse state than ever, with both women having their heads completely drenched in blood with marks to indicate scratching and headbanging. They also appear to be incredibly malnourished and covered in blood in other places, indicating that they've most likely murdered a few people along the way. While Shellie holds a kitchen knife in her hand, Polly holds a shotgun with her. As Cora does everything she can to protect her little cousins from any further harm, Jax fights off the two deranged damsels as best as he can, using a corncob as a melee weapon to do so. It's a difficult fight since Polly’s target is none other than Cora herself, who, along with the twins, fled back to Henry to inform them of what's happening. The two bloodstained women both appear to be acting like some sort of hivemind, further complicating matters. Another important note is that both women exhibit neon purple eyes in their crazed state, with Shellie exhibiting dark purple vein-like marks on her hands. Looks like the mystery poison that's causing the bad harvest is slowly killing her, thus confirming the theory of the disappearance cases being related to the crop failure crisis. Just when Jax is being overpowered by the two psychotic women, Henry comes to the rescue, featuring the reinforcement of Uncle Joe and Bubble, and together, they're able to get the pair to back off, with Jax reuniting with Cora and the twins. After a brief moment of cooling off, everyone heads back to the rest of the Smith family and Team Circus, now with new evidence to present to Sam Starr.

Despite the twins being put in danger twice (much to the displeasure of Caine and Ragatha), Barnaby has a much better time than his twin sister Barbara, with the former being something of an adrenaline junkie and kinda enjoying the rush of being in a horror movie slasher scene. Jax is starting to feel uneasy about the whole thing, but he assumes that it's just the adrenaline — he's actually afraid of getting yelled at again over something that was completely out of control. Something isn't right. And Gemma knows something isn't right. She checks up on Jax, and he tries his hardest to navigate the confusion. It's a lot for the poor purple rabbit to process, but he's able to pull through, not wanting to be pathetic in his vulnerability. He does briefly catch sight of Grampa Al, however, and he knows it's gonna take a really long time for the two to actually be on good terms.

Everyone heads back to the Starr cottage for dinner, and once again, the atmosphere is tense, with Cora, Henry, Sam, and Karen relieving that tension with their icebreaker conversations. Even Uncle Joe and Aunt Holly join in. It's not much, but it does leave Jax in somewhat better spirits than before. Afterwards, the Smiths depart for the night, and the Starr duo and Team Circus get ready for bed.

The next morning rolls around and Jax and Sam meet up with Cora outside and they each discuss the newfound evidence they just gathered. Jax relays the details found from Polly Sheppard and Shellie O'Doherty, that being their neon purple eyes, malnourished appearance, an apparent hive mind of sorts that no one can quite put their finger on, and signs of dark purple necrotic markings on Shellie. That very last part is important, enough for Jax to begin to believe that their next suspect to interrogate might actually be innocent after all. Even the way Sam gathers the evidence doesn't appear to be adding up to him.

Their second round of evidence is the dead flowers, to which Sam says that it's connected to their next top suspect, the biker gang leader Blake Blade. Why, you may ask? Apparently Blake, being the “manly man”, hates flowers, or anything that may break his tough shell. Both Cora and Jax are skeptical of this, but seeing that Sam hasn't stirred them wrong when it came to Mrs. Polly Sheppard yesterday morning, they take his word for it. They all head over to the town area to meet up with the biker gang, who are known as The Flaming Hot Satans. There, they encounter Blake Blade himself, and already, we can see that Blake and Sam have bad blood, which is kinda expected between authority figures and defiant rebels. Ultimately, no one is even given the time to get to know Blake as immediately after, he's taken in to be interviewed. From the questions asked, Blake reveals he was out and about patrolling the streets like he and his biker pals have been doing these past few days. As much as Blake tries to hide his soft spot behind his hardened exterior, he cares for his biker gang members like they're his own family members, also revealing that he never had one of his own growing up. When presented with the dead flowers, Sam Starr accuses him of having anything to do with them, and as much as Blake doesn't want to be seen being anywhere near a flower thinking it'll make him look weak and pathetic, he admits that he would never do something as extreme as hurting a fly or even poisoning a plant. The interview concludes there, and Jax and Cora immediately notice the stark contrast between the two suspects, almost as though there's something else going on behind the scenes.

Things only take a turn for the worse when Jax, Cora, and Sam are greeted by some really unhappy faces. Uh oh. Apparently while the three were gone, Karen had informed everyone that Henry's apiary was damaged, and all fingers are pointing straight to Jax. Cora is shocked; how was that even possible!? No one was even near the apiary yesterday!! Cora suggests that it was probably the doing of Polly, who was after her last night by virtue of being Henry's daughter, but further slanderous evidence is shown in the apiary with almost every wooden beehive being destroyed and most of the honeybees being dead, along with lilac-colored graffiti laced all over Henry's house, with a crude drawing of a rabbit’s face on it that looks just like Jax. A frameup! Jax asks if anyone was even informed of where he was going last night, and it turns out, no, they weren't informed of the details; Sam had evidently neglected to tell anyone on account of being tired that night. Karen says that he was going out and about to cause some mayhem with the Smith twins, a completely different story from what actually happened last night. Of course, since Jax has cried wolf one too many times, no one believes him, in spite of the fact that Cora, Henry, and the twins were there with him! Since no one else is fessing up to the crime, Jax is punished by Caine via having to stand in place while carrying heavy buckets filled with water that's balanced on a pole, while everyone else cleans up the mess themselves. Jax is not allowed to move from the area he's standing on, sit down, or even talk at all while everyone pitches in to fix the mess. Gemma is unable to interfere with the events transpiring in front of her, and cannot reason with the livid ringmaster, no matter how much she tries, so she's left helpless from the other side until things can settle down. Afterwards, everyone heads off their separate ways, with Gangle, Ragatha, Zooble, and Pomni heading to Uncle Joe to his ranch, Kinger, Caine, and Bubble heading to Aunt Holly to her garden, and everyone else heading back to their respective homes to continue their work. Meanwhile, Jax is left standing with the water buckets all alone, save for Henry and Cora, who actually live at the apiary, although they're not allowed to interact with him at all while he's being punished.

