Chương 390: Book Eight, Chapter 57: Bobby II

The Quiet One Type: Rule/Insight/Debuff Archetype: Wallflower Aspect: -- Stat Used: -- It's easy to tell when a character is about to do a heel turn when they can't keep their mouths shut, but who could expect it from someone who was rarely in frame, whose lines were never the focus of the story, whose motivations were never the priority? Typecast: The player must stay in character as a [secret villain] or else all of their tropes will be unquipped.

Setup: The user can enter storylines to manipulate their starting position in a manner related to their role without triggering the Omen. The user will be cast as a minor antagonist. Their schemes succeed or fail based on the true antagonist's stats in addition to their own. Before the storyline begins, the user may circumvent the omen and manipulate the setup to include fellow players as victims, or otherwise place protagonists at an extreme starting disadvantage. The Omen must be triggered by other players.

The more difficult the startup for the players, the more all enemies' Plot Armor and stats will be debuffed. The user receives direction from the script to enact the antagonist's will. Allies will have reduced Insight into the user while this trope is in use. The true measure of a protagonist isn't that they do good or bad, but that they push the story forward. Just don't push it further than you can handle. Bobby Gill stepped out of the magical cafe and immediately felt the cold deep in his bones.

The remains of the Hatching House were almost completely covered in snow by now. He needed to get back to the sauna where the others were, but he had something else to do first. The house had many rooms, too many. Carousel would never have shown it, but there were rooms for all occasions, roughly worked together in illogical ways. The viewing audience would never know because of editing, so it didn't matter. Bobby only wanted to find what remained of one of those rooms.

It had been a game room or perhaps a trophy room, with many mounted animal heads and guns hung from the walls, all of which were disabled so they couldn't be used during the storyline or afterward. But there was something in the room that interested Bobby. It had hung from the ceiling. After he started fumbling through the wreckage and the newly fallen snow, he found it pretty quickly.

It was a large canoe, clearly decorative when it was inside the house, but as far as he could tell, it would function just fine with the four of them inside. After he had dug all the rubble out of it, he flipped it over so that no more snow would accumulate in it, and then he went about finding the oars, which wasn't so difficult. Only then could he reenter the sauna and let the warmth radiate through his nearly frozen body.

"Where have you been?" Kelsey asked as soon as he opened the door.

"We were about to go look for you." The less he said, the better. Luckily, no one ever really talked to him if they could avoid it, especially after his NPC wife had shown up. It was a lonely existence.

"Found a boat," he said simply.

"A boat?" Isaac asked.

"You're not seriously thinking we're going back out on the water, are you? Don't you remember how it went last time?"

"Last time we didn't have a boat," Bobby answered. He went back over to the corner he had been sitting in to warm up. It was always an argument with these people. There was always someone who wanted to maintain the status quo so much that they would shoot down any argument about changing it, even if the status quo was terrible. Change was so much scarier. It didn't matter. He knew that he would be able to convince them. They had no food, after all, and it was hard to argue for the status quo on an empty stomach.

- Their path back onto the water was an easy one. The river was right at the front of the property where the house had been. All they had to do was haul the canoe over to it.

"Maybe next time we find a storyline, you should equip that trope that makes sure that there's plenty of food," Ramona said as they made their way down the river.

"That way, when we find a place to stay safe, maybe we'll have something to eat." Bobby nodded. For most of the trip, the others were talking about plans: how they would stay safe, how they would find home, how they would find the others. They didn't need to know that Bobby already had all that covered.

"We take the next right," Bobby said. He had one of the only two oars, so it was easy for him to influence the direction they went.

"How do you know that?" Isaac asked.

"The script," Bobby said.

"What does the script say exactly?" Isaac asked. Bobby couldn't say. It would give the game away.

"It says send Isaac down the left path," Ramona said.

"Everybody else goes down the right." She splashed some water up at him.

"I told you to stop doing that!" Isaac snapped. Ramona had learned that the only way to stop Isaac from being a contrarian was to distract him. Bobby glanced back over his shoulder at her, and she gave him a reassuring nod. She had his back. That didn't make this any easier. He didn't feel the need to explain himself. When the river split in two, they took the correct turn, and that was all that mattered. Well, it wasn't the only thing that mattered.

A leak sprang up in the boat not long after that, right under Isaac. It wasn't an emergency, not really; Isaac could keep it plugged with a piece of cloth if he held it there manually, but it sure did make things scary. They would need an alternative. Bobby didn't know how long they had to go, and he didn't know if that hole in the boat would get bigger. This new version of the script gave him information he had no right to have. His new Quiet One trope was incredibly powerful.

It wasn't meant for players of his level. This script was so large and comprehensive that he could get his team where they needed to go from anywhere in Carousel. Bad guys really did have it easier. When the canoe sprang a leak, the script immediately gave him choices about what to do next in order to accomplish the goals of his master, whoever they may be.

"Right up here," he said as the river started to flow through a flooded parking lot. It wasn't just a parking lot, he soon realized; it was a whole airport, a small regional one for sure, but still a big building. Large, unnatural clouds hung over the structure, pouring down rain so thick it looked like a waterfall. The script simply told him that he needed to get into that building, and he needed to do it when the rain stopped.

