Chapter Ninety-Two: Young Love

Chapter Ninety-Two: Young Love

The party was in full swing, and I don't just mean the party phase of the plot cycle. People were dancing and laughing. They shared wine, champagne, and conversation.

Everyone I could see was wearing a mask, and because of that, I couldn't tell the enemies from the NPCs; unless I tried hard enough, I sometimes lost track of my team.

When we entered, Antoine, Kimberly, and I stayed, hovering near Grace. It was strange. We were getting used to entering into dangerous situations, but social situations could be the most confusing and intimidating.

One misspoken word could out us as imposters. Would that mean that we just lost? Was it possible to lose before First Blood?

Mary Lee Parrish didn't take long to catch sight of Grace. I thought that was strange, given the fact that Grace was wearing a mask. I wasn't sure what the rules were for the masks, but I had assumed that they would prevent us from being identified.

“Ms. Emerald? Ms. Emerald, is that you?” Mary Lee asked. “These damned masks make it so difficult to recognize anyone. I understand the need for secrecy, but this is just impractical. Come here, darling, it’s been so long since I’ve been up and walking around.”

Mary Lee came forward and gave Grace a hug and a quick peck on both cheeks.

When I looked at her on the red wallpaper, all I saw was the name, Ms. Opaline. Grace could see through that, perhaps because of her high stats, perhaps because Mary Lee Parrish was only brought to into the story because of the effects of Grace's trope.

Still, the fact that Mary Lee had mentioned the obfuscating nature of the masks (despite the masks not really covering anyone's face all that much) suggested that their power was not meta--that it was not the product of a trope. That would explain why I had not seen anything about the masks’ power on the red wallpaper with Trope Master.

It was magic. In-universe magic. How else would an NPC be mentioning it On-Screen?

That meant one thing: we were dealing with some kind of sorcery.

“Emerald, do you remember Mr. Chromatic?” Mary Lee asked in a tone that was both hushed, but somehow very loud.

“I apologize. Memory doesn’t serve. Care to remind me?” Grace asked.

“Mr. Chromatic! You remember him. You hit it off with him at the last society function. Tall man. Dreamy eyes. Wore the mask that looked like a mirror?”

“Mr. Chromatic!” Grace exclaimed. “How could I forget?”

“Well,” Mary Lee said, “He got in an accident skiing last month. His body was wrecked. What a waste. He should be around here somewhere. He isn’t quite as... captivating... in his current state.”

She started to laugh.

Grace joined in. Apparently, what Mary Lee said was some kind of joke.

Mary Lee and Grace continued to talk. The conversation revolved around things that had happened at previous parties.

Grace (Ms. Emerald) had gotten tipsy and eaten over a dozen shrimp cocktails. (“I had to carry you back to your limousine!”). Mary Lee (Ms. Opaline) had a wardrobe malfunction. (“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? That waiter fell in love though, didn't he?”).

And so on and so forth.

I moved away from the conversation and whispered to Antoine and Kimberly, “You notice none of their old stories take place outside of this building?”

“She hasn’t said Grace’s name even once,” Kimberly added.

“The masks,” I said. “Mary Lee knows the person who usually wears that mask. She can’t tell that Grace isn’t her.”

“Magic?” Antoine asked.

I nodded. “That or a head injury.”The inaugural upload of this chapter took place via N0v3l-B1n.

“Why can we recognize each other?” Kimberly asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

There were a few possibilities. We would have to work through them.

As we spoke, Chris came over and said, “My Gut Instinct ability is all over the place. Stay on your toes.”

As if we were relaxing.

“You two need to go exploring while we still have time in the Party Phase,” Chris said to Antoine and Kimberly. “I’m not sure what Film Buffs do, but go do that. If you find important information, get it back to Grace.”

He had a point. Kimberly’s Get A Room trope was exceedingly useful, but they couldn’t exactly use it with me around. I was a bit of a third wheel.

~~~

“Look,” Mrs. Cloudburst said, pointing to an open door we passed on the third floor, “They have an old-fashioned sleeping porch. I love houses with sleeping porches.”

As we walked, my Location Scout ability started to fill up with new locations. Maybe talking to people wasn't so bad.

Eventually, she took me over to a large bookcase on the first floor and pulled on one of the books, and the cabinet swung open to reveal a winding staircase. As it opened, Mrs. Cloudburst ushered me forward toward the stairs. I started to get nervous. Being out in the open with her was one thing, but in a secluded area, things could get rough.

“Hurry,” she said. She pointed to a large wooden door that was reinforced with large strips of iron. “We aren’t supposed to use this, and the entrance to the wine cellar is right there. Do you want us to get caught?”

“No,” I said. The wine cellar must have been pretty high-traffic.

She grabbed my hand and dragged me up the staircase, giggling like a schoolgirl. The bookcase closed behind us. We made it to the top to find a small door. She looked over at me and opened it.

Inside, I saw a room with a few implements of furniture, a small bathroom, and a large bed. There were windows on all four sides of the room, one labeled with each of the cardinal directions.

She pulled me into the room with a smile and shut the door.

Off-Screen.

Suddenly, her behavior changed. She let go of my arm and walked over to the window labeled with a large, “S.”

She gestured for me to follow.

As I did, I saw what she was looking at. The storm.

In the distance, a large, black storm hovered over the area that must have contained Carousel.

The storyline had just managed to make me forget about Anna and Camden.

Mrs. Cloudburst looked concerned. That puzzled me. I thought NPCs knew everything that was going on.

I was Off-Screen. No way I could break character.

“The Apocalypse?” I asked.

She looked at me and paused, thinking of the right words.

“Don’t worry, it won’t make it past the mountains.” She said the line like she was telling me, but her facial expressions made it look like she was asking.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

She nodded her head.

“You’ve never seen this one before?”

She shook her head and looked back out the window. The expression of worry never left her face.

Some of the veterans insisted that NPCs were not real. I wasn't sure. Here I was in a room with a woman who had, to the best of my understanding, pretended to seduce me so that she could ask me whether she was safe or not. Just like all the NPCs who had been forced by the script to stand and watch as the black snow approached, she was afraid of what the apocalypse would mean for her.

The funny thing was, I didn't actually know if she was a standard NPC or an enemy. She might try to kill me in a few hours.

There appeared to be limits to what different NPCs were told in their scripts.

"Some people close to me got trapped in it," I said. The words caught in my throat, and I had to keep myself from crying.

Mrs. Cloudburst reached out and gave me a hug.

She started to mess with her hair, and she unbuttoned one of the buttons on her dress. She went back to the bathroom and looked in the mirror to hastily apply a new layer of lipstick.

Afterward, she returned to me and loosened my bow tie just a bit so that it wasn't perfectly straight, and she pulled up on my undershirt so it wasn't tucked in just right. Then she ruffled my hair.

She was getting us ready for the next scene. We needed to come out of the tower looking like we had just fooled around.

“Cristobal’s speech should be soon. You know he would hate for us to miss it, don’t you, Mr. Gray Amber?”

I didn’t know anything, but the character my character was pretending to be would.

“Of course,” I said.

“We had better not miss it,” she said, as she kissed the collar of my white undershirt, decorating it with a red lip-shaped stain.