Book Five, Chapter 36: If at first you don't succeed...
“It just comes down to a question,” Antoine said. “Do we try Dina's Rescue trope again, or do we switch to mine? Because we are not giving up. Not at the first real loss we suffered. I feel like we got a pretty good look at what my Rescue would be like, except there would be no player surrogates, and we’d have less time to get things done. I’m up for that, but I’m willing to put it up for a vote.”
We were on the roof of Kimberly's loft, eating food we had purchased to go from the restaurant downstairs. We had taken a couple of days to decompress and really think about our first failed storyline. It had been a somber few days.
An Omen had come to the door the night before. It was a woman in an usher's outfit like Silas the Mechanical Showman's. She was a singing telegram. If we had opened the door, she would have inadvertently sung us an ancient spell that would have summoned a demon or something. It sounded like fun, but we were busy.
Maybe next time.
I had watched Itch on the Red Wallpaper about six times.
It was okay—super depressing, obviously, because everyone died—but those NPCs were much better actors than any of my friends or me, outside of maybe Kimberly when she’s trying.
Antoine had set up the conversation so that I could take over and pitch the other side. I was willing to, just because I wanted to cut him off before the inspirational quotes came out.
“I think we need to look at this objectively,” I said. “Antoine's trope will give us more control over the narrative, but it will be more difficult than the storyline we just witnessed. And ultimately, I’m not sure we'll get better rewards for it to make up for the increased risk.”
Then, I broke into a lecture I hadn’t intended to give when I was preparing to say what needed to be said.