r/whowouldwin Jan 23 '24

Event Character Scramble Season 18 Round 1A: Siege

Round 1A is finished and the thread is locked! Please use this form to vote. Voting ends 48 hours after it began. You MUST vote if you are competing!

This round covers matches 1-8 in the bracket which can be found Here, check to see if you're in before you write


The Character Scramble is a long-running writing prompt tournament in which participants submit characters from fiction to a specified tier and guideline. After the submission period ends, the submitted characters are "scrambled" and randomly distributed to each writer, forming their team for the season. Writers will then be entered into a single-elimination bracket, where they write a story that features their team fighting against their opponent's team. Victors are decided based on reader votes; in other words, if you want people to vote for you, write some good content. The winner by votes of each match-up moves on to the next round. The pattern continues until only one participant remains: the new Character Scramble champion, who gets to choose the theme, tier, and rules of the next Scramble!

The theme of Character Scramble 18 is Secret Wars. Round prompts will be based on scenarios and setpieces from the original Secret Wars comic, as well as some other classic Marvel stories and scenarios, but will primarily be flavored by each participant being placed on one of two massive teams that will battle it out for supremacy.


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Round 1A: Siege

Your team now finds themselves on Battleworld proper, and figures their first order of business is the establishment of some kind of base.

Luckily for them, this isn't particularly hard. After a short walk, they find themselves looking down at a gleaming megafortress nearly the size of a city. It's almost too good to be true.

Almost, anyways. Just as easily as you found the base, somebody else found it. Be it a splinter faction from your team or an advance party from the enemy team, they want to take control of it just as much as you do. Complicating the matter even further, the base is host to an automatic drone defense system, which is currently primed to shoot anything that moves.

At the heart of the base lies the control panel for the defense system, and whoever reaches it first will be able to reconfigure the base to protect their allies and attack their enemies, giving them control over an extremely valuable and defensible staging ground. You had better make sure the people that reach it first is you.


Round Rules:

  • Fifty Four And A Half Pentagons, I'd Estimate: Whether you make it a futuristic superfortress or a hut at the top of a hill, this round should feature some kind of strategically important location that your team is capturing

  • Welcome to Doombase: The round should also feature you fighting the enemy team for control of the base. If you're facing somebody on the opposite superteam, then they're trying to take the base for their team. if it's somebody on your team, perhaps they're trying to create a splinter faction, or perhaps they just really don't like your team and don't want to let them in. Why they're fighting for the base is totally up to you.


Normal Rules:

  • The Second In A Twelve Part Crossover Series: Although the Guest Pool on the roster only includes unscrambled characters, you will, at all times, be allowed to write any characters in your pool as guests for the round, including characters on other people's teams. Full lists of characters on Team Secret and Team Wars can be found... on those links.

  • The Marvel Way: It's a comic book, the good guys always win out in the end, or if your team is the bad guys, they'll get to win out in the end, just this once. Even if your characters have only a small chance of victory, write that small chance happening!

  • In an All-New All-Different Costume: You are absolutely encouraged to write your characters gaining or losing equipment/abilities/injuries/sanity. However, your opponents are not expected to keep track of these in-story changes and vice versa.

  • Amazing! Astonishing! Uncanny!: Give a brief summary to introduce your characters at the start of your post. Be sure to mention things like powers, personality, history, just stuff that the average reader should know before reading.


Round 1A will run from 1/22/24 to 2/15/24. 11:59 CST.

Character limit is 5 full length Reddit comments, or 50k characters.

While it is fine to go a little bit over, anything that far surpasses this limit will be disqualified. This limit does not include intro posts, or analysis of the matchup.

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u/Artemisia846 Feb 15 '24

As Fate lay upon the ground, she knew that she was dead.

The wounds themselves were superficial… But she had been running on fumes for day after day. She had enough to put up a compelling fight, and perhaps even enough to stand up. But she wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted to. In one blow, the woman had ended all her hopes. Liliana Vess wasn’t in any position to be granting favours anytime soon and there was no way she could get to Cereza with four magical girls in her way. Sage would stay dead forever. She cradled the replica soul gem close to herself and watched as she ebbed back and forth in life.

Metropolis tried to calm things down, as he always did. He was all about moderation and community, to a sickening degree. She was slipping too far out of consciousness to hear the words. Nothing but a psychic communication from Liliana.

“It wouldn’t have worked anyway.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I lied to you. Nothing can bring back the dead. Not truly. I tried it with my brother, and not even Kyubey could achieve it.”

