Subject: [PW!] [NC] Halloween Murder Mystery In The Sprout Tower of Terror Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 08:28:27 GMT From: Rob <robfrompw@yahoo.com> Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Newsgroups: alt.games.nintendo.pokemon "I really must be going, sage. It's way past my bed time!" Bugsy tells the Elder Sage as he, and a group of other people, including Flakner the Wing Master, a second cousin twice removed of Falkner the Bird Pokemon Master, and Old Man Shuckle, who has just gotten his purple Shuckle back from Andrew, head out the door of the Sprout Tower. The elder sage waves his halberd as the group of notoriously prominent celebrities head out the exit, leaving just a few people and Pokemon left in the haunted Sprout Tower. The Sage shrugs, says, "They're going to miss out on all the fun," then slams the front doors of the Sprout Tower shut. At the refreshment table, Marcia the vampiress grinds her teeth at Tetsuo the samurai, "If I hear you insulting me because I'm 27 while most of you people here are teenagers, you're going to get what's coming to you. Keep that in mind." That said, she storms away from the table, Tetsuo mumbling something under his breath. The Elder Sage runs over to the wobbling beam in the center of the Sprout Tower, which according to Doppler is inhabited by Mimic, and hops onto a platform there. He picks up a loudspeaker on the platform and shouts into it, "Attention, partygoers! It's almost midnight! Stop what you're doing and listen up!" Marcia stops in her tracks. Tetsuo, Doppler, and Aerie stop looking at Marcia. Travis, Becky, and Drake stop conversing about Drake's unexpected time jump. Jutta, Kitsu, Keaton, and Andrew come down from the second floor, curious to find out what the Sage is going to say. Smasher stops looking for his Pokemon. Ted and Cyclonus stop spying on the Bomb Ball Bashers. Andy, Enimuram, and Nori stop making the sarcastic remarks Ted and Cyclonus were overhearing. PK Ball stops searching for people who own Pokeballs to rant at. Yolei stops dragging Yuki around and Lynkeru stops wondering if there's an ancient artifact that would be useful for her quest on the top floor of the Sprout Tower, as is usually the case in the world that she comes from. Splash, who has just come in through the back door, turns to face the Elder Sage on the platform, thinking that he's Murasaki, thus interested in what he has to say. In fact, everyone's now facing the Elder Sage. "Thank you." The Elder Sage smiles, glad that everyone's paying attention to him, "The final event for tonight will be a scavenger hunt. I've hidden valuable goodies on each floor of this Tower. The catch is, the best prizes are on the top floors and the top floors are the spookiest ones. In fact, as you climb up, each floor gets progressively scarier! Only the bravest souls will be able to make it to the top floor, and even then, it'll be quite a challenge to find the hidden surprises! To make this scavenger hunt spookier than it already is, I'm cutting the Tower's central lighting system, so you will have to rummage through the dark..." Those words spoken, he uses his axe to cut some wires on the platform, and soon, everyone is standing in dim cande-light. The Elder Sage cackles, "Good luck... and Happy Halloween!" After a brief moment of silence, some of those standing in the darkness begin to voice their opinions: "This scavenger hunt sounds EXTREME! I'm in!" "Maybe this'll cheer me up..." "I could sure use those fancy glasses I saw Damian wearing right about now." "I hope there's a hookshot up there! I feel ridiculous using this 'Unown' thing." "I play hunt game. But better be not any ghost pooping out in dark to scare!" "There's probably a gang of Electrode upstairs. What's scarier than that?" "I LOVE YOU, MURASAKI!" Once those comments are voiced, the costumed people and Pokemon at the party scramble upstairs, just as a storm begins to brew outside the Sprout Tower... Minutes later, the storm's thunderclaps illuminate the scary rooms. On the first floor, PK Ball and his Pokemon are roaming around, trying to find the staircase. On the second floor, Andrew, Kitsu, Keaton, and Jutta are searching for prizes in the darkness, choosing to search in this room since they know the layout of it better than any of the other floors since they were hanging out here earlier. They're not particularly scared by the many Gastly and the Stooge-like Gengar trying to scare them on this floor - in fact, many of the ghosts are more scared of Jutta than they are of her. On the third floor, covered in cobwebs and littered with a few moving body parts, Andy, Enimuram, Nori, Ted, Cyclonus, Doppler, and Aerie are searching for the valuables that the Elder Sage was talking about. "Woo hoo! I found one!" Andy exclaims. Enimuram asks, "What did you find?" "Check it out - a wiggling hand." Andy waves the moving dismembered hand around, "I could tape down the index finger, ring finger, and pinkie, and that way I can have the hand wave its middle finger at Ted the next time he shows up!" Andy doesn't notice the angry mumbling coming from Ted, but does hear Enimuram's. Enimuram stares at Andy as there's a thunderclap that lights the third floor, "You are aware that that's just a prop, right?" When Andy looks at him with pouted lips, since he really wants to keep the severed hand, Enimuram sighs, "Oh, fine, ask the sage if you can keep it." As Andy cheers and hugs the hand close, Enimuram murmurs under his breath, "Boy, am I glad Andrew decided to stay downstairs. I couldn't stand two Andys right now - or ever for that matter, but particularly now." "But daaaaaddy, I wanna go upstaaaaairs!" Aerie whines, pulling Doppler's