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?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“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.”

I smiled. That was likely why he didn’t get a single stat ticket.

“He should have given in to the slime,” I said. Isaac already had some experience being honked out of his mind for most of a storyline.

“He did eventually,” Ramona said, “but it was like Carousel was messing with him because he was a Comedian, and the story was kind of a comedy but not really.”

“Yeah, something similar happened with him in The Die Cast storyline. He must give really good reactions if Carousel is keeping him alive to terrify him.”

“I couldn’t tell,” she said. “I just couldn’t figure out why he didn’t want the slime.”

“I think he likes his slime well done,” I said.

She smiled but didn’t laugh.

“Well, I’m glad it wasn’t traumatic for everyone.”

“No,” she said as she stared into the distance. “Not for me.”

There was a silence then that seemed to stretch forever.

“So, I was going to take a nap,” she said.

“Great,” I said. “Get rested up.”

I turned and left. It felt like a productive conversation.

At least we were talking about something.

It was a step in the right direction, at least.

----------------------------------------

Itch was not a popular storyline.

The recommended archetypes for scouting were Scholar-Researcher, Adventurer, and Engineer, which was an advanced archetype I had not come across before.

The section that had information from scouting tropes that were not considered spoilers was blank.

No one had gotten around to scouting out this story, at least not at the time this copy of the Atlas was obtained.

There just wasn’t a lot of information on it. That was unusual, as there was usually at least one Psychic scouting trope in every storyline. There were none for Itch.

But we weren't entirely out of options.

We had our own scouting tropes.

"Kimberly, we haven’t talked in so long," Sal said. "Are you quitting acting or something, sweetheart?"

"You know I could never quit," Kimberly said. "I was hoping you could give me advice about this movie called Itch that I’ve been hearing about. If you could tell me all about it, I’d appreciate it."

Kimberly's trope that allowed her to call her talent agent for information was really useful for The Final Straw. We hoped it would help here, too.

And then we waited for his response, which took a moment.

"Oh, that one," Sal said. "I’ve heard of it. I wouldn’t say I’m a big fan, but it's not exactly a mistake if you want to go for that sort of thing. You definitely have the range. Though I will say the old saying 'looks don’t last' is very literal in this screenplay."

"What’s it about?" Kimberly asked.

"I don’t recall," Sal said. "Certainly a psychological horror, maybe a creature feature. Who knows? It's not my sort of thing. I just skimmed the script."

We all looked at each other. We had played around with this trope a ton, and he had never been this tight-lipped.

"Is that all?" Kimberly asked.

"It is. I wish I had more for you. I’ve got to go. Bye now."

Sal hung up.

"What just happened?" Kimberly asked.

"Is this storyline that much harder than the ones we've tested before?" Antoine asked. "Maybe you just don't have high enough Moxie to get a good reading."

I wasn’t so sure. Itch was a harder story than The Final Straw was, but not that much more difficult. Her trope should not have been blanking that hard.

"When I used my tropes on it when we were out there, they didn't seem to have too much trouble," I said.

Location Scout had given me a whole list of rooms and hallways that included terms like "living quarters" and "storage." Not incredibly useful, but pretty standard for the trope.

If I had wanted it to do better, I would need to put a lot more points into Savvy.

I don’t like it here… had told me how to activate the trope just fine and told me its difficulty was higher than average, but then there were only three of us there, so it might actually be pretty average in difficulty for us.

Of course, when we used a rescue trope on it, it would be more difficult, but its base difficulty seemed to be about in line with what our levels were.

"Just a second," I said. "Antoine, equip your rescue trope."

He quickly did.

"Now Kimberly, call Sal again."

She dialed out again.

"Kimberly, I was just thinking about you. What are you doing?" Sal asked.

Kimberly paused, looked at me, then looked at Antoine, and then said, "I was hoping you could tell me about that new movie Itch. Do you know anything about that?"

"Huh, you know I was reading about it, but I gotta say I’m not a big fan. It's a little bit of psychological horror, a little bit of a thriller, a creature feature, more or less. You probably wouldn’t stand out in all that testosterone."

"What kind of character would I play?" Kimberly asked.

"I can’t imagine," Sal said.

Again, he didn't have much to say.

I waved my hand across my neck, telling her to cut the call.

She did so.

"He's just not saying anything," Kimberly said. “Not as much as usual.”

"Not only is he not saying anything, but he’s saying the same amount he did before," I said. Even though the rescue version would be more difficult. I don’t think it’s the difficulty that’s the problem."

When Antoine had equipped his rescue trope, Sal had a new version of the screenplay to go over with Kimberly—a version that should have been harder and should have given us even less information than the original.

That's how rescues worked; they were supposed to be harder.

But the two summaries from Sal were roughly equivalent.

Something else was at play, but I didn’t know what.

"Should we try Dina’s rescue trope?" Kimberly asked.

It was better than hiking all the way out there to see if it would work. I nodded my head. Antoine unequipped his rescue ticket, and then Dina equipped hers.

Kimberly called Sal again.

"Kimberly!" Sal exclaimed when he answered the phone. "I’m having major déjà vu. I just knew you were gonna call me. It is so weird."

"Hey, Sal. I was wondering about that movie called Itch."

"Straight to business there, aren’t you?" he asked. "I know we were talking about Itch a few days ago, and I know you were excited to do psychological horror, but unfortunately, I got a new copy of the script, and your role has been almost completely cut. They revamped the script to focus on some other characters. It's still a creature feature or something like that, but you barely get a cameo in it. There was nothing I could do."

"Do you know what the plot is about?" Kimberly asked.

"I did before, but I have had so many things on my mind it must have gotten pushed out," Sal said. "Well, if that's all, I’ve gotta be going."

Again, he hung up.

This time, we just sat back and stared at each other, bewildered.