“Why… Why tell me! Couldn’t you have let me die with hope?”

“Because I know something you don’t.”

Liliana grew quiet and Fate filled herself with rage. Who did she think she was? Where did she get off on this suffering! Why would she take what little hope remained to her?

And her soul gem finally turned black.


It was the space between death and life. All that Fate could do was sit in the endless void and think.

Nothing she could do would be good enough. Not even Liliana could have brought back Sage. Nothing she could ever do would be good enough. That was always Alicia’s role. Alicia was the perfect daughter, the one that her mother doted all their attention on. Fate had been left with less than nothing, the eternal disappointment…

Nobody in her life had ever shown her any kindness until Sage had appeared. Like a flash of light in her darkness, Sage had appreciated her. Respected her. She had stood up for her at school, with other magical girls… Even in front of her mother. The day that she had moved in with Sage was one of the best of her life.

If Sage couldn’t be in the world, then there was nothing left worth saving. Nothing worth preserving. She felt the resonance with the false soul gem that Liliana had given her. It might not have held Sage’s soul, but it held her essence. The closest she could ever get to it. They would be joined… And they would burn the world together.


The house exploded in a burst of energy as for the first time in this reality, a terrible sight set itself upon the city of Denver. A domain the size of the entire city began to form as wraiths swarmed and it became night. Stars lit up the night sky and meteors began to decimate the city as a network of buildings formed into one great observatory, broadcasting the city's doom to every television set inside the domain.

For the first time in this reality, a being of raw unfocused power laid its eyes upon the world, as the soul of Fate Testarossa prepared to lay waste to it. A meteor the size of a city came cascading down to leave nothing in its wake.

Nibiru, Witch of Destruction.

3

u/Artemisia846 Feb 15 '24

As Clownmuffle looked up at the sky, the first thing she wondered was if there had been another Archon appearance without her knowledge. What else had that force, that power? Her paralysis was quickly cut short however as a meteor struck the house.

The force radiated from it and sent her flying, and when she could next see she found herself leaned up against a wall. Metropolis had grabbed her and Arcueid, and the strange woman had grabbed Cereza. The only person still standing in the ruins was Liliana, whose corpse was twisting unnaturally like a spider.

The mysterious woman seemed to be having a panic attack, so Clownmuffle decided that she was the right person to focus her attention on.

“What the fuck is going on!? First you show up from nowhere, I don’t even know your name and then you claim that Cereza is your daughter, now this!?”

Fury overtook the woman's eyes.

“It’s Homura. And that creature up there should not be in this reality. I need to fix this… I can’t let it start again. If they can do this, they can get to Madoka. And if they can get to Madoka… The law of cycles as a whole is in danger.”

A look of horror came over her eyes as she pointed accusingly at Clownmuffle.

“I should have known. Shrodinger returns. Time is a flat circle after all. I had hypothesised as much, but is it a fixed point that at the end of the year 2013, you cause the universe unfixable harm? Then I have no recourse left to me. I need to remove you from the picture to keep my daughter safe.”

She flipped backwards and channelled power. The only thing stopping her from using her powers then and there was a tendril of hair from Cereza.

“Go! Deal with that thing! I’ll deal with her.”

As her attention shifted and her eyes steeled, she clenched a fist.

“If she really is my mother… I have some questions for her.”

Cereza might not have been the fighter that she wanted to trust her life to, but as another volley of meteors annihilated houses all over the street and throughout the entire city, Clownmuffle knew that Archon or not, this creature had to die.

She turned to Metropolis, in a gesture that saved her life as a bolt of pure death magic narrowly missed her soul gem. Liliana had stood back up, a piecemeal husk of a human that spoke through poorly constructed vocal chords.

“eHEHeheH! yOU WoN’T eSCaPE! dIE WItH mE!”

Arcueid’s claws glowed.

“Leave her to me. I came here to kill her, I’m going to see it done.”

Her determination cracked for a moment as she turned to Clownmuffle.

“I was wrong about you. You’ve always been human. I was just too blind to see it. Go. Save the city. Be a hero.”

She wanted to argue, say that she had never been a hero. She was never the sort of person to save people or fix lives. She was just trying to do her best and survive. But there was no time to argue. As Metropolis took flight and headed for the monster, she began to walk on air. It was do or die.

