The Game at Carousel: A Horror Movie LitRPG-Chapter 9Book Six, : Recon

I told the others to go home and lock their doors.

I couldn't kick the feeling that anyone who got caught trying to watch what happened to Avery that night might share her fate.

Of course, that didn't apply to me.

My build was designed for reconnaissance.

First, my Call Sheet trope would tell me the next time I was to appear On-Screen, and as long as that timer was hours in the future, I knew I was safe from being drawn into the scene.

But even if that wasn't true, my Just Out of Shot trope would help me metaphorically see the cameras and avoid being picked up when evading enemies.

And of course, if that failed, Oblivious Bystander could prevent me from being attacked even if I ended up On-Screen.

Yes, I was definitely prepped for my stakeout that night. I might not have been good at killing a ravenous monster, but I could watch a scene from afar with little danger to myself.

It turned out I wasn't the only one staking out the pizza parlor, waiting for Avery to get back.

Ruck Johnson had parked his car on the far end of the parking lot and was waiting with something small and rectangular in his hands.

A quick glance at a clock conveniently built into a large sign for a bank nearby told me that I had 30 minutes before 1 a.m.

I had plenty of time.

I cautiously walked around to the part of the parking lot where Ruck waited. He saw me coming and smiled a mischievous smile. We were Off-Screen, of course.

"So, I guess in this movie you're a stalker of some kind," I said, not really expecting an answer.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Better than getting stabbed in a deck chair."

I nearly jumped out of my skin.

I knew that Ruck and the NPCs from his storyline were meta-aware; they had to be for their storyline to work. As the elder Doctor Halle had stated, NPCs remember whatever they need to be better at their jobs.

Still, I didn't expect such an out-of-character response.

I took a deep breath and stared at him.

"So you're going to protect her, whatever happens?" I asked.

Ruck nodded. He didn't have his usual obnoxious confidence; he was scared.

"I'll do whatever I can, but I usually don't last long in stuff like this. Fat guys don't survive this type of movie. Don't you know that?"

I nodded. It was a fate worse than death situation, but I got his point.

"Well, whatever happens, thank—" I started to say, but then I saw what he was holding in his hands.

"Is that a mixtape?"

Ruck smiled.

"The script suggested flowers or something, but I thought this was better. What do you think?"

I agreed.

There’s a certain amount of vulnerability that comes from making a mixtape for a woman who's way out of your league. It might even redeem him for how much he had annoyed Avery with his incessant date requests. Might.

I wanted to ask him questions, but I didn't want to press my luck. I couldn't imagine being in his position and being aware of what was going on.

"Good luck," I said.

I turned to walk away and head back to my hiding spot, but then I thought better of it.

There was a question I wanted to ask.

"Do you remember us?"

He smiled but only in the corner of his mouth, and nodded his head gently.

This wasn’t important, but I wanted to ask him who actually killed him in his native storyline. The gimmick of the Delta Epsilon Delta movie was that there was a whole host of different people who wanted him dead. I wanted to know what real-world scenario could create a storyline like that in Carousel or if it had been crafted from scratch.

But that would have to be a question for a different day. The time on the sign across the street jumped ahead ten minutes.

I quickly jogged across the road.

Ruck had not been de-aged for this storyline, so he was very clearly in his early twenties, but I supposed I might have been too. He was a big guy and hopefully a strong guy, but I didn't know how much that was going to help Avery.

I just hoped that the mixtape would survive the storyline so that I could listen to it.

Time drew nearer, and I watched the pizza parlor. Even as 1 a.m. approached, nothing seemed to change.

Maybe I was foolish to assume that the entire store would transform into some sort of funhouse version of itself or that perhaps a black hole would open up, trapping all who came near.

The 1 a.m. restriction was very subtle, but to me it had flashed in red blinking letters.

Something strange was going to happen here after that time limit, I just didn’t know what.

As I pondered this, I saw Avery's car pull into the parking lot. I was hidden behind a bush across the street from the restaurant.

She parked in front of the restaurant and emerged from her vehicle, distraught at being late. It was 1:06 a.m.

She rolled her eyes and cursed. I had put my headphones on, so my Quiet on Set trope would allow me to hear everything that was happening across the street.

She was On-Screen. All attention was on her.

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Unable to open the front door, I saw her start to make her way around to the back side of the building, holding a wad of cash that had no doubt just been given to her by the customer.

I would have to move positions to be able to see the other side of the building, but that was okay. I had mapped everything out and had my route planned. I could stay out of shot.

Unfortunately, it would require a whole lot more movement from me to get a good view of the backside of the restaurant than it would for her, so I had to book it, all while ducking down and hiding in the shadows.

I couldn’t complain. As far as I understood it, this was what Dina did in almost every storyline.

I made it to my next hiding position with a full view of the backside of the building, although I was seeing it from an angle.

Avery tried the back door.

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"Typical," she said. She started to fold the money up tight and then tried to stick it through the side of the door.

Something told me there should have been a drop box for this exact situation, but if there were, there would be no high drama.

As Avery tried to stick the money through the door, a limousine pulled into the parking lot and swung around behind the building, its headlights flashing right into Avery’s eyes.

She held up a hand to block out the light so that she could see.

The back door to the limousine opened up, and a large man in an expensive suit stepped out.

He was slow and cautious. He walked forward half a step at a time.

"Are you the broker?" he said, in a nervous voice, like he was afraid of Avery.

"What?" she asked.

But before he could answer, the back door that she had just been trying to shove the money through opened abruptly.

Red light shone out, and two nondescript men stepped out, forcing Avery to jump back.

Avery looked from one man to the other. They just looked like ordinary men in business suits.

And yet, something was off about them.

They weren't showing up on the red wallpaper, not as NPCs, not as enemies.