Uncle Joe looks racked up from the whole ordeal, and dreads going back to the butcher shop after the events that transpired there yesterday. As for the four members of Team Circus, they appear to be in… neutral spirits to say the least. Pomni and Gangle are feeding the chickens and pigs respectively, Zooble tends to the cattle to the best of their ability and Ragatha gains a new enemy with a shrieking goat and a fed up turkey. All the while, Joe remains at the front desk of the butcher shop, with sales becoming increasingly slow there. Essentially, all the fresh meat is gone, every last bit of it contaminated by dark veins, and apparently with a mind of its own. It's not much work due to things slowly declining to a disastrous low, and when the four of them meet up with Uncle Joe, he worries that his livelihood, and in turn his family’s livelihood, is in danger. The only thing anyone can do at the moment right now is hang out. And despite frantic protests from Joe, Gangle attempts to enter the kitchen, where she encounters violently moving trash bags filled with unsalvageable meat. This causes the rest of three Team Circus members to enter, and they're equal parts horrified and disgusted. What the hell is going on there!?!?

Things at Holly's garden and flower shop are looking much worse with all the flowers and produce being unaffected by the crop failure crisis beginning to run out. It's only been three days, and the garden is already showing signs of abandonment. It only took less than an hour for Kinger, Caine, and Bubble to harvest the whole damn garden, and it is still not enough to make even a marginal profit for Holly. Still, that doesn't stop the twins, of whom Holly was supposed to look after that day since Jax is unavailable to do so, from leaving the stressed momma’s sight and roaming amok all over the garden. An unsuccessful chase scene between the twins and the three members of Team Circus ensues, resulting in the garden being damaged. The Team Circus boys are not at all amused by what's happened, since it's now being made as clear as diamonds that Holly and Joe are very neglectful parents and have been using Jax as their designated babysitter this whole time, as Caine, Bubble, and Kinger individually point out to Holly when they each take turns scolding her. Suffice to say, the flower shop closed early that day.

We cut back to the apiary and Jax is still standing there, holding the balancing pole that's carrying the heavy buckets filled with water, and looking absolutely exhausted, but still refusing to back down and get into further trouble than he already is. He does everything he can to concentrate on something else while he endured this quite frankly strenuous punishment, like the scenery of The Farmlands’ vast landscapes. He's quick to notice the sun is close to setting so that should mean everyone should be coming back any second now. And they do. But no one is even remotely happy about it, nor does anyone look happy to see each other, save for the Smith family, and especially the little twins, who he unfortunately does not have the privilege of seeing right now as they're both heading over to Henry's house instead. He even notices Caine shooting a quick yet utterly spiteful glare at the jackrabbit, much to Jax's bitterness, who only rolls his eyes back at him. After a few more minutes of Jax still standing in place, Ragatha walks over to him and tells him that his punishment is over. Jax carefully places the buckets down, and trudges over to the others where everyone is keeping each other company through the usual debriefing of the day's events. None of his friends in Team Circus even bother to comfort him when at last, he finds the couch and plops down on it, exhausted and wanting to go to bed. Gemma calls via her communicator bracelet, and is relieved to see him unhurt, but Jax isn't even in the spirit to properly greet her back. Not even when the green-haired diplomat reveals that she was able to convince Caine to let him go and stop the punishment from going on any longer is Jax able to perk up. It's only made worse when even after the punishment’s been lifted, he's no longer allowed to see Barnaby and Barbara, since apparently, Joe and Holly have been using him as their designated babysitter due to them being somewhat neglectful parents who couldn't handle the responsibility of parenting while also simultaneously doing their respective farmwork. As a result, the twins are gonna be staying with Henry and Cora, who have been deemed by everyone to be the better caretakers of the two and are going to be learning how to control their behavior and antics from now on. Jax sobs into a couch pillow.

Nighttime rolls around at the apiary, and everyone is enjoying each other's company (including a minor tidbit of Caine easily getting drunk on only one can of beer), savoring that one last day of peace before everything goes downhill from here. Everyone, that is, except for Jax, of course, who's been left out on purpose, since everyone is still mad at him. That's when Karen and Sam come on by to greet everyone, and the sheriff sees the purple rabbit all mopey. He comes into Henry's house, finds Jax on the couch having cried his heart out a couple of hours ago, and tries to cheer the poor bunny up with words of encouragement. It only halfway works, since he's still sullen over being framed for the property destruction done to Henry's apiary. Jax also says that he used to be a compulsive liar, so he guesses he had it coming for crying wolf yet again. Sam suggests Jax a quick night out with his wife to clear his head and get back into the teamwork spirit. Jax hastily agrees, his mind all fuzzy from the tiredness and resentment. No one outside even notices Sam and Karen taking Jax in their black-colored van; that's how little they think of the jackrabbit.

