8:30 AM, Thursday, October 21st, 2021: Bend, Oregon
Duniway High School's annual field trip to The Huntington's Potato Farm on October 21st was proceeding as it always had. Ms. Duffy had organized this trip over a dozen times now, possessing a particular passion for plants and agriculture that always made her excited to explain the process to her students once they arrived. The Huntington family was amenable to it, happy to explain the delicate process of growing and harvesting potatoes for mass consumption.
The students of Ms. Duffy's Biology class boarded the school bus in the morning as they always had. Only a few were particularly excited about the trip given the destination, and most were only going because it was free and it got them out of class for a full day. All was quiet until the bus finally began to move, the usual excited chatter and gossiping commencing as Ms. Duffy relaxed in the front seat. Spirits were high, and the manic energy of the students brought on by the change of scenery was palpable.
None of them noticed the black sedan tailing them ever since they left the school's parking lot.
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9:41 AM, Thursday, October 21st, 2021: Central Oregon Highway
About an hour into the drive, Ms. Duffy found herself staring out the window of the bus at the Oregon wilderness off of Highway 20. Duniway's School Resource Officer Hayden Phelps, a gruff, older man with an infamously short temper, was sitting to her left, staring at his phone and scrolling through his Facebook feed. The cacophony of voices echoing off the walls of the bus was familiar to her, and almost relaxing in a way. Watching the forests roll by as she listened to her students converse was such a regular experience that it was relaxing. She could almost lose herself in it.
A sudden rush of wind through her hair from behind followed by a deluge of shouting from her students snapped her out of her daze. Was someone using their Gift to cause a ruckus again? This always happened at least once on these trips. She had better nip that in the bud, and fast.
She whipped her head behind her, readying herself to chew her students out, only to be greeted by three new figures in rubber masks standing right in the center of the bus.
Everything that followed happened so fast.
Before she could react or say something or do anything, the largest of the three leveled a pistol at Hayden. She heard the boom in the same instant she felt his blood splatter against her face. She saw his body hit the floor as the largest of them charged the bus driver.
The students screamed, she screamed. Frost began to coat her skin, with her student's powers erupting all at once in a great, panicked flurry.
The air inside the bus seemed to be filled with mist.
Then, all of a sudden, everything went black.
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Unknown Time, Thursday, October 21st, 2021: Undisclosed Location
When Ms. Duffy finally woke back up, she felt groggy, and she still couldn't see anything around her. She tried to move, only to find that she seemed to be chained to where she was sitting. What was happening? Why was she tied up? Where was she? Where were her students? She started to struggle and panic immediately, letting out a scream, only to be silenced by a sharp blow to the back of her head.
"Shut up," a deep, muffled, rumbling voice hissed into her ear.
Her skull ached from where she had been hit. What sounded like panicked cries from some of her students broke out not long after she was struck. She tried to look around, to see them, but was met with only blackness.
"QUIET," another voice screeched, this one much higher pitched.
The cries and yells of her students continued unabated.
"This'll shut them up," the same voice said, much quieter and much closer this time.
Ms. Duffy felt a tug on the back of her neck, followed by the sensation of fabric running across her face, and suddenly she could see again. She appeared to be in the back of some kind of long, thin corridor. In front of her were most of her students, all tied to chairs like she was, most of them panicking, flailing, and yelling. None of them seemed to be using their Gifts. She couldn't seem to be able to use her own. Had they been sedated, was that why she felt so hazy?
She didn't get an answer before she felt something cold and metallic press against the back of her head.
"SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTHS," the voice screeched once more, this time from behind.
Ms. Duffy didn't get the chance to realize what was happening before her brain was blown out of her skull.
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The students did as they were told in the aftermath of the gunshot, their teacher's body hitting the floor with a thud as the chair she was in tipped over, what remained of her head lying in a mess of bloody viscera.
