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
As they talked, Revy and Ladd had been slowly progressing through the room, checking the various boxes and loose machines scattered throughout. Karma and Morgan continued to slink around the time machine, making sure to stay as silent as possible and remain out of sight. They matched each other’s gaze. Karma removed the pistol Morgan had given him from his waistband and gestured towards the secondary intruders, but Morgan shook her head.
Revy and Ladd had been waiting for the chance to invade ARIA’s base, and Morgan and Karma had let them in. Any way you looked at it, these two were killers, and taking them out now would be doing the world a service. Admittedly Karma didn’t really care about that as much as he just wanted to fight them, but still, the thought was there.
“Too risky,” Morgan whispered. “Let’s slip out the exit when their backs are turned.”
“And just let the borderline serial killers go about their business?” Karma asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I’m not gonna let you risk your life just to fight some other humans.” Morgan said a little bit louder. “Typhon and ARIA are enemies we don't have a choice but to fight, but fighting these people would just be reckless.”
Before they could continue the argument, the decision was made for them.
“Heh, hey Revy! Check out this thing!” Ladd’s voice was close enough to make Morgan jump in surprise. “Whaddya suppose it’s for?” “Beats me. What do batshit AI bitches usually do with satellites?”
“Hmm… I dunno. But I bet ARIA would be preeeeetty upset if we destroyed it.”
“Heh, that’s the first good thing to come outta your shit spewing mouth all day.”
Karma grinned, once again eyeing Morgan. Surely she wouldn’t let these idiots blow fill her precious time machine full of holes. She lowered her head and let out a deep sigh.
“Dammit.”
Karma moved, dashing around the corner of the time machine to meet the widening eyes of Ladd. Leaping forward, Karma delivered a swift roundhouse straight to Ladd’s jaw. Spit, slightly tainted with blood, spewed out of his mouth from the blow, peppering what remained of the white on his shoulder with red spots as he tumbled to the ground.
Morgan immediately followed up the attack with a shot from her GLOO cannon. The gelatinous white material engulfed Ladd’s hand and immediately expanded, trapping both his arm and the shotgun he held in place. Rather than look angry, Ladd’s expression transformed into an even wider grin.
“Finally,” He muttered excitedly. “Fresh meat…”
A quarter second after the words had left his lips, Revy was already in the process of drawing her pistols and pointing them at Karma and Morgan. Karma gave Morgan a push, the force generated narrowly knocking them both out of the way of the incoming torrent of gunfire. He rolled backwards, using the momentum of the push to position himself behind the contents of one of the many storage shelves.
“What the hell are a brat and an astronaut doing here!?” Revy shouted angrily, ducking behind cover of her own as Karma began returning fire. “Don’t tell me you guys are ARIA’s security team.”
“Nothing like that.” Karma chuckled. “I just can’t stand adults who think they can run around and do whatever they want without consequences. Plus you seem like good entertainment.”
“Oh I’ll do more than entertain you.”
A spray of bullets peppered the ground just to the right of where Karma was standing, tearing a hole in the pants of his school uniform that had somehow managed to survive this long. Karma’s grin shrank slightly. Had she moved positions already? Reaching inside one of the boxes that he was using for cover, he grabbed an expensive looking device and held it out in clear view. It was quickly shredded to bits, the glass and metal pieces falling in such a way that he could pinpoint where Revy had relocated: closer to the opposite side of the time machine.
“Hey Revy, I could use a hand!” Ladd said, pointing to the GLOO that was still pinning down both his weapon and one of his arms.
A single bang rang throughout the room, as Revy obliged his request, shattering the hardened material containing him with a single bullet.
“YEOW!” Ladd shouted in surprise. “Yep, you’re a firecracker alright!”
Karma couldn’t just let Ladd recover and even up the numbers again. However, when he reached around the corner of his cover, to finish him off, his arm was nearly blown away by a rain of gunfire from Revy. Like it or not, he was pinned down.
Ladd flexed his freed appendage with a grin before reaching down to retrieve his weapon. However, that expression quickly changed to one of confusion once he actually looked down, finding that not one but two shotguns laid beneath him. He hesitated for a moment but quickly opted to use the weapon nearest to him. Big mistake, as the instant he had pointed it in Karma’s direction, the shotgun shifted to a deep black color, transforming into one Morgan Yu primed to swing her wrench.
