Chương 147: Book Five, Chapter 50: Sensitive Measures

It was incredible how life could move forward so quickly and yet seemingly stay the same. Days earlier, we had completed our first rescue. Before we could be satisfied with our success, we had to worry about the whole Lila fiasco. But then I woke up one day not so long after, and she was in the kitchen making eggs for everyone. It was a special morning for me because I woke up to the sound of laughter from a few rooms away. That hadn't happened in a long while, maybe not since Camp Dyer.

As I opened my eyes, I smiled—not because I heard the joke, but because I could tell the atmosphere was improving. Just by adding three new players, we were building our own little camp. After I got out of my room and did my morning routine, I came into the living room and figured out what they were all laughing at.

"Kimberly, I'm telling you, you have to sign on to this movie if you're looking for something new, something you've never done. And you have never done it because it is complete nonsense. No one knows what's happening, and everyone will say it's smarter than it is just because it's confusing, and you'll get accolades if you succeed. Of course, if you fail, I may not be able to take your calls anymore. That's just business, dear. You understand.

If you pull it off, though, it will instantly elevate your career—just don't answer reporters' questions about the plot because then they'll know you're in over your head." It was Kimberly's fake talent agent, Sal. He was always good for a laugh.

"Of course, if you do decide to take it, just know it is going to be one of the biggest acting challenges of your life, and there's a very real chance it might not score well with audiences. Keeping the timeline straight will be difficult for everyone, including the screenwriter," Sal said.

"But at the end, all that matters is that you beat the bad guy, right? That's how these movies go. I'm told, though, that it does have some pretty squeamish scenes. But if you're very lucky, you won't be in any of them." Timeline and squeamish scenes? I knew immediately which movie Sal was talking about.

"Well, anyway, sweetheart, that's all I have to say. If you have any more questions, please be sure to call," Sal said. Kimberly said her goodbyes and hung up the phone. As I walked further into the room, I saw that Andrew, Antoine, and most of the others were hovering around the kitchen table, listening to Kimberly's call.

"We should have recorded that," Andrew said.

"We should have recorded all of the various calls to see what differences there were. Are we able to call again?" He was discovering the incredible potential of her scouting trope.

"Yeah," Kimberly said.

"He doesn't seem to remember past phone calls. He's always happy to hear from me." I had slept in by a few hours. It seemed like they were already getting to work while eating cheesy eggs. If there was one thing Eastern Carousel General Store had, it was eggs." Post-Traumatic?" I asked. We were always looking for new information about that storyline because one day, we were going to rescue our friends from it. Kimberly nodded.

"My rescue trope works on it, we think. So does Antoine's," she said.

"Sal kind of references them."

"He didn't have as much to say about mine, though," Antoine added.

"That might mean it's a higher level." We had discovered that if Kimberly asked her agent about a storyline while one of us had a rescue trope equipped, then Sal would talk about the altered rescue version instead of the original. It was helpful to compare them.

"Did you get any good info?" I asked. They all looked at each other, tilting their heads, shrugging their shoulders—that sort of thing.

"It's pretty high level," Antoine said.

"We didn't get much—not much more than we already knew." Bummer. That was pretty much what always happened with Post-Traumatic. I decided to help myself to the last remaining cheesy eggs in the pan—at least the part that hadn't gone crusty yet. Then I walked over to them, scooping the eggs into my mouth right off the paper plate.

"I have an idea," I said.

"And what's that?" Antoine asked.

"We'll need to take a walk," I said. I had a theory for learning things about Post-Traumatic, but unlike Kimberly, I couldn't do it from a long distance. I had to be looking at the omen itself. The airport was about halfway between downtown and eastern Carousel, so it was not a bad walk, but definitely not a short one. The roller rink, which occasionally disappeared, was right next to the airport. That was the omen we were after.

Lila had offered to open up some sound stages for us to travel through, but as cool as that sounded, from the way she described it, it was also a lot more walking. I figured the faster we were done with this, the better. So, we walked in one big group out of the more densely populated part of Carousel into the more small-town outskirts. The street looked like any street that could be found in any small town back home—or, heck, probably anywhere in the real world. Except this one brought back memories.

