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/OddDirective Apr 09 '22
And suddenly, the walls came down, and we were all back together again. The Stitcher’s puppets didn’t move, and no one on our side did, either. At least, not to begin with.
"Enough!" shouted the Stitcher. "This has gone on long enough."
The Stitcher held his hand out, and a tangle of threads appeared, wrapping and twisting in on itself like a ball of glowing twine. Finally, I snapped to my senses, and I saw Lancelot and Steeljack do the same.
As the tangle in the Stitcher’s hands grew, I grabbed as much speed as I could and ran like a bullet at him, wanting to stop whatever that was. But I couldn’t get there. Hale reacted at the last second, leapt and slammed into me with a forearm that laid me out and sent me straight back to where I was.
Lancelot and Steeljack rushed up too, but they got blasted back by the other fighters too. That was enough for the others, the ones Gwen brought in, to get the memo… but there wasn’t enough time to do anything about it.
The tangled threads near the Stitcher’s hand had grown as large as his torso, so he held it out behind him, with the arm “holding” it shaking from the energy. All at once, the threads glowing white became black, and the wind in the room started being drawn towards the swirling mass.
"There's no saving it. There can be no hope.", he said, with his eyes closed from it all. "Time to clean up this mess."
“Scatter!” Steeljack shouted.
The Stitcher launched his attack.
Black threads surged into the ground all around us, hitting indiscriminately and obliterating anything the threads touched. Gold, gems, artwork- nothing was spared from being wiped off the face of existence.
The first volley hit the three who were helping Steeljack. They never stood a chance. I saw Steeljack sink down to his knees.
And through it all, he kept talking. “Delete.Scatter.Wipe the slate clean.”
“It would appear that the Stitcher is killing the guest characters. I must be on my way, then, tata!” said Robotnik, speeding away from the destruction. He only got twenty feet before he was unmade.
And then Banjou…
A black thread raced to his location. There wasn’t enough time to dodge.
But at the last second, it veered away and buried itself in the ground.
…He had a chance.
And as long as there was a chance, we had to keep going. I stood back up, locked eyes with Lancelot, and flew.
“You… you BASTAAARD!!” Banjou shouted, and ran for the Stitcher. Lancelot charged with him, on a separate angle of attack, and I was the third, coming in from above. Each and every one of us had our sights on breaking through and landing a hit- a single hit- on the Stitcher.
But when I dove, Chuuya was there to meet me. A use of his ability crushed me into the ground like a cockroach under a flyswatter. I could barely crane my neck up, just to see Hale plant both of his feet into Lancelot’s unprotected side, and send him away.
Banjou had a clear shot. What must have been the greatest rage he felt in his life fueled him as he yelled out and slammed a lever on his belt.
“SCRAP BREAK!”
A pair of dragon wings formed over his shoulders, and a glowing blue energy surrounded him as he leapt high into the air, and aimed his kick straight down at the Stitcher. There wazs nothing in the way. Nothing that looked like it could stop him.
Fourze reached down and swapped things in his belt. ”Rocket, Drill, On!”
A rocket emerged from his left arm and he soared, up, even higher than the heights Banjou had reached. From above, he pulled a lever on his belt.
”Rocket-Drill LIMIT BREAK.”
They both hung in the air for a second.
Then it all came crashing back down.
Fourze hit Banjou square in the chest, blasting through and knocking Banjou away, skidding along the ground, and his armor dissolved into nothing along the way. As he rolled to a stop, I looked back at the Stitcher. “Stop this! Stop doing this!”
He didn’t look up.
“Kill your darlings.”
One more thread fired out from the nexus of black, and sailed through the air, right on target. I watched it fly, watched it arc down towards him-
Lancelot leapt up. He held his shield out, stood over Banjou’s fallen form-
The thread curved around him. It turned golden, picked up Banjou by the neck, and hauled him up into the sky, right where everybody could see.
One final thread pierced his heart, and his body never hit the ground.
Lancelot fell to the ground.
