Chương 78: Arc II, Chapter 66: Sparks Fly

I didn't have time to mourn Carlyle. The Die Cast, far removed from its original purpose, was not sated by the death of the eldest Geist. It wanted more. Kimberly and I scrambled back over the fence toward the exit. The air was thick with smoke. The Die Cast followed. Its tropes held clues on how to beat it or at least how to survive a little longer. I knew it could outspeed us to a new shooting location. On that note, we were good. This whole place was likely one shooting location, if I were to guess.

He wouldn't get a Hustle boost as long as we were here. My strategy? Find a way to slow him down and then get far enough away for the scene to end and First Blood to officially have passed. We would get a reprieve then, however minor. That was all well and good, but how would we stop this thing? He was bigger than me and built like a truck (and that wasn't even counting the metal parts). The bad luck aura was the real problem. Anything could fail. Anything could become a deadly weapon in its vicinity. Anything.

A gun, a fence, a… golf cart. I barely heard the whir of the electric golf cart as it whizzed through the artificial streets, dodging obstacles and building up speed. Bobby was at the helm. He must have gotten his dogs sorted out. As he got close to the Die Cast and it turned to see him, Bobby's eyes got wide, and he lost some of his conviction from the effects of the aura. Still, he put all his effort into keeping the gas pedal down, and then, with his last bit of bravery, he jumped from the seat.

Interestingly, I had played around on an electric cart like the ones on the movie studio lot. Unlike their gas-powered cousins, they didn't really maintain speed when the accelerator was not compressed. I half expected the cart to slow down to a dull jog before it hit its target. It didn't. The cart slammed into the Die Cast and took him off his feet, pushing him away from us and into the wall of a nearby brick house, which crumbled. The crash was loud and filled the air with dust and debris.

The Die Cast was covered in bricks, to the point that I could not see him. Bobby didn't have a great Savvy stat. He had spent his stats elsewhere, so that wasn't why the golf cart plan worked. What Bobby did right was give Carousel something to work with. Gale Zaragoza had a trope that made his actions more cinematic and explosive, but as the golf cart began spewing white-hot molten globs as its battery burst, I realized that things like "getting hit by a golf cart" must have counted as an action.

He had a weakness. Another point for the Wallflower. Bobby was still recovering from his run-in with the concrete sidewalk he had rolled onto when he left the golf cart. I ran to help him up.

"I was looking for Mr. Geist," he said as he got to his feet.

"He's dead." Bobby nodded, "Yeah, I'm not surprised. What is that thing?" Oh, right, horror movie banter. He was a clueless side character.

"A mistake," I said glumly. That should help rehabilitate my character a bit. Admitting guilt is a great first step. The second step was surviving long enough for the audience to remember you. As Gale Zaragoza's undead body started throwing bricks, timber, and a golf cart off of himself, I realized that would be easier said than done. I expected Gale to roar or something. He didn't. He was silent as the grave. His mouth was basically welded shut, so that made sense.

"Kimberly," I said.

"Run. Get out of here!" I tried helping Bobby forward. Only then did I realize he was Hobbled from his fall. His knee cap stuck out funny. Our best shot was if Kimberly left. She was a main character, a truly innocent person who got wrapped up in all of this. If she were gone, there was a good chance we might go Off-Screen. An even better chance, thanks to my Offscreen Death ability. If I could just take this fight Off-Screen, I might have a chance at getting away.

The enemy would still pursue me, but it would be different. I had learned that with the Grotesques. They stopped being larger than life Off-Screen. There was no other way to explain it. I had to believe that was the way forward. We couldn't go Off-Screen, though, unless Kimberly left, if even then.

"Just leave us!" I screamed. I was rehabilitating my character so, so well. It might have worked, too. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Kimberly leaves, and I "die" Off-Screen. It could have worked out well. The Die Cast had other plans. He picked up the golf cart and threw it into a treehouse that was in a plaster tree near where Kimberly was standing. The crash was louder than a lightweight cart would merit.

The fake tree wasn't held down by much, apparently, because it fell over, peeling up a fake grass as it did. Its treehouse broke apart and created a debris field of pallet boards and plywood from which Kimberly had to back away. The treehouse had Christmas lights as decorations. The power was out to the building, but those lights were lit. When they became a tangled mess on the ground, they started sparking. This was too frustrating.

It was almost as if this entire building was designed to make this Chase/Fight scene as difficult as possible. Kimberly couldn't go over the debris field. That was surely a good way to get electrocuted. As it walked toward her, I leaned Bobby up against a stop sign and took off toward the Die Cast. I grabbed a brick from the wall that had fallen. It was rubber or foam of some kind. Of course, it was. This was a movie set.

The realization that the falling bricks I had heard had been a real-life sound effect caused by the Die Cast's cinema trope almost made me smile. Almost. I threw the foam brick at the Die Cast. It clanged off the creature's metal fixtures as if it were made of actual brick. The Spirit of Vengeance could target everyone. Anyone could die. Unlike most enemies, it didn't pick a target and kill it before moving on. It could pick any target. A player could defend his ally with nothing but bravery and a foam brick.

Normally, you would need a trope to make an enemy truly target you on purpose.

"It's my fault you're here," I said.

