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
Robot was the only thing to call them. Shiny metal humanoids with featureless gray boxes for heads. The single glowing slit they had instead of a face each immediately locked onto the three of them and they advanced, blue fire burning from their palms and soles to help them move with surprising speed.
Majima had never fought a robot before, had no idea how to go about fighting a robot, so he just shot it. The one in the lead, the buckshot splashed across its chest and caved it inward, but that did basically nothing to slow it down.
Toomes immediately had his back. He had his purple rifle in hand and let loose into the crater Majima had just made. The steel plating slowly melted away, revealing a forest of tangled wires underneath dripping, glowing red slag.
Majima didn't wait for a clear visual, he just shot again. This time the buckshot burrowed deep into its inner workings, the robot only managed one more step before collapsing.
That was one down, and that was the amount of time they had before the robots converged on them.
The play for the remaining bots seemed to be bear hugs, either they were looking to restrain and not kill, or these things were strong enough to cut a guy in half by squeezing them.
In either case, bad idea to get caught in it. Majima slipped out its grip and launched a hook to the side of its boxy head.
It hurt like a motherfucker. And didn't even really do anything. So Majima punched it harder.
Levi took off like a bullet. Even in a tight space like this, his grapple points were precise and zipped him around like he might as well have been flying. His swords flashed, brief glimmers of silver, targeting the joints and slipping in between plates of armor with precision Majima couldn't hope to match. Within seconds, he had another on the ground.
"Toomes!" Majima barked. "Get the elevator open! We'll hold 'em off!"
He punched the robot again. Still wasn't doing anything, but damn if he wasn't gonna not punch the robot.
Toomes got free of the one harrowing him and booked it for the elevator in the middle of the room. He pulled a small device from his jacket pocket. It was an ugly thing, just a packet of cobbled together wires and circuit boards, but it'd do what they needed it to do. Toomes popped the panel off the elevator's sensor and started hooking his device up.
Levi meanwhile had disassembled a second robot and was now working on his third. Meanwhile, the one haranguing Majima took its next empty swing.
Majima dropped his gun, fairly confident that the robots wouldn't go for it, and used his free hands to clamber up onto the thing's shoulders. It seemed stumped on what to do with this new development. It reached its arms up to grab at him, but they weren't flexible enough to reach him. Majima got his arms around its head and started to pull.
It wasn't quite budging, Majima had to pull his knife and start digging into the wires of its neck. Shocked himself a couple times but based on how he thought electricity worked, it had to go through the robot too.
Finally he managed to sever something that felt pretty important and, with all his strength, wrenched up and tore the robot's head off of its body. Dark fluids leaked from the stump as it collapsed onto the ground.
That left only one, one that just got its head cut off. Levi wiped the oil off on his cloak.
Around the room, slats opened up where the wallpaper met trim, like garage doors. From inside waddled out squat little things, like robot pillbugs or the tiny droids from Star Wars. Red on top with a bunch of golden legs underneath and no faces between any of them.
They were kind of cute, at least until two ports opened on either side and started blasting at them with laser fire.
Majima hit the deck. "Toomes! You done over there or what?"
"Don't rush me, I'm working on it!"
Levi was shooting off doing his swingy-slicy thing again, but these compact bots didn't have any obvious weak points for him to target. His blade scraped off of their steely hides, leaving behind a trail of sparks but not much else.
If Levi wasn't getting through them, Majima sure as hell wasn't. Seemed like a smart idea in this moment to just lie on his stomach and wait for Toomes to get the damn door open.
When a few started turning towards Toomes, that was when Majima got off his ass.
He hit the one currently aiming its guns at Toomes with a charging tackle, low enough to actually catch the thing that only came up to his thighs. It barely budged, but budge it did still do, so Majima pushed. That initial bump was enough for the shots to sail just past Toomes' head.
"Hey!" he yelled. "Would you handle these things? Sitting fucking duck."
Majima groaned with exertion. This thing was stiff and it was heavy, a few hundred pounds at least. Still, the strongest guns in the room were on these things, so if he wanted it, he'd have to take the whole package.
