r/whowouldwin • u/LetterSequence • Mar 04 '22
Event Character Scramble 15 Semifinals: I'm Still Here
This round is now closed for voting! Please vote for the write ups in the form linked here. Voting will close at 10PM on April 12th.
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This round is for matches 37 and 38 on the bracket. Make sure to double check to see if you’re in this one!
Your journey is reaching its end. The location of Kingdom Hearts may be nearly impossible to reach on foot, by land, or by sky. Except there is one way to get there. After all this time traveling, all the information you’ve acquired, all the things you’ve seen, you know the secret. It all involves a door.
“When the door is open, so too will Kingdom Hearts open.”
There’s one door that is spoken of. A door used by a dreaded space captain. This captain stole treasures from all across the universe, and kept them to himself, never to be seen again. This door is a portal that opens to his treasure, and it can also open up to anywhere in the entire universe. It can open the way to Kingdom Hearts.
And that door is located on…
Treasure Planet
So you know where to go. But how do you exactly open this door?
Luckily for you, one brave adventurer holds a map, a spaceship, and the key to this door, and is looking for a crew to help escort them across the cosmos to reach the planet unharmed. That’s when the ideas start to formulate.
Escort or Heist?
Will your team present themselves to this adventurer and offer them aid? In exchange for directions, a split prize, and a companion, this would involve ensuring their safety, providing passage across all of Treasure Planet, fighting off any who would stand in your path, putting your life in harm's way all the while.
Or… will your team simply wait for someone else to take up the offer? If they follow this path, they can stalk the team who joins them instead. By prowling in wait, they can ambush the other team at the vital moment they reach the treasure, and take it all for themselves. However, you’d need to obtain your own means of travel, as losing sight of them means losing the treasure in its entirety.
Space, Land, or Underground?
Traversing an entire planet aimlessly is a good way to get yourselves killed. You’ll need to pick a route that’s safest to get there with the least danger possible.
Do you approach from outer space? Going from above may seem like the route with the least danger, but it comes with plenty of downsides. One wrong move, a stray asteroid, an attack that leaves you stranded from the ship, can leave you floating in the deep reaches of space until you finally perish.
Do you approach from land? It’s the most straightforward and easiest to circumnavigate, but this planet is covered in deep jungles and vegetation, with very little wildlife. Resources may be difficult to manage, the path would be the longest, and an ambush is almost all but guaranteed.
Do you approach from the underground? Beneath the surface is an entire system of passageways, tunnels, and heavy machinery, as if the planet was built by some insane person. It’d get you to the door the fastest if you know where you’re going, but if you don’t… you may be lost under here forever.
The Door
At the pivotal moment when the door is open, what will your team do? It can offer them guidance, lead them anywhere in the universe, and lead them exactly to Kingdom Hearts. But the promise of unlimited riches stands in front of them as well. It is here that what is most important to them will be tested.
All of this being said… this is the final leg of your quest before finally obtaining all you desire. So… what will you do?
Scramble Rules
That’s Sora, Donald, and Goofy Too!: Every participant this season received three characters on their team, but many of them might not be a household name. To aid with readability, please give a brief summary of your characters, with enough information so the average reader can get excited for your team before starting.
Let Your Heart Be Your Guiding Key: Your write up will depict a scenario where your team is the victor. Even if your team has a one in a million chance of overcoming the odds, show what they’d need to do to come out on top against the challenge in front of them!
Unlocking Limit Form: Writers are allowed to make changes to their characters in their narrative to fit their story, such as allowing power stealers to gain more powers, teaching martial artists new techniques, or having characters gradually grow in strength between rounds. However, you are not beholden to following what your opponent is doing. When facing another team, you are only required to write their characters as they were submitted. This is to help with ease of research, and make things more fun for both sides.
Round Rules
Guest Starring…: Space Adventurers! The guest in this round is someone who has a vested interest in Treasure Planet. Are they the person who holds the key, who needs to be escorted to the door? Are they the leader of the band of misfits who intend on stealing your treasure for themselves, or the group that escorts the client to the door? Are they a lone wanderer, stuck on this planet, who once resided on the crew of the captain who stole all the treasure? However they show up is up to you!
Setting: Treasure Planet, a mysterious and deadly planet said to hold all the treasures in the world at its core. The solar system surrounding it, deep in the cosmos, bathes this world in purple hues, the lights from hundreds of millions of stars. The planet itself is teeming with vegetation. Thick jungles, moss, mildew, and yet curiously, no life at all. Only the remnants of an adventure long since finished. Underneath the surface, this planet functions as a machine. Deep tunnels that lead to secret passageways, lights that illuminate this world, and cogs turning for some reason or another. There are plenty of paths that all lead to the same place. The door that leads to everywhere, and most importantly, to your goal.