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u/Artemisia846 Feb 15 '24

They danced a dance of hair and blades upon the air, Cereza replacing the tendrils faster than Homura could cut. Not even the scenes of annihilation before them could stay their blades as their movements that determined the fate of the world grew ever faster.

“Why? Why leave me there? What do you gain out of it? And why do you only come back now, at the point where you have to save me!?”

Homura’s blade split into five copies, and Cereza had to take extra special care to avoid being struck by the crossfire.

“It was for the best. I needed to find out how you can exist! Across the entire universe, me and her can never be happy. It’s fate’s hand! She is always the law of cycles, I am the one who breaks it. Predestination across the multiverse. I put you here so that you’d be safe, and I didn’t expect all of this.”

Remember the principles Morgana mentioned. If the other girl has a win condition, do everything you can to stop her achieving it. On her next barrage of tendrils, she burrowed even deeper into the gears. Even if Homura cut the hair, the damage would still remain.

“Do you want this, Cereza? Do you want Denver to be ruined? Do you want witches to return to the world? If this timeline continues down its current path, it’s inevitable! Shrodinger brings nothing but misery, it is her fate! In just a few more days, the world will be ruined as a result of her actions. It is fixed. I took pity once, thought that if her circumstances were changed she could become more than herself. Look where that led us. If she doesn’t die then, her fate will seal the rest of us!‘

Liebe whispered a plan to her, and she snapped back as she prepared.

“Why do you believe so much in destiny? You said that no version of you can be happy, yet I exist don’t I? Why are you so certain you need to erase all the good that she’s done just because of what she might do, or what a different person has done?”

“I believe in it because it’s real! If I don’t make sure they die, the fixed point will always come to pass. Sayaka Miki will always contract, Mami Tomoe will always go mad… Shrodinger will always cause destruction!”

A new mass of hair appeared from behind Cereza, resembling a plain doll. Hundreds of ribbons of hair emerged from its maw, restraining the sword, the shield… Even Homura herself, wrapped in a neat little bow. For the first time, Homura noticed the doll.

“You betray me, Liebe? She could not know about this without you. You are a personification of my being, are you not? Curious. You are however in the minority.”

14 other dolls appeared next to her and began hacking away at the ribbons as Cereza frantically began making more. Who cared how strong her mother was? Clark was right, it wasn’t about power or karmic weight, it was about how she used it. Not even the most powerful wraith could stand up to enough restraints. It was simple tactics, the stuff that most girls forgot after a year. Not Morgana, though. She believed deeply in the forgotten knowledge.

Liebe emerged from Cereza’s arms and grew a blade of her own, cutting the other dolls down piece by piece. When they were weakened, they were easier for Cereza to grab, turning the block into more and more of a nightmare of restraints, a new labyrinth. They worked in tandem, musical notes and whips and guns and everything in between…

But she realised something. Homura was letting her win. At any moment the dolls could have swarmed her weakened form and slain her, or hundreds of guns could have fired. But Homura refused to lay a finger on her. As Homura began to sweat even further, she yelled out one last line of venom.

“Why? Why do you insist on protecting a girl who is fated to only bring destruction? If she was killed, the entire world would be better! We would be closer to a timeline where you were safe.‘

Cereza knew the answer to that question in her soul.

“Because I don’t believe in killing magical girls for the idea of what they could be rather than any truth about them. No destiny or karmic weight can make you more or less special… And that logic is what makes Kyubey want to kill me.”

As the last of the dolls was taken in and Homura went silent, Cereza looked at the sky and hoped that this reprieve was enough.

3

u/Artemisia846 Feb 15 '24

Clark had flown before, but not like this. His body was already pushed to the limit, but people needed him so he persisted. When he was needed, he would always be there.

Lasers cleaved through meteors, cards and explosives catching the ones that he missed. But for every meteor the two of them caught, two more fell upon the city of Denver. He thought he saw other girls down there trying to save civilians, but everyone's hands were full with the sheer volume of wraiths that inhabited the strange labyrinth he was fighting in. And more than that, he was unsure how he would defeat this strange entity.

He had faced large wraiths before, but the Metropolis Archon had been a far cry from this. The meteor that threatened to destroy everything was the size of a city, perhaps big enough to wipe out life on earth if unbounded. If his theories were correct though, the impact wouldn’t spread beyond the city that was imprisoned in endless night. Small consolation when it was only 650,000 people.