And we all lost any hope we had. How foolish were we, to think that we could fight against the one who controlled everything we did? The one that writes all the wrongs done to us, that doesn’t want to continue on this path. He was right.
There was no chance of winning.
Two shots rang out, then three more. The Stitcher raised two fingers, and the bullets were split apart by a lattice of threads.
“Ugh, how come everyone gets to be a bullet timer? It’s not fair! Some of us only have guns, you know!”
Gwen stood behind the Stitcher, a ways off, with a single pistol in her hands. The Stitcher turned, and spoke. “And then, there was one.”
The gravity stopped pressing on my back as the other fighters turned back towards Gwen, but I couldn’t muster the strength to get back up.
“Come on!” said Gwen, eyes flicking from one to the other. “You’re not so tough.”
Chuuya smirked. “We’ll still be enough for you,” he said, before raising a hand and cratering the ground just in front of her.
Gwen leapt back, kept Hale from jumping at her with a few well-placed shots. They didn’t hurt him, but it staggered him enough for her to dun back and duck behind a pillar. She reloaded, turned, and ducked another spiked-ball swing from Fourze that broke the pillar’s top.
She ran, dodging some gravity balls with luck more than skill. She looked back, and called to all of us on the ground. “Steeljack! Animal Man! Lancelot! Anybody, do something! You can’t just let it end like this!”
But none of us did anything. Gwen ducked behind a throne, switched out the gun in her hands- and got caught around the throat by a red-colored metal arm. Fourze hauled the Magic Arm back, and brought her eye to eye with the Stitcher.
The Stitcher reached out and replaced the hand around her neck with his own. Gwen kicked, struggled, but whatever strength she had wasn’t enough. “Shame. I had such high hopes for you.”
“Oh, really? Cause it looked to me like you didn’t have any hope left at all,” Gwen shot back.
The Stitcher’s face turned serious. “Any last words?”
“Heh, yeah, just one question,” Gwen said, finally stopping her struggle. “What do you call someone who’s never been published, but has already made a dozen fanfics?”
The Stitcher cocked his head, as if to invite the response.
“A writer.”
The grip around Gwen’s windpipe tightened. “Goodbye.”
The Stitcher wrapped threads around his other arm, in the shape of a blade coming from his wrist. He held Gwen up, pulled his arm back, and
“Stop right there.”
Lancelot stood a good twenty feet away, with his sword leveled at the Stitcher. “You will not kill her on my watch.”
“[Oh?]” said the Stitcher, almost sounding amused. “What are you gonna do about it?”
Lancelot addressed the one in the Stitcher’s grasp next. “Gwen, you were watching when I fought the shadow of Adolin, yes?”
“Yeah, why,” Gwen choked out.
“I understand what must be done, now. It is not enough to win the fight with might alone; or rather, might alone is not enough to win the fight,” Lancelot continued. “We must defeat him through using his flaws, by showing him that even though they may be true, they are no death sentence. We must show him what his eyes have not seen.”
“What?” said the Stitcher, but before he could offer some other remark, Lancelot spoke again.
“That we are here speaking to you is enough to know. You are worthy as a creator. If it were not so, then we would be in that void, lost to the knowledge of the world. Your existence proves that you cannot be correct! That victory can be won this day!”
The Stitcher didn’t respond to that. But it provided the opening Gwen needed. She swung her katanas down, and severed his hand completely, before she ran back towards us.
Yeah. Us.
Slowly, I picked myself up from the ground. If we could use what Lancelot said we could, if we could turn everything around by proving to this guy that he was worth something, that his creations- that our story was something everyone wanted to see.
We had to take the chance.
I looked over at Steeljack. He looked back at me, and smirked. “Never thought I’d be fightin’ to save the whole world before this.”
“Guess it’s just one of those things superheroes do,” I replied.
A sound like a measuring tape contracting reached our ears. The Stitcher reattached his hand onto the frayed edge where it was left, looking no worse for wear. “That means nothing.” he declared.
He swept forwards with his hand, and Hale marched forward to meet us. “But if you want a fight, you’ve got one.”