r/whowouldwin • u/OddDirective • Nov 05 '22
Event Scramble 16 Round 3: Twister
EDIT: Round 3 has concluded! While there are no competitive rounds (and thus, no strict need for a voting form), we have put together a form to vote on your favorite round/who you think will win. Please check it out HERE!
Round 3: Twister
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DAY 5
The mission for today seems oddly easy for your Players. “Enter Tower Records. You have 8 hours. Fail, and face erasure.” They don’t wake up too far from the entrance, and the time limit is very generous. But hey, they’ve been fighting for their lives for a fair bit, so they’re glad to have something of a cakewalk to get to the next day.
That’s not what this is.
The Game Master has decided that the gloves are coming off now. They’ve set a simple task to their Reapers; eliminate every Player you can get your hands on. Not only that, but they’ve set up an ambush right in front of the one way to get to Tower Records, featuring some hand-picked assassins- the enemy team. For whatever reason, your Reaper can’t or doesn’t let your Players know- if they’re the Game Master (or even if not), they might have decided that your team has reached the end of their usefulness, or they could be trying to dodge the Game Master’s suspicion to avoid erasure themselves.
Whatever the case, as your team walks into the trap, they come across a lone Player, one who’s lost the rest of their team. Whether it’s because they’re still fighting, or because Players without a team can’t have gotten this far, your Players are tipped off- just in time for the enemy team to come in. To save their life, your Players form a pact with the solo Player, and prepare to face off in a battle for everyone’s second chance…
Scramble Rules
Let ‘Em Know Who You Are: Every participant this season received four characters on their team, but many of them might not be a household name. To aid with readability, please give a brief introduction and summary of your characters, with enough information so the average reader can get excited for your team before starting. That includes your adopted character this time, too!
This World Ends With You: Your writeup will depict a scenario where your team succeeds. 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!
Everybody Has Their Own World: 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
Setting: This round’s original setting is Tower Records, an iconic music store that outlived its American main branch, located in the heart of Shibuya with shelves stocked with all the latest music, in CD or vinyl. The important parts of wherever the location is is that it’s recognizable by the members of the team, and it can be set up for an ambush. There’s also more than enough time for your team to mess around and do whatever their heart desires before going into the ambush, so you can include other locations as well.
Key Points: The main idea of the round is the following. The Game Master wants to eliminate a whole load of Players, and so sets up a seemingly-easy mission to keep the Players off guard. This gives your Players time to do things other than the mission, but when they do pursue the mission, they meet a lone Player, with whom they extend their pact to stay as a team. During this, they are ambushed, and have to fight against the enemy team for their lives.
Union X: Adoptions! That’s right, it’s the adoption round. We’ve decided to be pretty open about this; there are two possibilities for who you can adopt. The first is that any Player on a team that has already been eliminated is available to adopt. We have also curated a list of unpicked backups that you can choose from. All available adoptions are HERE, and be sure to look through to find someone you’ll enjoy writing.
Post Limit: For this round, writers will be limited to 8 posts, or 80k 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.
Due Date: Writeups will be due at 11:59 PM CST on EDIT: Sunday, November 27th. That’s about two and a half weeks. At that point, the thread will be locked, and voting will go up for a few days afterwards.
Flavor Suggestions
Incongruous: Your team members might be suspicious of such an easy mission. After all, the people in charge of this don’t really want you to win, do they? Would they see this as a chance to take a break, and do things casually? Alternatively, would they rush headlong into the ambush the Game Master set up?
Dancer In The Street: Whoever you’re adopting, your team is going to be meeting them in a difficult situation, either in combat or just having come from it. But you can’t just sideline them, you’ve gotta make sure they shine! What do they bring to the table in terms of synergies? How do they fight when they’re backed into a corner? And importantly, how would your team react to finding someone on their own?
1
u/Proletlariet Nov 27 '22 edited Nov 28 '22
Ding, Dong! Bing, Bong!
”A body has been discovered!”
After a certain amount of time, which you may use however you like, a class trial will begin!
It wasn’t any less jarring the second time.
They stood gathered over Komachi’s lifeless body. Hob examined the faces of the gathered eight. Three he knew. Five, total strangers, including a woman he’d never seen before. Where was Karai?
“Yep. She’s dead alright.” Archer said.
