r/whowouldwin • u/Cleverly_Clearly • Jun 04 '17
Special Character Scramble VIII Round 0: Jailhouse Rock
The Character Scramble is a writing prompt tournament where people compete to write the best story they can. At the beginning, everyone submits characters that meet the guidelines, then those characters are randomized and distributed evenly. From then on, each week there's a new writing prompt for everyone to follow. At the end of the week, everyone votes for who they think should advance, until we have our winner at the end. The winner at the end of the tournament gets to choose the theme, tier, and rules of the next scramble, along with a nice custom flair as their reward. The current theme is based on Part 6 of the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure manga, and the tier is 2-8/10 against Captain America or Batman.
Without further ado, here we go!
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(♫)
You still can’t believe it. The situation is so surreal you can hardly think of it as anything other than some horrible nightmare. You’ve spent the last few days being railroaded through a court system that seemed more concerned about convicting you than judging you, and now you’re in a van with barred windows, heading for America’s first privately-owned prison for people, creatures, and miscellaneous beings that normal prisons can’t contain: Green Dolphin Street Prison. Your sentence: Life without chance of parole. It’s hard to be optimistic about the situation.
Prison guards guide you through the admission process. You get your weapons and armor taken away, get assigned your uniform, and get toured around the facilities. Finally, you are assigned your cellmates - three of them.
You try to get to know the people you’ll be spending the rest of your life with, and the four of you quickly figure out that pretty much everybody has weapons and nobody is wearing the prison uniforms. Your fellow inmates aren’t even bothering to hide their contraband, and the guards don’t care. None of you want to be helpless prey for the prisoners who have vastly better firearms and fashion sense, so you come up with a plan: raid the confiscated items room and steal your stuff back.
The four of you surreptitiously manage to sneak past the guards make it into the security room. You raid the lockers and plastic tubs until you’ve nabbed everything that’s yours and changed back into your usual getup. Everything seems to have gone off without a hitch. Say, why aren’t there any guards in this room, anyway? The only other living thing in this room is that weird bird sleeping over there...
Then the bird wakes up.
Then the bird is really mad.
Your team has woken up the guardian of the prison’s confiscated items, and it isn’t gonna let you take them without a fight. If you want to be free, you’re gonna have to fight this bird.
Free. Bird. Free Bird. See, there’s a reason I picked that music.
Normal Rules
People Living In Competition: Look at all these obscure characters in the scramble! Give a brief summary of your characters in your post. Be sure to mention things like powers, personality, weaknesses, just stuff that the average reader should know before reading.
All I Do Is Win: The Scramble is a game, and in the end the player always wins the game. This time the player is you, champ! That means that when your write your story, your team always comes out victorious. Even if the odds of you winning are 1 in 100, explain those odds in the analysis and then show us that 1 miracle run.
Take Your Hand Out Of My Pocket: Characters are assumed to be at the same power level they started the tournament at at all times. To clarify, this means you would not be able to loot Captain America of his shield if you beat him in a previous round, or otherwise gain a competitive advantage based on anything that happened in a previous round. This is to aid your opponent in research of your character.
Due Date: Round 0 is due June 18th, two weeks from now Keep in mind that while this is a warmup round, failing to participate will still get you kicked out. It’s highly recommended that you put your best foot forward, but don’t take it too seriously- we’re just getting started!
Round-Specific Rules
Round Goal: Take Back What’s Yours!: You aren’t leaving without your weapons and gear, and you’re going to make sure every thing that got taken from you is stuffed right back into your pockets. If nobody on your team uses weapons, then take your clothes. If your whole team consists of naked animals, then just improvise some reason to get into this fight.
I Want To Break Free!: ...but you can’t. This prison isn’t any old prison, it’s built for people of your character’s caliber. The walls are too high to scale and too hard to break, the guards are armed to the point that fighting them is impossible, and a magical/technological barrier prevents teleporting or flying out. If you can think of any other ways your characters could just bust their way out of prison on the spot, they can’t do that either. The reason: This is the beginning of the season and if they do that now there’s no story.
Bird is the Word: In case you haven’t guessed, your team is going to have to defeat Pet Shop. It might not be Part 6, but it’s still Jojo, so it fits! The bird has to be either killed, knocked out, or otherwise incapacitated to progress. All characters can see and interact with Horus whether they have a stand or not.
Flavor Rules
Florida Prison Blues: What’s the first day in prison like for your characters? How are they taking it? How did they choose to spend their time? How did they keep their hair from getting shaved down to the prison-standard buzz cut?
Getting to Know You: These are going to be your cellmates and teammates for the duration. You don’t have to get along, but you’re kind of stuck together, so maybe you’d like to at least try to learn some stuff about each other.
Breaking In Is Hard To Do: Well? ...how are they going to get into the security room to steal their stuff back? It can be as complicated or simple as you want. Just try not to cause a big fight. If you all get locked in solitary it defeats the purpose.
<=====[TO BE CONTINUED]
3
u/OddDirective Jun 17 '17 edited Jul 05 '17
CHAPTER 1: Welcome to the Jungle, Pt. 1
Tsunayoshi Sawada stared at the cuffs keeping his hands in place. How had it turned out like this? he thought. Sure, I did beat up that weird foreigner, but he was threatening me!
“Prisoner 108!”
And he attacked Gokudera! I had to defend myself!
“Prisoner 108!”
Tsuna thought back to his “Family”, or at least, what Reborn had called his family. Gokudera, Yamamoto, Ryohei, Kyoko, everyone. I’m so-
“HEEEEEEEEEEEEY!” Tsuna’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the guard at the front of the van yelled out at the prisoners. “Prisoner 108!” he said, pointing at the young Mafia boss.