The three of them head into the less well-known locations of The Farmlands, where lawlessness and violence is laced all around the place. It is way too tempting for him to act out, especially considering he's still upset over the bucket punishment he had to endure all day long. Turns out Sam intentionally led him here to get his frustrations out of his system. Jax hesitates at first, but after Sam reminds him of the injustice over not being believed when he does actually tell the truth, the blatant apathy and indifference to his emotions from his own peers, even the ones he's finally getting along with after so long, and even Caine absolutely despising him and not caring at all about the significant progress he's made since that fateful day before the road trip (which in turn ends up being an apparent tactic to get on the rabbit's nerve get him to cave in to his impulses), he lets loose, destroying some already damaged property and getting into violent fights with a bunch of random thugs, all while Karen and Sam watch from a safe distance. After Jax calms down from his high and weeps, he notices a line of motorcycles being untouched at the parking rack. By the design of the logo embedded onto the motorbikes, and the different colors of the flames on them individually, Jax can easily tell that those bikes belong to The Flaming Hot Satans. By all accounts, Blake Blade and his gang should be within the vicinity. However, when Jax investigates further, he hears screams of terror from within a dark alleyway. Peeking out of the alleyway are a couple of corpses bleeding out on the ground. Judging by the leather vests and the signature Flaming Hot Satans logo, it's not good. He once again encounters Polly Sheppard and Shellie O'Doherty, this time, with the new addition of Blake Blade himself, also displaying a bleeding head with scratch marks and dents from headbanging, as well as the signature neon purple eyes and pale malnourished body. It doesn't take long for Jax to connect the dots. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times…?

Jax doesn't escape in time before he's thrust out of his racing thoughts, as he's suddenly bombarded with the three maniacs, with Shellie holding a kitchen knife, Polly holding a shotgun, and Blake holding an axe. Jax is barely able to make it out alive from the encounter when he rushes back to Sam and Karen, informing them of what's happening. Karen takes Jax back while Sam holds the three off. Everything is confusing at the moment, and Jax can't comprehend it all. All the suspects they interviewed? Why did they just… suddenly turn?? He can't even bring himself to tell Cora about any of it when they all arrive back to everyone. Not even a family reunion sleepover is enough to get Jax out of his terrified state of mind.

At the Star cottage, as everyone gets ready for bed, Jax can't help but look at the mirror and realize he hasn't just changed in terms of personality; he's changed physically too. There's now a gap in his teeth from all the times he's ever been punched in the face, his left ear now has dent marks from all the times Caine forcefully grabbed it, and now left eye is bruised up, with it never having healed from two days ago. He can't tell whether he likes it because it makes him look badass, or if he hates it because of how much it physically hurts to touch the affected areas. He's snapped out of his thoughts when a flying pillow smacks him in the head, causing minor whiplash. He turns around to find that it was Zooble who threw the pillow at him, who signals to him that he better go to bed now before he gets into more trouble. He says nothing and does as he's told in defeated compliance.

In the middle of the night, Jax quietly leaves the cottage to go outside, presumably to take another nightly stroll to clear his head… or at least that's what Gemma asks when she calls him from each other's communicator bracelets, until Jax reveals he's running away. Shocked and worried sick, Gemma begs for him to stay just a little longer, but it falls on deaf rabbit ears as he's adamant that his presence will only make things worse. The dramatic banter continues, with the green-haired woman trying to get Jax to see reason, and Jax emotionally breaking down as he runs further and further away, until he bumps into a shadowy figure hiding in the tall grass. Jax cowers, curling up into a ball and trembling, until the figure reaches out to him. The bunny rabbit hesitantly reaches out and upon getting up sees that the shadowy figure is another resident of The Farmlands that no one has ever met before. He looks disheveled and tired, but is actually revealed to be kind-hearted and thoughtful, but also timid and soft-spoken. After a small exchange between the two, we learn that the guy's name is Josh, and he's been looking for his friend. Jax offers to help him find his friend, despite dreading the thought of having to come back. The two have a tiny heart-to-heart and while Josh learns about Jax’s situation (both before the road trip and now), Jax also learns about Josh's situation. Josh was wrongly imprisoned for allegedly a crime he didn't commit, and was locked away never to be seen again. He escaped with the intention of reuniting with his longtime childhood friend, whose name is revealed to be Albert. Strangely, Jax doesn't connect the dots right away, not even when Jax leads Josh back to the cottage where he initially tried to run away from. Not wanting to bother anyone that night, he decides to camp out underneath the stars with Josh until the next morning.

And as morning arrives, Cora walks out the door to find Jax asleep on the grass in front of the cottage, next to a stranger she's not familiar with. At first she gets protective of Jax, until he explains who the stranger is and what he's here for. The three of them get acquainted and they decide to get breakfast at the diner Team Circus first went to four days ago. At the diner, Jax feels a little better than last night. He tells Cora that he tried to run away last night, much to Cora's heartbreak. When asked why, Jax is reluctant to answer, clearly showing remorse in his eyes. With encouragement from both Cora and Josh, however, he reveals how he used to be a not so nice person, about how he hurt a lot of people in an attempt to try to protect himself from heartache. In a tiny twist of events, Josh reveals he used to be a bully too, until he met Albert and out of everyone in his life, Albert was the only one who showed him kindness when everyone only saw the worst in him. Josh had a shitty home life, and he had no outlet for his trauma. Jax also makes a minor implication that he also had a shitty home life before becoming a member of Team Circus, and Josh can tell; the rabbit is able to find a kindred spirit in the guy, even though they just met.