Hmm… The first layer seemed breachable. Maybe if he was flying at full speed he could get deeper. But then who would stop the meteors? Thousands would die for only a chance at salvation. Clownmuffle cut into his mind.

“Do you have a plan to deal with that thing!? Because if you do, I think I can deal with the meteors.”

“I have an idea, I don’t know if it’ll work…”

“Same! Unfortunately, we don’t have much of a choice. How long can you fire those lasers for?”

“Five seconds max?”

“Good enough. I’ve run the numbers. Aim them at the ground and I’ll do the rest.”

He shrugged. Better to risk his life on a gamble than to risk it on nothing. He fired the lasers downward, and concentrated all of his power in flying upwards at top speed. A sonic boom echoed throughout the city as he looked to the side and saw Clownmuffle’s plan in full motion as the sky became a technicolour mass of red light.

She had summoned thousands of mirrors, each reflecting his lasers in a new direction in a latticework maze that halted the meteors from crushing buildings. He marvelled at her talent, able to calculate the angles under such pressure. If he didn’t know better, he would have assumed her wish was related to rocket science.

The meteor shower was reduced to space dust as the laser found its final target, straight onto the meteor itself… And the mirrors had amplified it. He didn’t know how that worked, but magic was magic as the laser drilled into the shell… Right before his fist struck it.

He felt the weight of a second collision on that scale overtake his body, and he began to fall out of the sky as he observed the deeper core of the meteor. It was filled with thrusters that brought it down to earth and held within it a parasite, a wormlike mass that was at the heart of the being, and with a screech began to reform the outer shell. Meteors rapidly diverted direction to attach themselves to the cataclysm in wraith form and it began to look as though no damage had been done.

He had reached terminal velocity, and he slammed through the roof of a house, leaving a crater the size of one of the meteors. But still he stood. He would always stand, even as a mass of wraiths came over him. For a moment, he lost himself in a haze of violence. His mind went blank as he punched them until nothing but grief cubes remained, and he pressed them to his soul gem. More energy. Give me more energy, more strength. Once again, the man began to fly.

He used his X-ray vision and scanned for her, and sure enough Clownmuffle was beset by wraiths of her own. Unlike him however, she seemed to be overwhelmed. It was his responsibility to even the odds, and a wide beam of lasers cut through them, Clownmuffle’s body splitting in two to neatly avoid it.

He arrived on the rooftop, and she spoke to him in a daze.

“You know, your costume really isn’t that bad. I know I gave it a two on the selfie board, but it’s really more of a three. I appreciate how the underwear symbolises the way your heart is exposed to the world. It’s one of the few touches that aren’t derivative.”

He shook her until her eyes returned to focus.

“I appreciate the compliment, I really do… But if we don’t take out those thrusters we aren’t going to have a city to stand in!”

“Right. Sorry.”

She tried to fly, but her jump simply touched back down to the ground.

“Fuck! Too many people have seen me fall. The trick is ruined now.”

“Do you have any… other tricks that would work?”

“None that can get me up there for a sustained period of time.”

Her face morphed into realisation.

“I only need to be up there for a short period of time though. If I can crack the outer shell again, can you deal with the thrusters?”

“Probably? If you can crack the outer shell though I’d rather just deal with the heart.”

She shrugged.

“Then we’ve got a plan. On my signal, throw me as high as you can.”

He nodded. This wasn’t the time to worry about risk. In the next instant she began what looked like a ritual. In just a few seconds, she appeared all over the city, faster than his X-ray vision could track her. And in each place she scattered a deck of cards on the ground. When she returned and gave her signal, he was beyond curious… But he threw her regardless.

Clownmuffle soared over the beast and at the apex of her height, held an empty box of cards aloft and yelled a phrase.

“52 PICK UP!”

The entire sky was aloft with hundreds of thousands of cards, all heading for one destination. Clownmuffle’s box. The meteor was strong, but compared to the sheer barrage on display… The shell was nothing.

Clark was once again almost at the apex of his speed, and he tackled the bug at full force, cutting through the meteor. But that moment of realisation turned to horror as he learned what was at the centre of it. A black hole. No matter how he tried to escape, he was sucked deeper in until all he felt was oblivion.

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u/Artemisia846 Feb 15 '24

Oblivion was far more peaceful than he had given it credit for. The black void held images of Fate’s life, with an unhealthy obsession on Sage’s. A pendulum swung back and forth outside of his eyeline, but he began to stand. He didn’t need to be transformed here, so he wasn’t. There was only one object inside the core, so he went to it.

