Chương 457: Arc II, Chapter 22: The Weakness

"The Stranger said this isn't how this storyline is supposed to go," I said to Sidney as we walked into the living room.

"You seemed surprised with the change."

"I've only played it once when I was brought in through a ticket," she said as she grabbed one of the remaining chicken tenders from the plate on the counter.

"This is the kiddie ride. You watch the ghosts get closer and closer until eventually, you can see the red wallpaper for the first time. No one has to die. No one can leave." She hungrily devoured the chicken.

"Mmm. These aren't bad."

"I just followed the instructions on the bag," Bobby admitted, almost blushing.

"Why is this version different?" Antoine asked.

"Why change so many things? Couldn't the storyline have just scaled to our level? That's what the Atlas seemed to imply." Sidney shrugged her shoulders.

"Carousel had a different plan. It couldn't change the story completely. This storyline is pretty important for the Throughline in an indirect sort of way. It just took the training wheels off because you didn't need them."

"Sure," I said, "Took the training wheels off, slashed the tires, and set the whole thing on fire." Sidney nodded in agreement. She was projecting strength, as if all of this didn't bother her. I didn't know if I bought it.

"The question remains," Antoine said, "How are we supposed to beat an enemy who won't play by the rules?"

"Maybe we don't," Sidney answered. She undid her ponytail and redid it, this time tighter.

"Maybe Carousel isn't just playing hardball. Maybe, it actually wants to kill you all." She said it so matter-of-factly. Her statement hit the others like a punch to the gut. I couldn't afford to think about that possibility.

"Let's figure out what we know for sure," I said, "There had to be some way to beat Strander Blake originally before he started going off script. Antoine, what happened with you and Kimberly in the room?" Antoine thought for a moment. I could see it was painful for him to dredge up the memory. He spent so long pretending not to remember anything that recounting a tragic event was difficult.

"We talked to a spirit who was missing an arm. That spirit left quickly. Didn't say much. Talked to another spirit. The drowned woman. They kept getting closer and closer until we started hearing laughter. Then an arm stuck out from behind her and threw a flashlight through the window. The next thing I knew there was a struggle and it grabbed Kimberly. I chased after it trying to keep her alive. It went on like that for a while until she… stopped moving and I was all alone."

Throwing something through the window couldn't have been in the original storyline, but it might have been in this version.

"That part had to have been scripted," I said.

"Clearly the story was supposed to move outside at First Blood and then back inside at Second Blood. I have no idea how the blue lantern ghost was supposed to fit in."

"Strander said he wasn't supposed to grab that one," Bobby said.

"Maybe that guy wasn't supposed to be part of the story." That wasn't likely. The blue light was mentioned in the rules for the Ten Second Game.

"Not the first time you play, no," Sidney said.

"But eventually he shows up to discourage you from running the storyline too often. Can't really expand on that, but you'll understand soon anyway." We were supposed to run this storyline multiple times… No doubt to talk to a specific ghost or Geist, rather.

"We don't have much experience rerunning stories," Dina said.

"Is there something we need to know?"

"The more you rerun the story, the more you learn about it and its different possibilities," Sidney answered as she plopped down on the couch.

"Sometimes there isn't much to learn, but often there is, even if it's just a unique version that gets you more experience. Other times, you can find something that's important, but, again, you'll figure that out when you get to the next part." We asked her more questions about rescues and finding bases and she answered as much as her script allowed her to. While she could talk freely most of the time as a "player" there were clearly some topics Carousel restricted.

Namely, questions about Carousel and the script itself.

"Carousel is complicated," she eventually managed to say.

"I wasn't here for the beginning. Some Paragons take the mantle early in the timeline they might know more. My Dad and I only move to town in 1997 when I become the Scream Queen Paragon. Of course, you weren't around for that. You all came in 2022, right?" What a peculiar way to phrase that.

"You've been here for twenty-five years?" Isaac asked.