After breakfast, they head back to the Starr cottage, where Sam is impatiently waiting. Jax almost forgot about their third top suspect in the now looming famine of The Farmlands, that person being Joshua Smallville. …Uh oh. His fears are slightly alleviated when Sam warmly greets Josh with open arms, and when Josh explains his situation, Sam is able to figure it out, and summons Grampa Al outside. Al recognizes him as his long lost friend that disappeared during the height of the bad harvest, and the reunion is sweet. Al gets everyone over, including Granny Anabel and the rest of the Smiths. Team Circus is nowhere to be found. Peculiar. After the commotion dies down, Al comes to fetch the rest of Team Circus while Uncle Joe takes Jax to his ranch. Sam offers to take Al and Joshua into his cottage so that the two can catch up on recent events. Joe's ranch is the only area the Smiths have that isn't too badly affected by famine. Jax makes a mental note to himself at how fast The Farmlands’ famine came in comparison to Harmonia. Feeding the animals isn't too much of a hassle and one of his secret talents is that he's an animal whisperer, able to tame the cattle, pigs, chickens, and other animals within the ranch. While in the middle of tending to yesterday's amusing duo of the goat and the turkey, he hears something inside one of the buildings that Joe has. That building would turn out to be the slaughterhouse. Judging by the dialogue, a leader of a mysterious group is relaying all the information they have against the Smiths and their “little accomplices”, those accomplices being Team Circus themselves. The people of that group refer to their leader as “God”, not unlike the Candy Canyon Kingdom in regards to Caine long ago. The leader is apparently trying to frame the Smith family and Team Circus as the perpetrators of the crop failure crisis and the subsequent famine that followed suit in an attempt to stay in power. Before Jax can get further information, he's called back by Joe to the ranch, and he leaves the area.

Meanwhile, Gangle, Pomni, and Ragatha are at Henry's apiary, alongside Cora, Barnaby and Barbara helping tend to the remaining honeybees, and thus producing a very insufficient amount of honey to keep the place running for the day. Henry is able to keep the girls’ spirits up with some words of encouragement, but this doesn't stop them from thinking about the looming peril of The Farmlands, and how they're on the verge of genuinely failing everyone after a harrowing close call back in Harmonia. Suddenly, Sam runs over towards Henry, Cora, the Smith twins, and the three Team Circus girls and relays some urgent information regarding Jax: he's apparently gone back to his old ways and trashed an entire area of the town in a fit of spiteful rage, and they all go and investigate. Said trashed area is actually the same area from last night that was already rundown to begin with, but they don't know that, so they faithfully take his word for it and are furious about it. Henry, who actually has been to that town area before at least once or twice, is just confused about the whole ordeal, as is Cora and her twin cousins.

Then we have Granny Smith and Cora picking the last of the healthy apples, which are sadly not enough to fill even a single basket due to all the apple trees being unusable as a result of the famine. They both note that it's not only not enough to feed themselves for long, but also not enough to give out to the general public and keep their farm prosperous. Kinger, Bubble, and Caine are arguing over the now-found missing luggage from the previous episode, the latter absolutely refusing to let it go even after all this time (which partially explains his contemptuous disdain towards Jax, as it's implied he's taking it out on Jax due to how easy it is to get away with it, considering the fact that he's only partially tolerated at best and used as a scapegoat for everything going wrong at worst, which, by the way, is absolutely fucking terrible; please don't do that to anyone), while Zooble, bored out of their mind, walks over to Cora to have a chat. But even then, Zooble absolutely refuses to believe that even Cora would ever be friends with Jax, in spite of everything. Before things can continue further, Sam Starr rushes over to the orchard to let them know of what Jax has done this time: he supposedly let a dangerous criminal loose in The Farmlands that caused havoc along the way. Now already, everyone can tell that the story isn't adding up at all. However, the four Team Circus members are all too stressed and hyper-focused on Jax to bother looking into the details. They, along with Cora and Anabel, are all led to that same rundown area that Henry and the girls are. Because of conflicting details, a massive quarrel erupts amongst the group. Sam breaks up the fight, claiming he already caught the criminal and he's held captive inside the home. Everyone follows him.

Afterwards, Sam runs over to the ranch where it's shown that Jax and Joe are getting along swimmingly, with the two having bonded over their shared love of animals with the former seeing the latter as his father figure. The Starr sheriff informs the two that Joe needs to get his wife Holly; the twins are in major trouble and in need of rescuing. The two don't hesitate to come with Sam, fetch Holly at the flower shop, and follow his lead.

