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
“Wait!” Kaori shouted. “We’re just trying to find my partner. You said we wouldn’t be that valuable, right? Just help us find him and we’ll get out of your hair, I promise.”
“Your partner? Oh, you must mean Saeba-san.”
“Yes, that’s him!” As she spoke, Cleo noticed Kaori slowly reaching behind her, her fingers inching towards the handgun she had stored in her waistband.
There was no way Sakura wouldn’t notice soon, but Cleo got the idea. Keep Sakura talking. Prepare what you can.
“Which makes you Kaori Makimura. You’re mentioned a lot in Saeba-san’s book.” Sakura’s smile grew wider. “Now that’s just so sad! I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle it!”
“What are you talking about? Ryo’s book?” Cleo asked, holding her Rat Communicator behind her back and broadening its range to as wide as possible.
“Oh, so you’re weak and clueless?” Sakura responded. “Commander Redfield didn’t tell you anything about what we’re doing here, huh? Every book here represents a person. Their lives, experiences, and more. Lady Angela is bringing the strongest people in the world here to collect their books! The tournament’s been a big help with that.” Sakura’s face contorted into something sinister. “But to make a book, that person needs to die. So sorry, Saeba-san’s already gone! I killed him myself!”
Kaori whipped her weapon forward, aiming the barrel at Sakura’s head. However, before she could pull the trigger, Sakura’s form blurred. Faster than either of them could comprehend, a dark tendril lashed out from her dress-
Blood splattered the ground, followed by a dull thud. Kaori cried out in pain, falling to the ground with a deep gash in her shoulder. Cleo’s eyes widened in shock, immediately bending down to check on her. It wasn’t fatal, but there was so much blood. Not again. I escaped Waller’s grasp but my friends are still dying. Why?
“Tsk.” Sakura sighed, almost sounding disappointed. “You’re too slow to dodge. You’re too weak to take a hit. I guess I can’t judge you too much. I used to be weak as well, but then Lady Angela injected me with her EGO. Now nobody can hurt me anymore, and once you turn into books nobody will hurt you either!”
Cleo activated her Communicator, ordering every rat in the endless halls of the Library to converge on Sakura. A wave of fur and teeth surged around her and Kaori, charging valiantly towards their foe. It didn’t matter how strong Sakura was, the sheer number of them would eventually overwhelm her.
That’s how it should’ve been at least.
“Please, no matter how much trash bands together, it’s still trash.” Sakura laughed, tendrils whipping away dozens of them at a time at blinding speeds, reducing them into red viscera. “This is familiar, though. A girl who fights by controlling rats. If I remember correctly, I’ve seen this in one of the Library’s recent additions.”
Sakura held out her hand, manifesting a thick tome from midair. Cleo desperately kept up her attack, trying different formations and sending in rat packs from multiple directions. But her numbers were rapidly approaching zero. It was hopeless, and both of them knew it.
“From the Book of Christopher Smith, who I believe you knew as Peacemaker, page 3095.” Sakura read as she kept up her impenetrable defense. “Cleo Cazo became Ratcatcher 2 after her crackhead dad kicked the bucket. She controls rats. Seriously, that’s it. She’s always exhausted and barely has anything worthwhile to say, so I doubt she’d ever be a problem to the plan. But if she acts out, I can take care of her, easy.”
Cleo clenched her fists. Moments from the past flashed through her memory at the mention of Peacemaker, none of them pleasant. Finding out he had died here did nothing to console her. He’d thought of her as nothing, and Sakura was the same. One monster always replaced the last. If she couldn’t grow stronger, she’d never escape her hell on earth.
Of course, that wouldn’t matter if she died here.
She called off her remaining rats, only a dozen of which had survived.
“Oh? Has little Cleo given up?” Sakura taunted, firing a tendril that Cleo had no hope of dodging. It wrapped around her neck, cutting off oxygen and yanking her closer to Sakura. “A shame, I was hoping you’d at least put up a little bit of a fight. I suppose Peacemaker had you pegged from the start, huh?”
Cleo gasped, her vision growing dark as she spotted something on the bookshelf behind her foe. It was Sebastian. Of course, she and that rat had a bond that eclipsed all others. When she had ordered the rest to flee, he remained by her side no matter what. But this furry beings had plenty more ways to surprise her.
Balancing himself on his hindlegs, he took a familiar form. Back paws spread, front paws held together, a light glow began to form. And then, with all his tiny might he let out a courageous shriek and thrust his paws forward, launching a small version of Ryu’s Hadoken.
Cleo couldn’t believe her eyes, watching as it flew through the air and slammed into the side of Sakura’s head. The monster in front of Cleo barely budged, giving a slight look of annoyance in Sebastian’s direction. It wasn’t very powerful, but it didn’t need to be.
On the edge of consciousness, Cleo tightened her grip on Kaori’s gun, which she had picked up earlier, and placed the barrel to Sakura’s neck. Cleo wasn’t very familiar with guns, but she didn’t need experience to pull a trigger.
“Not strong enough.” Cleo muttered.
BANG!
Immediately, the pressure from Sakura’s tendril loosened, allowing Cleo to haphazardly collapse to the floor. She rubbed her neck, which would almost certainly bruise, greedily filling her lungs with so much air it became painful.
She looked up at Sakura, who swayed unsteadily as she placed a hand to her neck. The black tendrils slowly began dissipating around her, revealing an ordinary school girl’s outfit beneath. “Lady… Angela…” She coughed, splattering Cleo’s cheek with her blood. “Please… help me.”
Her eyes and hair shifted to what was likely their natural colors, each a dark, beautiful lavender. She remained standing until she took her last breath, finally collapsing to the ground beside Cleo.
Sebastian rushed to her side, climbing on top of her and squeaking frantically with concern. “I’m okay. I’m okay.” She said softly. She wasn't lying. She'd just killed someone, a real person, and she was okay. Before she could dwell any further, a thought entered her mind. Kaori!
Ignoring her aching body, Cleo rushed to Kaori’s side. Her breathing was weak and a puddle of blood had spread on the floor around her, but it wasn’t too late. Cleo sighed in relief.
“Hey…” She whispered, causing Cleo to jolt in surprise. “Good job.”
“I got lucky.” Cleo grimaced, ordering her few remaining rats to start ripping out pages of books to stop the bleeding.
“Everyone gets lucky. Even people like Ryo. It’s the ones… that take advantage of that luck… that win.”
“But he died.”
“I’ve thought he died plenty of times. He always pulls through.”
Frowning, Cleo began stuffing pages into the wound. Kaori’s face contorted in pain, but she managed not to scream. Or maybe she just didn’t have the strength for it.
“Just stay quiet.” Cleo muttered. “I had the rats leave a trail back to where we started by scratching at the bookshelves. We can use that to find Ryu. Hopefully he and Chris pulled through.”
Bracing herself, Cleo placed Kaori’s good arm around her shoulder and hefted her to her feet. “Sorry, this is gonna be a painful trip.”