Were they that powerful?

I didn't know. Avery was probably wondering the same thing.

"I'm just trying to drop off the money from my last run," she said, unsure of what was happening.

The men looked at each other.

"Pretty girl," one of them said, in a voice far too high-pitched for a man or even a human.

Avery backed away.

"I'll just turn it in in the morning," she said, stammering.

The other man also said, "Pretty girl. Poor girl."

And it wasn’t just because they were perverts or anything like that.

Avery had a trope that would cause many enemies to develop some sort of feelings for her during a chase scene, feelings that might make them sloppy, and in the blink of an eye, Avery had just entered into a chase scene.

And she was on top of it.

She had been through this before.

She turned to run around the side of the store, and the men took off after her.

Her vehicle was probably a hundred feet away from her, but the men were upon her, and one of them grabbed her arm.

They were incredibly quick. They moved faster than their steps should have taken them, as if they glided and their steps were all for show.

Instinctively, she let loose a scream that pierced the night.

The men grabbed their ears, and if my eyes didn't deceive me, something was strange about the way their skin moved as they slapped their hands over their ears.

As if maybe their skin wasn't attached to whatever was underneath.

Avery’s scream should have debuffed them, but since they didn't appear on the red wallpaper, I couldn't directly confirm that.

Avery took the opportunity and ran as fast as she could toward her car.

The men looked at each other and then, in an instant, their skin and clothes fell to the ground, leaving nothing but shadows standing where they had been.

At least now I understood why they didn't show up on the red wallpaper: because those sets of skin were just a costume.

And when the shadows revealed themselves, I saw good and well what they were on the red wallpaper.

Repossessor

Plot Armor: 25

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Tropes

Night Terrors

All information from insight tropes directly related to this entity will come in the form of On-Screen nightmares or visions.

A Repossessor. I couldn’t even see their tropes, not in the way I typically did. If I understood it correctly, the other tropes would come to me as nightmares.

And given their one trope that I was able to see, it was quite clear that they were demons of some kind, and that wasn’t just from my meta knowledge.

It was deep in my core; I understood that what I was looking at was a demonic entity.

And yet, the demons didn’t pursue Avery directly.

Instead, they molded into the shadows in the parking lot, screaming with a dozen anguished voices.

One turned into a strange, long thread that wound its way up the nearest light pole and burst the bulb, leaving the entire area in darkness.

The other shadow spread across the ground and went right past Avery, blending into the shadow underneath her car.

Avery still ran to the driver’s side door, opened it, and jumped inside.

But this act sealed her fate. In the darkness, she must not have seen where the demon went.

I couldn’t see exactly what was happening, but I could hear it.

Something wrapped around Avery. I thought it was the seatbelt, and it started to tighten.

I could hear it clicking, and I could hear her struggling to get away from it.

The car roared to life.

The demon that had burst the light on the light pole had already returned to his skin suit and was walking toward the car, adjusting his skin so that it fit better.

Avery, desperate, began honking the horn of her car as the man got closer to the driver’s side door.

He reached it, and the door flew open, clearly under the influence of the second demon.

But before the man could reach out and grab Avery, something large and surprisingly quick flew right through him.

It was Ruck.

"Don't worry, I'm here, Avery!" he cried out as he tackled the man.

Of course, when he landed on the ground, all he had gripped in his arms was a deflated man suit, and this realization freaked him out.

He began screaming and throwing the suit, skin and all, away from himself.

He looked up, seeing the shadow--the demon itself.

To be fair, Ruck was really good at this part.

He really did look afraid.

And maybe he was.

He started to scream, and his scream joined in with Avery’s and with the thousand screams that emitted from the demon’s body.

Ruck quickly got to his feet. He seemed to consider running away, but then he saw Avery bound inside her own car.

And he decided to be brave.

He ran toward her, but as he did, the car came to life with a roar of its engine and pivoted.

Moving forward quickly, it hit him in the knees.

Luckily, all this did was knock his legs out from under him and land him directly against the windshield with a large crack.

He didn’t go flying off the back end—no, the windshield seemed to crack on its own after his impact, and it embraced him, almost binding him to the car. It looked ridiculous, but this was a comedy, and this type of possession fit right in.

The car, now having captured both Avery and Ruck, began driving back around to the backside of the building slowly, confidently, and quietly.

One skin suit stood up as the demon re-entered it.

The man, if I could call him a man, brushed some dirt off his suit, walked back toward the backside of the building, picked up his partner’s skin suit, and continued on around.

I rushed back to the second vantage point so that I could see the rear of the building.

What I saw was more men in suits hauling Avery and Ruck into the restaurant.

The wealthy man who had gotten out of the limousine was standing there, clearly having an out-of-body experience as he observed what was happening.

He was in way over his head.

He was just a normal NPC.

I had no idea what he was doing there.

I didn’t know who he was or how he was connected to the storyline.

But there was a woman standing next to him now, a woman who, like the other demons, did not show up on the red wallpaper. She was short, with gray hair tied up in a bun.

A woman who held onto the man’s elbow tightly, as if preventing him from running away.

In a small way, I was glad that something had finally happened, something supernatural, something we could sink our teeth into.

But the truth was, as I stared from my hiding spot, the woman, who wore her own business suit and was not physically intimidating, stared across the street where I was hiding.

And though I was not in her direct line of sight, she could still see me.

I knew.

And just her seeing me was enough to make my Incapacitation status flutter.

The rich man waved off his limousine nervously, and it drove away quickly. Its driver was clearly ready to get away from whatever he had just seen.

The large man in the fancy suit followed the short woman into the back of the restaurant, into the red light that shone out.

Then the door shut, and everything was again silent at Pecatto’s Pizza.