Chapter Twenty-One: Ranger Danger

I was nearly to the street when I stopped to gather myself and make a decision. I knew that I had to leave the backyard. Ruck was about to get killed; of that I was certain. We had been shown suspects, but none of them stood out to me.

Plot Armor: 3. No Enemy tropes. As far as I knew, I couldn’t see the tropes of NPCs, though I suspected they had some.

The crowd was quickly moving on down the street. As I watched them go, a realization dawned on me: I didn’t recognize any of them.

Not only were my friends nowhere to be found, but every other person I had seen at the party had somehow vanished into the crowd. It made absolutely no sense. I had just seen these people leave the Delta Epsilon Delta house, but I couldn’t pick out one person I recognized.

A chill went down my spine as I realized that a trope had appeared on the red wallpaper in my mind. I couldn’t see the bad guy, but I could see one of their tropes. It was like how I knew the Astralist was spying on us and that Benny the Scarecrow could change his corn maze at will.

I read the trope:

Everyone Is A Suspect: No characters or players will have an alibi for the murders occurring before the finale.

It took me a moment to understand why I was seeing that, but then I figured it out. Every single named character had gotten lost in the crowd, including my friends. None of us would be able to vouch for the location of any of the suspects.

Of course.

This was a Whodunnit. We had all been split up so that none of us could act as an alibi for anyone. It made the mystery more difficult. On the bright side, that meant Anna and Evan had been separated too.

I looked back at the house. The SMU mascot costume was no longer hanging from a noose. Had Kevin and the SMU guys retrieved it? It had seemed like they left too quickly for that.

If I went to the field with everyone else, I probably wouldn’t be able to meet up with my friends until after the murder anyway. Might as well stick around and put Oblivious Bystander to work. I returned to the house and entered through the front door. Ruck was out back, so I figured the killer would be too.

I retrieved the sunglasses I had taken from the Astralist storyline. With them on, my eyes were mostly covered. I could still see pretty much everything, but covering my eyes gave me the plausible deniability needed to make the Oblivious Bystander strategy work.

Soon, I was trying my best to stay casual while walking through the house. I had no defense if the killer just stepped out in front of me, but truthfully, I didn’t think that was going to happen. When I had used this trope at Halle Castle, the Astralist had kind of… gone along with it. His Ghost form had simply followed behind me, only attempting to reveal himself when he could do so without interrupting me. The whole point of the trope would go down the drain if the bad guys could just tap me on the shoulder, after all. I wasn’t sure that would always be the case. It was time to find out.

The kitchen had a great view of the backyard so that was where I went.

As soon as I walked into the small dinette area, I looked through the window on the back door. There Ruck was laying out on the lounging chair just as he had been when I left.

Someone was standing over him while wearing the SMU mascot’s costume. In a gloved hand, they were brandishing a large kitchen knife.

When the costume had been hanging on the roof, it had not occurred to me how similar the outfit was to well-known slasher getups. The rubber mask, the soulless, hollow eyes. It reminded me of The Shape’s mask in the Halloween franchise. If Michael Meyers had worn a bandana and flat-brimmed cowby hat, that is.

I quickly jumped into the kitchen to try to be out of the line of sight. I crouched down behind the counter and my mind went blank.

What was my plan again?

Oh yeah. I was going to act like the really scary thing wasn’t happening.

But how?

I looked around the kitchen and saw that cereal boxes were lined up on top of the refrigerator. I quickly grabbed one.

I started pretending to read the back of it… Was that enough though?

I know, I’ll pour a bowl, I thought.

This was so ridiculous. A killer was looming over an overweight frat guy twenty feet from me and I was searching through the cabinets for a bowl and spoon so that I could eat some healthy delicious Icy Flakes.

Next, I needed to put the cereal in the bowl. Did I need to pour quietly? Yes and no. I didn’t want to attract the killer’s attention, but I was supposed to be pretending not to see the killer.

I held my breath and poured. Every little ding in the bowl sounded like a bomb going off in my ears. Was my hand shaking? Stop it.

I turned to get some milk out of the fridge. Should I chance a glance at the killer so that I could read their tropes?

Yes.

I peeked quickly and turned my eyes back toward my meal.

That was too quick. I didn’t see anything. Come on, keep it together.

I poured the milk into the bowl and put the carton back in the fridge. Now I needed somewhere to eat this. Should I sit at the kitchen bar or the table? Or should I eat it over the sink like a true bachelor?

