“You know where the airfield is?” Chris asked Travis.
Travis nodded. “I rember the place,” he said. “Over by Pit Boulevard.”
"You got it."
Chris turned to the bus. “We have a lot of players around or below level thirty. That’s dangerous. Ons at the airfield can be higher level than that. Grace will divide us into teams to try to make us more balanced and ensure there are higher-level players in each team. No complaints, people. This one is for real.”
Grace took out her notebook and pen and started creating team lists.
“Antoine with ,” Chris said.
“And Kimberly,” Antoine added.
“I can do that.”
Grace scanned the bus and started pairing everyone together in an attempt to create well-rounded teams and to distribute lower-level players as well as higher-level ones.
After a minute or two, she had the list together and read it all for us.
The plan was to find three separate Ons of the appropriate danger level and create three teams to beat each one.
The teams were divided as follows:
Team 1:
1. Grace: Detective, Plot Armor: 41
2. Chris: Athlete-Sport, Plot Armor: 58
3. Antoine: Athlete, Plot Armor: 19
4. Kimberly: Eye Candy, Plot Armor: 17
5. Riley: Film Buff-Filmmaker, Plot Armor: 22
Team 2:
1. Tory: Final Girl-Scream Queen, Plot Armor: 29
2. Mark: Scholar-Strategist, Plot Armor: 30
3. Vernon: Bruiser-Bully, Plot Armor: 31
4. Dirk: Bruiser-Brute, Plot Armor: 38
5. Jesse: Outsider-Newcor, Plot Armor: 41
Team 3:
1. Anna: Final Girl, Plot Armor: 21
2. Reggie: Bruiser-Gentle Giant, Plot Armor: 40
3. Camden: Scholar, Plot Armor: 18
4. Bella: Bruiser-Bully, Plot Armor: 37
5. Travis: Outsider-Criminal, Plot Armor: 32
6. Jose: Soldier, Plot Armor: 30
Anna and Camden looked apprehensive about being separated from the rest of the group. Grace appeared to notice this.
“Reggie is going to make sure that both of you are safe,” she said. “Right, Reggie?”
“I’ll take care of you,” he said.
Everyone moved around to sit near their teams except for Travis, who was driving. We discussed our strategies.
“Which of you is First Blood?” Chris asked.
I was about to volunteer. I would have probably been forced into it anyway because of my artificially low plot armor. Before I could, Kimberly raised her hand.
“I can do it, but I left my Looks Don't Last trope at the Lodge,” she said.
Chris and Grace looked at one another.
“Sweetheart, you can't leave your tropes anywhere. They're always with you. Just reach for it in your pocket, and it'll be there,” Grace said.
Kimberly reached down into her pocket. With the shorts she was wearing, her pocket wasn't even large enough to hold one of our tickets, but she pulled out her Looks Don't Last trope. The way she stared at it you would think that she was looking at a ghost.
“How do I... use it?”
“Until you get the hang of it, the easiest way to equip it is to take your archetype ticket in one hand and then place the tropes you want to take with you in that sa hand,” Grace explained gently.
“I'll split my focus between buffing the weaker players and getting ready for the fight at the end,” Chris said to Grace. “I assu you can handle insight and story control?”
Grace nodded and started flicking through her stack of tropes that she pulled out of her jacket pocket.
“Antoine, you do whatever we need you to do,” Chris said. “Riley, you’re Second Blood.”
So nice of him to volunteer . What else could I really expect?
“With Grace as a detective, the story is going to beco a mystery. Be ready for anything until we get a handle on what's going on.”
Antoine, Kimberly, and I nodded.
Soon after that, Grace and Chris started traveling up and down the bus helping the other teams figure out their strategies. Usually, whenever veterans went out on runs, they had days or even weeks of planning. This ti they only had minutes.
I looked back at Anna and Camden as they were briefed on their team's strategy. I couldn't hear what was being said, but I could tell that they both looked worried.
I didn't have long to think about my teammates. I had to keep my eyes on the road looking for Ons. The further we went, the fewer Ons I could see, and those that I did see were disappearing as soon as I got an eye on them.
I realized that there was a possibility we could get to the airstrip and still not see any live Ons. I tried thinking back to the map of Carousel I had seen. I couldn't rember if there were any roads out of town from this direction. Even Patcher's Family Farm where the corn maze had been was pretty close to town in the sche of things and would likely not be far enough away to keep us safe.
“The airfield is ahead,” Travis yelled.
As we neared it, I was relieved to see that there were several Ons still on the airstrip. In fact, those were not the only Ons I saw.
We were coming up on a road with a sign that said Pit Blvd. It didn't take long to figure out why they called it that. There was a large pit in a lot on the corner of the street. It was fenced off and appeared to have been that way for a long ti. I couldn't tell what had happened there.
And then, in the blink of an eye, it was gone. Instead of a pit, there was a parking lot and a large building with a sign that said “Carousel Roller Daze.”
It was an old fashion roller rink. It had been a long ti since I'd seen one of those.
The building appearing out of nowhere wasn't the biggest concern. The biggest concern was that the entire building, along with the parking lot, was flickering in and out of existence. Sotis it would stay there for a few monts and then it would disappear for half a second.
There was an On associated with that building.