“Dude!” 21 shot him a disgusted look.
“Just confirming it.” Archer shrugged.
Hob studied the strange red-headed woman’s conflicted expression. “Karai?” He guessed.
She nodded. “Dorothy now.”
“Alright.” Hob said. “Dorothy. How’re you holdin’ up?”
“I know even less about how to feel about that woman than I do about myself.” Dorothy admitted. “But I don’t think she deserved this.”
Just what’d happened between then and now? Hob knew better than to pry when they had limited time but he couldn’t help but wonder.
Edward’s face remained stern. “She stole the lives of who knows how many and gave them to the dead unasked for. It’s a sorry fate, but only to be expected from such madness.”
“Madness is greatness by another name.” Gilgamesh remarked. “She had an arrogant dream to change the face of death. For that, I admit to some admiration. I have no such praise for you, mongrel.”
The man wearing priest robes spoke up. “I think what we’re really getting at is that her actions influenced a lot of people. Many of us have understandable motives to do this. That makes this a complicated case.”
Hob took that as his time to enter the conversation. “Then let’s break it down.” He said. “We’ve got a much bigger area to search this time, so we’re all gonna have to split up.”
Laszlo raised his hand. “Yes, I would like to investigate the body while it’s still fresh and full of blood.”
“Absolutely not.” Said Hob. “21, you wanna take the body again since you did it last time?”
“Fine.” 21 grumbled.
“The killer may have made use of the surrounding woods.” Edward volunteered. “I’ll see what I can find. If my spine’s up to the exertion.” He shot a meaningful glower at the man with the fur cloak.
The man sighed. “If it’s entirely necessary, then I shall assist as repentance.”
“Yeah I’ll come too.” Archer agreed. “I’ve got some stuff I left out there anyway.”
“Dorothy and I were the ones closest to the murder when it happened.” Said the priest.
“Yes.” Dorothy said. “We should retrace our steps and see if we can learn anything from that.”
“Very well.” The priest agreed. “Gilgamesh, would you like to come?”
“Mm? Are you tethered to me Kirei?” Gilgamesh smirked. “Run along. A King does not do a peon’s labour.”
“Great. Another case where somebody’s doing nothing to help.” 21 muttered.
“Insolence! You are unworthy of the service I am providing.” Gilgamesh snapped. “By my golden fortune, all precious items find their way to me. In this case, I shall allow the most valuable clues to come into my arms. Rejoice, mongrels. It is a rare day a king shares his treasures.”
“So you’re gonna stand here and wait for the murder to solve itself.” 21 summarised.
“And supervise you that you shall not taint the evidence.” Gilgamesh added. “You are not such a lowly insect that I do not consider you a suspect.”
It wasn’t a bad point, if badly delivered.
“Alright. I’m gonna make a map of the area and where we were all standing at the time. If we’re doing groups of two, that leaves me with…”
Laszlo waved happily at him.
“Jesus Christ.” Hob swore.
Laszlo hissed.
“Sorry, sorry.”
As it turned out Laszlo was actually a really useful partner.
Other than never shutting up anyway.
As a bat, he could get an excellent overhead view of the rooms. Plus, he was able to easily fit into the vents and traverse them in record time. Soon enough they had a rough but ready map of Tower Records in hand.
“Well look at us. A vampire and a werewolf working together.” Laszlo said happily, slapping Hob on the back. “What a win for diversity, eh?”
“Yeah sure. Nice work.”
Hob tried to reckon what to do with the spare time they had. They had the map already. Maybe it was time to get started on locations and alibis.
“Hey pal, what exactly were you doing up until we bumped into each other again?” Hob asked.
“Mm? I was wandering about the second storey. Sort of like a labyrinth of music up there. A musical labyrinth.”
“Alright.. Were you looking for anything in particular?” He asked.
“More of my songs for one.” He answered. “D’you know ‘Chum On Irene?’ One of my favourites, that one. They had a version but all the lyrics were wrong. Must’ve been a parody.”
“Not a music guy.” Hob brushed him off. “You said for one. Anything else you were doing?”
“After a while I got a bit peckish. Lost a lot of blood in that scrap with you, like I said. So went looking for someone good to drink. That’s when I bumped into you.”