"Why are we going in here?" Isaac asked.

"Don't you think it's weird how those clouds look?" In fact, it was weird, but Bobby wasn't so concerned with it. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"See, it's an omen," Isaac said, having used his scouting trope to identify the threat.

"There's something in those clouds, and that rain isn't natural. If it touches us, we're going to enter a really dangerous storyline."

"Then we don't let it touch us," Bobby said.

"Come on, hurry." Ramona and Kelsey looked at each other. Maybe they weren't used to Bobby taking the lead, but they couldn't let him leave without them. They abandoned the canoe, only taking the oars with them. When they got to the edge of the storm clouds, they waited for the rain to stop, and when it did, they made a beeline for the front entrance of the airport. A group of survivors was there, unlocking the doors and removing barricades they had thrown up to let the players inside.

They closed the doors right after Isaac made it in. He had hung back initially, but when he realized the others didn't want to listen to him, he ran full speed to catch up and happened to make it inside right before the rain started back up again. The survivors inside immediately began expressing their humanity in all the warm, glowy ways that Bobby expected them to, asking them where they had come from, if they'd heard any news, if the local military base was still operational, yada yada yada.

Bobby didn't care about any of that. He walked straight past them, past a long wall of windows, toward the loading gate for one of the few airplanes that was ready to be boarded.

"Are you a pilot?" one of the NPCs asked him. He could be if he wanted to. He was a Recast aspect, after all. He could be anything, but that wasn't the goal. Flying away might have worked, he didn't know, but the script didn't tell him to fly away. He just needed to be on the plane. It didn't take him too long to figure out why. The script didn't tell him everything, but it gave him enough that he could piece it together. He passed right by the NPC without answering any questions.

Back in the day, he could waste away the hours talking to NPCs, but he had work to do, and he didn't intend to stay long. He ran down the gate until he got to the open door of the airplane and stepped inside. There were more NPCs in there, sleeping in the seats. They sat up and asked if he was a pilot.

"Go back to sleep," he said. He started looking around the front of the plane, where the stewardess would stay, until he found what he was after. It was a small plane, and it had emergency supplies if they needed to make a landing. What he was after was in a large red bag. He didn't know how durable it was, but it was better than a canoe with a hole in it.

He was quickly back out of the plane, down the gate, and across the large boarding area, where he found Kelsey, Ramona, and Isaac eating food that the NPCs had offered them.

"There's a hole in the sky," one of the NPCs was saying.

"That's not a cloud, that's fog leaking through. Whatever's over there, it's just waiting for us." The NPCs were shooting off lines that might help them if they triggered the Omen, but none of the players had any intention to.

"What's that?" Kelsey asked as she saw what was in his hand. She was eating from a tray of finger sandwiches. Bobby grabbed a handful and started eating them. He was quite hungry.

"This is our ride out of here," he said as he held the red bag up so she could see what it was.

"A life raft," she said.

"That's brilliant. How did you think of that?" Why else would the script suddenly add details about the galley of an airplane? Bobby chewed two or three of the finger sandwiches for a moment and then said, "I watched Cast Away a few too many times, I guess. We need to be by the door so we can make a break for the river as soon as it stops raining. We can't afford to stay here with the Omen literally raining down on us."

The NPCs were reacting as if the conversation were somehow in character, but Bobby and the others ignored them.

"Are we sure that an emergency raft is better than what we have?" Isaac asked.

"Are those things made for rivers? Usually, it's people just floating in the open ocean." Bobby didn't fault Isaac for asking. It was a good question. This wasn't the type of raft that was normally used on rivers. It wasn't like Isaac could know the enormous narrative momentum that would drive them to their destination.

"It will work at least as well as a broken canoe," Ramona said. Isaac considered this for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders. They waited by the door until the rain stopped, and then they ran back out to the river where their canoe was, deployed the emergency raft, and set sail on the water as soon as possible. While the raft was sturdy, made of heavy rubber, it was hexagonal and had no front or back, so they found themselves spinning occasionally.

Using the canoe's oars allowed them to steady themselves and even steer. And Bobby knew exactly where they needed to steer to. He almost laughed to himself; it was so easy. The script told him which direction to take, and he followed. The river existed in the storyline they were heading to, and his character knew it well. He thought about how much the other group must be struggling for every mile; he couldn't even imagine how they were navigating the river without the explicit knowledge he had.

Riley would find a way. Lucky had told him as much. Riley was going to find the group, and Bobby would need to be ready for when he did. In fact, because of Bobby, Riley's efforts would pay off all that much faster. They saw monsters and killers on the shore, but none of them bothered the emergency raft. While the others prepared for battle as a large snake entered the water, Bobby wasn't afraid. That snake had no sway over the narrative. Someone else did, someone or something in the distance.

