Slingshot Crew — v0.3

Current draft

They are three ten-year-old Latina girls, all medium-sized and the same height within an inch, who found out that two lengths of PVC pipe and eight feet of surgical tubing throw a water balloon over a house. Two brace the pipes against their hips; the third, the lightest, walks the loaded pouch backward until her heels stop holding, which is the worst job. She counts out loud, and the shot always leaves on two. Which of them thought of it first remains deliberately unresolved rather than invented to look complete.

They aim as long as they cackle, which is not long, and are startled every time it works. None of them can do this alone, and none has ever tried.

What changed

• Reframed the entry as a sunset dossier: the sheet's lean toward a merge, not a cut.
• Grew the seed into three asymmetric girls — two brace, the lightest walks the pouch back and counts.
• Gave the crew one countable silhouette: two pipes, one loop of tubing, one pouch, no trigger.
• Recorded what a merge carries, stillness and the long reload, and what it drops.
• Added the casting sheet's row 5 size, medium.
• Repointed the merge citation at Wheelchair Catapult v0.2, the live revision.
• Put the featured question to the girl who walks the pouch back, not the group.

Why it changed

The casting sheet leans toward cutting this crew, so the honest revision is a farewell rather than a competing pitch. Rows 5 and 11 already share an analog and a weakness, word for word; what row 11 cannot inherit is the part that took three kids.

Evidence and playtest marginalia

• docs/characters/roster-mix-v1.csv rows 5 and 11 share a Myth analog and a weakness cell verbatim; row 11 builds "a pivoting surgical-tubing catapult" — this crew's material, on wheels.
• Row 5 opens "(LIKELY CUT — merged into Wheelchair Catapult.)"; artbook/content/revisions/wheelchair-catapult/v0.2.md leaves it open — "whether the heavy-artillery role is his or the Slingshot Crew's" — where its superseded seed wanted "clean silhouette instead of three-kid negotiated cost" (artbook/content/revisions/wheelchair-catapult/v0.1.md); artbook/content/revisions/slingshot-crew/v0.2.md says "neither idea is selected"; decisions.md has never ruled.
• docs/seventh-street-charter-v8.md §8: roster table entry, "Enormous range, enormous minimum range, immobile, defenseless." artbook/scripts/lib/validators.mjs keeps this crew published by failing any group below two.
• Nothing has been built for these kids — no prototype, no plate, no playtest. Worse: decisions.md (2026-07-22) ends a match "immediately when a squad is wiped," and nothing here says whether three kids on one launcher are one entry or three.

Rejected or alternate directions

• Three separate soak meters and three roster slots.
• Graceful degradation as crew members are called in.
• Three distinct personalities.
• A fourth kid as spotter.
• A named ringleader among the three.
• The launcher as the roster entry, with three pairs of hands attached.
• A frame of the balloon arriving, an impact, or a soaked target.
• A tragic farewell.
• Wet transparency, body close-ups, and low-angle framing.

Still unresolved

Featured question: is the girl walking the pouch backward a whole kid, or one third of a machine?

Secondary unknowns:

• whether the cut is a decision or an inclination;
• their three names, which are Claira's;
• what the crew sounds like when the shot misses;
• what happens to the shared amber tubing if row 11 absorbs the concept;
• whether the heavy-artillery group keeps two members if this goes.