A fusion of two soul gems, one of which he recognised. This was all that was left of Fate Testarossa. He had to understand, had to help her.

“Fate… Why are you doing this?”

“It needs to burn! It needs to suffer! If it rejects me, why am I still upon this earth? Why am I still suffering? If it dies… I can stay here forever with Sage.”

“Do you want to hurt Denver? This is your city. You fought here for six years, didn’t you? That’s impressive, longer than me. You’ve certainly helped more people than me. Did they reject you?”

“I can’t… Those people deserved better. They needed a hero. I’m not a hero. I’m barely a magical girl, barely anything! Without her I’m nothing! I couldn’t even destroy things right without her!”

“That’s not true. Did the girls try and coup you? Or did they look up to you and give you time? You didn’t need her to organise the relief effort for the Philadelphia Archon, did you?”

“Anyone could have done that!”

“Nobody did.”

He took a step closer and the void darkened, a cacophony of voices assaulting him from every side.

“I can be with her-” “Enough cubes to save the city-” “Let someone else step up-” “An ending, any ending-”

It took the last of his strength to force through it all and grasp the warped soul gem in his hand.

“Nobody has to die today.”

His soul gem began to shine, a deep light that washed away all the darkness surrounding it, and a miracle beyond the power of even a demon began.

The darkness in her soul gem cleared.

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u/Artemisia846 Feb 15 '24

As Cereza and Homura looked up at the sky, an explosion of light lit up the night sky. The domain faded and the city returned to normal… Yet no grief cubes fell. Instead, Clark appeared at the centre of it all. A beacon of radiance, an angel of mercy. In his hands was Fate.

Homura was reduced speechless by this, as Cereza jumped for joy.

“See! See! Miracles are possible!”

Homura’s soul gem changed shape, and her wings snapped the bindings she was held in. Before Cereza could make new ones, she instead simply went to sit and watch the miniature sun that emerged from Clark.

“I don’t understand. Once a girl is a witch, she is no longer a human. Only a mere creature of sin. This is a fact of the universe, and one that countless girls have lost their lives trying to fix. What about him is different? What lets him cheat the system? What lets him save everyone?”

As Homura looked back to Cereza, a look of finality formed upon her face.

“Fine. If you want to stay, on your head be it. There is too much about this situation that I don’t understand… And a part of growing up is to make your own mistakes.”

She disappeared into thin air, and Cereza realised a terrible truth.

She had been abandoned yet again.


Clownmuffle crashed with the precision of an acrobat, emerging unharmed from the fall. She found herself face to face again with Arcueid, who was standing on top of the puddle of gore that was once Liliana Vess. She turned in recognition.

“Ah, Clownmuffle. Congratulations. You really were a hero.”

Wiping her claws on her jumper, Arcueid prepared to leave.

“I dragged you into this mess to prove yourself, and that you have done. You go and lap up the glory and adoration, and I’ll return to trying to reach your heights.”

Clownmuffle forced herself to her feet, as desperation overtook her voice.

“Wait!”

Arcueid’s slight turn was the only chance she was going to get.

“Stay! Don’t let that bullshit about souls define you. I don’t care what any past versions of you did, you aren’t them! You’re not Arcueid the princess or Arcueid the demon… You’re the Arcueid who saved the city of Denver by fighting Liliana Vess. Don’t dedicate your life to a lie!”

Arcueid walked over and hugged her.

“You’re sweet, you know that? I think this is the most that any girl has ever thought of me. But sweet words cannot change who I am… Or what I must do.”

She snapped her fingers.

“Reality Marble.”

Clownmuffle stood inside a perfect replica of Sage Rhys’s house. She had access to all of MagNet’s records, the authority to declare full scale war, the ability to protect Cereza… Everything except what she truly cared about. Arcueid was gone.

All the reward that a hero deserved.


As Clark lay Fate down on the ground, he felt a pain in his chest and collapsed. This was a new sensation to him. Normally magical girls were inoculated against heart conditions simply by existing…

But this was something else.

As he looked at his soul gem, he saw a darkness that hadn’t been present since he had defeated the Metropolis Archon. Despite grabbing every single grief cube from his satchel, it refused to clear with the rest, a black line that marked the inside of his soul gem.

That wasn’t good, he had to admit. But as the girls of the city of Denver came up to him looking for answers and explanations, he forced himself to his feet. While people in this world needed him, he would always be there to help…

No matter the cost.