“What the-”
Ladd was once again conked on the head, this time leaving him lying motionless on the floor.
“Dammit, Ladd! You’re fucking useless!” Revy growled, reaching around the corner of the time machine and taking aim at Morgan.
She pulled the trigger. Luckily for Morgan, instead of a powerful bang the only sound that appeared was a pathetic click, signifying that Revy had run out of ammo. She cursed, ducking back behind her cover to reload. Karma had been keeping track of his own bullets, determining that he had two bullets left before he would need to follow suit.
“Karma, get ready!” Morgan shouted.
Karma knew that it would probably be smarter to reload, but his curiosity at what kind of crazy ability Morgan could incorporate into her apparent plan got the better of him. He jumped out from behind his own cover, stepping on the still limp body of Ladd and standing side by side with Morgan.
She raised an open handed glove in the direction of their. Karma watched in anticipation as the ground beneath Revy’s hiding spot began to emit a bright green glow. Suddenly, a spiral of energy blasted upwards, lifting both Revy and several nearby boxes almost five meters into the air. Revy floundered angrily, firing in seemingly random directions as she attempted and failed to get her bearings.
She was beaten, but still dangerous. Karma raised his silenced pistol in the air, ready to end the scuffle. It was a strange feeling. Karma had boasted that he would be ready to take a life at any given time, but he’d never actually done it. Even killing people who were clearly dangerous and likely deserved it like Revy and Ladd felt like it would be crossing some sort of line, as if any facsimile of his childhood innocence would disappear forever.
BANG!
Karma froze, widening his eyes in surprise at sharp noise that had been frighteningly close to his ears. The vortex that had been levitating Revy dissipated, allowing her and the various boxes it had been carrying to crash to the ground. Karma felt something pepper his cheek as a dull thud hit the ground to his left, confirming what Karma had already feared.
Karma hadn’t fired that shot.
He whipped his arm around, but it was halted in place as an overwhelming force grabbed his wrist. Karma winced as he felt his radius crack, along with some other bones in his wrist and hand. Physically unable to maintain his grip or pull the trigger, Karma dropped the pistol, which clacked off the ground. Despite the copious amount of blood running from his head wound and staining his collar, Ladd couldn’t look happier.
“Nice try slugger, but sometimes kids like you need to just sit back and let the adults have their fun!” Ladd grabbed Karma’s shoulder and kneed him square in the gut.
Karma fell to his hands and knees, the force of the blow causing his eyes to water and sending bile up his esophagus and into his mouth. He felt a strange wetness on his palms. Opening his eyes, he was filled with disgust to find that he had landed in a puddle of a sickly red liquid. This was of course, the blood leaking from the stump that Ladd’s shotgun had reduced Morgan’s head to.
“Yep. Life’s a fickle thing, ain’t it?” Ladd said calmly. “One minute you’re on top of the world, thinking nothing can take you down, and then BANG! Shotgun to the head!”
Karma crawled over to Morgan’s body, throwing himself over it.
“Most folks tend to think they’re invincible. Sure, bad things happen to people all the time, but there’s no way they could ever die horrible deaths. They’re normal people.” He grabbed a fistful of Karma’s hair and lifted him into the air. “And let met tell ya, squirt. Nothin’ gets me going like givin’ those people a heaping dose of reality.”
“Well… sorry to disappoint.” Karma coughed, flashing Ladd his best attempt at a casual expression despite the unbearable pain he was in. “But I’m not afraid to die.”
“Is that right…?” Ladd asked, clearly not buying Karma’s claim. “I’ve seen the eyes of someone who’s ready to die. Why do you think I haven’t shot a hole in my partner over there?”
“Bite me!” Revy shouted, finally recovering from Morgan’s levitation trick.
“See, she’s kinda like the typhon in a way. Hunters that have accepted the fact that they might be prey one day. You put a gun barrel between their eyes, or a knife to their neck, sure they’ll keep fighting, but there’s no fear. Do you understand why this is such an important moment for me, kid? I’ve killed so many things in the past few days and none of them have given me the look I’m looking for.”
Karma felt the tip of something sharp poking into his neck. Likely some kind of pocket knife. Instinctively, Karma’s eyes narrowed and his lips quivered.
“That’s it!” Ladd laughed. “That’s the look!”