arm with all her strength, "Mommy went upstairs, why can't we go there too?" Doppler explains, "When you're known as Doppler, Destroyer of Cities, you've got to be careful in dark places full of people, especially if one of them's your mom." "Aww, mommy's not gonna kill you, let's go, let's go, let's go..." Aerie continues to pull on Doppler's arm, as he thinks about indulging his daughter's request... On the fourth floor, Marcia's only one of the people searching for valuables among the rotting corpses of human beings, many of whom are wearing nothing but torn cloth over their genitals and and a toe tags, and the puddles of blood. The smell in this room is almost unbearable, especially to Marcia, since she has a heightened sense of smell. Others who are disgusted by the various horrifying sights and stenches in this room are Tetsuo, Travis, Becky, Yolei, and Yuki. Splash is also here, but he's not disgusted - he's hugging the half-naked corpse of a purple-haired woman who reminds him of Murasaki, wondering why she's not hugging him back. Tetsuo and Travis are not too intimidated by the corpses, so they're shoving them aside and searching them, while Becky supervises, not wanting to touch them. Yolei feels like she's about to vomit and she asks Yuki, "Remind me why we're here again..." "Lynkeru wanted to go all the way to the top, so she dragged us here..." Yuki replies. "Well, I'm going downstairs. Care to join me?" When Yuki nods, Yolei and Yuki run downstairs to the third floor, passing Doppler and Aerie as they go... On the fifth and final floor, the sights, smells, and sounds are so terrifying, that anyone in their right mind would run away from there as soon as possible. The only partygoers present on this terrifying floor are Smasher, his Marowak skull is shielding him from some of the putrid scents and disturbing noises here, Drake, even more arrogant than usual due to his heavy metal robotic disguise, and Lynkeru, who, while searching for a special item on this floor, is wondering when the main boss is going to arrive so that she can slice him, her, or it to bits in order to earn a heart-shaped container. Even though these three are brave enough to be present here, they are unnerved when they hear realistic screams coming from the floor below them, followed by a little girl shrieking out, "DADDY'S DEAD! NOOOOOOO!" Smasher, Drake, and Lynkeru run downstairs just as people on the third floor run upstairs, pouring into the fourth floor, which now has one more cadaver than when the scavenger hunt began. Right in the center of the room, a bubbling pile of pinkish purple ooze is fizzling into nothingness. A female child dressed like Joan of Arc has her hands on the slime and is concentrating despite tears in her eyes, but she stops when the last bit of ooze fizzles out. She closes her hands and slams her fists onto the ground, "DADDYYYYYY!" She begins to sob and around this time, people from the second floor arrive to see the sight... "... someone killed Doppler?" Travis asks, sounding devastated, "One of the power players? I thought he was invincible... he broke out of a MASTER BALL!" Drake grabs his sword, and him, along with a few other people in the room, turn to face Marcia accusingly, "I guess you weren't quite finished killing Pokemon just yet, huh, Nurse Marcia? You saw your chance and you took it. How hypocritical of you to kill him, he who was trying to change his..." "Shut up, Dragonite." Marcia growls at the steel robot, "I did not kill Doppler. Well, at least not today. I know how much he means to my daughter, and I would never want to hurt her. It's not like I'm the only one here who has a grudge against the Pokemon who killed so many innocent people. Anyone here could be guilty." "...and I'm determined to find out who is." The Elder Sage finally walks into the room, and tells the people present, "Follow me back to the first floor. Nobody leaves this Tower until we find out which one of you murdered the Ditto." As the group heads downstairs, the beam in the center of the Sprout Tower starts to cry... Back on the first floor, the Elder Sage stands up on the platform, turns the lights back on, and demands to know, "All right, who was on what floor of the Tower and what were you doing when the Ditto was murdered? I can personally vouch for the strange floating Pokeball's innocence - he never managed to find the stairs..." Marcia, who is still being stared at by many of the people present, is the first one to speak, who to many sounds suspicious, "I was on the fourth floor..." "The scene of the crime..." Drake adds. Marcia narrows her eyes and nods, "Yes, but I didn't even notice that Doppler was there until Doppler screamed. Granted, it was a wonderful sound to hear, but I wasn't the cause of it. I was too busy looking for a prize, which I found, seconds before I heard the scream." She puts on the golden Arbok-shaped necklace she found, "If anything, Aerie's a better witness." Aerie, still crying, shakes her head, "I wasn't looking either... When I saw you, mommy, I let go of daddy's hand and ran over to see you, and he screamed before I got to you, so I turned around..." The Sage asks if anyone saw who was it that killed Doppler, but no one replies, so he looks around at the rest of the people gathered there and asks, "Who else wants to tell us where they were, before we have to force the information out of you?" -Marcia (( NS: Yes, I randomly drew Doppler's name out of a hat. I also drew out the name of the murderer. Now it's time to figure out who killed Doppler. The only people who can participate in this thread are those who entered the Sprout Tower in the other NC thread before I posted this one. Happy Halloween! ))