Chương 64: Book Five, Chapter 57: Baby Steps

We gently wrapped the crybaby's arms around the coat hooks at the entryway to the loft, both for convenience and practicality. Not to mention style. If something came along that we needed to know about, we hoped that the baby would cry and tell us. But that was actually a point of confusion—ever since we had gotten the baby, it had yet to cry even once, and we had come close to some tremendous dangers in Carousel since obtaining it. We did that every day, just walking around.

As I sat eating cream of wheat, one of the only breakfast cereals available at Eastern Carousel General Store, I stared at the baby as it hung from its hooks and wondered what exactly the trope was supposed to do. Fear of the Unknown activated around dangers the user was not aware of, seemingly a catchall. I scratched my head while I thought about it because I had a theory about why it wasn't working.

If it only worked on dangers you weren't aware of, that implied that if you were aware of the danger, it just wouldn't do anything. I wasn't the only one who was confused, but I was the only one who was thinking about it that morning—the day after we had purchased it. Everyone else was preoccupied. We had decided to postpone our journey to the Speakeasy for a day because we wanted to get there around midday, as we had been told that we needed to leave at closing time, whenever that was.

So, the sooner we got there in the day, the more time we would have to explore, and more importantly, the longer we would get to put off doing the dangerous endeavor of going to the Speakeasy itself. We knew, in theory, that this was how Carousel often worked back before the days of Camp Dyer—before everything started coming apart at the seams. You find a problem, you go to a Paragon to get an answer, and you follow their directions, continuously chasing clue after clue until you get your answer.

In a way, our mission was almost mundane by Carousel standards. We weren't trying to figure out some grand scheme or understand the nature of Carousel; we were just trying to figure out the name and location of a specific omen. I had to assume that such quests were one of the reasons that Paragons existed in the first place. Still, as I stared at the baby, waiting for it to start crying, I could feel myself growing nervous because everything we had done seemed to be going a little too well.

Maybe it was just the fake tutorial that had given me that anxiety, but the Paragons were helpful, and it felt like we were making progress. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The others were watching The Strings Attached in the living room. They were all lying down or sitting with their legs crossed scooted up near each other so that they could see the little TV I had purchased from The Bare Wire. They hadn't had such a convenient source of entertainment in a long time.

We figured that some spoilers were worth indulging the occasional curiousity. Besides, we didn't plan on sending players to that storyline anyway. Last night, we had watched Itch, and while we had anticipated we would enjoy it, no one actually had. It was such a source of frustration. Then we watched Delta Epsilon Delta, and that one was a lot more fun. We got to introduce everyone to Anna and Camden and watch our entire team fumble without knowing how to run a storyline properly yet.

Andrew's team had already run it, so only Cassie, Isaac, and Ramona were spoiled. My triumphant scene, in which I revealed the killer while stumbling up the stairs, too delirious even to notice the killer was there, was actually quite good—other than the fact that it made no sense for my character to be the one to figure everything out. I was literally there as a red herring suspect, and it turned out that I was the one to solve everything.

The others complimented me, but all I could think was how silly of a twist that was. It was like the main character changed for the reveal. This morning's choice was a bit of a thrill ride.

"Grace was so smart," Kimberly said as The Strings Attached played. I could see a tear forming in her eye. The finished film made Grace look like a major genius, and my scene of fighting off possession was one of the best sources of horror in the movie. Carousel had managed to catch the sound of my bones breaking in crisp, wet echoes.

"Can you imagine taking control and running a storyline without any research at all?" I said as I watched her reveal what had happened during that wicked masquerade ball.

"I know, right?" Antoine answered.

"They never even let us realize how much trouble we were in." Grace was a Detective advanced archetype, originally a Scholar. She had turned what was likely some sort of thriller into a proper mystery, and she had kept all of her teammates in line with the collection of tropes and an abundance of leadership that she had obviously learned from herding her team composed of three Bruisers around.

My little TV allowed me to show the players what I saw in the red wallpaper, and the obvious use of that was showing them all the films we had run that I could see because of my Director's Monitor trope. So, I was watching the movie both in my mind and with my real eyes. It was easy. I could do it just by thinking. I was just glad there wasn't a delay between them because that would be annoying. As soon as the movie was over, everyone begrudgingly rejoined the reality of what we had to do that day.

