Chương 85: Arc II, Chapter 73: Hard Mode Initiated

On-Screen.

"So let me get this straight," Isaac said as we stood outside the Geist Mansion, "We're sending them to a place we know the Die Cast is going to strike because we think Roderick will be skulking around outside with the flask because the psychic who got us into this mess believes that throwing the flask into a river will stop the Die Cast from being summoned?"

"That's the long and short of it," I said. Isaac sighed.

"And we're here because you think we can… what, be lookouts?" I shrugged my shoulders.

"I don't know how much help we'll be, but at least we'll get to watch." My Savvy ticked up a bit. It wasn't much, but the buff wasn't even the point. Isaac's trope for summarizing the plot would help buff our plans in general, and frankly, we needed all of the help we could get. A line of fancy cars paraded slowly down the mile-long driveway. A valet would take their keys and give them a receipt. Their cars would be parked, and they would elegantly walk into the mansion after showing their invitation.

They were all dressed in tuxes and fancy dresses and having the time of their lives.

"And I don't think it's fair to say the psychic got us into this," I said.

"We did this. We're getting everything we deserve." Isaac shook his head.

"Speak for yourself. It wasn't too long ago my family would be invited to parties like this. It's the Geists' fault we weren't. They could have played fair. Geists aren't going to be happy until everyone in Carousel is their employee. You'll see." I laughed.

"All the clarity that comes with dying, and you still hold a grudge."

"Sometimes grudges need to be held," he said somberly.

"There's Kimberly. Why is she coming with the dog walker? I thought she and Antoine were a package."

"Antoine has a bad history with the family after the lawsuit and all. Luckily, Bobby knew a secret way in," I said. ~-~ We had done all of the setup we could for this scene. Second Blood was upon us. We had shot a scene in which we contacted Cassie from beyond the grave to inform her that Roderick Gray was behind all of the attacks and that it wasn't just the Spirit of Vengeance gone haywire, as our characters had previously believed. We explained it as best we could. The Die Cast was a loose cannon.

Every time it was summoned, it became more willful and violent. Until it had killed all of the Geists, it would continue to get wilder and more dangerous until, eventually, it wouldn't need to be summoned from the flask. We had patched its lore together, and I was 80% sure I understood it. If we had a scholar to do proper research, I would feel much more confident. They had their group meeting, Bobby included and decided to ambush Gray at his next target.

Bobby had done some decent improv to explain that he knew there were secret passages in and out of the mansion. Apparently, one of the Geist granddaughters would use one of them to come visit the horses late at night (as rich horse girls do), and he knew where to find it. Given that he was a Geist employee, that sounded like a clever explanation for how we knew about the passage from the Paupers' Grave to inside the Geist mansion.

We didn't have a great reason for Bobby to be in our group, per se, but we were not shooting for a perfect run. He helped because he was a nice guy who might be in danger. Now, we stood outside the party that we knew would end in disaster.

"You know," Isaac said.

"It probably is weird for Bobby to be arriving with Kimberly, given that he works for the Geists. They'll think it awfully low class."

"If they want to look down on him, they'll look down on him. The reasons are just pretense," I said. I jumped as I stared in through the window and saw a face I recognized, though it had not looked like this the last time I had seen it in person. Lillian Geist was walking down the stairs like an angel descending from the heavens. She really was pretty. As I stared at her, I recognized something in her that I usually only saw in the mirror—a profound loneliness.

She hid it behind a smile and sparkly makeup of some kind, but it was there. If we couldn't save Carlyle, then we certainly couldn't save Lillian. Getting to the true ending was the goal. Heroics were for other genres. Just thinking of Carlyle filled me with a dark guilt. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't my script. Why did I feel guilty?

"She had such a crush on me," Isaac said, following my gaze, "You know, back when I had money and power and standing. I should have married her then, and I would still be alive today. I'd be wearing a tux and drinking one of those blue drinks." He looked into the window longingly. He was doing his best to act like his character, but he was having difficulty not laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. His character was a punching bag, so he might as well lean into it by acting like a tool.

"You thinking you would have taken her last name?" I asked.

"I hear they pay men to change their last name to Geist when they enter the family. Some go for it." This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"If that's what it took," he said. I laughed.

"Never change, pal, never change." You didn't need the red wallpaper to sort the NPCs from the Geists. It was easy. The Geists were the happy ones. Some NPCs knew what was coming, and those that look like when you walk into a room and forget why you're there. We were Off-Screen, so we walked through the walls of the mansion and took in the ambiance. Kimberly had a huge crowd around her. She was famous, after all.

"Is this going to work?" Isaac asked.

"I mean, only Antoine and Kimberly have to survive. Literally, everyone else here is going to be joining us very soon." He wasn't satisfied. Being a ghost might have helped dull his sense of impending doom, but it certainly didn't eliminate it.

"You know there's something strange about these Geists," I said.

"Just one thing?" he asked.

"The spouses," I said.

"I thought all of the spouses were going to be NPCs, but look at Bensen's wife." I pointed to the shrew-faced woman standing next to Bensen.

"She's labeled as a Geist on the red wallpaper." Isaac took a moment to soak in the implications.

"Gross. Are you saying they kept it in the family?"

"What?" I asked.

"Incest. She's a Geist."

"No," I said.

"Look at Robert Green," I said, pointing to a man who was unashamedly flirting with a cocktail waitress.