"I didn't think the curse was real. I don't know what I thought. I was just angry, and I did something unforgivable. Take me and leave her alone." To my surprise, the Die Cast paused. Was he considering my offer? Was Carousel? Carousel decided to pick a third option. A man stumbled toward the wreckage and said, "We have to get out of here. The whole place is going to burn!" It was the stuntman playing the killer in our movie. He still wore his mask. His name was Tommy on the red wallpaper.

I didn't even have time to tell him to run before the Die Cast turned to him, grabbed him by the arm, and threw him onto the pile of treehouse debris with the Christmas lights. Tommy, the stuntman, started to fry. Poor guy. Kimberly and I didn't waste any time getting away. We ran around the Die Cast and scooped up Bobby. He could move on his own, just not fast. We ran with him around the debris and toward the large exit in the distance. The Die Cast just walked over the sparking heap.

He stood in front of the flaming wasteland that had once been a neat little fake neighborhood. He stood there posing so that when the others got inside, they could see him clearly. Antoine, Cassie, Isaac, and Ricky Zaragoza had come to save us. Ricky was in his usual emotional state. He yelped at the sight of his brother. Antoine ushered us to him. Kimberly almost went in for a hug, but Antoine had the presence of mind to remember that their characters didn't know each other.

"You're safe now, this way," he said. She got the message. Isaac was dressed like he was going to swing by the Roxbury after we were done. He was hit by the aura so hard he might as well have run into closeline. Cassie had taken her month-long break to dress her character in the least flamboyant clothing she owned, which was apparently a purple blazer and skirt combo that Whoopi Goldberg might have worn in the movie Ghost. They were all scared except for Antoine, who looked more wired than anything.

Maybe angry at the undead thing that had just tried to hurt Kimberly.

"Gale!" Antoine screamed as he rushed past Kimberly.

"What have we done to you? I didn't know. I didn't know it would do this to you. I'm so sorry." The man who had once been Gale Zaragoza looked at Antoine. He had picked up a piece of lumber with roofing tin attached to the end. In his hands, it was a lethal weapon. Was there a glimmer of recognition there? I couldn't tell. I saw nothing in his eyes.

"Gale!" echoed throughout the warehouse. This time, it was Ricky Zaragoza who screamed it. He ran closer to his brother.

"Oh, god, no. Not like this. Are you okay, does it hurt?" Ricky, never completely without some illicit substance coursing through his veins, was sober at that moment. Tears flowed down his cheeks.

"We were just trying to get revenge on them," Ricky said.

"I can't believe this happened. Gale, it's me, Ricky. Don't you know your own brother?" If he did, he didn't show it. He walked closer to Ricky.

"Your wife is still messed up about you," Ricky said.

"You gotta remember. Look, look," he added, digging through his pockets. He pulled out a photograph that I was too far away from to see.

"It's me and you and Dina. Don't you remember Dina?" Dina? Was she playing Gale Zaragoza's widow? I had no way of knowing. Casting Director didn't activate for reasons I couldn't understand at that moment. What could cause that? Her Guarded Personality trope might have been blocking it. Was that it? Ricky waited patiently in front of his brother, holding out the picture. Gale had been a head or more taller than Ricky in life. After he swung his gnarled board with a roofing tin blade, he was another head taller.

Ricky's body fell to the ground as his shocked face rolled across the room. The picture took flight and landed five feet away from me. I grabbed at it. Gale Zaragoza was no longer there. All that was left was this undead murderous fiend.

"We have to go!" Cassie screamed. I wasn't one to argue. We all took off to the exit, a large bay door with a door that lowered with a pull chain. As the others ran, I saw the contraption ahead.

"All at once!" I screamed.

"We exit all at once!" Maybe that was a little too inside baseball for my character, but I just knew that door was going to slide down and kill somebody if we ran under it one at a time. The others seemed to understand, and we more or less exited the door at the same time. It slid closed suddenly behind us with a force that would have killed anyone caught underneath. Ramona was sitting outside in my car. She had pulled it up near the door. She cursed as the door slammed shut.

I realized that she planned to ram the Die Cast much as Bobby had done.

"You didn't even kill it?" she screamed as I opened the driver's door and beckoned her to scoot over.

"I am a Film Buff," I said sternly as I sat in the driver's seat. We needed to get out of there as fast as possible, faster than on foot. If the Die Cast got too close, the car could simply malfunction.

"Follow me!" I screamed out the door at Antoine as he, Cassie, and Isaac loaded into the brown car that had belonged to the future mayor. I would have to ask about how they got it. I would have a lot of questions. I hadn't seen them in weeks. Ramona and Kimberly got in my car, though Kimberly only did so out of habit because her character didn't know Antoine. We had been Off-Screen since running out of the warehouse, but it could be hard to tell.

Perhaps that was why the red wallpaper had an Off-Screen indicator instead of an On-Screen one. They followed me. Antoine in the brown car, Bobby in a travel trailer filled with scared dogs. I looked at the picture Ricky had shown his undead brother. That was Dina, alright. Why did I know nothing about her? Was she not in 1984 with us? Was she already dead? I couldn't figure it out. When we arrived back at my house—for lack of a better location—we found someone waiting for us there.

She was much younger than I remembered her. It was Madam Celia. She looked upset.