Book Five, Chapter 21: Hard Scouting

Having not been able to find anything explicitly forbidding Kimberly’s NPC trickery, I decided to join her and Antoine on the roof. At the end of the day, we needed the disaster book to prep for a single rescue. If Carousel wanted to prevent that, it wouldn’t have shown the book to me when I used Coming to a Theater Near You at the end of The Strings Attached. All signs were a go.

When I got up to the roof, I saw Antoine staring through the telescope, searching for omens while simultaneously petting dogs on his left and right.

The dogs were very obedient and well-trained, but they were anxious with Bobby gone. Antoine seemed to be in a good mood, but I couldn’t say whether he actually was.

It had been two days since the others had gone on their run.

The plan was for us to go pick them up because, although Isaac did have a scouting trope, it was a lot more hands-on than mine was.

He had to notice things first and comment on them, and then he would be given information. It was safer if I guided them.

That plan apparently wasn’t good enough for them.

“I see the others,” Antoine said.

“Already?” Kimberly asked. “We were supposed to head over there in a few. Do they look OK?”

Antoine stared through the telescope. “They don’t look happy,” he said.

They didn’t need to look happy; they just needed to be alive.

Before too long, they were storming in from the back door into Kimberly’s loft.

We greeted them in the living room area.

They marched in one by one. Isaac looked completely exhausted mentally. Cassie gave me a weak smile. Ramona looked utterly emotionless. Bobby seemed like his old chipper self and quickly made his way up to the roof to see his dogs after waving hello.

I couldn’t see that Dina had any negative impacts from the storyline they had run, but then she was pretty high level for that story.

“Did you guys know?” Isaac asked.

“Did we know what?” I asked.

“You know,” he said. Did you guys know what the storyline was about?”

I shook my head. “We didn’t know anything more than you did going in.”

That was true.

Of course, I did avoid some educated guessing that might clue them into things that might make them hesitant to do the run.

I didn’t want to send them into a storyline that would disgust them, but I would rather do that than send them into one where they could lose.

“Normally, I would be alright with you venting about this,” I said, “but we don’t want to risk you spoiling the story for us if we need to run it in the future. I’m sure you understand.”

Isaac nodded his head and then found his way to the bathroom, where he could be heard loudly brushing his teeth as if he were making some point.

Of course, there was no real chance that we would ever run that storyline. Spoilers didn’t matter.

“What’s this?” Cassie asked as she saw a missing poster on the table and picked it up. “Oh my God, are you guys going to rescue him?”

“That’s the plan,” Antoine said.

Cassie started to tear up. “Isaac, Isaac, get out here! They’re planning to rescue Andrew!”

I could hear Isaac spitting into the sink, and then he rushed out to join us again. “A rescue? I thought you guys said you weren’t going to do it yet,” he said.

“We moved it up on the schedule,” I said.

“Are we going soon?” Cassie asked, suddenly excited.

“We’re still in the planning phase,” I said. “We can’t risk rushing this.”

“Do you want me to use my trope?” she asked.

I nodded and said, “That’ll be tomorrow, though. You guys need to rest up.”

Isaac and Cassie suddenly were in a good mood, as good as could be expected.

Isaac even promised to cook us dinner.

I noticed that Ramona stayed back and listened before returning to her room. Her face was blank.

I decided to talk to her again.

Even if we didn’t have a personal conversation, at least we could talk about the storyline—a sort of debriefing. As she turned to close the sheet that separated her area from the rest of the dead-end hallway, she saw me following her and paused.

“I’m fine,” she said.

I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “It would be cool if you could talk about the storyline.”

“I thought we couldn’t talk about the storyline because of spoilers?”

“That’s just something I told Isaac so he wouldn’t complain,” I said. “There’s no chance that I’m ever going to run The Box Lunch, so spoilers don’t matter.”

She smiled at that. “So what do you want to know?” she asked.

“This may be a silly question, but how was it? Do you feel like you contributed? Did you get any rewards?”

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“I got two stat tickets and a trope,” she said. “I also got a buy-one-get-one-free coupon from a buffet in town that promises no omens or danger while eating.”

She pulled the ticket out of nowhere and showed it to me.

“I’m guessing the last thing you want to do is go eat at a buffet.”

“You’re guessing right,” she said. “Cassie locked me in a freezer, and I ate all of the frozen food. Just shoved it in my mouth. I’m not proud of that.”

“Dentists don’t recommend doing that, you know,” I said.

“Oh, trust me, I know.”

She ran her finger over her teeth.

“So, how are you doing? Are you feeling OK?” I asked.

“You know, if you keep asking me that, I will lie to you eventually.”

I had the same tactic.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t imagine how you feel.”

“I don’t feel anything at all,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “So you don’t have to worry anymore.”

That was part of what I was worried about.

In addition to my concerns about her mental health, I knew that her mental well-being was important in other ways, too.

She was a Hysteric, an archetype that weaponized their emotions.

I wondered if she would be able to do her job and survive if she closed herself off. Perhaps her plight was yet another reason we needed to rescue a Doctor. I didn’t know what tropes Andrew Hughes had, but if he had a Psychiatrist trope that could help, it would be a lifesaver. Possibly literally.

“After you guys went into the story, we got the missing posters and I saw that no one had ever wiped out in that story, so there were no rescues to be done in it. I decided to spoil it for myself and read what the story was about in the Atlas… I am so sorry for sending you there,” I said.

I couldn’t contain my laugh as I said that.

Ramona laughed, too.

That was a good thing, I thought.

“It wasn’t bad,” she said. “Really. After I got… infected, I just wanted to eat and make more of the slimes. It was all I wanted. It made me happy. I could feel dopamine surging in my head like bubble wrap popping.”

“Gotta love a generous parasite,” I said.

“You should have seen Isaac running from me, though,” she said. “He cursed so much we went Off-Screen.”