The Fifteen Strangers Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
strangerpeople) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
15strangers2020-01-27 10:38 am
strangerpeople) wrote in 15strangers2020-01-27 10:38 am
W͜͏̶Ę͏E͝͠K͝͞ ̧1̵͟
There was no sugarcoating it anymore. This was a critical time. Saving all of the vines is paramount, but what does one do when the blight hits? It keeps encroaching on the grapes, day by day. Entire clusters, entire bunches, dead and rotting, while allowing the blight to spread, and the leading botanists and viticulturists cannot identify the origin or the cause. They can't even successfully isolate the culprit in their labs; it seems to disappear like air no matter the precautions taken.
It is a catastrophe that seems to be beyond science, and it will result in the complete collapse of the entire country's wine industry. Already, embargoes on this year's crop have forced other grape-growers to close shop for the year after they'd sold their previous stock; it is all too possible that no grapes might ever be grown here again if a cure cannot be found. The tourists have stopped coming. The towns have grown silent.
You, meanwhile, are devastated. With the way your business is going, it will be on the brink of bankruptcy within the year. You will soon have no choice but to close shop and let every grapevine die, let the land go fallow. There must be a cure for this, there must be. Yet everything that can go wrong is.
Then, as you watch the news, it happens. Breaking news. The blight has been found in another country.
It is a pandemic-and it is only getting worse.
-
Well. This is...what else can can anyone say? You all know the deal. You all know what situation you're in. All that is left is to figure out what you can do about it. If there's anything that can be done.
You still feel that compulsion to distrust. To know you cannot win. To know that only the hosts have your best interests in mind. It would be easy to just do all that. But would it be the right thing to do? You can't be completely sure. Indeed, nothing is certain here, except for that damned ticking sound. If only you could stop it.
But you can't stop it. It is inevitable.
There are 15 strangers in this place.]
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Uh, just wanna check, your talking about Charlotte Aulin, right? Long brown hair, magical abilities, technically related to Dracula in some way?
[And yes, King was just letting this fight be, but then some memory came back up and now he has questions.]
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[Congratulations, King, you have ALL of Jonathan's attention. And he's abruptly gone damn near chalk-white at that name... and the accurate description....]
I - how do you know her?!
[Fear makes him angry. This time, though, anyone could tell he's terrified more than enraged; his voice is pleading and horror-sick as much as it's loud. The thought of his best friend, his kid sister, the one person in all the worlds he's hurt the most by not thinking things over before jumping into them... and someone who's been through things like what he and Vita have knows her full name and that terrible genealogical tidbit too!?]
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That may be fear in Jonathan's voice, but King's still taking a step back regardless. He's not in the mood to get grabbed by this kid or anything.]
Sh-She was on the train. Went through a lot of terrible stuff-but she's okay. She should still be with The Empress.
[Along with the others...he hopes they're still with her...]
i literally don't have an upset enough icon for this lmao
[He's just kind of sinking down to halfway curl up in a ball on the floor, King, don't worry.
It was only supposed to be him with this kind of luck. She was supposed to be safe. They'd won, hadn't they? And of course someone here would say that and then say "she's okay", they'd want to try to pacify him, try to keep him from finding out what really happened....]
Tell me they didn't make her a killer. I know you're probably lyin' about some of it anyway but tell me they didn't make her kill somebody, please -
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Ignoring the whole "you're probably lying about something" part for now, he'll try to be a bit more comforting.]
They didn't. I promise. She got out alive, and didn't...she didn't kill anyone.
[He was going to say hurt, but then his mind went back to that rat thing she fried, so...]
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[It's the least he can say, really. That odd little hitch, and that emphasis, did not escape him... but right now, Jonathan's just staying here, sitting down, hoping the room quits spinning sometime soon. Hell of a thing having shock and fear spike your heart rate like that out of next to nowhere....]
She's - she's important to me, it's complicated but....
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It's okay, she's fine and there are others who can vouch for that too. We just saw her not long ago too.
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[It's oddly graceful, how he leans into her embrace for a moment before drawing them both upright and her into his arms. It makes dropping his voice to a volume only those immediately nearby can hear make sense, too.]
We saw our her. Caleb said he recognized me because the her on the train was fighting for my sake, and I didn't want to believe it. Multiple timelines for sure. It's a goddamn spiderweb all right....
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[She'll do the same with her voice though.] She'd be fighting for her Jonathan's sake then and she got out to be able to see him again. Neither one of you has lost her.
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[At a loss for words, plainly.]
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