“W-what? Me?!” Tsuna said, looking at the guard in confusion.
“No, I mean the OTHER spaced-out prisoner I’m pointing at!” the fed-up guard replied. When Sawada began to look behind him for that “other” prisoner, the guard angrily grabbed his collar and shouted “Come on!”
Tsuna tried his best to get out of the guard’s grip, but failed as he was brought into the gates of the prison. As he watched them close, he felt a lump form in his throat. He was just a middle school student, yet here he was, being thrown in maximum security prison.
There was no time to dwell on the circumstances, though, as he was dragged to his feet in some sort of processing room. The guard at the desk, a rather large lady, simply pointed to the guard holding him and asked “That the last one?”
“Yeah.” the guard said, “He decided he didn’t want to hear me, so I had to drag him out.”
“H-hold on-” the prisoner began, but the lady merely shrugged, and said “Just process him and get him on the way. Boss said he had a speech prepared.”
“Really?” the guard said, leading Tsuna to another room. “Well, at least we won’t be the only ones who’re forced to listen to him.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” was all he heard before being shoved into another room. This one was like a normal school locker room, except someone had taken out the lockers, so there was just benches and a residual smell of sadness. The guard fished around on his belt for the keys, and unlocked Tsuna’s handcuffs.
Rubbing his wrists, Tsuna looked at the guard, who was in the process of closing the door. “Why did you take my cuffs off?”
The man turned to him, and said ‘I sure as hell ain’t stripping you.” before slamming the door shut.
“Whaaa?!” H-he doesn’t expect me to take my clothes off, does he?!
“Prisoner!” the intercom blared. “This is an automated message. Please take off your clothes for a full body inspection. Afterwards, you will be given a regulation prison jumpsuit and your clothes will be taken to lockup.”
They do!! Tsuna, slowly realizing that there was no other option, stipped down to his boxers and stepped in front of the door to the examination room. He swallowed, and opened the door.
“At least that’s over.” Tsuna sighed. He was being led to the cell block by a surprisingly normal-seeming guard. As they walked through the corridors, Tsuna asked the guard “What’s your name?”
The guard simply gave him a look of disgust as the two entered into the main cell block. The prisoners were lined up in rows, assembled in front of a bunch of tables. Tsuna looked over at the prisoners. There were so many of them, of all shapes and sizes. There were hugely muscled men sitting next to timid-looking women. There were cyborgs, aliens, and even a few large animals, in their own section. Each was doing their own thing, be it talking with another prisoner or scanning the cell block for escape points.
Finally, the guard led Tsuna to his place at the front of the room. He watched as a man with silver hair and a dangerous grin dressed in black punk attire strode on stage. He held a megaphone in his left hand, and as he got to the microphone, held the megaphone up to it. Tsuna tried to cover his ears as-
”ATTENTION ALL YOCTOGRAMS!”
-the man shouted loudly into the megaphone. All eyes turned to the man, who kicked the microphone over and held the megaphone to his mouth again.”Now that I have your attention, let’s go in the order of operations. First, Outer, Inner, Last!”
As Tsuna felt the ringing in his ears subside, the man continued. “First! My name is Sho Minamimoto, and I am the Head Warden of this prison. My vision for this prison is utterly complete! Any and all operations performed on you factoring hectopascals has already been approved by me. QED!”
“Outer! The limit of your hope of a free life will approach zero! Outside this prison, all of you are known to the public as dangerous criminals. And there’s only one matrix that can hold you irrational elements in this country. This one. Don’t even calculate your odds of escape, unless you want to see zeroes wherever you look.”
“Inner! Let me ask you a question. Inside this prison, exactly how much are each of you rule-breaking radians worth?” Without waiting for a response, he suddenly declared “I said at the beginning, one yoctogram! And for you brain-dead binomials that slept through math, that means that the atoms you’re standing on are worth more than you! Remember that.”
“Last! A little factor told me that some of you place great value in the following things: Friendship, cooperation, teamwork, trust, helpfulness... ”
As the warden paused, Tsuna felt some small bit of hope take root in his heart. Maybe he’d say-
“They’re all GARBAGE!”
G-Garbage?!? Tsuna was taken aback. Minamimoto continued, almost gleeful as he said “Crunch them all up and thrown them away! If you try to use those things here, all you’ll end up with is a googolplex of stitches!”
As the man looked at all of the prisoners, he shouted into his megaphone “Class is dismissed! Guards! Take these nonprime factors to their cells!”
Tsuna felt the guard tugging on his arm, but he felt frozen in place. Friendship, cooperation, teamwork...They’re all GARBAGE!
How... how could he say those kind of things?! As the guard tried to drag him, Tsuna fought to escape the guard’s grasp, and as he did...
THWACK
...his elbow accidentally connected with the guard’s chin. The guard turned, elbow still in his face, and looked the unfortunate prisoner in the eyes. Instantly, Tsuna knew exactly how bad he was about to have it.
A flurry of blows rained down on his body, each stronger than the last. As the guard caught him with a spinning back fist, another guard hit Tsuna in the back with a stun baton. The baton-wielding guard turned to the other as Tsuna collapsed, and asked him “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, Nines.” the superficially wounded guard said. After watching all of this go down, Minamimoto brought the megaphone to his mouth one more time. “X = one last thing! If any prisoner instigates a fight with a guard, they will be immediately deleted from this prison’s population!”
He let that sit for a moment, eyeing the crowd, then yelled “Go to your cells!”
With all that was said and done to him, Tsunayoshi Sawada, Prisoner #108 at Green Dolphin Street Penitentiary, finally fell into unconsciousness.