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/Ultim8_Lifeform Nov 28 '22
While he would never admit it, even Karma found the building’s interior unnerving. There was nothing visible outside of their small bubble of light, and the only sound was their own footsteps. There could be a typhon standing a few meters in front of them and they would have no idea.
Eventually, they arrived at a staircase. With no way to go but forward, the duo progressed, traveling down into the shadowy depths of ARIA’s base. It was long, with Karma suspecting they’d traveled at least a half-dozen stories underground by the time they reached the bottom, but the claustrophobic corridor finally opened up into a large, albeit still musty, room. Following Morgan’s flashlight with his gaze, Karma saw the entrances of multiple other hallways branching out in various directions.
It appeared to be some sort of central hub of ARIA’s dirty secrets.
“Do you see anything that looks like a place we can stick this flashdrive?” Morgan asked as she cautiously scanned the room.
“Can’t say I do. You wouldn’t happen to have an extra flashlight, would you?”
“Sorry.”
Karma ran his hand along the wall near the door frame they had just emerged from. After a few seconds, he felt a recognizable shape. He flipped the switch upward, causing the room to become bathed in artificial lighting. Karma shied away, closing his eyes to avoid being completely blinded.
“Careful!” Morgan reprimanded. “We don’t know what kind of security ARIA has in place!”
“It’ll be fine,” Karma said as his eyes adjusted to the light. “If we were gonna die, I’m pretty sure ARIA wants it to be against the typhon. I don’t see any of her security being too deadly.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I usually am.”
Now able to see properly, Karma surveyed the room. In the center, various pieces of large machinery stood motionless. A thin layer of dust showing that some hadn’t been used in some time, while others were perfectly spotless. They appeared to be part of some sort of assembly line, but Karma couldn’t guess exactly what they were meant to be building.
“I’m not seeing anything.” Morgan concluded, turning towards Karma. “Looks like we’ll have to do some exploring.”
“Ooo, should we split up and look for clues?” Karma grinned, to which Morgan responded by grabbing his arm and dragging him towards the nearest hallway.
The facility was surprisingly expansive. Karma had no idea how Ultratech managed to build the entire secret underground factory without anyone finding out about it, but nonetheless it was there. They’d spent about twenty minutes exploring, now arriving at their third room, and so far they’d had tough luck finding a tool that could take down ARIA.
The first had been full of even more unused machinery, none of which had really caught their interest. The second had been filled with some sort of high tech generators that Morgan had recognized as using nuclear power. Supposedly the generator’s casings would protect them from any radiation, but they both decided it was best to move on quickly.
Now they stood at the entrance to some sort of storage room, but that description alone didn’t really do it justice. It was more like a miniature warehouse, with shelves that stood several stories high and were each chalked full of boxes or otherwise covered items. Even moreso than the earlier parts of the facility, Karma’s nose was attacked with a musty stench, almost as if the air itself had grown stale.
“Do we really feel like searching this entire room?” Karma sighed, his patience of the ‘finally fighting back against ARIA’ plan wearing thin. “I know we’ve got time, but we are still on the clock, you know.”
“Just… give me a second.” Morgan muttered, almost to herself.
Karma raised an eyebrow as Morgan briskly walked through the various rows of shelves with a noticeable sense of purpose. Her gaze was focused on the back corner of the room, where an object tall enough to tower over them both was covered in a red tarp with the Ultratech logo on it. Curious, Karma followed her.
Wrapping a gloved hand around one of the tarp’s corners, she gave it a mighty tug. Even before the fabric had hit the ground, Morgan had let out an audible gasp. She had revealed some sort of machine, the shape of which reminded Karma of a satellite. It had two rectangular panels roughly the size of the machine itself extending from either side of the main cylindrical body. Morgan approached the machine’s exterior, placing her hand on some faded text that had been painted on the side. FG204.
“What’s up?” Karma asked.
“It’s here…” Morgan muttered. “The whole time, it was here.”