Post-Traumatic was the title of the storyline. The poster was of a building on fire. In fact, the building was the roller rink itself.
“There's an On there,” I said loudly for all to hear. It was disappearing off and on, but I wasn't sure if that was because of the apocalypse or sothing else. The way it flickered was unlike any of the other Ons I had seen.
“Keep going to the airfield,” Chris said. “It's a safer bet.”
I couldn't argue with that. We couldn't exactly pull the bus into a disappearing parking lot.
As we passed by the roller rink, I looked inside it through its glass door and saw that the people were wearing 80s fashion getups and dancing cheerfully as if they couldn't see the incoming apocalypse like other NPCs could.
The bus continued on toward the airstrip. The closer we got, the better I could see the available Ons.
The Ons were pretty straightforward at the airstrip. Load onto the aircraft and fly off toward your destination. It was that simple.
“Can you tell how strong the Ons are?” Grace asked.
The two airplanes were both strong. One of them was called Preservation, and its poster featured a tal and glass box against a backdrop of a forest burning. I couldn’t see what was in the box… sothing round… with... hair. The other On was too strong for to even see any details.
There was a helicopter with a slightly easier On called Headhuntress Reborn.
I told Grace and Chris about what I saw.
“And…,” I said. “The limousine.” I pointed to the parking lot. There was a black limousine outside the small airplane hangar. The driver was standing outside holding a sign that said, “Conner Party.”
It was called The Strings Attached. Its poster featured an ordinary image of a ballroom with dancers wearing masks—a masquerade—except on closer inspection, it was clear that not all of the dancers were moving on their own power. They were limply being carried around the ballroom in their partners’ arms.
Its difficulty level was “Get to the car now!”
There was a problem, though. My I don’t like it here… trope was subjective and gave ratings based on how strong my team was. The problem was: who did the trope count as being on my team at that mont? Was it my original team? Or was it the people physically closest to ?
The difficulty level could be in the twenties or thirties or higher, depending on who it might be. I didn’t know how to tell.
As soon as Chris had all of the information I did, he assigned us our stories.
Anna and Camden were going for Headhuntress Reborn.
The team with Jesse was going to Preservation.
Finally, my team was going for The Strings Attached.
As we pulled into the parking lot before we disembarked from the bus, Kimberly hugged Anna.
“See you guys on the other side,” Camden said.
“We’ll be fine,” Antoine said. “We just have to run the story. We’ve done it before.”
Camden nodded.
After pulling away from Kimberly, Anna ca toward with her arms outstretched and hugged .
As soon as the bus was stopped and we unloaded, she and Camden ran behind their team.
Travis held onto Tory, his girlfriend, and teammate, and gave her a kiss as they left for their separate storylines.
“Co on, Riley,” Antoine yelled, snapping out of the weird mont I was having as I realized that many of the players, even the vets, weren’t sure whether they were coming back.
I ran toward the limousine.
“Conner Party, I presu,” the driver said as we began piling into the back of the limo. “As requested, I have fetched your evening wear.”
As I took a seat and looked around, I found that the limousine had five available seats. There were clothes hanging from a bar next to the small refrigerator. It was a luxury car, through and through.
As soon as we were all loaded in, the driver quickly took his seat and put the pedal to the tal. Even though he had to play his part as the On, it was clear that he was aware of the coming danger.
“How is this thing supposed to get us to safety?” Antoine asked. “If there was a road out of town over here, why didn’t we just go there on the bus?”
“If there wasn’t a way out, the On would have disappeared like all of the others,” Chris said. He didn’t sound sure.
I started to suspect there were other reasons he put himself and his little brother in the limo instead of the other options available.
If you had to choose between getting caught by the storm in a car or an airplane, the choice was pretty simple.
As the limo headed north, I looked behind us toward the airfield, hoping to see a plane taking off from the runway.
What I saw froze my blood in my veins.
Headhuntress Reborn had disappeared from my view. The helicopter was still there, but the On was gone. So was the On that was so strong I couldn’t even read the storyline title.
The only On left over there was Preservation.
“Turn around!” I scread.
The others turned and struggled to see what I was looking at. The driver didn’t listen to in the slightest. He was still speeding away.
I beat my fist against the window.
As I watched, Anna and Camden's team ran toward the big blue plane that held the On for Preservation. They made it to the door just as the other team had loaded in. Travis climbed inside, then Bella and Jose.
Then the door closed. The storyline must have hit its limit.
The airplane started taxiing away from Anna, Camden, and Reggie.
Everyone in the limo started screaming for the driver to turn around. He ignored us. I could see his face in the rear-view mirror. He looked like he understood exactly what was happening. His face was grim.
I tried opening the car door, but it was locked. We were stuck. Our storyline had begun. We had passed from On to Choice. It was too late.
Anna, Camden, and Reggie were stranded.
The limousine continued to head north, skirting around the edge of the storm. Eventually, we turned onto a road that I had heard of before. It was called Turn Around Rd.
A sign said "Dead End," but the driver continued.
We ca upon a bridge.
I heard Chris and Antoine begin to talk as we went along. Apparently, the bridge that we crossed was usually out. This road was unpassable unless you happen to trigger an On for a storyline on the other side.
Kimberly was crying inconsolably.
I leaned my head against the window next to my seat.
I wondered who, if any of us, would survive.
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