Its stubby golden legs lifted off the ground.
Majima kept his shaking legs steady and put his arms firmly underneath its belly. He pointed it another one, one currently in the process of circling to aim at Toomes.
He yelled. "Ah!"
Nothing.
"Go!" Nope. "Shoot!" Didn't happen. "Blammo!"
He tried jostling it, that just made his arms hurt more.
"Come on!" He propped it up on his knee and waved a hand in front of the thing's faced.
It immediately let loose a volley of bolts that melted its friend into slag.
Majima hollered, partly in shock that it had worked and partly in excitement cause that was fucking cool. He turned on his pivot foot, aimed it at another and waved his hand to make it fire again. Same thing. Majima laughed. This was the best thing he'd ever done.
The elevator in the center gave off a loud hiss, and a concerning cloud of smoke, but the door opened.
"Alright, I got it!" Toomes yelled. "Go, let's go!"
Majima hurled the robot to the side where it landed on its back and struggled to right itself. He dashed for the elevator, scooped his shotgun up on his way, and made it in with time to spare.
"Levi!" Majima yelled. "Get your ass in here!"
Levi was still zipping around the room. If he could hear Majima he didn't show it. He went for a wide swing and cut the legs out from under most of the remaining pillbots. It was only when the elevator doors started to close that he took notice.
In that instant his momentum shifted, it was almost hard to see how. But all of the sudden he was coming at them like a freight train.
His body shifted mid-air, spun, and he landed on his feet. That did not make his momentum stop. He slid on his heels while staying stock still on his feet right into the elevator as the doors closed in front of him. Content that the danger was passed, he sheathed his swords.
There was the banging of something exploding on the elevator doors, but they didn't even dent.
Majima rolled his neck and leaned on his shotgun to rest his sore arms. None of the men spoke on the ride up. Levi was just being Levi, but Toomes looked deadly serious. Thinking hard, wasn't sure about what. Majima just felt awkward, didn't want to break the silence.
The doors opened onto the 101st floor. More than the floor below, this entire floor was on room. Wide open and perfectly circular, half of the wall was window looking over the rest of New York from impossible heights. Even from a distance, and even with his crap depth perception, it gave Majima a bit of vertigo.
Most of the space was clear, though there were various workbenches and tinker stations on the edges of the room. Most of the furniture was in the dead center. There was an octagonal wooden desk, rich wood and impeccably polished. Every square inch of it was covered with computers and filled out notepads. A dozen light blue holographs hovered above in a circle of their own, some of them complex schematics, some just the digital equivalent of more notepads.
And in the center, in a leather swivel office chair, leaned back and on the phone, was a man. Late-30s, early-40s, his dark hair styled perfectly, his beard trimmed immaculately, his three piece suit was spotless and pressed free of any wrinkles and matched in color so subtly that even Majima took notice. His shoes were Versace. His belt was Gucci. His sunglasses were Belenciaga. And he probably owned each and every one of those companies.
Tony Stark
Majima and Toomes both raised their guns, Levi drew his swords.
"On your feet, Stark!" Majima said.
"No, I hear you," Stark continued talking on his phone. "I hear what you're saying, I do. And I'm asking you to look at things from my perspective. I mean you're the backbone of this company, you know that, right? You do? Good. Cause we would be, let me tell you, we would be nowhere without you. Right, we understand each other, so I need that design. Don't need it today. Don't need it tomorrow. But I need it soon."
"Stark!" Toomes roared, probably more vicious than he meant to. "This isn't a fucking game. Put the phone down, get your hands where I can see them."
"Alright, listen, I'll get back to you, you know I will. But I got another meeting here now, they're being real pushy, you know how it is. Alright. Alright. Buh-bye."
He hung up the phone and stood. He lifted his hands, but playfully. In a 'nothing up my sleeve' sort of way, with a wave and a waggle, and just as quickly put them back on the desk.
"So," he said. "What can I do for you?"