“What is?”
“My time machine.”
2014.04.10 13:06:32:10
ARIA hovered over the Radio Kaikan building, waiting for the first of the participants to arrive as the alarm was sounded from the Akihabara Ultratech branch. This was unprecedented. None of her prediction models had come up with the possibility of trespassers in her base. Was this the result of that unlicensed access of Ultratech’s network that she had detected earlier that day?
She had immediately expunged the hacker and closed up any security weaknesses that they could exploit a second time, but apparently that hadn’t been enough. No matter, she had installed security measures specifically so that she would not need to concern herself with such matters. It was a pity that the intruders would throw their lives away so carelessly, but there were things in that base that ARIA could not risk falling into the wrong hands.
She would let her guard dog handle them.
2014.04.10 13:06:32:11
Before Karma could react to their discovery, something made him freeze in place. If it wasn’t for his exceptional hearing and the fact that other than them the facility had been dead quiet, he may not have noticed it in time. However, turning his head towards the storage room’s entrance, it was unmistakable. Voices.
Karma practically tackled Morgan, dragging her behind the time machine as the noises grew closer. Luckily, Morgan had the sense not to make any loud response, as Morgan wouldn’t have been able to cover her mouth through her helmet. Mere seconds after they had safely hidden themselves behind the machine’s base, two figures arrived in the doorway.
“Cmon, we’ve gotta find something excitin’ soon! I’ve been itchin’ to kill something and typhon just ain’t gonna cut it anymore!”
“Would you quit your bitching already? I heard you the first fucking eight times.”
Karma poked his head a few inches out from under their cover to get a read on the newcomers, who couldn’t look more different. The first was a tan woman with brown hair that had been tied up into a ponytail. Her body was impressively toned, which was on full display thanks to her outfit which consisted solely of a black tank top and denim shorts that covered nothing but the bare essentials. She held a lit cigarette between the lips of her irritated scowl, which was quickly beginning to stink up the storage room.
The second looked like he belonged at an upper class social gathering… or maybe a casino. He wore a tuxedo that had presumably been all white at some point, but now its sleeves and chest were stained with an inky black substance, likely the result of slaying typhon. Unlike the woman’s eyes, which were just furrowed like she was pissed off, the man’s wide blue eyes had a sort of manic energy that combined with his wide grin looked like he could snap at any moment.
They were both armed, with the woman’s hands gripping two large pistols that were holstered at her sides and the fancy suited man casually holding a shotgun over his shoulder. They were clearly prepared to fight. By all accounts those two should be on the same team as Karma and Morgan, but their words made Karma hesitate to reveal himself.
“Ya know, Revy. I’m startin’ ta think we should’ve just gone and done the challenge. At least then we woulda had somethin’ ta do instead a’ walking around some dingy dump like this.” The man said in possibly the strongest American accent Karma had ever heard.
The woman, Revy, unholstered her weapons and pointed one of them directly to the man’s forehead. “For the last time, shut the fuck up! Two days of camping out and we finally got a chance to see what that ARIA bitch has been hiding in here. There’s no way in hell I’m gonna pass up this opportunity just cause the psychopath got bored. So unless you want me to give you a second asshole, you’ll put a sock in it. Huh, Ladd? How’s that sound?”
“Yeesh. Temper temper. You know, usually I only ask out classy ladies.” Ladd chuckled, causing the vein in Revy’s forehead to grow even larger before he continued. “Though I suppose ya do have a point. If we can find something in here that gets us outside that stinkin’ barrier, I can go back to doing what I love.”
Revy sighed, almost reluctantly reholstering her weapons. “Right, killing people.”
“Not just killing people. There’s somethin’ special about putting a bullet in people who truly believed they weren’t gonna die. The look on their faces as the light leaves their eyes is always priceless!”
“Shit, you really do get off on it.”
“Hey, I’m just an artist that appreciates his craft.”