The recording ends, and a few moments later you hear something beeping. You follow it to the stage in the Gala Hall to find a large metal box, with a stack of papers on top, and a slot in the lid. The beeping stops as you get close. On the side of the box, in stenciled, spray-painted letters, are the words Deposit Box.
A placard screwed to one side of the box has instructions.
Mark names on the papers provided
Insert into box before midnight
Results to be announced at noon tomorrow
The papers are long, narrow sheets with a table printed on one side. There are sixteen of them, each with a name printed at the top; after a moment of shuffling and arguing you find yours. The top of one column is marked Civilian Identity, and the other Hero Identity.
It seems this is the guessing game the voice in the recording had mentioned. What were the prizes? Escape from the tower but have your identity exposed, or stay and be granted murder immunity.
Tempting prizes... You eye up the papers and the box. Will you guess? Have you figured everyone out yet?
Submit guesses to the main blog; any winners will be announced shortly. If submitting from a blog other than your character blog, let us know who you are, or else your guesses will not be counted.
The silence of the relative peace of your early morning is broken by harsh, frantic barks; Dash, or at least you sure hope those sounds are coming from the dog. It rings throughout the entire building, echoing off of walls that have definitely seem better days. Some of you are already up; some are roused by Dash’s barking. And some are quite literally dragged out of bed by the retriever, teeth gentle on your wrist as he leads you to the Gala Hall, where all of this had began.
Perhaps this is the beginning of something new as well, for better or for worse.
The tube in his mouth, picked up from the floor as soon as the last person enters, hints heavily at the latter, however.
Once everyone has arrived, Dash immediately makes a beeline for NONARY, who takes the cylindrical casing with a decidedly amused expression on his face. He, like everyone else, had already been through this once and though Carlos had been the one gifted with the recorder last time, he knows what to do, taking it out of its case and immediately pressing play.
“Good morning, heroes. It--’s--ful--earl--f--ou--” The scientist has a huge shiteating grin on his face as he rapidly pushes the play/pause button over and over again, causing whoever’s behind this to stutter and stammer their words, rendering the beginning of the message nearly unintelligible, until after a few more stops and starts, the glares he gets cause him to sigh and hit play one more time, letting their apparent captor speak.
“--afraid things must change around here. None of you are dead. Yet. You see, it’s very easy to be heroic when people are watching. All of you, heroes, your eyes set on each other. You have to uphold yourselves, correct? Oh, it’s so easy to be gallant when nothing’s on the line.
This changes now.
Every person, every hero has their fears. Fear of being forgotten, of being ordinary, of your archnemesis gaining the upper hand, of your loved ones being put in danger by your actions...
...But every superhero’s worst fear is, perhaps, having their identity exposed. Maybe not for all of you. I believe that enough, however, feel that fear strike true. What will having your mask torn off lead to? ... I will leave that to your own imaginations. I think you already know.
I will be succinct: kill someone, or one by one your identities will be revealed. To whom? I can assure you there is someone, many someones, still out there who would be interested in gaining this information. Villains, for instance.
As a matter of goodwill, I will hold off on revealing an identity immediately. This is your grace period. Do not waste it. At this time tomorrow, if no one has died, I will send you another recording, exposing one of you. Much is at stake. You have twenty-four hours.”
The recording cuts off sharply at the end, the command laid out before you starkly. Murder someone, or have your identity ripped away for the world to see. It’s that simple.
Motivation For Murder
And the motive drops! The tension rises as you wonder who, if anyone, you can trust. You have powers, or maybe gadgets; so do all 15 people around you. The question is, who will be the first one to use them...?
But, you know, if you do want to be that person... there’s planning to be done, isn’t there? All those potential victims...
[[If you would like to be either killer or victim for this chapter, please contact one of the mods!!]]
... only to reappear downstairs in the gala hall a minute later. It pushes open the door with no problems, and now it has something in its mouth, something similar to one of the cylindrical containers in a bank drive-through.
It walks up to Carlos, who takes the container gently from its mouth; it then sits in front of him, panting happily, a job well done.
Wordlessly, confusion written on his face, he opens the cylinder and empties it into the palm of his hand. It looks like a small machine, almost akin to an old school mp3 player. The only buttons are PLAY/PAUSE and RECORD; judging by the blinking red light to the side of them, something’s already been recorded and is waiting to be played. There’s a moment where he considers not pressing play, but as sketchy as it is, it’s the only lead they have. He presses play and holds it out in front of him, letting everyone gather around him to listen.
