 Rictor Overtime has a Disborn, a Patreon, and a Twitter. Thanks! Good evening. Not long ago my original upload on Badwater Videos 2009 broke the huge milestone of a million views. It's the most popular upload on my channel by a wide margin, and my other ARG videos trail not very far behind it. I'm extremely grateful for all the attention this series has gotten, and I'll admit it's regrettable that I've waited so long to come back to it. But considering the one-year anniversary of my first ARG video rolling around, the creator of Badwater revealing themselves in order to announce the project going on a hiatus, and the piled-up lists of new uploads from the channel, I figured right now was a pretty opportune time to punch in and have a look at what one of the OGG mod ARG's has been up to. Before we dive in, however, I want to point out that Badwater's channel banner has changed. The door on the map is now opened, revealing itself to be yet another of the strange white map transition portals we've been seeing them make use of. I'm not sure if this change was planned from the start, but if it was, it's some nicely done foreshadowing. For a quick refresher, the last video I covered was Sanctuary, and it ended with a captive red scout running away while Badwater was distracted building a ragdoll walker contraption he was going to rig the scout into. The scout took refuge in the dark room, and Badwater chose not to follow him, with the video's title Sanctuary further implying that the dark room was to be a safe place for the scout. The first upload since then is called Piter on the Move. It came out on October 1st of 2021. Let's have a quick look at that. Here's a spooky Halloween themed upload that introduces a new TF2 freak creature called the Piter, that being a pyro mixed with a spider. The video's story follows the fan-favorite Teethaneer, who seems to be putting finishing touches on some kind of modified sticky launcher, probably in hopes to use it against Melon Man. After hearing some skidding around, we see him use the echolocation technique we learned about in the Q&A video before getting ambushed by the Piter. The Teethaneer tries to run for a sticky launcher, but gets interrupted by the Piter shooting web and catching his hands. The Teethaneer then uses his teeth to break free from the web, and fires a grenade at the Piter, which scuttles away. Prematurely celebrating his victory, the Teethaneer forgets to run for cover from the explosion, and gets detonated by his own bomb. A nice callback to the Teethaneer interrupts tea time video. There's nothing explicitly out of place or creepy about this video, apart from Piter being a creepy crawly insect guy, and it seems to be nothing more than another machinima from Badwater. However, given what we've learned so far, it's not much of a stretch to imagine that the two pyros who make up this Piter creature are probably living ragdolls now fused together into one abomination, human centipede style. So if nothing else, this video does provide yet another small glimpse into Badwater's twisted mind. The description also gives us a little bit of clarity regarding Piter's role in Badwater's story arc he's working on. In the corners secluded from the chaos of Melon Man's and Dr. Metalhead's eternal battle, other villains lurk in the shadows with allegiance to neither side. The next upload brings us back to the perspective of the fugitive Red Scout, and it's called Discarded. It was uploaded on October 19th, 2021, but its description dates it to September 23rd, 2009. That would be one day after the date of Sanctuary. Check it out. Picking up where we left off with the Red Scout sleeping in the dark room, he wakes up and picks up a light to shine his way through a flood of abandoned props. It's here we see the heavies minigun, couch, and a TV. Identical to those seen in the Broken TV video. The scout notices a wrench on the ground and picks it up, and with that, the video corrupts and abruptly ends. The set of the Broken TV video seems to imply that all the deleted props go to the dark room, since we witnessed a player delete all of them. That begs the question, is this where deleted rag dolls go as well? If so, where is the Blue Heavy? Scout picking up the wrench is interesting, as it seems to imply he's going to build something from the junk props scattered around. We'll figure out just what it is in the next video, but I'll warn you ahead of time, it's probably the most intense development of the whole series, shall we? Well, we found out what the scout was going to build with the wrench. Off camera he seems to have set up a little workstation for himself, consisting of a desk and a lamp, and he's got his hands on a revolver that looks suspiciously like the base of the Garry's Mod Toolgun. However, something alerts the scout, so he gets up and looks off into the darkness on his right. Catching a glimpse of a Kleiner model, we quickly find out what, or rather who, scout heard. It turns out the dark room wasn't much of a sanctuary after all. The scout finds himself constrained to a chair, unable to break loose. Badwater brings himself into the light and stares blankly, before whipping out the tool gun and using the finger poser tool as a method of torture to break the scout's fingers. Seemingly unsatisfied, Badwater then retreats into the darkness and comes back to pierce Scout's chest with a spinning saw blade contraption. After a cut to black, we get an ominous shot of Badwater alone in the dark room, staring dead on a head for a few seconds before turning to stare at the viewer. So, what do we make of this? Well, first and foremost, it seems the creator of the ARG misled us, or maybe changed their mind to keep us guessing. The title sanctuary definitely seemed to imply the scout would be safe in the dark room, but it looks like Badwater wasn't scared of it after all. The two biggest story beats we get from this are first, that the scout has been recaptured and punished, and second, that Badwater is aware of the videos that have been posted from the scout's perspective, hence the glare toward the fourth wall at the end. Maybe he even takes joy in knowing that the viewers have seen what he does to these ragdolls. The last thing I have to say about this video is that I think the use of the finger poser as a torture method is a really creative idea. It flips a central element of Gary's mod into something truly morbid, much like the concept of the sentient ragdolls themselves. Anywho, with that out of the way, let's have a look at the latest upload, a two minute animated return to form called Metalhead's Final Straw. This seems to be just another ordinary animation, though it's got some interesting undertones. To recap, we see the red scout chilling on a bench in PL Badwater. Teethaneer mixes presence known above the scout, and immediately afterward, the red engineer and melon man are alerted to the scout's screams. They rush out to see the Teethaneer cornering the scout, and melon man jumps to his rescue. While the melon man and Teethaneer are engaged in an elongated war of words, the scout grabs a lead pipe off the ground and bonks the Teethaneer over the head, rendering him unconscious for several hours. The Teethaneer then wakes up later that night, only to be scolded by Metalhead for failing to defeat the melon man again. Metalhead then unleashes what appears to be an armada of flying machines made in his image. The first thing that sticks out about the video is the presence of red scout in the animation. We know he's been recaptured by Badwater, and we just saw him getting brutally tortured, so it's a little off-putting to see him casually playing a character in this short. The second thing that sticks out is the ending. I'm pretty sure it's setting up for another presumably big animation upload, where melon man will be forced to deal with all of these helicopter bomb things. I wonder how he'll square that one. But with that out of the way, we're officially caught up on Badwater. To break it down to bare essentials, the new developments are that the scout has been recaptured and tortured after finding out the dark room wasn't safe, Dr. Metalhead has had about enough of Teethaneer getting owned by melon man, and melon man is probably in trouble. Unfortunately, as I mentioned at the opening of the video, the creator of Badwater recently broke character to reveal themselves and announced that the project is going on a hiatus, so I'm not sure how long it'll be until we see another upload. However, not long ago the unthinkable happened, and Gunslinger Pro 2009, the father of all the sentient ragdoll energies which was believed to be abandoned or dead by most in the community, returned. In between you and me, I think there's a lot more on the way than this one upload. Let me know if you're interested in a video on that. That's all I've got this time, though. Thanks for watching. Thanks for a million views. Seriously, what an incredible metric. And have a great rest of your day. Oh, and thanks to all my patrons.