r/whowouldwin • u/Ragnarust • Nov 28 '24
Event Character Scramble Season 19 Round 1C: Happy Bananksgiving
*Round 1C is now closed. Click HERE to vote on the rounds!
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 19 is Super Smash Bros. Round prompts will be based on the many Nintendo franchises represented in Smash, along with some of its third party offerings.
Join the Character Scramble Discord!
Round 1C: Happy Bananksgiving
Your team convenes in a verdant clearing. For some of you, your world has just been shaken, the calamity in the previous round destroying any sense of peace. For others, you have just survived a perilous night in the wilderness. No matter where you started, where you are now remains the same:
Rushing rapids froth beneath you as you make your way across the docks to a quaint cabin. However, this Airbananb is already occupied by the Assist Trophy and an absolute treasure trove of bananas! They’re looking after the place for someone else, but you’re welcome to stay if you’d like! You lay down your arms, and take a rest…
Only to find, moments later, that said arms have been stolen! The enemy team has taken off down the river with your gear, which is as important to a Fighter as bananas (which, incidentally, have also been stolen) are to large tie-wearing apes! You gotta chase those thieves down and get your stuff back!
Round Rules:
He Has No Style, He Has No Grace, He Has No Weapons: Your team has been deprived of their gear for this round. And if there’s no gear for your team to be deprived of… well, those bananas are still gone, and you know someone’s getting a big DK slap to the face if you don’t get those back. Whatever your circumstances are, you’ve got good reason to chase the enemy team down to retrieve stolen goods!
The Leader of the Bunch: The Assist Trophy for this round was here first. Will they join you to retrieve what was stolen? Or are they the lead thief themselves?
Jungle Japes Not To Be Confused With Kongo Jungle To Be Confused With Kongo Falls Not To Be Confused With Rumble Falls: Why base a round off one DK stage when you can base it off them all? You’re gonna go through the whole DK gamut. From the jungle to the river to a large waterfall is your general progression, with lots of barrel-launchers and claptraps along the way.
Normal Rules:
Spirits: Your team has a character in a special role called your Spirit. These are characters that can alter the course of the battle in a way that a normal fighter can't. Whether one of your Fighters is borrowing their power, or the Spirit themselves is possessing someone to get into the action, or they're just there for support, your Spirit's gonna change the texture of the fight ahead!
Assist Trophies: You can select any one character from the Assist Trophy pool to guest star in your round! However, be aware that you're only limited to only one use of a given trophy for your run!
A Skilled Roy Can Beat Any Fox: Despite what Tribunal and the elitists and gatekeepers might've told you, tiers don't exist and "bad matchups" are Johns. Smash is a game of skill, and so long as you stay in the lab, you can overcome any S-Tier with whatever character you want. Even if your characters have only a small chance of victory, write that small chance happening!
Custom Movesets: Remember those? Smash 4? No? Anyway, these characters are yours, and you are allowed and encouraged to mix and match powers and keep track of character progress however you wish. However, your opponents are not expected to keep track of these in-story changes and vice versa.
Can't Believe They Added Some Literally Who Instead of Geno: 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.
Project M: We're not Nintendo, we're not gonna send you a cease and desist if you deviate from the rules a bit. For all of this, so long as you go with the broad strokes of the prompts and the rules, you'll be fine.
Round 1C will run from 11/28/24 to 12/21/24. 11:59 PST.
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.
3
u/Ultim8_Lifeform Dec 22 '24
🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀
The moment the group entered the immense Library, Cleo and Kaori split off from the others, ducking behind one of the many gargantuan bookshelves just as a strange woman arrived to meet them.
“Ah, new visitors. Welcome to the Library.” She addressed the boys, giving the girls time to slink off down a side path without being detected.
The further they went, the woman’s voice grew quieter and quieter. Eventually all that was left was silence. It was only then that Cleo realized she had been holding her breath, releasing the air in a puff.
Cleo had done it, she’d been freed from Amanda Waller’s control for the first time since she’d arrived in this god forsaken country. Yet here she was, willingly throwing herself back into danger she hadn’t prepared for and didn’t fully understand. To save a man she’d only met yesterday?
No, it wasn’t just that. There was another reason.
Reaching into her pack, she retrieved her father’s Rat Communicator and flicked the switch to activate it. A bright light shone from the bulb as it began emitting a frequency that only the furry creatures could perceive. First one squeak, then a few more, and finally dozens of rodent cries filled the area as they swarmed to her location.
Kaori looked like she was trying not to freak out at the sight of them. That was okay, rats were used to not being wanted.
“Don’t worry, they’re friends.” Cleo told her before sending them on their mission. At each intersection, furry pairs would split off in different directions to scout the Library. While Cleo wasn’t sure what they were looking for exactly, this would at least let her know if they were approaching anything interesting… or if anything else was approaching them.
“Right. Sorry, I’ve always been a little nervous around rats.” Kaori visibly relaxed as the last rat vanished around a corner. “So what now?”
“We start looking, I guess.”
“I know that was the plan but…” Kaori took a wide look around the labyrinth of bookshelves that spread out before them. “I never expected all this to be inside that regular looking building!”
Without much in the way of leads, the two began walking.
“Sorry if this brings up bad memories.” Kaori said. “But how did a nice girl like you end up with government assassins after you? I haven’t known you long, but I’m just not seeing how it’s possible.”
“It’s okay.” Cleo assured her. “It’s still painful, pretending it never happened won’t solve anything. The short answer is that I tried robbing a bank.”
“That’s it?”
“People have gone to jail for less.” Cleo shrugged. “But since they considered ‘rats’ a deadly weapon, it was enough for them to charge me with way more than should’ve been possible. That’s how I ended up on Waller’s shortlist, but sometimes I wonder if I was on her radar even before that. She loves using people with unconventional powers that won’t raise a scene if they go missing. If things go horribly wrong on one of her unsanctioned missions, she doesn’t lose anything.”
“That sounds horrible. I’m sorry.”
“It’s how the world works, I think.” Cleo sighed. “The powerful will always use the weak for their own ends for as long as they’re not able to fight back, and discard them the moment they don’t serve their purpose.”
“Hey.” Kaori took Cleo’s hands in her own, causing her to freeze in surprise. “That may be how the world is, but it doesn’t have to be. We’re gonna take care of it, me, Ryo and the others. If this Waller lady thinks she can just do whatever she wants to people, she has another thing coming! That’s a promise!”
Cleo hesitated for a moment, staring into Kaori’s eyes full of sincerity, before slowly nodding.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
The two girls froze. Standing at the intersection in front of them was a figure in black, eyes red like blood and long hair white like bone. She was… developed in ways Cleo wasn’t, but she couldn’t have been older than twenty. Yet she gave off an intense aura the likes of which Cleo had never felt before.
When had she appeared? Cleo’s rats scouts should’ve given her a warning, but they didn’t.
“Usually only noteworthy people are invited here.” The girl mused, her voice tinged with a malicious playfulness. “I suppose you could’ve piggybacked on Ryu’s invitation, but that still doesn’t explain why Lady Angela let you get this far. Maybe she’s just messing with me to see how I’d react. She’s so mean…”
Cleo and Kaori shared a look. The fact of the matter was that neither of them were fighters. The whole point of splitting up was so that they could avoid the fighting, but now that seemed unavoidable. This girl didn’t seem like she’d be willing to turn a blind eye.
“But where are my manners? My name is Sakura Matou, I am a librarian here.” Sakura smiled. “I don’t think your books will be that valuable, but I’m going to kill you now, okay? Lady Angela is always happy to add to her collection.”