Behind her stood six figures, all wearing different rubber animal head masks with valves poking out of them. The largest of the group stood to the side of Ms. Duffy's body, wearing a shark mask. Two figures stood behind him, one of them a tall, skinny man wearing a wolf mask and the other a slightly shorter woman wearing a black bear mask that tensed up when the gunshot went off. Those three were immediately recognizable to the students, they had been the ones that had suddenly appeared on the bus.
The other three were new. Two of them were off to the side, leaning against the wall, staring at the students. One was a plain looking man in a crocodile mask, the other a much larger man in a tiger mask. Near the center stood a somewhat small woman in an owl mask, a fresh trail of smoke still leaving the barrel of her pistol, Ms. Duffy's blood spattered all over her.
"Let's lay some ground rules for how this is going to go from here on out," the woman in the owl mask said, her voice muffled slightly by her mask. "No crying. No screaming. No struggling. Otherwise you'll wind up like your teacher here."
In response, the hair of one of the students nearest to her erupted into a ball of fire, the student screaming obscenities and threats and struggling in his seat. A quick flick of the wrist from the shark-masked-man and another thunderous boom followed, and that student's life and flames were snuffed out in an instant.
"As I said," the woman in the owl mask continued, not missing a beat. "Behave, and just maybe you'll make it out of this alive."
The rest of the class remained silent, and still.
"Now, have any of you ever heard of Battle Royale?"
None of the students responded.
"Shit, really? Okay well that makes this a bit harder to explain."
She sighed, and reached up to adjust the dark goggles on her mask.
"Here's how this is going to go from here. Some of you didn't wake back up after we put you to sleep. Those of you who did are clearly the stronger ones. We intend to find out which among you is the strongest of all."
She cleared her throat, and rolled her shoulders.
"We will put all of you to sleep again, and when you wake up, you will be in a fenced off area. There will be an explosive, metal collar around each of your necks. If you try to escape the area, your collar will explode and you will die, assuming the kill squads don't get to you first. If you try to tamper with the collar, it will explode and you will die. Extra precautions have been taken for each of you that might survive the explosion because of your Gifts. You know who you are, and so do we.
"Additionally, certain areas will be off limits. We will tell you all which ones each morning over loudspeakers. If you go into these areas and stay too long, your collar will explode, and you will die.
"Your collars will track your GPS coordinates, and we will be monitoring and recording everything each of you do at all times through a series of cameras. The footage will be broadcast on the internet when all of this is done. Tamper with any of the cameras or any of our other equipment, and your collar will explode and you will die.
"Your goal is to be the last person standing, because we're only going to let one of you go home. Your first priority should be figuring out how to be that one, which means making sure that everyone else dies, one way or another. You all will have five days to make sure that you're the only one left, and if you all take any longer than that, we will detonate all of your collars and call it a day.
"We've confiscated your belongings, including your cell phones, though not as if that matters, since you'll be in a dead zone for coverage anyway. Your only supplies will be those we provide to you all. Your only weapons will be your Gifts.
"That is, unless one or more of you happen to kill the largest number of your fellow classmates in a given day. We will announce each death that occurs and who was responsible the following morning. Those of you who get the most kills will receive an extra reward, in the form of a weapon. Think of it as a little encouragement to start cracking heads.
"Oh, and, don't worry about anyone coming to look for all of you. As far as the world knows, all of you died in a horrible bus accident. We made sure of that.
"That's everything. Enjoy the first day of your new lives, however long or short they end up being. Good luck, and have fun.”
As the woman in the owl mask finished speaking, the man in the wolf mask reached up, turning one of the valves on his mask, and mist began to pour out of it. It didn't take long for the whole room to fill up, and for each of the students, everything went dark once again.
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11:57 AM, Friday, October 22nd, 2021: Some Distance Off The Central Oregon Highway
Oregon State Trooper Sean Hill stood a few feet away from the burnt up wreckage of the Deschutes County school bus, watching his fellows pick through the wreckage and pull out the charred remains of the unfortunate passengers. He had been sent out to investigate what happened, but he couldn't quite ascertain what had caused the unfortunate incident that lay before him. It wasn't going to be an easy process. Even after spending years on the force before joining the State Troopers, children's bodies still hit him hard, and there were an awful lot of them here.
