Arc II, Chapters 99 and 100 (Patreon)

"We have to leave now," I said as I ushered them to follow me.

Luckily, whatever weird ancestor-worshipping ritual the Patchers were going through was keeping them from turning to us, but I knew it would only be a matter of time.

The Patchers did what they had to do to protect their family. They covered up the death of Tamara Cano. They killed Benny Harless. We knew of those crimes, which meant we were next.

Antoine, Kimberly, Ted the cameraman, Dina, Rose, and I hoofed it back to Antoine's cruiser. It wasn’t that far away, and we had just followed the path to the cliffside.

Still, we were too late.

When we got there, there were Patchers standing around, staring, downloading their evil magic programming.

As we headed toward the car, one of them fired three shotgun blasts into the hood, and because this was a movie, a fire ignited, quickly consuming the vehicle's cab.

There was no explosion, though. Maybe it wasn't in the budget.

Other than that, the Patchers just stood there and chanted, "In family, we find our purpose," over and over again.

"What is going on?" Rose exclaimed.

Oh, right. That's what we needed to do. We needed to explain what was going on around us and react to it.

"I think we're finding out what all those shrines around town are for," I said.

"I don't understand," Kimberly said. "Are they a cult?"

"Worse," I said. "They're a family."

We ran away from the car toward the woods.

"We're gonna have to cut through here to get to the Harless property," I said. "Antoine, you made it through before. Do you know the way?"

Antoine didn't respond. He had lost his cool, and as he stared into the woods in the darkness, I realized he was having a problem bigger than just the jitters.

"Rose, do you know the way back to your home?" I asked.

"I think so," she said. She was still sobbing but was at least able to communicate. I had expected her to be too distraught to help, but she wasn't.

We started to run into the woods, following her directions.

Antoine managed to snap out of it, and soon, we were running for our lives.

Rose was, however, a problem. As we started running into the woods, it quickly became apparent that she was too slow. She was a normal NPC, after all. We were being chased, and she could not outrun our pursuers.

"Antoine, help her," I said.

Antoine realized what was going on and picked her up with one arm, just kept running with her like it was nothing.

Ted, the cameraman, was having no problem keeping up with us. He must have had an NPC trope that allowed him to do that. He was a cameraman, so it made sense that he could follow us wherever we went.

Off-Screen.

"What's the plan here?" Antoine said, fear caught in his throat despite his efforts to hide it.

"We make our final stand at the Harless farm," I said.

"I thought we were doing the finale at the boarding house," Kimberly said. "Isn't that why I took my penthouse trope?"

"Change of plans," I said.

I had to believe that the finale would have been at the boarding house if Benny the Slasher had continued to be the antagonist. When we metaphorically unmasked him, the Patchers became the antagonist. I couldn't imagine that the boarding house would have been as effective at keeping them away.

"We need to get to the farm," I said.

I had a plan. Ever since I saw Benny/Rustle’s tropes, an idea began forming in my mind.

"Guns are not the answer," I said. "Rustle had a trope that made it so that bladed weapons would be equal to guns. That's why when I shot at him, I missed even though he was only thirty feet away. We need bladed weapons."

We could have used them right then, in fact.

On-Screen.

We had been running through the woods for ten minutes when the Patchers started to make an appearance.

"On the right," Dina said.

One of the Patchers, whose names were rapidly becoming less important, appeared, apparently unarmed, but with palpable malicious intent in his eyes.

Antoine didn't seem to mind that he didn't have a gun on him. With his one free hand, he aimed and took a shot.

One down, a few hundred more to go.

We were in a run-and-shoot sequence, which I was getting used to in Carousel’s storylines. These sequences would go on until Carousel had gotten the footage it needed.

One after another, Patchers would come out of the woodwork with blank expressions on their faces and some random weapon in their hands.

At first, I thought it was just about lining up and shooting, but then I started to realize that Carousel was depleting our ammo. Every Patcher who had a gun would shoot until their weapon was out of bullets.

They were aiming at Rose. After all, she did have the lowest plot armor.

We ran down the trail until there was no more trail, and then we just kept going.

"Rose!" Kimberly exclaimed as we came into a clearing in the woods.