"I didn't say that," she answered, looking down at the coffee table contemplatively.

"Look, I am not used to being around new players. Maybe you should talk to Constance about the timelines after we win. Right now, we have a big battle coming up and no plans to win. Our muscle is Hobbled and all of our cute, audience-friendly characters died at the end of the first Act. I don't even have a player trope that will be useful in this part of the story."

"We know who's next," Bobby said. That was true. Isaac was next in the targeting priority assuming that none of us fell for any traps or did something incredibly stupid. Isaac was very aware of his impending doom and sat wide-eyed. His head was still bleeding, likely from a spike in blood pressure. His Incapacitated status was flickering every so often, but it was nothing to worry about.

"For what it's worth," I said, "I do have a plan. We're going to have to be careful though. Once he's onto us it'll be pretty easy for him to stop us. I think I know exactly how we're supposed to beat this guy. We have to move Cassie's body." This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it I told them my plan. If I followed the clues properly, then we had a chance. On-Screen. As soon as the camera came on, we got into character.

Luckily, being in character meant acting scared, confused, and worn out. We didn't have to dig too deep to play that part.

"I'll play," Antoine said after we sat, staring at the plastic bell on the coffee table. It worked the same as the metal one, it just sounded more like a loud rattlesnake rattle than an actual bell. I was happy not to hear the high-pitched "Briiingg" again.

"You're hurt," Dina said.

"I should do it."

"We'll both go," Antoine said, looking very nervous. He was barely holding it in. Dina snatched the plastic clapper off the table and walked with Antoine to the room we had decided would be next on our list. Antoine limped behind with his bat as a cane. Bobby's splint had stayed on pretty well, but it wasn't going to support any weight. Antoine's recovery was all Grit, determination, and movie magic. As soon as they left, we were Off-Screen for a moment.

"You sure the audience knows about your bell, right?" I asked Sidney.

"Oh, I'm sure. I had to play those scenes out." Sometimes Carousel made players play through scenes that occurred before the film and sometimes it didn't. The Stranger hadn't played through his scenes, but that was likely because the audience wouldn't see those. We waited as the silence turned into the sound of ticking. The plastic bell Sidney had brought wasn't as loud as the metal one, but it still echoed through the house. Tick. Tick. Tick. Rattle. The sound of it sent a shiver up my spine.

This went on three more times. They got three yeses and one no by my count. We still didn't know what questions we were supposed to ask, so we asked about Jedediah Geist, just as Sidney and her friends had originally. It annoyed me that there might not be any payoff to that plotline. Who was this guy and why was he important? Perhaps that was the reason we were supposed to rerun this storyline. We needed to figure out more about him. Finally, after ten or so minutes, Antoine and Dina returned. On-Screen.

We took turns going into the room and playing the game, all except Isaac. It would have been better if he could stay in the living room, but, as I suspected, the storyline wouldn't move forward that way. He was next in line to be targeted so he had to go into the room and play the Ten Second Game. Otherwise, the Plot Cycle wouldn't move an inch. After Sidney and I got back, we all looked at each other. We knew what we had to do.

"So far so good," I said, acting relieved that the mysterious Strander Blake had not made an appearance.

"Guess I'm next," Bobby said.

"I'll go too," Isaac said. He was shivering with every word. His head was in bad shape, but he knew what he had to do. Our efforts to do it differently were in vain. We couldn't avoid putting him in the line of fire forever. Dina handed the bell to Bobby. Isaac was pale and Bobby basically had to drag him. He kept staring at the couch in the middle of the room where Cassie's body had been. He was doing far better than any of us would have been on our first storyline.

Bobby led Isaac into the bedroom, but the camera stayed in the living room with the rest of us. That meant the focus was on our reactions to whatever we heard in that room. I kept telling myself that no one needed to die. Technically, we could get through the story without another person getting killed. That didn't seem likely though. We waited quietly for the game to begin. It didn't take long. Tick. Tick. Tick. Rattle. That meant yes. The process continued. Tick. Tick. Tick. Rattle. And again. Tick. Tick. Tick.