As we were walking past a neighborhood that was probably middle to lower-middle-class, I spotted a structure in the backyard of one of the houses. It was a shed. Even without all of the black snow all over the ground, I recognized it. That was Reggie's shed. That was as far as he had been able to make it into the black snow, as far as I could tell—but then again, I only got to watch the trailer for the apocalypse, not the whole thing.

When the Black Snow Apocalypse had been sent—for whatever reason it had been sent—Reggie Vargas, a bruiser, one of the vets at Camp Dyer and member of the Bowlers team, had sacrificed himself to help Anna and Camden get into a storyline so that they would not die from the apocalypse. Anna had made sure to note his sacrifice in her letter to us, which was attached to the back of Silas, the mechanical showman. One day, we would be able to rescue Anna and Camden and make his sacrifice worth it.

I hoped we would rescue him, too. A flood of memories came over me of the Bowlers and how they helped make Camp Dyer seem so normal. Grace loved to cook and was whip-smart, keeping her team of Bruisers in line against all odds. Of course, they were all gone now. I had seen Reggie's fate—or at least part of it—thanks to my Coming to a Theater Near You trope. I had seen him bunker down in that shed.

"Is it an omen?" Antoine asked as he caught me staring. I shook my head.

"We're almost there," I said. I didn't need to share that sad memory with them again. As we crested a small hill, the tiny Carousel airport appeared in the distance. Far before it was the corner lot where the roller rink stood. It was blinking like normal—sometimes existing, sometimes nothing more than a large pit in the earth.

"All right, everyone," I said.

"I've never messed around with this before, but we're going to try to be as scientific as possible." I looked back down at the roller rink and then cleared my throat.

"We're going to take all of the highest-level players we have—that's me, Antoine, Kimberly, Bobby, and Andrew. The rest of you, stay up here. Lila and Isaac, keep your eyes out for omens." I had explained my plans briefly. Still, most of them looked either on edge or terrified to be out in Carousel Proper without protection. With that, we split up. Those who I grouped with myself walked down the hill toward the roller rink, and the rest stood there watching.

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"Exactly how far apart do we have to be for this to work?" Antoine asked.

"Just a bit further, I think," I said. The establishment's name was Carousel Roller Daze. Its design and decor were like something from another decade, but that made sense, as Post-Traumatic was a time travel horror movie. I kept my eye on the red wallpaper. My I Don't Like It Here trope gave me a rough estimate of how difficult a storyline was, but that estimate was based on my current party. I had a hunch it wasn't just about pure levels. I thought it factored in everything, like Archetypes or equipped tropes.

We were about to find out. Ever since we had figured out that Kimberly's talent agent trope could give a different answer depending on what tropes were equipped, I had been wondering if we could use the same thing for my scouting trope. I had collected all of the highest-level players. As we walked further down the hill, I became confident that we had finally separated from the others enough that my reading would be just about us and not include the players at the top of the hill.

I looked at the flickering roller rink and stared at its poster on the red wallpaper. Post-Traumatic registered as This Is Scaring Me, which was one of the most dangerous levels that my trope would tell me. Of course, I was mostly guessing based on the innate fear and anxiety that my trope gave me, but I was pretty confident that this was a very dangerous storyline. It wasn't the most dangerous, but it was a contender—we were easily out-leveled by ten plot armor or more.

"Kimberly, equip your rescue trope." She quickly did. The difficulty increased. Not only could I see it jump all the way to Get to the Car Now!, but I could feel it getting more difficult in an instant—perhaps because I was focused on it. The anxiety hit me in the back of the neck, and I subconsciously stretched my shoulders, contorting myself, trying to ease the stress.

"So it obviously got more difficult," I said, "but it's always going to do that for a rescue trope. Could you unequip it?" Kimberly nodded and did as I asked. Unfortunately, the storyline was so much stronger than us that this exercise might have been in vain. It was difficult to tell how much more challenging this storyline would be when it was already topping out the meter.