I glanced up to see that Rose had been shot. It was one of those ambiguous movie wounds whose only evidence of existence was a lot of blood on her nightgown.

It could have been a gut shot, which would always be fatal, or it could have been some innocuous wound that even an NPC could survive. We had no way of knowing, and I suspected that the nature of the wound would be determined by what choices we made.

"I'm fine," Rose said, but her weak voice did not give us much confidence.

Unfortunately, the run-and-shoot sequence did not reveal any of the main Patchers.

This was a lead-up to something else.

It took us twenty or so minutes to break through the forest into the fields of the Harless property. In the entire sequence, Ted the cameraman was never shot once. I couldn't even tell if he was shot at. That mysterious NPC trope was likely the explanation.

On-Screen.

"Rose," I said, "where do you keep all of the tools you use in the garden? Where do you keep your guns?"

"The garden?" she asked, delirious.

"Do you have a tool shed or something?" I asked. "I'm running on empty here," I said, holding up my firearm. "Do you have weapons or guns or something?"

"Behind the house," she said weakly.

We knew she had a gun, but she wasn't telling us that.

We ran across the fields until we got to the Harless house. Sure enough, there was a small shed attached to the back of the house.

We had failed to explore it before the finale, so my heart sank as we walked near it.

Discoveries have to be made before the finale.

You can't just let weapons appear out of nowhere; they have to be established. Still, it was established that this was a farm and that they did have tools. Logically, there must be some farming implements that could be used as weapons on this property.

As we got to the shed, there was a padlock on it. Dina ran ahead of us and messed with it for a moment before drawing the gun that Antoine had given her and just shooting the lock off.

"No use messing with it," she said.

As the shed opened and we started shining our lights inside, I gained a little bit of hope.

There was a large pegboard on which all the tools were kept neatly in place. The tools had been outlined in chalk or something similar to show where they went, so we knew which tools were missing.

The axe? Gone.

The machete? Not there. Its space was empty, and I couldn't see it anywhere in the shed.

In fact, I felt like Carousel was just teasing us because this shed had space for a few more ambiguous-bladed tools, but they were mostly empty.

There were a few things, though.

Dina grabbed a small hatchet. Like all the other blades in the shed, its blade was sharp.

Kimberly grabbed a pruning knife and a spade.

Antoine took a sling blade, a large wooden handle affixed with a heavy metal hooked blade. Guess he liked French fried potaters.

That left me with two options: the hedge shears and a large, intimidating scythe.

It made sense that Carousel would give us a scythe. It fit the theme so well.

I chose both.

The hedge shears had a delightful surprise attached to them. They had a trope called Sha-shing that buffed the user’s Mettle when using a bladed weapon if they brandished them for the camera before attacking.

That was a really cool trope if it had just been attached to a real weapon….

I shoved the shears into my belt.

Arming sequence complete, I turned to Rose and asked, "Where's your car?"

"The garage," she answered.

Of course. Where else would you keep your car if you had a full-size mechanic shop on your property?

The thing was, though, we hadn't actually seen it when we were snooping before. It immediately became clear why. The entire car was hidden by boxes and covered in a sheet.

"I don't really get out much anymore," Rose explained. "The farmer's market shut down a few years ago. If people need our produce, they just come here."

"Does it run?" Antoine asked.

"Yes," Rose said. "Rustle kept it in good condition for me. He was such a good son." She began to weep.

We weren't going off-screen, so I couldn't explain much to the others. I trusted them to pick up on what was about to happen.

I doubled over, my hand to my stomach.

"What's wrong?" Kimberly asked.

"This place feels off," I said. "There's a presence here..."

"A presence?" Kimberly asked.

I had done some minor work to establish my character's latent psychic powers. It would have to do. I just hoped that Carousel would go along with it. I suspected it would.

"They're angry," I said.

After I said that, the wind outside began to pick up.

"We have to expose what the Patchers did," Kimberly said. "We can't let them get away with this. Power through."

"No one's going to believe us," Dina said. "Are we going to tell them that there's some sort of ancestor-worshipping cult?"

"We might have to leave that part out," I said.

