Book Five, Chapter 105: Timely Preparations

We were back at Happened A-Pawn.

The previous time we had been to the pawn shop, there hadn’t been much of a selection—at least not anything we needed. But this time was different because we had played several storylines since then, and the stock was determined by the recent storylines that had been run.

I was pleased to see that the weapons selection was far better, no doubt thanks to Stray Dawn having so many firearms and other killing tools.

It wasn’t like we could just buy a gun and that would be it. You needed a trope to bring a firearm into a storyline. But this storyline was different because we got to prepare a base to defend.

So, while buying a sci-fi military-grade sniper rifle might not be realistic, police-grade weapons would make sense to be found at a jailhouse museum. The Atlas suggested that Carousel respected the base building, but the players didn’t have free rein.

We couldn’t get greedy.

We just made sure that there were a couple of handguns and a rifle available, along with ammunition. We chose the ones that would look the best in a museum.

Some guns had the same basic design for over 100 years, so that part was easy. Unfortunately, those guns were usually slow to load. We managed to pick up one that was dark gray metal with a wooden handle.

It was a big gun that would put a hole the size of a silver dollar in a cattle rustler.

It was funny how revolvers had built-in drama because of how long they took to reload. Still, the revolver, a smaller handgun, and a rifle seemed reasonable to exist inside a jailhouse museum.

We would have to cross our fingers.

The good news was we could get them for cheap.

The whole time we were in the pawn shop, Tar Bellows watched carefully.

That was unusual because normally, he pretended not to even notice us until we were ready to make a purchase. The others were looking around at the various supplies available.

We weren’t all going on the Post-Traumatic storyline, but we were all working on it.

We ended up getting hammers, screwdrivers—anything innocuous that could be used as a weapon in a moment of need. We had been by the jailhouse just to look in the windows at all the displays. We didn’t want to activate the Writ of Habitation yet because it didn’t last very long.

Building tools—we’re talking the basic stuff—could be very useful if we were smart. Unlike with Stray Dawn, we weren’t aiming for the highest score possible. We just wanted to get the rescue done.

A torture storyline was not something to get fancy with.

We barely talked. The nerves were getting to us. Maybe that was why Tar was watching us.

He was six foot five and built like a bull. We could sure use a Bruiser like him. If only, if only.

I took a glance at the tropes he had on display, but there was nothing special.

I was fidgety and nervous, and Tar could tell.

“Got something on your mind?” he asked.

“Always do,” I said.

“What are you looking for, exactly?” he asked.

“Home defense,” I said.

He nodded. “That can be a tricky one. You can never be too safe.”

“Not in Carousel,” I said.

“Sure enough. You know, the best home defense can be a good guard dog,” he said. “It’s the bark that does it more than the bite.”

Was he giving us practical advice? Encouraging us to bring Bobby and one of his dogs along?

Kimberly was right there next to me—or at least close enough to listen in.

“But we were warned,” she said. “If the dog gets killed, won’t Bobby die too?”

He looked at her like she was… naïve, to put it nicely. He didn’t say anything at first, but that look said enough.

“Wait,” I said. “The warning that Bobby got when he got his dogs was that they couldn’t get hurt because the audience doesn’t like to see it. Are you telling us that that was just flavor and not a rule or something?”

When Bobby got his license to bring those dogs into the storyline, it said that if the dogs suffered, Bobby would, too. We had taken that as strictly literal, but from the look on Tar’s face, I was beginning to think that perhaps we had been foolish.

Having a dog was not such an unordinary thing in a movie, even a horror movie.

We called over Bobby and went through the entire scenario with him.

After we were done, Tar pointed us toward an aisle that had some basic pet supplies—most of it used.

Bobby picked up some leashes and collars, but I could tell from his face that he wasn’t exactly excited about the prospect of turning his beloved pooches into guard dogs.

Still, Tar had never given us a bum lead—the tutorial notwithstanding.

All the while we were talking about this, I could still feel Tar’s eyes on me. When the others had left to continue looking around, I finally turned to him and asked him what he was staring at me for.

He shook his head. “Nothing I can say in polite society.”

What exactly did Paragons know? Were they more like NPCs who were bound by the script, or had he been to the theater? Was he privy to the things that the whispering woman had warned me about?

One lesson I had learned since coming to Carousel was that, when in doubt, use your words.

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“Are you talking about the audience abandoning us?” I asked.

He squared his shoulders and looked at me. He said nothing.

“You can’t talk about the people in the theater, can you? It’s one of the restrictions on the script,” I said. “But you do know about them. You know what they’re planning over there, right?”

“A fellow hears things,” he said.

“We’re going to move forward,” I said. “We’re going to pick a through-line. It’s just going to take some convincing.”

He didn’t seem sure, but I couldn’t exactly have a conversation where he couldn’t even acknowledge what it was we were talking about.

All we knew about Them—the people at the theater—was that they did not like to be referenced at all. It was as if they were on the other side of the fourth wall, a funny concept given how meta Carousel was.

We could never mention the audience.

Well, I didn’t care much for that restriction. Unless I heard a certain axe murderer breathing in the distance, I was going to keep pushing until I got answers.

Making decisions because we had no other choice was how we ended up in the tutorial. We needed real answers, and if they wanted us to move forward, they were going to have to give them to us.

If I could just find a way to send that message without getting my head chopped off.

A few old guns, some building supplies gathered from whichever stores we could safely enter, and a new plan involving some big dogs—that was what we headed back to Kimberly’s loft with.

The prep didn’t stop there.

We were hard at work.

“He’s angry and scared,” Cassie said. “He says that they’re after him, and he can run for eternity, but he’ll never get away.”