Key Points: The key points of this round are as follows. You must obtain the key to open the door that leads into your ultimate goal (Kingdom Hearts). How you obtain this key, reach the door, and what roles the enemy team and guest fill are up to you.
Post Limit: For this round, writers will be limited to 10 posts, or 100k characters. While it is fine to go a little bit over, anything that far surpasses this limit will be automatically disqualified. This limit does not include intro posts, or analysis of the matchup. Use your best judgment, if you think your story is too long for the round, it probably is.
Due Date: Write ups will be due at 10PM EST on April 8th. That’s a full month, so you should have plenty of time!
Flavor Suggestions
The Door is Open: Your team is heading for the door that resides somewhere on this planet. This door is essentially a portal that can lead to anywhere in the entire universe. While you ultimately have a destination in mind, does such a prospect tempt anyone on your team? How would they react to such an easy method of transportation? Would they try to keep it for themselves? Visit any places before settling on Kingdom Hearts?
Fool’s Gold: The core of Treasure Planet is roughly one hundred million billion metric tons of gold, jewelry, and riches stolen from various cultures and civilizations. Maybe your team is only in it for the money. So, is there something that’d tempt them even more than this? Some kind of goal that’d make them seek out Kingdom Hearts instead of ending their journey here and just nabbing as much gold as they can get their hands on? Or maybe, they’ll get greedy, and try to do both? Remember, it all depends on what your team would do!
3
u/TheMightyBox72 Mar 23 '22
Christopher Nolan was experiencing that perhaps universal of all sensation. The cringing in bed, listening to the alarm going off, realizing and coming to grips with the fact that dreams were over, it was time to get ready to go to work.
And yes, he was named Christopher Nolan, like the director. He was not the director, that was obvious just by looking at him. His hair was dark and he was about twenty years younger and he could never grow more than peach fuzz so he kept shaved. Kids used to ask, back in school, if they were related. They weren't. Sometimes people just had the same name. He went by Chris now.
Chris turned off his alarm, and since he was looking at his phone anyways, started looking at his phone.
News was, well it was alright. There was some fearmongering about international tensions, but the economy was doing alright, some puff piece about a hero cop and why gen z kids were spending less money on furniture. All that combined meant there was no news. He checked his portfolio, you weren't supposed to do that every day, not for a pension fund, but Chris liked to see the number go up; it gave him motivation to go to work. Today's wordle was a weird one, took him four tries. Not bad, but frustrating, his average was starting to slip off balance.
The first thing Chris did after getting out of bed was strip naked and start the shower. He waited around for it to warm up, naked. It was a strange habit he'd carried with him for years and never told a soul, never wanted a soul to ever find out. He had no idea what would happen if he ever got a girlfriend, change his entire life to focus on never doing anything embarassing around her, he supposed.
Hopping in the shower, Chris was reminded, once again, of the mold spot that he really needed to clean soon. This weekend, for sure. For sure this time.
Chris shaved in the shower, he brushed his teeth in the shower, he washed in the shower but maybe that was a foregone conclusion.
He could, honestly, spend all day in the shower but he only had thirty minutes before absolutely needing to be in his car, so sadly he got out, dried off, and got dressed.
His work uniform was a dress shirt, black tie and slacks. His shirt was pressed, his hair was immaculate, his BO was under control, he stepped out of the apartment and towards his car.
The drive to work wasn't long, but traffic in the city was always going to be bad, no matter how much work was done to mitigate it. It wasn't a big deal, he wasn't going to be late.
A squadron of police cars flew past the intersection where Chris was stopped. He watched them go with a mild, yet fleeting, curiosity.
Technically it would've been faster for Chris to walk three blocks, take the subway to the heart of downtown, and walk four more blocks. But Chris didn't like walking. He liked driving. He liked being alone, in the car, with his thoughts, as a brief reprieve before the day really began.
Unfortunately, most of his thoughts right now were about not wanting to go to work.
It was, he told himself all the time, and it was true, a very good job. His manager was nice, the work wasn't demanding, there was a lot of room for him there on the ladder to the top.
Plus, working at the original Stark Tower, it was just exciting.
Walking up to the front doors, looking up at its staggering height, seeing that immortal name. Stark. It still gave him tingles.
Most of the impact at this point was symbolic, however. Despite working in this tower for, coming up on a year now, Chris had never once seen Tony Stark in the flesh. You'd think at least once they'd bump into each other in the elevator or in the bathroom or something.
Chris worked on the 23rd floor, of 101 in total. His job was to keep an eye on the database that managed their promotional website, and when things were running smoothly he helped develop internal production tools. Another reason to be glad about the job, he actually got to do some coding. Couldn't tell you how long he spent after getting his degree doing basic computer filing, or the godawful 4 months of tech support.
Well, there wasn't a reason to dwell on that. He worked here now. Soon as he clocked in, Chris went straight for the break room.