Lots of people honor their ancestors. I guess some people's ancestors are evil.

Kimberly ran over to the phone that was still on the counter. She picked the receiver up, put it to her ear, and started to dial, but before she could finish, she paused and looked at the phone.

"The phone line's been cut," she said.

"Are they outside?" Antoine asked. "I wish this place had windows. I hate not knowing what's out there."

The garage did have windows, but they had been covered.

"My guess is that a Patcher works at the phone company," I said. "Wouldn't be surprised if all of Eastern Carousel is cut off."

"What do we do?" Dina asked. "We can't let them get away with what they did."

The wind howled outside again.

"You guys hit the road," I said. "Kimberly, you and Sheriff Stone in the back seat. Ted, you get in the passenger seat and you turn your camera back on them so Kimberly can report what happened here. Having the sheriff there to confirm things lends authority to it. We've got next to no proof. Just the hair tie and our own eyes. Get the story on tape. Miss Cano, I hope you're okay with driving. I have a feeling there might be company out on the roads. It's gonna be rough."

"I can do it," she said.

One of the first things I learned about Dina was that she liked to drive fast. She passed us on our way to Carousel.

"What are you going to do?" Kimberly asked.

"You all need to take Rose with you," I said. "She needs medical help. That little car's not going to fit all of us. I'm going to stay here," I said. "I'm the distraction. I need to make them think we're all here locked up in the garage."

Kimberly paused as she realized what I was suggesting. Her character would need to react to it.

"Riley, there has to be a better way," Kimberly said.

"All that matters is that we tell people what happened, right?" I asked. "I told you this story was going to change our lives, didn't I? We're gonna be the hotshot journalists taking down the bad guys like on TV."

Kimberly hugged me.

"Make sure everyone knows," I said.

"I will," she said.

They pulled off the cover of the car, and sure enough, it started right up.

"I'm going to go clear out anyone who's out there right now," I said. "When I give you the signal, you open the garage and you drive back to the civilized world as fast as that thing will go."

It was a plan.

"I'm not going," Rose said.

"Rose," Kimberly said, "we need to get you to a hospital."

"You're a sweet woman," Rose said, "but this is my home. This is where my husband and my son lived. I'm not leaving. Give me a gun. I'm not gonna let those bastards drive me away. They aren't the only ones who know how to pray, and those I pray to have power the Patchers could never imagine."

We weren't exactly going to argue with her. Antoine handed her a firearm and a few bullets. It was time for it to happen.

Oblivious Bystander was useless for the task I had in mind. Luckily, I had a lot of Hustle. Good for sneaking.

As I found my way outside, I realized that the stars were gone. It was overcast, the wind howled, and the crops danced to the music. Lightning struck in the distance. I had to stay on the alert.

It didn’t take long to find some enemies.

Some Patchers were walking down the road in front of the garage.

They weren't speaking to each other. Whatever had happened to them, I suspected they no longer needed to speak.

At first, I thought the hive mind trope was completely meta, that they would merely act like a hive mind. That was common enough in movies where there are multiple enemies who seem to anticipate each other's movement so well that it feels like they're coordinated by a higher power.

That wasn't the case here. These people were clearly connected to each other, connected by blood, marriage, and magic.

I laid my scythe down on the ground.

I had tucked my hedge shears into my belt.

As I walked cautiously around to the back of the two men standing on the road, I withdrew the shears and held them out menacingly. Sure enough, I could hear the metallic shing sound coming off the blade. I opened it up, and there was a further sound. The Patchers couldn't hear it, apparently.

Killing monsters was one thing.

Killing human monsters was a whole different thing.

Killing human monsters without the use of a firearm, with a blade, was a third thing, and it was the hardest of the bunch.

But I had a job to do, and I did it. The first one went down with a swipe at his neck; then I rushed the second as he looked at me and pierced his torso. I didn't know if the wounds were fatal in real life, but they were movie-fatal.

These guys didn't have enough grit to stand up to it.

"Hey!" someone screamed from further down the road, hiding in the trees.

It was yet another Patcher. This one I recognized.

It was Corduroy Patcher. In many ways, he was the only person who had to die in this whole story to ensure that we could loot his general store.