Couldn’t eat it over the sink, I realized. There was a window that pointed straight into the backyard. I would see too much to pretend I was oblivious.

The needle on the plot cycle touched First Blood.

Shit, I was missing it.

I casually walked over to the table and sat down with my cereal and the box. Having the box there gave me extra cover. Plus, there was a word search on the back.

I was positioned in such a way that I could just barely see the backyard without turning my head. I had to strain my peripheral vision. If I turned any more, I would have had my back to the killer. It was the best I could do.

With the deftness of a world-class spy, I looked out the window. The cowboy mascot or whatever he was supposed to be was pulling the blade from Ruck’s corpse.

Part of me felt guilty for not trying to save him, but I knew that I wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Carousel was where horror movies came to life. Not superhero movies. He was scripted to die and so he did. If I got in the way, it would just be both of us dead. My friends and I could only survive by getting to the end of the story. Part of that story had Ruck getting killed.

I casually lapped up spoonful after spoonful of the off-brand Frosted Flakes as I watched the killer stare at Ruck’s lifeless body. Ruck had never even woken up.

I peered into the red wallpaper:

Ranger Danger

Plot Armor: 15

__________

Tropes

Quick Change

Artist

This villain can change into and out of their disguise without being seen or getting caught.

Hidden In

Plain Sight

The villain will appear as an ordinary NPC until they don their disguise.

They’ll Never

Believe You

When tangling with this villain, the authorities will not believe or take seriously anything the players tell them.

Pattern Killer

Before the final battle, the villain will only kill victims chosen according to a pre-established motive.

No Neighborhood Watch

The villain will not be seen by NPC witnesses when off-screen.

Everyone Is A Suspect

No characters or players will have an alibi for the murders occurring before the finale.

The Immortal Mask

This villain cannot be defeated, captured, or unmasked until their identity and motive have been deduced.

My first question was “What the hell is ‘Ranger Danger?’”

Then I realized it was probably the name of the SMU mascot. What were they, the SMU Rangers? Knowing Carousel, they could just as easily have been the SMU Dangers.

Plot Armor: 15.

That made sense. With my plot armor of 13, we were roughly similar in level.

These tropes spelled out a very specific set of rules for this storyline. As I had thought, this was a Whodunnit. Scoping out the guests at the party had been useless.

Because of the Hidden In Plain Sight trope, he could have been any of them. Apparently, that ability trumped my Trope Master ticket because I had seen nothing but a bunch of level-three NPCs. I meant to ask my friends if they had seen anything but didn’t get a chance.

The killer dressed as Ranger Danger had ceased staring at Ruck and now had moved away from Ruck’s body. He was walking toward me.

Quick, how does a normal person eat?

As I munched on my processed corn cereal, the killer approached the window behind me. For some reason, I didn’t feel very protected by that glass.

But I kept eating. I stared at the cereal box and tried to make out some of the words in the word search. “Dead,” “Execution,” “Assassination.” Dang, no wonder the kids in Carousel were so creepy if the games on the back of cereal boxes were that dark.

I became acutely aware that the light on my Off-Screen status had flicked off. That made sense. Antoine’s brother Chris had explained that the Off-Screen status was an indicator of whether you were “on camera” in the sense that the scene you were in was important.

I had concluded that I was rarely doing anything important. I was Off-Screen for most of the Party Phase. As I understood it, some cool tropes could only be used off-screen. Some others could only be used on-screen.

Right now, I was finally in an important scene.

Whenever you see the Oblivious Bystander trope in a horror movie, the camera will always cut or zoom in to reveal the killer posing in a scary way while the oblivious bystander is none-the-wiser. This would be accompanied by that deep scary sound effect that every horror movie has.

That’s what this was.

This was a scene used to build tension in a horror movie. It might even get a laugh. The hapless cereal eater has no idea that a murder was just committed outside the window. How close did he come to death without knowing it?

I took one last look at the killer out of the corner of my eye before he disappeared. I committed his tropes to memory. The next time I saw him, I would need to be prepared.

At that moment, I needed to get out of the house. I didn’t want to be caught with the dead body.

I wasn’t the main character, so I might not have important information that would help me deduce the killer’s identity. I needed to meet up with the others to go over everything.

After I had waited a few minutes for the needle on the plot cycle to move firmly out of First Blood, I put my cereal bowl in the sink and left the house.

With that, the game was afoot.

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