"Antoine," I said. He nodded and equipped his Race Against Time trope. The difficulty kicked back up, but this time, I felt it was more extreme. My heart started to beat. It wasn't quite as bad as hearing the breathing from the axe murderer, but I could feel that even though they both registered as Get to the Car Now!, Antoine's was more difficult.

"Okay," I said.

"Now it's my turn." Antoine unequipped his rescue trope, and I equipped mine— The Wrong Reel. And in an instant, I felt relief. I swore I did. It still registered as Get to the Car Now! on the red wallpaper, but it was definitely less difficult than Antoine's. If I had to guess, Kimberly's rescue trope and mine were about equal in difficulty when used on Post-Traumatic. I relayed my findings to the others.

"Exactly how large is this experiment going to get?" Andrew asked.

"If I'm not mistaken, this technique could be used to fine-tune all of the tropes we equip and which players we take."

"That's what I was thinking," I said.

"I don't know if this trope is sensitive enough to tell minor differences, but it can tell major differences. And if it reacts to individual tropes equipped and not just rescue tropes, that could be huge. Right now, what I'm concerned with is party composition. We're high Savvy, Moxie, and Hustle right now. If I were to guess, that's probably a good combination for a time travel horror."

"Well, let's test that theory," Andrew said. He began walking away all the way up the hill. When he got there, he sent Michael back down to us. Now, we had two melee archetypes and one less savvy-based archetype. And with that one switch, the storyline jumped up to Get to the Car Now! even without a rescue trope equipped. So, the theory was well-founded that this storyline was mainly about speed and intelligence.

"All right," I said.

"Let's mix and match." We spent 30 minutes just swapping people out to see what builds worked well with Post-Traumatic. It was far from an exact science because things like the tropes we had equipped or the level differences we had would play majorly into the difficulty rating my scouting trope gave. But broadly, it was still very useful information. From this, we determined that our initial hypothesis was mostly correct. We needed Savvy and Hustle.

Moxie and Mettle were not so important, and it was difficult to tell how vital Grit was with this method, but I had to assume it was, given what I knew about the storyline. After all, I had seen that Camden had lost his arm, and this storyline involved some torture. Grit really helped the torture go down easier.

We could play around forever trying to lower the storyline's difficulty rating, but at the end of the day, my I Don't Like It Here trope just wasn't sensitive enough to help fine-tune our builds on a storyline that difficult. Once we had leveled up, I suspected I would get a more accurate reading. Overall, it was still giving us good information. The technique would be really useful for storylines closer to our level. We walked back to the loft with our heads held high.

Even though we hadn't accomplished all that much, it still felt like we were taking steps forward. And that was great because we had a lot of steps to go. It was afternoon, and we were on the roof of the loft, lounging. Bobby was playing with his dogs, and his dogs were playing with everyone, whether they liked it or not. It was a sunny day. If there's one thing I appreciated about the new players, it's that Andrew was just as neurotic about discussing our plans for the future as I was.

Of course, he was more or less focused on only one thing: rescuing his teammates who had gotten killed in the werewolf lair. I couldn't blame him. We had spent all day worrying about my teammates who had gotten killed in a storyline. But getting Logan and Avery, his teammates, was a lot more complicated because we didn't know what storyline those werewolves were from. If we could figure that out, we could rescue them—assuming they were in a storyline we could beat.

But figuring out what storyline they were in was an enormous task for us. And we had so much more to think about.

"Look," I said, "there's a lot on the To-Do List. We need to get more writs of habitation, for one." We were sat out at a table under an umbrella.

"And how do we accomplish that?" Andrew asked as he sipped on a yellow cocktail that someone had made him. I had one, too, but mine was murky brown. We didn't have a mixologist on staff; Isaac and Michael had been experimenting.

"According to the Atlas, if we want to be awarded writs of habitation, we have to run storylines where our characters are assigned habitable bases and have to spend the night at least once. Even then, the base has to come into the story theoretically."

"That shouldn't be too difficult," Andrew said.

"I feel like there are plenty of overnight storylines."