I readied my blades and prepared for a fight.

~-~

It was harder to kill him than the first two because I saw his face and I had spoken to him.

I truly had difficulty attacking him.

He was a portly old man. He held in his hands the sawed-off shotgun from his shop. Its trope, the Hidden Barrel, was intact, though it wasn't active because his gun wasn't hidden, thankfully.

Still, he looked the most human out of all the Patchers we had seen since they went hive mind.

He looked scared.

Then he spoke and said, "In family we find purpose," and he spoke with a hundred voices all at once like he was possessed.

His face went blank and he lifted his shotgun at me while his mouth continued to chant.

That made it a lot easier, actually.

He fired the shotgun at me, but I dodged to the left. He must have been using buckshot despite having a sawed-off shotgun… I felt that was a poor choice, but I wasn’t going to argue. It made it easier to dodge.

He started to reload.

The trope that made bladed weapons equal to guns was very ambiguous about how it would work, but I suspected things like decreasing bullets' accuracy and making guns have to reload more often were part of it.

Those little tweaks allowed a man wearing an oversized suit and holding hedge shears to beat a possessed man with a shotgun.

I closed the distance, and as I removed him from the picture, his eyes began to glow.

I hadn't seen the others do that because I hadn't seen them up close when they died.

Perhaps Carousel wanted to confirm for the audience that these enemies were not exactly human. Typically, that would be done by showing how evil they were, but Corduroy hadn't done much evil stuff.

The hundred voices in his mouth did not stop talking after he died, not for several minutes. His mouth wasn't even moving, and the sounds came out.

Creepy.

I grabbed his shotgun. I was really making a killing here with the trope weapons.

I ran over to the garage after I saw there were no more Patchers around. I knocked on the garage door so they would know it was me.

They opened it, restarted the car, and they were off, leaving me behind.

The wind howled and I stared out across the fields as people with glowing eyes began exiting the forest.

"They're here!" I yelled back into the garage as I shut the door.

I needed them to think Kimberly and the others were inside.

I assumed that the deception would work because Rose and I were here, and we had the lowest plot armor of anyone being targeted.

The deception gave cover to explain why we were being attacked and the others weren't. At least they weren’t being attacked by these Patchers. They likely had their own problems to deal with.

Once the others left this scene, Carousel would have a challenge ready for them.

The deception worked, too.

We were getting good at this game.

Now, I had fifty or so armed attackers coming straight for me. What a great plan I had made.

---

I went Off-Screen soon after Kimberly and the others left.

I was Off-Screen for quite a while.

Kimberly recording her report on everything that had happened was clearly more important than what was happening to me. I imagined they were dodging enemies as she recorded things.

The Patchers just stood and watched from a distance. Usually, enemies will attack you when you're Off-Screen, just not with much enthusiasm, especially if you're an important character. With what I had planned, it was obvious that Carousel wanted to make sure that my fate was captured in its entirety.

I remembered back to when we were scouting this storyline out.

Cassie had used her trope to try to find out the supernatural nature of the story.

She spoke of an angry entity upset over blood being spilled. A child of the earth had been killed.

At first, I thought that might have been Tamara Cano, but as I learned about Rustle and eventually saw him gunned down, I realized it must be him.

The ancient spirits that had given him life, that had answered Rose Harless' prayer, were now angry that he had been killed.

I was going to give voice to that anger.

I had equipped my Raised by Television trope. When I stayed behind to let the others escape, it activated, and as I had hoped, it buffed my Moxie by five points.

Not Mettle, not Grit.

Moxie.

Moxie was used to interact with the supernatural and spiritual. It was also used for Improvisation.

I couldn't say what was about to happen or whether I would live, but if I was right, this would be a great conclusion.

Of course, I really did hope that I would survive. It would be a bit embarrassing to die grocery shopping.

I knew things were about to start happening as Rose slowly limped out of the garage and joined me in the field as I stared at the Patchers.

We were Off-Screen, but she said, "If I had known all of this would happen, I wonder if I would have prayed for a child."

"You couldn't have known," I said. "If it wasn't for them, things would have turned out fine."