When they all arrive, however, they're greeted to various looks of disappointment and anger at the cottage. Jax, Joe, and Holly are royally puzzled, until Sam does his due diligence of explaining the entire situation, about how Jax only wanted to cause problems ever since he and the rest of Team Circus got here, being aided by the crazy townies with the vandalism, torment, and the destruction of the farms all over the Farmlands. Jax shatters right then and there. Oh, and to rub salt and lemon juice on the wound, Sam summons Joshua, who calls him a criminal scumbag who should have been locked up with the other crazy hooligans in this small town, and judging by the situation and the looks on his face, Joshua is utterly heartbroken and betrayed to “learn” that Jax betrayed him and his trust, and Al is devastated all over again. After a one-sided argument consisting of everyone in Team Circus harshly scolding Jax and him trying to explain himself in vain, along with the Smiths being too afraid to pick sides, and even the twins Barnaby and Barbara looking away in shame over Jax's “actions”, Jax breaks down completely, like a collapsing skyscraper on its demolition day, and lets out his frustrations, guilt, shame, remorse, and regret over everything he's ever done from day one to joining his friend group to now, calling out everyone's own shortcomings, saying that even they aren't as good of people as they'd like themselves and each other to believe, why he acted the way he did, thinking he was saving everyone, and ultimately, realizing far too little far too late that he was wrong. Gemma, who, as usual, witnessed everything via her communicator, is trying not to cry herself over this revelation, while the Smith family are saddened and show sympathy and understanding. Joshua, Al, and Team Circus on the other hand, are sadly even more infuriated with the information, each of them declaring that it's not an excuse for his actions and that it never was. Jax tries and fails miserably to say he wasn't trying to excuse his actions this time, but they absolutely refuse to hear any of it. They even accuse the other Smiths of defending an irredeemable monster just because they sympathized with him, and all in all, it is a slow motion nuclear explosion of everything spiralling so downhill that it might as well be plummeting to the center of the Earth. Sam breaks up the messy one-sided fight by suggesting that he help teach the lavender bunny a very important lesson, alongside his wife Karen. They all agree in a heartbeat. Joshua, Sam, and Karen drag Jax by the ear to the backyard of the cottage, and the defenseless rabbit could only whisper for help to no avail, as they… beat him senseless. Jax doesn't even scream, cry, or even wince. He just accepts his fate and silently prays that he doesn't die from this. The whole time this is happening, all the audience hears is ringing ears, highly muffled beratings and verbal abuse from the trio, and even more muffled sounds of whacks and punts. When the three of them are finally finished with the job, they leave him on the ground, presumably for dead. Jax does not move even a single millimeter. All he can do is stare off into the distance, in as much excruciating pain as one could even possibly feel, real world or digital. He has enough willpower left to not lose consciousness from it, now choosing to believe that even he doesn't deserve to feel any semblance of relief from this, thinking that he finally got the comeuppance everyone wanted so badly from him.

Nighttime rolls around yet again and Jax is still laying on the ground, unmoving. Though after a good several seconds, he slowly gets up, and I mean really, really slowly, considering he had just been pummeled into a lagomorphic pulp hours ago. However, he can only muster enough strength to sit up on the grass, as he's fighting the urge not to go comatose, head hurting and ears ringing. If it weren't for the fact that his (now dull and numb) eyes weren't glowing the iconic neon purple color seen in Mrs. Sheppard, Shellie O’Doherty, and even Blake Blade, one would have mistaken him as one of the insane town denizens of The Farmlands. And that certainly was almost the case when he catches Erick Carlson and Nellie O'Doherty approaching him with caution. Erick, feeling a tinge of pity for Jax, offers to help him up, and he does so. Somehow, Jax is still able to walk despite his unsavory condition. Erick and Nellie help Jax to the O'Doherty household, with Nellie comforting him with sweet nothings that doesn't even faze the poor purple bunny dude in the slightest.

At the O'Doherty Inn and family household, Jax is draped in a weighted blanket holding a warm mug of tea, looking unequivocally broken and dejected. Nellie feels sorry for Jax when he explains his situation to everyone. He's beginning to doubt himself. He doesn't even know who he is anymore. He would have been on the verge of abstraction by now had it not been for the small act of kindness Nellie and Erick showed him. It's the only positive out of this damn place he has left. After Nellie and Erick leave for a moment to have their own private conversation, which Jax doesn't even bother to listen in on, they come back to Jax and Erick says that there's something the both of them want to show him. Jax follows them both.

After a really long while of the three of them walking all over The Farmlands, he's taken to an abandoned slaughterhouse far, far away from the main part of the town, where he is shown a makeshift greenhouse filled with a beautiful-looking but ominous flower being cultivated. Jax compliments the beautiful flowers, and Erick takes that compliment with a simple “thank you”, while Nellie looks a bit nervous. Erick reveals he's been cultivating a brand new flower that's set to revolutionize the entirety of The Farmlands, even saying that in a way, it's already done so. When Jax asks Erick what he means by that, the latter offers to show him. They head outside through the back door to another cornfield. …And the sight is not pleasant to say the least. There, we are presented to the appearances of most of, if not all, of the crazy townsfolk, including Mrs. Polly Sheppard, Blake Blade, and Shellie O'Doherty, each of them dressed in white gowns and flower crowns made of the same flower cultivated by Erick. They're dancing around a burning wooden structure that looks like a giant earthworm, chanting Latin-based gibberish all the while. Jax is incredibly disturbed, wanting to know what exactly is the meaning of this. That's when we see someone emerge from behind the three characters, Sam Starr himself, dressed in a cult leader's gown of white and aubergine.