The coffee machine in there was ten times better than his crappy model at home. It had an arc reactor inside the machine, and that had to do something to the end product. It might be slowly giving him cancer, but damn it was worth it, a cup of this could keep him going all day.
As he was leaving, Jacobi stopped him.
"Hey, Chris. Do me a favor?"
Jacobi was a big guy, played football in high school. Now he did... something with HR. Any maybe Chris had never gotten over some of his poorer school memories, but when a guy as big as Jacobi asked him to do something, he tended to go along with it before thinking.
"It's Cassy's birthday today, I got her the box of donuts there," he nodded to a pale pink cardboard box on the counter. "But I don't think she saw. Apparently Aletta is out with the flu so she's filling in for her in the lobby, or something? I'm wrapped up with stuff but when you get the chance, take it down to her? Or tell her it's up here? Or something?"
"Uh," Chris's voice cracked, as it finally got used. "Yeah, I can do that. I just need to, check in on my stuff. Then I'll do that."
"Cool. Oh, you still on for happy hour tomorrow?"
"Yeah. Nothin' better to do right?"
"Ah." Jacobi gave a big smile and a forceful hand to the shoulder that Chris found deeply uncomfortable but swallowed. He took his coffee back to his desk.
Logged in. Saw that the computer wanted him to change his password, it would expire in a few days. But if it expired in a few days, then that is when it would expire.
Nothing was going on with the database, the servers were running normally. He tabbed over to his development environment and remembered where he left off before with a groan. It was a stopgap, he had an idea on how to fix it, but it'd be a pain in the ass, and there had to be something easier but it just wasn't coming to him right now.
His frustration brought hunger with it. He thought about those donuts. Maybe if he took them down, he could sneak one. Or, no, maybe if he brought them down Cassy would offer him one. That was probably the better way to go about it.
So he got back up from his desk and went back to the break room. Box was still there, he grabbed it and took it back to the elevator.
On the long ride down, he popped open the lid, just slightly, just to get a peek inside.
Each donut was frosted with letters, as a whole they spelled out 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' with two added to the top row so that they were a bit more even. If he was going to sneak any, it would have to be those two, it'd have to be both, so no one would realize any were missing.
No. He shut the lid again; No, he was not going to be sneaking any. He'd see if Cassy wanted to share, and maybe ask if she didn't say anything.
The elevator dinged as it came to a stop on the ground floor. He had to shuffle as a couple of the upper floor businessmen pushed in past him.
Jacobi said Cassy was supposed to working the desk in the lobby. Or, no, did the lobby have other jobs? Chris didn't see her anywhere, though, and, the desk was empty. Chris parked himself next to it, placed the box down, looked around while he waited. Maybe she skipped off to the bathroom? Well, he'd take the excuse.
He heard a siren in the distance. There must be something going on, he hadn't heard anything, but there must be.
Cassy was, uh, he'd probably get in trouble for thinking something like this, your classic office bombshell. Perfect golden hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, a very beautiful face. She could model, if she wanted to. Of course on his second day, Chris found out she had a boyfriend, which, yeah, that made sense.
With the entire front wall being pure glass, Chris could see out onto the streets ahead. An ambulance, sirens blaring, turned onto the street headed towards them. Cars started making room, but there was only so much room to make.
He really could sneak those donuts. Right now. He was hungry. Nobody would know.
The siren only got louder. Chris looked up. Not content with pushing through on the road, the ambulance had mounted the sidewalk. A couple people walking were forced to move out of the way.
That wasn't normal. Was it?
The ambulance charged straight towards the building. Every second that passed, he expected it to turn away. And every second, it didn't. It just got closer, and louder, and Chris's heart pumped a little bit faster.
Until, finally, it struck.
Metal bent with a ear-splitting shriek and glass sprayed over the entire lobby like confetti. Chris moved on instinct, getting down with his hands over his head. The ambulance tipped from the impact until it was on its side. It scraped across the tile floor, kicking up sparks in its wake, before finally coming to a stop right next to the elevators.
The back door was kicked open and out jumped a dangerous looking man with an eyepatch and a snakeskin jacket and a shotgun. Following him was a tired, really short guy in a green poncho and a guy in an aviator jacket and helmet.
"I swear, that's the last time I let you drive," the aviator said. "Crazy son of a bitch."
"Alright Levi, now!" the eyepatch guy yelled.
"Now what," the tired guy said, tiredly.
"Now go Titan!"
"No."
"What do you mean, no?"
Around that time, the aviator spotted Chris. He pulled a weird looking chrome gun from his jacket and aimed it down straight at him.
"No moves," he growled. "Got it?"
The piercing green eyes fixed onto his very soul stopped Chris's heart. He passed out on the spot. His head slammed into the desk. The donuts fell down and scattered across the floor.