She didn't look as confident.

"You can never be surprised by what you get when you pray to a nameless thing, whether you're praying for a child or for a second chance. A person willing to do that doesn't deserve to plead ignorance. I did what I did, and now we're here."

"Now we're here," I repeated, staring at her, unsure of the full scope of what she was saying.

I didn't have time to think about it.

On-Screen.

"Come to us," the Patchers all spoke at once, hundreds of voices sounding out of dozens of mouths. "Come to us; we will make it quick."

I had to wonder if a scholar or an occultist had done this story, would we have learned more about the Patchers and their supernatural nature? I supposed we could figure that out the next time we went food shopping.

If they were going to yell at me, I was going to yell back. It was showtime.

"You shouldn't have come here!" I screamed.

"We have been here since the first war," the voices said, "and we will be here at the last one."

I didn't know the history they were referencing, but it was a cool line, I thought.

"There were those that were here before you," I screamed, "and they are angry."

I got no response, but I noticed Merle Patcher had moved into the forefront of the group that was closing the distance toward me. That gave me confidence in my plan. It was nice to see the main Patcher.

"We will do whatever it takes to protect our family," he said, except he didn't say it with a hundred voices like the others; he was just talking himself.

His eyes were glowing though. His plot armor was 28. He was the boss.

Or so he thought.

The wind started to howl even harder, and Patchers emerged from the woods holding torches, which they promptly used to catch the crops on fire.

"You really shouldn't have done that," I said.

I tried to look panicked, afraid not of the Patchers but of the thing that they were insulting.

Rose started to call out, "Trees, sky, earth, hear me! These people have killed your child. They killed the child you gave me to protect. Please," she said, "I implore you, let loose your vengeance on them."

Thunder boomed with no lighting.

"You should go!" I screamed. "Something is happening."

I tried to play it like I was so panicked that I just wanted it all to stop. I even shed a tear, though that could have been from the wind whipping my eyes.

Merle was unfazed. "We will do whatever it takes to protect our family name," he said.

He lifted his gun and shot Rose. She fell to the ground; this wound was fatal.

"You really shouldn't have done that," I said. "You already killed his father, and then you killed him. Now he's really going to be angry."

Fifty heads tilted in confusion.

"I don't think so," Merle said.

They lifted their firearms. I hoisted my scythe up and ran as they started to shoot at me.

Sure enough, the bullets whizzed past but never hit me. I ran into the nearest field of corn. It was on fire, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. There was plenty of room to hide there, and the fire wouldn't get to me for some time.

They followed me into the corn.

The first one I saw, I swiped at with the scythe.

I wasn't sure if the scythe was a good weapon in real life, but in this movie, heads rolled.

Literally.

There was a pitter-patter as corn fell to the ground, followed by a thud after each swing. I continued running and swiping and dodging for a long while, but the fire spread, and eventually, even my luck ran out.

I ran out of room to run.

Eventually, I was forced out of the corn as the fire ate away at the entire crop. As soon as I got out, I felt something stinging my shoulder.

I had been shot.

Perhaps the ride was over.

The Patchers were closing in now, and I watched the Plot Cycle. It wasn't moving. We were still firmly in the final battle.

I hoped that Kimberly and the others were well on their way to Carousel now.

I didn't have to kill these people.

I didn't even have to survive.

I did have a show to put on, however.

I doubled over like I was sick to my stomach. The stinging bullet hole in my shoulder was only a mild annoyance as my plan started to come to fruition.

I puked on the ground.

I felt something in the wind, something that felt like battery acid on my skin. The red wallpaper showed my status changing to Infected.

So that's how it was going to play out.

"They won't have any mercy on you," I said, though I struggled to speak.

After that, I didn't have control of my mouth. A wicked voice came out of my throat that didn't sound human.

"You killed him," the voice accused. "You spilled his blood on this land," it continued. "Your blood will be spilled for it."

Merle lifted his gun to shoot at me, and when he pulled the trigger.

At first, I thought that it had misfired.

He was only ten feet away, so that didn't make a lot of sense, but I heard a bang and I felt nothing.

It was only a moment later that I realized that my Grit was over a thirty.