There was silence for a while.

"Cassie?" Isaac muttered quietly. My plan had worked. A chilling sound of laughter followed. It was showtime. Isaac and Bobby backed up toward the door, still making eye contact with whatever entity had arrived to greet them. Once they got out of the room, we could see them from down the hallway. Those of us in the living room stood up, ready for what came next. Isaac and Bobby turned around, breaking one of the fundamental rules of the Ten Second Game. Suddenly, as they turned, a figure appeared in the hall.

It was Cassie, or at least her spirit. She had a hand-shaped bruise around her neck and bloodshot eyes. The black thread ran through her skin, binding her to the dark figure behind her, Strander Blake.

"Isaac," she said, though her voice was scratchy and harsh from her death wound.

"I was lost in the woods. I can't believe I finally found my way back." Like most of the ghosts from this storyline, she didn't know she was dead. She had the same enemy tropes as J. T. Guzman and the rest. Bobby practically dragged Isaac out of the doorway and passed Cassie's ghost and into the living room with the rest of us.

"Where are you going?" Cassie asked harshly.

"Haven't you wondered where I was?" Isaac looked at her in horror.

"No, Cass, I've known where you were this whole time." He looked back toward the couch. So did Cassie. Right on cue, Antione and I reached down and flipped over the couch to reveal what we had put underneath it. Cassie's body. We had moved it for just this reason.

"You're dead, Cassie," Isaac said.

"That thing killed you!" Cassie's spirit looked at her body with a gaze of abject horror. She put her hands to her throat. Suddenly, she started making a gurgling sound like the one she had made when dying. The gurgling transitioned to a ghastly shriek. She stared down at the black threads in her arms and raged, pulling against them with all her might.

"No!" Strander Blake screamed from behind her. He was losing control. The clue we had been given about how to defeat him had been the fact that there was no lore about him at all. Every single bit of lore was about the ghosts that this storyline produced. Constance had relayed a story about how they lost control and got violent upon learning of their demise. That had to be significant. It just so happened that this new enemy had a strange habit of strapping ghosts to his body.

Sure, with most ghosts, that probably made him more powerful, but the ghosts from this storyline were more of a liability. Cassie transformed from the perfect image of her dead body to a spirit of pure terror. Her features darkened, her arms lengthened. She pulled at the black threads until they started snapping.

"What is happening?" Strander screamed angrily. He must not have been able to see the ghosts' tropes. He could see their powers, as he had with the blue lantern ghost, but that was the crucial difference between abilities in lore and tropes in the meta. Cassie became more demon than ghost as she tore chunks of black sinew from Strander as he screamed. He tried desperately to fight her, to bring out one of his other ghosts, but he was tied to her. The house started to shake as Strander fought for control.

I never got a good look at him, but I could tell he was struggling. The Plot Cycle was well into the Final Battle, but we weren't quite finished yet. The struggle continued as Cassie's enraged spirit damaged the walls and floor, anything in reach. Then Cassie screamed so loud I could feel the sound in my teeth as I hid around the corner. What happened next sounded like an explosion of anguish as Cassie's spirit dissipated rapidly, causing chunks of wood and wallpaper to fly around the room.

I looked out to survey the damage. Cassie was gone. Laying on the ground where she had been, was the drowned ghost of a woman that Strander had used before.

"You tricked me," she said, but even as her spirit spoke, Strander spoke too, blending to create a terrifying conjoined voice. To the audience, it would sound like Strander was talking to us, but I got the distinct impression that he was talking to Carousel itself.

"You tricked me. This wasn't the……" He found himself unable to speak.

"I'm going to kill all of them!" he screamed in rage. Then he looked at us in fury. The Final Battle wasn't yet over. What now?