Andrew and I had looked through the Atlas for any references to the bar or a tavern or anything with the word "Speakeasy" in it, and we had struck pay dirt. The Speakeasy was also a Criminal-Outsider trope. That's where the establishment itself came from. It allowed its users to incorporate the aforementioned Speakeasy into any story they ran and explained why the Speakeasy relocated.

There was a whole half-page on the trope written in tiny script by someone whose handwriting looked like typed words—it was so neat and uniform. The Speakeasy trope was really useful, creating a sort of sanctuary that could be used in a variety of ways. It was a trope fit for an Apocalypse. It turned out the Speakeasy just happened to exist even when that trope wasn't being used. Truthfully, there was probably more information about it somewhere in the Atlas, but we had exhausted our abilities to search for it.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Whatever the case, finding it in the Atlas—even though we didn't get much information about the downsides of visiting the Speakeasy other than the random warning that things often change in Carousel—did make me feel a lot more secure about visiting it. But that wasn't what was on other people's minds. Not first thing in the morning. Because after the movie was over, their minds switched back to the crybaby.

Just as mine had been while I was eating my cream of wheat. So, we had one of our famous 11-person huddles around a table with only six chairs as we planned what we were going to do that day.

"We need to go to the werewolf lair," Andrew said.

"Not discounting our tip about the Speakeasy, I can't help but think that the crybaby was designed to help us stay safe near a monster lair. Whatever the case, having that answer will make me feel more confident about going into places we don't understand." Michael was on board, as was Lila—but of course they were; they were his teammates. I found that most people were on board with his detour.

Isaac and Cassie obviously agreed with him because they were his brother and sister, and the others seemed open to the idea of returning to the werewolf lair if only to put off the eerie feeling surrounding the Speakeasy for a little bit. I wasn't going to argue; the only real downside was the walk. I had trouble hiding my pessimism over the soundness of the idea.

We had already received another lead to move our little mini-quest further, so if it turned out that the crybaby was all we needed, it would seem like Tar had given us a time-waster—or maybe he was just scripted to tell us about the Speakeasy regardless eventually. Whatever the case, that was how we found ourselves on the long walk out to the KRSL Powerworks Pavilion that morning. Andrew volunteered to hold the baby—what a sweetheart.

Again, Lila offered to show us how she could open up sound stages to traverse Carousel safely, but I didn't go for it, and I couldn't exactly explain why, other than it made me feel uncomfortable and that I would rather do things my way. She didn't seem to take it too hard, but what did I know? The trip there was uneventful, and the baby didn't cry once, even as we reached a part of the road where the smaller road up the mountain had been washed out by rain.

"This is it," Andrew said.

"This is the road she led us to." Andrew was actually nervous being back here. We all were.

"I'll take the baby," Michael said.

"See if it warns us about the lair." Andrew's face showed his shock immediately, and he stammered to explain to Michael that he was not going to be going into the werewolf lair on this trip.

"We're just here to see if there is a notable interaction between the crybaby and the lair." Michael nodded; he almost seemed disappointed, like he had a grudge to settle.

"Well, somebody's gotta say it," Isaac said.

"Why don't we just sneak up there and get a glimpse at the werewolves on the red wallpaper and see what the storyline is called? Wouldn't that be faster?" Andrew shook his head.

"In order to see what storyline they're from, we would have to wait for them to transform away from being normal NPCs. I'm afraid at that point, we would likely be too far in to ensure our escape."

"You could use Oblivious Bystander," Antoine suggested. I noticed he was standing as far away from the forested side of the road as he could.

"After the apocalypse, you used that, didn't you?" I shook my head and said, "Look, yes, Oblivious Bystander is a possibility, but first, I'd like to understand what we gain by getting closer to the lair. I thought our goal was just to see if the baby cried when we walked by it or something like that."

"I assumed something would happen," Andrew said.

"It seemed like we received the crybaby for this purpose." He held the cursed little baby doll out as its eyes moved side to side. I scratched my head.

"That would make sense if it said it would help you detect any danger. But it only helps you detect dangers that you're not already aware of—that seems like such a specific use case."