A gradual tsunami wave of realization hits Jax hard, and the only thing he can do is ask why. Sam reveals everything that has ever happened: in an attempt to rise the ranks and become the most powerful person in The Farmlands, he enlisted the help of a flower cultivator, revealed to be Erick Carlson himself, to create a deadly deliriant hybrid flower that would not only cause vivid hallucinations, but also slowly kill any organic life its pollen touched. Those flowers are the Nyx flowers, which are far more lethal and powerful than the sleepysuckles of the bird island of Harmonia. Those Nyx flowers were sold at Holly Smith's flower shop, where they ended up contaminating almost every farm’s harvest supply, turning everyone into an insane murdering machine, while slowly killing them. As a result of the flowers’ influence, everyone in The Farmlands became more mean-spirited and hateful, not even realizing that they were all silently dying in the process. When he gathered his first few victims that had eventually gone mad from the flowers, he claimed to them that he was God and that he was going to salvage their souls if they did every bidding and task he assigned them. In doing so, he created a secret cult that would ensure his plan wouldn't get foiled in the process by the only residents of The Farmlands that actually cared about the land they tended to: the Smith family. A whistleblower by the name of Joshua Smallville was almost successful in exposing the plan to the Smiths, but managed to thwart it by locking him up in an insane asylum far away from town, and sprinkling some Nyx flower pollen onto Grampa Al in a flimsy attempt to wipe his memory of some sort. He sent his beloved wife, Karen Starr, to spy on the Smith family ever since, with his plan almost being thwarted a second time with the arrival of Team Circus. Upon learning of their previous contributions in other places, as well as their initial willingness to help out the Smith family, he had Karen also spy on Team Circus in order to learn a tiny bit of information and especially their weaknesses, flaws, insecurities, and worst fears, including Jax. Using the information Karen gathered from her espionage, Sam was able to spread semi-truthful gossip to Team Circus, feeding them blasphemous lies about Jax and exaggerations of real events surrounding them, all based on the individual insecurities of each Team Circus member, and he chose Jax as his target since he was the most vulnerable, and no one seemed to actually enjoy his company to begin with. And they easily fell for the misinformation since none of them were really entirely mentally there to begin with, for reasons that are pretty obvious to the audience at this point. And because of his influence across The Farmlands, no one dared go against what he said, not even the Smith family themselves! The best part? Not a single damn person even came to stop him, Karen, and Joshua from beating Jax to near-death.

Jax demands to know where his friends are, anger rising in him. Sam snidely answers with this: “Why do you care? Last time I recall, you don't have any friends. You never did. And you never will.” The anger in Jax quickly turns into anguish. Sam kicks the rabbit while he's down one last time by concluding that he's just a coward, a loser, a lost cause that not even God Himself wants. Afterwards, he sends Erick, Nellie, Karen, Polly, Blake, and Shellie to go after Jax and drag him into the huge corn maze, where the rabbit man will be forgotten by everyone for all time. As Jax is surrounded by huge corn plants, he aimlessly tries to run away, dissolving into a panic attack and becoming consumed by the crushing weight of hopelessness and defeat. As Jax lays there helplessly on the ground and surrounded by corn stalks towering over him, his left hand begins to go black and glitchy, with a single glowing green eye shedding tears on his palm. He reminisces to a time when he was a child, no older than 8 years of age, when an angry Hispanic man in his forties, allegedly his father, angrily berates him in Spanish over drawing on the walls upstairs. The little boy is crying his heart out, profusely apologizing to his Papá and begging him not to toss him into the cornfield again. The fuming man does not listen and forcefully drags the poor little niño by the arm, squeezing it tight enough to make the tiny one scream in pain all while the man continues to yell at him in Spanish. As the weeping boy is carelessly thrown into the cornfield, the man screams at him: “¡¡Quédate ahí, niño, y piensa en lo que has hecho!!”, which translates to “Now stay in there, boy, and think about what you've done!!” The flashback ends with the little guy curled up into a ball in perpetual fear, still crying. Just as the abstraction glitch is about to reach his elbow, having already sprouted three more glowing eyes, Gemma pops on by via the holographic screen of Jax's communicator bracelet, notices everything that's happening in front of her, and sings a song to calm him down. Jax can hear her, is snapped out of his dark thoughts, causing the abstraction glitch to recede and completely go away, and sings along with her until the last of the lyrics. He thanks her.

Gemma is extremely relieved that Jax hasn't abstracted after all and also incredibly remorseful that everything went wrong within only less than a week. Jax also feels the same way. In fact, he feels a little downtrodden with his own friends having turned his back on him, not even knowing where they are, how to get back to them, or if they're even okay. For once, his jerk-with-a-hidden-but-broken-heart-of-gold mask falls off and he's revealed to be a scared and vulnerable man who was dealt a really bad hand in life, and never knew how to navigate that. He was hoping to reclaim the childhood that was stolen from him years ago, but even that backfired on him too. And after years of taking it out on everyone, with it having initially begun as a misguided way to protect those he cared about, he began losing his way and in turn lost himself in the process after a series of misfortunes in the circus that slowly chiseled away his mental state as those same years kept going. He's felt lost and aimless ever since. Gemma makes a note to Jax about the positives that came of this, and it's the fact that Jax actually does care deep down inside. After some reassurance from Gemma, Jax feels significantly better, and makes a vow to stop this threat looming in The Farmlands, even if he has to do it all by himself. Gemma continues to stay by Jax's side the whole way through as he tries to navigate his way out of the corn maze.