Hob sighed. It wasn’t exactly an alibi. But he wasn’t inclined to disbelieve it either. It’s not as though his own was any better. As far as he could remember, he’d tussled with Laszlo, come to whatever weird understanding they had now, and come downstairs to find Gilgamesh had literally wrecked shop.
Maybe a visit with Dorothy and her new priest friend would shed some light on things.
He grabbed Laszlo and dragged him along with him. “Come on. I’m not leaving you unsupervised with a fresh corpse outside.”
Dorothy and the priest---Kirei, Gilgamesh had called him---were examining a stack of brown cardboard boxes in a small side office.
Hob cleared his throat and the two turned around.
“Ah.” The priest greeted him. “This is the room Lady Onozuka fell from. Dorothy and I were examining traces the killer may have left.”
Dorothy held up Komachi’s scythe. “She was disarmed before she was killed. No blood on the blade itself, so she didn’t land a hit.”
“There’s more.” Kirei said. He pointed at one box, stacked on top of two others. The slats hung open, revealing a pile of strange symbols. Hob considered that they might be stickers at first, but when I went to pick one up he felt cold metal. Fridge magnets.
Another box lay on its side. It’d spilled its contents across the floor; hundreds of novelty pens tipped with miniature celebrity bobbleheads.
“Think they mighta gotten bumped in the struggle?” Hob asked.
“It’s my working theory.” Kirei agreed. "Though I wonder how an impact opened the magnets without spilling the box as well."
“Could you two tell me what you were doing betore the murder?” Hob asked.
“It’s hard to recall.” Dorothy said. “I was there when it happened but…”
Hob shot to attention. If they had an eyewitness that could be the key to cracking this thing.
“What’d you see of it?” He asked. “Didja get a read on their height, their build?”
“No.” Dorothy shook her head. “No. My senses weren’t responding. Something struck my head and everything went into a haze. I could only make out the motion. Two people struggled, then my sight died entirely and when it came back, she was bleeding outside.” She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. “I feel like if I concentrated, I could put it together, but when I try to replay it it’s broken. I’m sorry.”
Hob put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be. Listen, the last thing we need is you drivin’ yourself in circles over this. Clear your head the best you can. We’ll figure it out. Both of us’ve got experience with mind screws, right?”
Dorothy smiled. “If you can call spending the first part of your life thinking about nothing but naps and tuna mentally taxing.”
“You wound me.” Hob joked. “String was pretty high up there too.”
Kirei coughed politely. “If I could give my account, poor as it might be. I left Gilgamesh to handle the three men in the sound system showroom and headed directly to meet with Lady Onozuka.”
“Why’d you want to meet with the boss so badly?” Laszlo asked contemptuously. “Were you going to try to brown nose her? I already had that idea.”
Kirei laughed. “No Laszlo. I merely felt something off upon arriving. That’s as far in depth as I’ll go before the trial.”
“There was one more thing.” Dorothy said. “I need another eye for this. Kirei and I disagree.” She indicated one wall where a group of signed albums hung in frames. “Do those look a little off to you?”
Hob studied them. “I guess they’re hung kinda far apart.” He shrugged.
“We’ll talk about the matter more if it comes up.” Kirei interjected. “They look fine to me anyway.” Hob caught a twinge of annoyance in his voice like he was miffed at him for agreeing with her. Seemed even priests could have their petty moments.
Laszlo cleared his throat. “If we are done here? Standing within six feet of a priest causes my skin to melt very slowly.”
Hob caught the whiff of burning flesh and gagged. “Yeah, let’s get outta here.”
They found 21 hunched over the body on the grass. He’d cleared the shards of glass from the window into a little pile to avoid stepping on any.
Gilgamesh stood aloof off to one side watching him.
Archer was there too. Evidently he’d gotten bored of jungling. He clutched his carton under one arm and a very large rifle under another.
21 looked up. “Oh great. You here to watch me do the worst job too?”
“I would’ve happily done it.” Laszlo pouted.
Hob knelt by 21. “There. We’ll be autopsy buddies. Done complaining?”
Hob pulled up the Monokuma File on his prison handbook.
The victim died instantly from blunt trauma to the back of the skull. The victim also suffered minor lacerations from glass shards to the face and hands. There are two evenly spaced 3cm puncture wounds in the victim’s neck.