The Fifteen Strangers Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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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.]
cw: brainwashing waves
He will start to feel something in his mind, something which starts to cling onto his mind, his heart, his soul. Listen to how wonderful the rhythm is. Feel how easy it is to dip beneath the waves. It's so peaceful and perfect.
Continue listening? Or will Jonathan try to pull away?]
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That there should be something wrong about not hurting says things Jonathan won't even admit to himself. It would be so easy to -
But he recognizes that fog. He's maybe not that aware of his body at the moment, but he's going to try to step away from the radio.]
cw: brainwashing waves
The question is whether Jonathan knows of anything in his current existence that can counteract this malignancy-something that makes it worth rejecting the red fog that increasingly starts to encroach on his vision.]
if you didn't want like 400 words of Hero Bullshit in response, you used the wrong wording
It hurts, being an individual. It's heavy, having a heart that can break and never really knowing what the people around you think of you. It's heavy and it really hurts. But it's sublime, too, on occasion.
The vague "happiness" Hiyori spoke of doesn't have any time or place for being exceptional or feeling triumph. He remembers seeing everyone united, after the Base - Vita flying that ridiculous machine like she was a cross between Rita Hayworth and Beryl Markham, Barbara punching one of the bastards who'd put so much on poor Ivy straight in the throat, Nagisa smiling, Akira's face gone blurry because he couldn't help but tear up from sheer overjoyed relief, everyone... these aren't memories he would have in a perfect peaceful fogged-over life. The feelings tied to them are ones this "peace" would steal.
Losing the ability to feel different things about different people would be a sort of death, wouldn't it? Hiyori described his new lease on life as just that flattened. He doesn't want to die. Not even if it means never being sad or lonely or scared again. Not if it means giving up all the good things, too.
Besides all that, he's as close as there is to a Belmont, now, and that means getting hurt so others don't have to, and that he has to hold the line.
He may never feel at peace, but that's just what life is. Yes, it hurts being separate sometimes. It's awful, some of the things you can do when you can only be sure of yourself (and sometimes not even then). But it has always been worth it, so far as Jonathan has seen. When you get right down to it, what he wants more than anything is to keep hoping that the future will be better, and to help it to be so.
He has wants and attachments and a sense of duty to the world. This muted peace just feels like giving up. He doesn't want it.]
o o p s
But eventually, the grip is loosed off. The red fog dissipates. Jonathan's mind becomes clearer than it has been. Not completely-the ticking is still there, the thoughts about trusting no one are still there-but it is definitely better than it had been.
Maybe he will want to turn the radio off, too.]
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It'll take him a few more seconds, but yes, first order of business is getting the radio shut off. If it's not yet another built-in appliance, he'll actually unplug it and shove it in the back of a closet.]
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