"It would work on that crooked hallway omen that showed up a few nights ago," Antoine said, "not knowing if there was danger behind the door. Maybe that's why we were given it." That possibility had not occurred to the rest of us. What if the crybaby was just to help with the omens that arrived in the night? What if the crybaby quest was unrelated to finding the werewolf Omen?

"I had hoped it would be useful for more than that," Andrew said.

"If it makes us more secure at night, that is truly great, but it felt like we received this in order to help us find the name of the storyline that Logan and Avery were trapped in. I had to hope that bringing it here would do something. After all, none of us were able to detect the lair when we arrived here a year ago and started to climb the mountain. I thought perhaps it would grant perception of the film's poster." Monster lairs didn't show up on the red wallpaper like omens did with our scouting tropes.

Yet, at the same time, that wasn't to say we didn't detect them at all. After all, some combination of my hysteric scouting trope and my psychic background had clued me into the presence of something on the mountain that we were able to deduce was a monster lair. As I thought about that, stared up at the mountain, and felt the anxiety overcome me at how close we were to a monster lair, an idea struck me. I looked through the group. We weren't exactly the best stocked in scouting tropes. I got curious.

"Does anyone here feel like they can sense the monster's lair on the mountain?" I asked.

"Because I can, especially now that I know it's there." They each gave me a funny look at first, and then they turned to the mountain. Most of them closed their eyes; Cassie stuck out her hands as if feeling for vibes.

"I have no idea," Kimberly said, "I'm afraid, but I think that's just normal fear."

"I'm not getting anything," Isaac said. And that was the answer for most of them. Except for Cassie, who seemed to focus longer than the others, her face bound into knots of focus. Cassie was a psychic archetype, and she did have equipped a few tropes that should theoretically have some influence over her ability to sense something like a monster lair, even though they didn't explicitly say that they did.

Even something like her I'm Blocked trope, which allowed her to get some form of interaction with an entity within a storyline, might still work on a monster lair, even if she didn't know what the omen or storyline was. I was grasping at straws. I had no idea if Psychic tropes made you Psychic. Did the red wallpaper act as an interface with the power a trope gave you, or did it just help simulate the power?

"Do you feel anything?" I asked.

"I think so," Cassie said, "but I don't know if it's just in my head."

"Of course, it would be in your head; that's where psychic powers happen," Isaac said. Haha.

"So why are you asking?" Antoine asked.

"I can sense that there is a monster lair there," I said.

"It would make sense that certain archetypes or certain tropes would innately give you some ability to detect a monster's lair. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the baby is supposed to detect things that you can't detect, so maybe us being here—those of us who detect the lair—well, maybe we should leave."

"So you take the wording of the trope literally?" Andrew said.

"That it ceases to function unless it's your only resort?"

"It's just a hunch," I said, "and it doesn't hurt to take things literally sometimes. So, anyone who feels that they have some inkling that there is a monster lair on that mountain, come with me. Anyone certain that they can't detect it, stay here." So I turned and started walking back down the road. Cassie followed.

So did Dina, whose background trope often gave her supernatural insights, although not in the most direct way, as hers only allowed her to have some quasi-psychic vibes connected to the loss her character receives. Still, a trope that gives you psychic abilities might disqualify you from the crybaby's protection, and it didn't hurt to see what would happen. Sure enough, as soon as we were far away enough from the monster's lair that I could no longer feel it, I heard a baby start crying in the distance.

We replayed that experiment several times to see if our hunch was correct, and it ultimately was. When Cassie or Dina or I were in the group, the thing just didn't work. If Dina took off her tropes, it did. If I took off my background trope, causing my scouting trope also to become unequipped, suddenly, the baby would cry when I was around.

Even Cassie could get the baby to cry when she was around if she unequipped all of her psychic tropes, which meant that having a psychic archetype did not actually make you psychic. That was a whole other can of worms.

"So what have we learned?" Andrew said.

"I think there's something strange up on that mountain," Isaac said.

"I mean, what did we learn about the crybaby's purpose?" Andrew said.

"Given its niche use case?" Many people offered suggestions, but I said, "We learned it was given to us for a very specific reason. Maybe that itself is a clue." And that wasn't really an answer because what did that mean? Where was a place that we needed to go where there was a danger none of us were aware of? Well, if it was the Speakeasy, we were about to find out.