"That was Cherise's husband. She passed years ago, but he's labeled as a Geist too. Look at Steven's wife; Moira is just an NPC. That's Lillians… stepmom, I think."

"Wow," Isaac said.

"I'll let you obsess on that for a few weeks, and then you can give us your conclusions." I waved him off. It was interesting. But it wasn't relevant.

"We need to spread out and look for Roderick," I said.

"We're acting on the assumption that he has to be nearby to activate the flask, which was all but confirmed to be true. Even if it wasn't true for lore reasons, I suspected it would be true for story reasons." Roderick would want to see the effects of his malice. He was an angry boy. Somewhere below us, Antoine and Cassie were making their way through a hidden tunnel to find their way into the party. We doubted they would be checking invitations at the secret entrance. Security was tight, but not that tight.

"Shouldn't we just follow a path in the clouds?" Isaac asked.

"If it's a scene, Carousel should lead us right to it."

"Do you see a path?" I asked. He looked around. We were standing over in the corner behind a lamp so that people wouldn't walk through us and make us feel all funny.

"I mean, we haven't really explored."

"Alright," I said.

"Assuming Roderick is here already, we should be able to find him pretty quickly. Security is really beefed up. I doubt he found a way inside, but still, it wouldn't hurt to check. Go find the caterers and see if he snuck in with them. I'm taking a lap around the perimeter. Meet back here in ten minutes or if anything strange happens."

"Gotcha," he said. And he headed out. The odds were in my favor here. Dying had its advantages. In fact, it had more than I had ever realized. My Effective Plot Armor was full. I had not noticed this effect before in the couple of times I had died and gotten to stick around because of Off-Screen Death. I just hadn't thought to look. Now, as a disembodied spirit, staring at the red wallpaper was one of my only forms of entertainment. So I had noticed. The negative effects of Trope Master had subsided.

Normally, it split my Plot Armor in half. I was dead. That restriction had been lifted. Of course, Plot Armor wasn't as useful as a ghost. The Die Cast wasn't going to target me anyway. High PA still had one advantage, however. It made the plot come to you. This usually manifested as bonuses during Exploration or additional dialogue options with NPCs. I suspected that it would help me find our dear friend Roderick Gray pretty easily. I would soon find just how right I was. And how wrong I was about other things.

~-~ I found him walking toward the mansion from the cemetery. He would have to pass through a security checkpoint. He was dressed well—too well. There was no way he had an invitation. His entire political platform had been a thinly veiled attack on the Geist family. Why would they invite him? Yet, he wore a tux (which was only marginally more fancy than the clothes he normally wore). I saw an invitation sticking out of his pocket. I followed him in disbelief.

We hadn't counted on him getting good access to the party. Heck, we didn't even think he would want to go inside. We were hoping he would set up in a dark corner of the estate where Antoine could give him a good thump on the head and steal the flask. This complicated things. I followed him as he made his way to the entrance of the mansion. He was allowed to pass through the various checkpoints simply by flashing his invitation. At the entrance, they would be more thorough. On-Screen.

Roderick took his invitation out of his pocket as he approached the man at the door. It looked authentic enough. It looked like he really was invited. Carousel simply hadn't filmed him receiving it, and therefore, it didn't happen On-Screen, so I didn't see it. That was probably intentional. We were being forced to react. This didn't change our plans too much. We already had a way to get Antoine inside. The timing was going to be a pain.

We had to wait until after the Die Cast was summoned so we would get the true ending. Then, Antoine, Cassie, Kimberly, and Bobby would have to get the flask from Roderick and then get out before everyone died. Carousel sends its strongest battles to its most frazzled players. That was said somewhere in the Atlas, I was pretty sure. Suddenly, the screen on the red wallpaper cut away to a scene of Mayor Morrow standing outside the clock tower where the Mayor's offices were located.

"I have no idea what all they took," Moonlight said.

"Marge, we need to do a full accounting. How much petty cash was in the safe box?" They continued discussing what was an apparent robbery. The camera panned around the scene, showing broken windows, papers strewn about, and all manner of vandalism. The camera rested an envelope addressed to the office of the mayor from The Geists. It was the envelope the invitations had come in. I had one sitting on my dining room table that had been delivered after my death. This one was torn open and empty.

The screen switched back to the entrance of the mansion. When Roderick got to the door, he held out the invite and said, "I've come on behalf of the mayor. He couldn't make it." The screen jumped back to the scene of the robbery. The camera showed something it hadn't before. A body lay on the sidewalk. It was a security guard. He had a bullet hole just above his left eye. Roderick was getting serious. I watched him walk in, and I noticed something had changed. He wasn't an NPC anymore.

We had chosen the true ending, so we were getting the true villain. Roderick was an enemy. Plot Armor 27. The distinction between NPCs and enemies was always for gameplay reasons, after all. Enemies were NPCs; technically, tropes just acted on them differently. Things looked differently on the red wallpaper. I didn't get a chance to see his tropes before I lost line of sight, but I imagined there was a trope there that made him appear as an NPC. We had seen more than one that could accomplish that.

I had to hope that Antoine and the others were ready for a fight because things were going to be far more difficult than we originally planned. I had managed to see one trope. Intoxicated by Power: This villain is possessed, literally or figuratively, by the power they wield. Beware. This exorcism will be dangerous.