Jax wholly intends to warn the Smith family of Sam's evil plot once he makes his way out with the helpful guidance of Gemma, who, despite everything, has never once dared to leave him in the dust. And thanks to that, Jax manages to escape out of the cornfield and with newfound determination and energy, sprints off to find the Smiths, starting with Cora. He's able to find Cora at the apiary playing with the twins Barnaby and Barbara, and it's a happy reunion all around. Jax tells her everything about what Sam intends to do, and she goes to fetch her father, who in turn tells him what Jax told her. As Jax and the three of the Smiths grab Joe, Holly, Anabel, and Al to tell them everything, a mix of horror, realization, remorse, and newfound spirit is embedded into them and they all unite as a group, fully determined to stop Sam Starr once and for all!

Jax and the Smith family all plan out their ambush of Sam and the rescue of the missing folks, who have apparently been tricked into a cult based around maggots and worms. After carefully figuring out the mechanics, they enact their plan and it's an action-packed sequence of tackling the guards of the greenhouse, rounding up the cult members to be taken in for medical treatment, and the capturing of the Nyx flowers from all over The Farmlands. One of the final belligerents is Karen Starr, who has fully embraced her batshit insane self, immediately reminding Jax of Harley Quinn for some reason. After a brief pre-fight monologue from Karen, a witty exchange filled with perseverance and cockiness ensues from both sides of the battle, as well as a few more minutes of the Smith family and Jax taking on Karen and her chainsaw, defeating her non-fatally in the process. Even Barnaby and Barbara got in on the action themselves! A while later, all of the known Nyx flowers are gathered up into the makeshift greenhouse, and they all are intent on burning the entire place down, with tons of gasoline laced all over the place. But before they light the match to burn this greenhouse down for good, Sam barges in from behind, furious that his hard work has been ruined. Sam sends out his henchman Erick Carlson to finish them off, armed with brass knuckles. Erick is one hell of a strong fella, despite his appearance. Nevertheless, after another few more minutes of battling it out with the gang, they're able to successfully apprehend Erick and tie him up alongside Karen Starr, feeding Sam’s anger even further. Sam attempts to gaslight Jax into believing that his friends still don't want him, even after defeating all his minions, destroying his flowers, and foiling his plan for town-wide domination, but Cora is able to snap Jax out of his thoughts again and get him to regain his confidence. Jax is able to counter back that even if his circus friends don't want him, he's still got his farming family by his side, and really, that's kinda all he needs in life right now. Livid, Sam yells out a harsh pre-battle dialogue, saying that he'll never lose to a team of ragtag farmers. A third and final battle ensues from there, and it's pretty close, with the Smiths gaining the upper hand momentarily before being curb-stomped by Sam one by one, saving Jax for last. Just as Sam Starr is about emerge victorious, Nellie O'Doherty swoops in to the rescue, and with a machete in her hand and Sam holding a pistol gun, the two engage in a thrilling combat sequence that lasts for about six minutes before Nellie is successfully able to subdue the corrupt sheriff/cult leader. Nellie makes an empty threat to slice Sam’s throat open if he doesn't back down. Sam, having already gone cuckoo for cocoa puffs at this point, expresses outrage over the betrayal and switching sides. Nellie on the other hand, reveals all she wanted more than anything was to save her twin sister. No one gets in the way of her family. EVER. Sensing that Sam will never back down no matter what, Nellie drags him back to Erick and Karen, and is subsequently tied up alongside them. She delivers the final blow by lighting up a single match in the gasoline-covered greenhouse, and the entire building goes up in flames, with Sam being forced to watch it all in perpetual tears. It burns all throughout the night and into the morning, and everyone witnesses the glorious display from afar, exhausted yet victorious.

With the help of Gemma's supply of magic and Holly's expertise in flowers, they're able to cure everyone in The Farmlands within only a day, and the sight of reconciliation all over the makeshift hospital at Henry's apiary is bittersweet. Afterwards, they head over to the tied up trio as they're locked up in prison for conspiracy to usurp. In the meantime, Uncle Joe is declared the new sheriff of The Farmlands by the public, and everyone adores him. He even gives Joshua Smallville a pardon from his crimes after everything that transpired. Lastly, they head over to the old Starr cottage to clean everything up, where it turns out the remaining seven members of Team Circus, including their new pal Joshua, have just been hanging out with each other the whole time, playing board games and overall having fun in each other's company, and apparently having already cooled off from yesterday. Jax is extremely nervous to see them again despite being incredibly thankful they've been safe and sound all along, especially since they have no idea what transpired while Jax was away. That's when Granny Smith does the honor of letting the gang know what happened and what caused the bad harvest and disappearance cases all along. She's even granted permission to let Jax into the cottage so they can see him again. Jax timidly drags himself inside, and by the looks of things, everyone is looking at Jax with pain and regret on their faces. Almost immediately, they gather around the banged up bunny, tearfully apologizing for everything. Although all is forgiven, Jax will not be forgetting this anytime soon. He doesn't even let any of them know he almost abstracted that night; they don't deserve the pain of knowing what happened to him that night.

