DBA Episode 26 - www.REBOOT.dba

www.REBOOT.dba is considered one of the more production value heavy episodes. Its story involves the newly free Shadowrealm God W "rebooting" the DBA tournament by taking the contestants into a Danganronpa style murder mystery.
== Plot ==
The episode starts with the player characters entering the arena ready for any usual combat, with the new addition of The Jester due to one of the other contestants going missing at the last minute. However, things were immediately amiss, as the announcers were Rosé and Benny from the first episode, even using some of the same lines. Then W, who had recently possessed a cam clone for a body, decided to flex some of his power. Deeming the DBA canon "too confusing", he claimed to "reboot" it by taking the players into The Shadowrealm, represented by the players going into an entirely different Roll20. He then constructed a school, and then a yacht, to play out his game.
The gist was simple: the players had to survive a killing game! This killing game consisted of a handful of simple rules: kill another person and get the wrong person executed for it at the class trial! This would get everyone else murdered except the killer, who would be given a wish. Of course, the situation was a little more complicated than that. For one, all the players' weapons were confiscated and hidden in an undisclosed location. People's epithets were also disabled on the lower floors, to isolate fuckery. W also created various illusory people out of previous Fine Dining characters to fill out the roster, although they were unconnected to the real deals. This included Emrick, Saffron, Leon, Rosé, Viktor, and Soviet, as well as Madness Ensues cameos from Robin and Emma. Ash Wolfe from Stargazers also cameo'd.
The ship consisted of a main deck, pool, arcade, dining room, rooms below deck, a closet that the weapons were being stored in, and bathrooms. Again, epithets are disabled in the rooms below deck.
Everyone went about their business as normally as possible under the circumstances. Leon exclusively played in the arcade, while Rosé and Ash used the pool on the front deck. Emma and Robin leave to find a way off the ship. Soviet runs downstairs due to seasickness, and Viktor joins him. Saffron goes off to eat at the dining hall. Emrick decides to stay with the party, as the "ultimate lucky student" surrogate for the game. Eventually they hear of Viktor's planned magic show at 2 PM, to help bring everyone together. However this backfires as Viktor is endlessly ridiculed, before being told to "go fuck himself" as his last trick, which he does as he vanishes into smoke.
Upon entering the pool, the party finds Rosé dead at the pool, with mysterious numbers written in blood nearby. She had an obvious wound to the back of her head. The area, as well as part of the pool itself, were covered in blood. W performs a basic autopsy, claiming she died at approximately 2:15. Her body was surrounded by glitter and glass shards of a different color than the bottles in the dining hall. The party set out to investigate, finding Leon still gaming in the arcade. However, Leon did claim he saw Ash leaving from the direction of the pool to find a bathroom, while Viktor appeared in the area around 2:15. The floor also had slight wet spots. Downstairs the party finds Soviet still sick, with the weapons closet unlocked and the weapons within thrown about. The only one missing is Soviet's vodka bottle weapon. Saffron also appears quite shaken, having apparently seen the body first.
Once the trial had started the various party members were split. Slick was certain that the killer was his buddy Leon, while some suspected Saffron of having murdered her before returning to the dining room where the bottles would be. However, eventually the party was able to piece together the truth: that Viktor was the killer! While downstairs with Soviet, he took a hangar from Rosé's room and used it to form a lockpick to break into the weapons closet. Then he teleported onto the deck behind some towels after his performance, waiting for Ash to leave before killing Rosé with the weapon. He then teleported back into the arcade, to make that appear like where he escaped to after the murder, but he was given away by the feint water that stuck to his shoes and tracked into the arcade. Viktor's desire for the wish was to be talented and make his family's circus a success.
After unveiling the killer, W decided to have one last fight to have the players prove their worth. However, his fast power made an actual confrontation impossible for the contestants, so instead he gave a tiny fraction of his power to the Viktor illusion, which ended up creating a massive five phase boss fight including shadow copies, a massive stone hand, a shadow tiger, and altered evil tricks by "Wiktor". After finally defeating him after a long gauntlet, W officially got bored of his game and allowed the players to go home. Beforehand however, he managed to smooth talk Slick into joining his cult he's trying to form.
== Technical Difficulties ==
Like many early DBA episodes, occasional audio cutouts were abundant and virtually impossible to quell. Originally JAVERT LXXXVII was going to be the last player character, however Kuma had to cancel last minute. Instead The Jester was used as a last minute replacement.
== Trivia ==
* This episode is largely a reference to the Danganronpa series of video games, which involve a group of gifted students being trapped somewhere and made to kill each other under the same rules, with the prize being freedom instead of a wish.
** The blood at the crime scene is made into a hot pink like the blood in Danganronpa.
** "Truth Bullets" are used to cleanly summarize pieces of information, although they aren't used as mechanically as in the games.
* The "Wiktor" fight was at the time one of the more difficult combats in DBA, and to this day remains the longest when it comes to sheer phase count.
* This episode is the first time W was codified as an actual character, getting a name other than "Weird Handshake Statue" or "Weird Handshake Generator". His name was chosen from the first letter of "Weird", which was the most consistent part of his name. 
** This was W's first appearance after possessing Rogue, meaning it was the first time Camshake form of W was used.
Category:Episodes
Category:DBA Episodes