Not to mention the smell...
The call had come in late yesterday evening, when the bus had failed to return to the school on schedule. It took until this morning for them to finally find the wreckage, and cursory examination had made it appear that some kind of accident had occurred. The bus was in such a state that telling what exactly had caused it to go careening off the highway and into the Oregon wilderness wasn't exactly easy, but if he had to guess, it was probably someone on board having their Gift go out of control. He'd seen enough of those kinds of accidents in his day to know the signs. Why else would the bus be four miles off the highway and burnt to a crisp?
He supposed foul play would also explain it, given that he couldn't entirely rule the possibility out. He'd need the forensics team out here to determine if it had been some kind of intentional sabotage, but he couldn't fathom what would possess someone to kill an entire bus full of high schoolers out of the blue. Maybe a school shooter who wanted to make a show out of it? Eh, probably not, in all likelihood it was just a terrible accident.
Although, the body count didn't entirely add up, either. It wasn't easy telling just how many bodies they had, given how mangled all of them were, but he had been told by the initial search team that they were missing at least a few. Too few skulls and pelvises left behind for the amount of missing people, they said. Didn't necessarily suggest sabotage, though. Could mean that some of them had survived the initial wreck by some miracle, but that would mean that they were wandering out and about all on their lonesome. They'd need to go looking, call in a manhunt, see if they can find any of the students.
He hoped that this was just an accident, and that they'd find the missing students, dead or alive. This was going to be a political nightmare for his superiors if it wasn't an accident or they didn't find the missing students, and a political nightmare for his superiors was a nightmare for him.
He'd just put it down as an accident in his report, at least for now. Send out a search party for any of them that might still be alive. Tell the press what they want to hear, and then wait and see. Maybe the inevitable PR fiasco would pass over him like the eye of a hurricane...
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Let the games begin, delicious friends. Please note the following:
In SOTF: Supers the students each receive a medium-sized duffel bag, colored light gray, marked with their number in painted black block letters on the side (S001, S002, etc.) and with no other identifying marks on it. The duffel bag contains the supplies detailed in Daypack Contents (and also posted below).
The collars in SOTF: Supers are solid black, clearly metallic, and feel heavy on the neck. They are a centimeter thick, and roughly three centimeters in height. They have no apparent electronic components when viewed from the outside. They for the most part fit tightly around the character's necks, though the individual collars vary slightly, and may fit very slightly tighter or looser than they do on average, character-to-character. If you wish to write a death using the collars, make sure to consult SOTF: Supers' rules around collar deaths.
The students have had all their belongings confiscated, with the exception of whatever happened to be in their pockets. The following items specifically have been confiscated from their pockets by the gamerunners, and cannot be used in the game:
- Cell phones and all other personal electronics.
- Batteries and anything else that runs on them.
- Any weapons that may be on their person, such as knives and mace.
- Anything that resembles a weapon or could be of possible use in combat.
- Any performance-enhancing drugs or performance-enhancing medication more powerful than those typically circulated in high schools.
- Any supplies of personal medication in excess of seven days' worth of doses.
- Eight high-energy survival ration protein bars (Approx. 4 days worth of food)
- Six liter bottles of water (Approx. 3 days worth of water)
- Detailed Area Map
- Compass
- Bright Yellow, Lantern Flashlight
- Unmarked Black Sleeping Bag
- First Aid Kit (Clear Plastic Box)
DAY ONE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22ND, 2021
WEATHER: Sunny with a slight breeze and no clouds in the sky. The temperature reaches a high of 18° C (64° F) in the late afternoon and a low of 1° C (34° F) late into the night. The moon is currently in its waning gibbous phase, just after the full moon.
Characters begin to wake up in the early morning hours of Friday, and all characters are awake by the mid-morning hours of the day. They will wake up to find themselves tucked inside their sleeping bags and placed in scattered areas around the arena. Their duffel bags can be found somewhere nearby them, though these may not be in immediate line of sight. Where they go and what they do from that point on is up to them.