"Lots of them, it would seem," I said.

"There doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason for when they're handed out, other than that. We have to wait until Carousel is feeling generous."

"Okay, what else do we have to do?" he asked.

"We need more rescue tropes," I said.

"I think Carousel limited rescue tropes after we rescued you because it wanted variety, not because it wanted us to stop doing rescues. But that means we need more tropes."

"And how do we get those?" Andrew asked.

"We run storylines that involve rescuing someone as part of the base story," I said.

"Makes sense," Andrew said.

"I can certainly see us working that into our future plans. I would argue that rescuing Logan and Avery will be very helpful, even toward that goal. Having two operational, high-level teams would make every aspect of this base and any other base that we occupy run smoother."

"Look, Andrew, I'm not against the idea of rescuing your friends. I want you to manage your expectations. We're going to work our tails off to figure out what storyline they're in, and we may fail. And even if we do succeed, there's a good chance we won't be able to rescue them still, if the storyline is too tough."

"I understand that," he said, "but I think that they deserve our full devotion. After all, we have learned that your friends are in too high-level of a storyline for us to dream of beating right now. If it turns out that Logan and Avery's storyline is more realistic, it would be a godsend." That was true. Post-Traumatic was too high-level for us. Most every other time I had taken on a higher-level story, there had been at least one ringer on the team who was already high-level.

If we tried to take on that storyline anytime soon, we would likely lose. I had an anxiety building up that we would work to figure out what storyline Logan and Avery were trapped behind and that when we found it was too high-level, Andrew and Michael might become disheartened or uncooperative. They had not done anything to make me think that was the case yet, but I still worried.

"Whatever the case," I said, "we definitely need to rescue more players in general. Isaac and Ramona are almost too low-level to even meaningfully contribute to most runs with the rest of us." Andrew took a sip of his drink.

"Trying to find a team of low-level players doesn't sound easy."

"We have plenty to choose from," I said.

"A huge chunk of those missing posters are for newbies. Wouldn't be surprised if some of them never even learned what was going on here."

"That might be better," Andrew said.

"It's easier to fill an empty cup." He was right. Being the first point of contact for new players was better all around—better for them and better for us. After a few moments of silence, I said, "The Atlas has over a dozen werewolf stories in it that I could tell from the non-spoilers section, none of which seem to be a match for our culprits, and that is not exhaustive; there are likely more. You're sure you can't remember what the title of the storyline was?"

"I'm trying my best," Andrew said.

"I remember there being a title, but I was so focused on running that I never really gave the red wallpaper much mind." I could understand that. After all, most players didn't need to keep an eye on the red wallpaper as aggressively as I did with my Oblivious Bystander strategy. It could be extremely difficult to use your eyes and look at the red wallpaper.

"Was the title long or short?" I asked.

"Can you remember that much?" Andrew put his head in his hands and moved his fingers through his hair.

"I can't," he said, "but I don't think it was short. It was one of those where the title was really small at the top, but the top was covered with other things, too. It was just a character poster, after all, not one of the main movie posters."

"Right," I said.

"Guess that means one thing."

"What's that?" he asked.

"Tomorrow we're going shopping." Andrew looked at me funny, but before he could say anything, someone else beat him to it.

"Did you say we're going shopping?" Kimberly asked, having just made her way over to our table.

"That is wonderful! I know that you like your hoodie, but there are so many better options."

"Not that kind of shopping," I said.

"We'll see," she said with a smile. Then she turned her attention to Andrew; her expression changed, and her voice softened as she asked if she could speak to him for a moment. She gestured over toward Antoine, who was on the other side of the roof, leaning against the railing and looking very annoyed. Andrew politely excused himself and followed Kimberly back across the roof.

I wondered how long it would take him to find out that one of the reasons he was alive was because he might be able to help Antoine with his mostly well-concealed PTSD. Andrew had at least one helpful trope. It would be another Band-Aid on top of a stack of other Band-Aids, and together, they could be something like a cure. Whatever the case, I had done enough that day to call it a success. I cuddled up in my hoodie in the shade and went to sleep.