Bobby didn't know yet, but when he chose his path, he was also choosing his master, choosing the true antagonist of the storyline he was headed toward. He didn't know how it would all work together, but he felt everything falling into place. They were heading to a storyline right on the edge of their destination. Heroes had to struggle to get where they were going, but bad guys rarely did.

In fact, it was a cliché that whenever the good guys finally arrived at their destination in an adventure story, the bad guys would already be there, waiting with a trap prepared. Whatever doubts Bobby had about his decision-making, he had to swallow them. He had already gone too far. The boat they were in was powered by the sheer narrative weight of the storyline he was headed toward and whatever evil lay within it. He didn't want to know what would happen if he changed his mind. So he sailed on.

The others were none the wiser. He explained to them that he was doing his best to interpret the script and keep them out of danger. It was working, so eventually they accepted it. They still had doubts. Isaac had doubts because he was Isaac. Kelsey had doubts because she didn't trust anyone or trust happiness at all, and Ramona had doubts because she knew nothing came this easily. Bobby didn't have any doubts. All he had was a plan. - They must have gone 50 miles downriver.

Snow turned to rain, and rain turned to desert, and desert turned to forest, and forest turned to jungle. They were almost there. It had been so easy. That scared Bobby more than anything else. There was going to be a price for all that smooth sailing. The jungle grew around them until they couldn't even see the sun.

The water was dark, and the path was darker, filled with evil, dangerous things, but Bobby knew where to go, and whatever evil was in the river, it paled in comparison to the evil he was acting on behalf of. The Quiet One certainly was a powerful trope. All he had to do was go a little further, take the others down a dangerous path, and then they could wait for Riley and his team to come save the day, just like they always did. The NPC sanctuary would be their reward. Lucky had assured him of that.

The path Bobby was on would take them right next to the neighborhood; it was a shortcut. His stomach churned as they got closer and closer to their destination.

"All right," he said, "I'm not exactly sure what to do now. I kept choosing the safest option we were given, but just because this is safer, it doesn't mean it's harmless." He had taken charge. Now, he needed to cede command to someone else so that he might be able to keep his treachery a secret.

"We understand," Kelsey said.

"We need to find an easy storyline around here so that we can beat it and get shelter for the night. I'm not sure I like the jungle, but I like it a lot better than the frozen wasteland we were on." Bobby nodded.

"Are there any omens on that dock up ahead?" she asked Isaac. Isaac shrugged and looked up at it. He had been muttering to himself throughout the entire ride in order to gain information on the various omens on the river.

"It's a little convenient for there to be a dock right there in the middle of nowhere, isn't it?" he asked aloud. Everyone in the boat waited for some omen to reveal itself, but none did.

"Should be safe," Isaac said. They steered their way over toward it. Kelsey reached out and grabbed onto it, and each of them climbed aboard as they hauled their emergency raft up onto the dock.

"We need to set up camp," she said.

"It's about to be dark. Isaac, find us a storyline. Hopefully one with a nice long Party Phase."

"I'm on it," he said.

"Wait a second. There's a storyline right over there," he said as he stared up through the trees at a large mountain in the distance. Smoke could be seen rising from the forest; either there was a fire or some kind of human encampment. Isaac muttered something to himself about them not being alone in the forest, and then he said, "Yeah, it's a storyline. Wait a second. This is weird." Bobby and the others stared up at the smoke, trying to see the storyline on the red wallpaper, but failing.

Bobby probably couldn't even see the title of it on the script, but he knew it was his direction.

"What's weird about it?" Ramona said.

"The title," Isaac said.

"You'll never believe what it is." He grinned from ear to ear for a moment.

"What is it?" Kelsey asked, annoyed.

"It's called Antoine Stone and the Sunken Cradle Part II. Can you believe that? Hey, Bobby, you went on that storyline, right? Can you believe it's still called Antoine Stone even though he's not here?" For the first time since Bobby had begun enacting his plan, it finally struck him exactly what he had done. Antoine Stone and the Sunken Cradle had been one of the hardest storylines he had ever been on, and they had barely beaten it. They didn't tell the others exactly how close they came to failure.

That storyline had haunted everyone who had gone on it. The storyline always changed its title based on the person who was cast as the main character. The fact that Carousel kept Antoine's name was an act of mockery. Carousel just had to put the sequel between him and the answers he so desperately wanted. As hard as the first was, this one would be impossible, or at least nearly. Had he made a mistake after all?

"Yeah, it's pretty strange," Bobby said, unable to mask his fear.

"We're going to have to stay away from that," Kelsey said.

"It would be hard to run a storyline without the protagonist." Of course, she didn't know that the protagonist was on his way.

"I don't know, I think Bobby here would make a great Antoine Stone," Ramona said. Bobby stared up at the smoke. Was it from campfires or from something else? He swallowed his fear as best he could. There was no way this was going to be easy, and Carousel had picked the perfect storyline to test his resolve. Kimberly, Antoine, and Riley would find a way to beat it. They always did. Bobby was always going to do whatever he had to do to push his throughline forward, even if the thing he had to do was die.

He certainly wouldn't survive after all he had done, what he was about to do. That didn't matter. Dying was the easiest part.