After a couple more hours of the Smiths and all of Team Circus celebrating the defeat of yet another foe in the amazing digital road trip, Jax gives out a dénouement towards his friends, listing more details about what happened specifically, and they all feel really silly about the whole thing. This is their sixth betrayal that's happened, and something tells them that this pattern will not be going away anytime soon. When asked about how to fix the crop failure crisis now that the worst has officially passed, Joe gets the brilliant idea to use his newfound sheriff status to gather the townsfolk of The Farmlands to all pitch in and restore their farms as good as new. He does exactly just that, with Team Circus included in the aide, and it's a beautiful montage of everyone helping each other restore their farms over the span of three weeks, all while Miranda Lambert’s “White Liar” plays. During the song's bridge, Cora finds Jax on top of a big branch of an apple tree, and she offers to join him. He happily accepts. A gorgeous sunrise is peeking over the hills of The Farmlands, and they bask in the beauty of it all. Jax is incredibly grateful for having such a wonderful friend like Cora, and she declares the same. The rest of Team Circus join the two up on the apple tree and also watch the sunrise in awe and wonder.

The scene cuts to an equally gorgeous starry night just as the song’s third and final chorus starts playing, where an outdoor potluck is taking place, with Henry Smith hosting it and a huge chunk of the town participating, including Joshua Smallville and even the O'Doherty twins! Everyone is all around having a good time, with Jax even wishing this would happen more often. In a lighthearted jape of fate from this, Jax spots a green glow coming from a random raspberry bush planted outside of Henry's house. Inside the raspberry bush, Jax spots the source of the green glow, and lo and behold, it's their next jewel for the road trip. This causes everyone's communicator bracelets to sound off with this pop-up notification:

~JEWEL OBTAINED!~

5 out of 26

Only 21 remain

The jewel in question is a flourishing green-colored Emerald, whose beauty is reminiscent of the verdant forests cultivated by Mother Earth herself. Jax briefly tests out the powers of the Emerald, and it sprouts out a large vine stalk sprinkled with daisies and apples from the dirt. He takes one of the apples from the vine stalk, eats it, and finds it absolutely delicious.

Alas, with the retrieval of their next jewel, this means that Team Circus must venture off elsewhere. The Smiths are wholeheartedly understanding, with Uncle Joe giving Jax permission to visit The Farmlands anytime he wishes as he is now an honorary member of the Smith family. He tightly hugs Joe, as though to say thank you, with the tiny twins tackling Jax to the ground saying that they'll miss him. Jax says he'll miss them too. He promises to visit them every summer after the road trip concludes. Gemma says that they don't have to immediately leave if they don't want to, and the Team Circus gang all stay at the potluck for a little while longer until the morning light approaches.

After Team Circus packs their things in the Van, and bid one last farewell to the Smith family early the next morning before driving back on the road, Gemma briefly asks that after everything that's happened there if he would like to go home early, and Jax declines, saying that he'll be okay. Everyone happily chats to each other about the other endless possibilities bound to happen next on their digital road trip and even the new friends and enemies they're sure to make along the way.

The episode ends with Jax listening to some country music with wireless headphones on while he wistfully looks out his passenger seat window at the green pastures in front of him, with the Magical Digital Van continuing to drive on the road and into the breathtaking morning sunlight. Despite that huge hiccup, everyone is optimistic for the events yet to come, undeterred and ready to take the next big challenge head on.

~~~~

Current Status:

5 Jewels have been collected

21 remain

🍏🐴🌾🌽🧑‍🌾🚜🧺🌳🐄

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• OG Cast

Lizzie Freeman as Pomni

Amanda Hufford as Ragatha

Michael Kovach as Jax

Sean Chiplock as Kinger

Marissa Lenti as Gangle

Ashley Nichols as Zooble

Gooseworx as Bubble

Alex Rochon as Caine

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• Audience Surrogate Cast/Diplomats

Hynden Walch as Valerie

Susan Egan as Pamela

Amy Winfrey as Garcia

Mandy Moore as Lulu

Nevaeh Hamilton (me) as Bethany

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• Background Diplomats

Andrea Libman as Winona

Cristina Vee as Patricia

E.G. Daily as Rionna

Stephanie Sheh as Olivia

Debi Derryberry as Yolanda

Ashleigh Ball as Cécelia

Erica Luttrell as Belle

Ashly Burch as Imera

Kimberly Brooks as Bailey

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• Main Guiding Diplomat

Cree Summer as Gemma

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• Episode’s Antagonists

Steve Kramer as Mr. Erick Carlson

Megan Hollingshead Shellie O’Doherty

Michelle Rojas as Nellie O’Doherty

Sam Strike as Joshua Smallville

Norman Reedus as Mr. Blake Blade

Mary Jo Catlett as Mrs. Polly Sheppard

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• Secondary Characters Introduced

Chris Houghton as Barnaby Smith

Marieve Herington as Barbara Smith

Artemis Pebdani as Granny Anabel Smith

Bob Joles as Uncle Joe Smith

Wendi McLendon-Covey as Aunt Holly Smith

Dan Povenmire as Mr. Henry Smith

ILoveKimPossibleALot as Cora Smith

Larry the Cable Guy as Grampa Al Smith

Miranda Lambert as Mrs. Karen Starr

Blake Shelton as Mr. Sam Starr

~~~~

#the amazing digital circus #tadc #tadc caine #the amazing digital road trip #tadrt au #tadc road trip #tadc au #tadc bubble #tadc pomni #tadc jax #tadc ragatha #tadc kinger #tadc gangle #tadc zooble #tadrt ep 6

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