Grit wasn't even supposed to make you bulletproof, but then I wasn't exactly human. I was a vessel, and while I didn't have the presence of mind to read all of the new tropes I had on the red wallpaper, I could see that there were dozens of them.

A higher power possessed me, and mere guns could not stop me.

The other Patchers started to fire into me, and their bullets pierced right through my suit but bounced off my skin.

My hand moved and picked up my scythe without me telling it to.

"The harvest is nigh," I said in the voice of that terrible entity. "The grain is ripe, and the reaper awaits."

Was I not the reaper?

Apparently not.

The Reaper flew in from above the trees in the distance. As my eyes looked in that direction, I could see that Benny the Haunted Scarecrow, had arrived. He was more ragged than I recognized. Bullet holes and blood were still there.

The legs of his coveralls were not tied, so the straw stuffing continued to fall out, though it never seemed to deplete his size. Benny flew over the fields.

"He seeks his revenge," I said in the voice of that terrible god.

And he got his revenge.

Benny was a quick and efficient killer, with his scythe firmly gripped in his gloved hand. He flew from Patcher to Patcher. Not one of them stood a chance.

This was the Benny from The Final Straw II.

This was the creature I recognized.

The Patchers began shooting at him. When they hit him as he flew overhead, a puff of straw would blow into the air, but it didn't really matter.

He was there to reap, and the harvest was ready.

Rustle, or Benny rather, going with the moniker he seemed to have taken, wielded his sickle for ten minutes.

The Patchers didn’t run at first. They seemed unable to come to terms with what they were up against. They just kept shooting.

They only started to run after it was too late. A few of them broke out of their trance and started to run. They screamed for their ancestor to save them, but he did not.

The final Patcher to die in that field was Merle. Benny finished him off with a clean slice.

I imagined that Carousel would edit that down into a sleek montage of carnage.

Moments after the final Patcher fell, I was released from my possession.

Pretty much all of my statuses were blaring.

It was all I could do to kneel. My entire body ached.

Benny flew down in front of me. The slits that had been cut in the scarecrow's head as eye holes were still open, but there was nothing behind them. Just straw. He looked at me directly in the eye as best he could with the buttons sewn to the mask.

At that moment, I got a flash of images.

He was giving me a flashback.

I saw a little blonde kid talking to Tamara Cano. I saw her little ponytail holders with the plastic balls. They were walking through the fields toward the special sunflowers. Rustle took out a knife, cut off one of the sunflowers, and handed it to Tamara. She smiled and thanked him, and then she said, "My mother loves these."

Rustle looked at her, confused.

"I give them to my mother," Tamara said. “She keeps them on the dining table.”

Rustle looked hurt.

He shook his head and then slapped the flower out of her hand.

I could feel what he was feeling. He was upset because he wanted Tamara to have the flower, not give it to her mother.

He was frustrated that he couldn't explain that. In his frustration, he signaled for Tamara to leave.

She didn't understand why, and she started to cry.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "What did I do?"

But he couldn't answer her.

She walked off that day crying, upset, just as Benny Harless had claimed.

Then, on her way home, she was struck and killed by Della Fields (née Patcher).

Rustle blamed himself. If he hadn't sent her away, she would still be alive. And he would have to live with that… if you could call what he did living.

The needle on the Plot Cycle struck The End not long after that.

The others must have made their way to Carousel proper, or at least far enough to get the victory.

Benny flew off.

I wouldn't see him again until I watched the movie later to see where he had gone. The others had returned with lots of police from the big city, and the CBI was out in force.

Even though the needle was on the end, the movie was still going, just filming some final scenes.

We had won; that was all that mattered.

Well, not all, because technically I was still in tremendous pain until the movie was actually over.

The sun came up quickly. Carousel was getting it all prepared. I watched the scene later.

Benny had gone and grabbed a sunflower and found Dina, who had apparently been directed to the cemetery where her daughter's final resting place had been dug.

Carousel had set the scene in the future. Benny landed next to Dina and gave her the sunflower.

Dina, confused, simply said, "Thank you."

Then Benny flew off into the distance.

And finally, it was the end.