The voice that comes out is deep, slightly tinny but decidedly mechanical, almost like something you’d get out of a text-to-speech service. It cuts right to the chase:
"Hello. I see you’ve all woken up. You’ve even had a chance to meet the others and introduce yourself. I would like to make an introduction, as well.
This is Dashing Dog. D-Dog or Dash for short. You can think of him as my assistant.
You’ve no doubt started to wonder what brought you all here and why, correct? And have you figured it out, yet? The answer is simple. You are heroes.
Yes, that's right: heroes. Did you really think you were the only one? All sixteen of you are superheroes. Every single one. You were not brought here at all. You came here of your own accord, to Paragon Tower, for the Heroes' Gala. You simply never left.
What happened here? Why, that’s for me to know. You’d think you’d remember something like this.You’re here because I want you to be. Superheroes are an interesting breed, aren’t they? No matter the reasons, always doing ‘good.’ But that should be obvious. You’re superheroes, after all. You’re the good guys.
‘Good.’ What does that mean to you? I suppose you all will be finding that out soon enough.”
There’s a pause in the recording, as if to let the words sink in. So you’re not the only hero... you’re not sure if that’s comforting or if it puts you on edge even more. You don’t have long to ruminate on it, because the voice has more to say.
“As some of you have attempted, and many of you no doubt suspect, leaving this building is difficult. Impossible, even. And to anyone who thought the latter: congratulations! You would be correct.
You cannot leave Paragon Tower through conventional means. And to those of you already thinking of unconventional means – superpowers, of course – you’ll find that they will be of no use to you, either. Think of it as a force field. Your powers will still work on the inside, but the boundary is absolute.
The technology to accomplish this exists, of course. How else would society keep defeated supervillains in check? Ah, but you’re not supervillains, are you? It would be unfair to keep you all trapped forever.
There are two ways to leave. Two ‘keys,’ if you will, though neither of them are physical keys. The first should be relatively easy, for someone with your abilities. You’re all quite capable, after all. To be granted permission to leave the tower, all I ask is that you get away with murder.
That’s right. And because the sixteen of you are the only ones present, this means that to take this route you would have to set your sights on another hero. If you succeed, you may leave the building. You will be able to go back to your normal life, whatever that may be.
I realize that this option may not seem desirable for some of you. You may prefer inaction, to wait out a rescue that will never come. The idea of killing another hero is too immoral or dangerous for you to stomach.
There is a second option. It will not be easy. And it can only be claimed by a single person.
If you are the first one that is able to correctly match the civilian and heroic identities of your fifteen companions, you will be able to claim one of two prizes. The first is the same as the one already mentioned: freedom from the tower. The second, immunity. Should you be the first to complete the list and choose not to leave, you will not be able to be targeted by your fellow heroes.
You may have already guessed this, but it is likely in your best interest to continue to keep your heroic persona to yourself. Or not. You are free to reveal as much or as little as you like. Just keep in mind that what you say can and will be used against you.”
The recording stops again momentarily, and you can almost feel your head spinning. There’s... so much information to take in. Kill each other? Some sort of... matching game?
“Ah, you might ask,” the recording continues, “but there are so many heroes in Arcadia City! How could you possibly pick out the correct sixteen from that pool, let alone match them to the correct civilian identities? The probability is so low that it might as well be impossible.
New rooms will be made available to you soon. In one of these rooms, you will find the profiles of sixteen heroes. One of them will be yours. The remaining fifteen belong to the others.
In addition, you will find a more detailed list of rules in the same room. I recommend that you go over these rules carefully. Ignorance is no excuse for breaking them, and you’ll find that the consequences for doing so are severe.
I assume all of you are capable of reading, so I don’t intend to go over the rules in depth with you, save one:
Dash is a good dog. You can pet him, play fetch with him, whatever you’d like. But if you so much as attempt to hurt this dog, you will be killed on the spot. You’d do well to keep that in mind.”
This time, after waiting nearly half a minute, you figure the recording ends for good, leaving all sixteen of you in stunned silence. There’s a lot to take in. But according to that message, why, you’ll have all the time in the world to process it.
The door that Dash came in through swings open fully, inviting you to explore the rest of the Tower. It’s not like you have anything else better to do.
Welcome to Paragon Tower... again.
Chapter one begins, leaving our heroes stranded in the decidedly beaten-up Paragon Tower. The first two floors of the tower are open for exploration; you find that when you try to ascend to three or descend to whatever lies beneath, you’re unable to, stopped by what you figure is the same technology keeping you from escaping.
Murder...? That’s the kind of thing you’ve sworn to prevent, via whatever your own personal modus operandi happens to be. Surely none of your fellow supers would do such a thing... right?
And that guessing game... you get one chance per chapter. Better not waste it.
