W͜͏̶Ę͏E͝͠K͝͞ ̧1̵͟

[strangerpeople]

W͜͏̶Ę͏E͝͠K͝͞ ̧1̵͟

[The national council just announced the blight to the country.

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.]

Comments

INVESTIGATION

[strangerpeople]

[katzenpfote]

[He's been wandering around a bit and you know what? He's just going to take some time to go over the lawns, starting with the one in front of his house. It's mowed, but are all the blades of grass exactly the same height?]

[strangerpeople]

[Yes.]

[katzenpfote]

[Feeling along the ground for a bit, does the ground seem to incline at all? Are there sticks and rocks and such? Or is it smooth and packed?]

[strangerpeople]

[Smoothed and packed. The ground doesn't incline. It is perfect.]

[katzenpfote]

[He goes into the house and grabs a knife and a spoon, and crouches in the dirt in front of his house. He hesitates a moment and then just stabs the knife in. Does it go in as far as a normal kitchen knife might go?]

[strangerpeople]

[Yup.]

cw (past) cremation

[poorlovefool]

[So, aside from the nasty food, most of the base has been kinda okay. There's just one place that gives him possibly unwarranted anxiety whenever he thinks about it though... the furnace. Every time he passes it, he can't help but remember... putting in Ai's body... In a place set out to gather the remnants of death games, he's sure he can't trust a furnace here either. It's driving him a little crazy this far into the week, and it's gotten to the point that he feels he just. Needs to check.

So, here he is. Outside the furnace, he's definitely not going to get in, although he could open it up. Anything of note here?]

[strangerpeople]

[Well, there. Is lots of fire. And heat. And heated fire.




that's basically it at the moment]

[poorlovefool]

[so nothing is cooking!! thank god. well he'll just close this up and move on then]

[strangerpeople]

[Excellent idea!

Does Eric want to go anywhere else?]

[poorlovefool]

[Sure, why not. How's the kitchen, is it bitchin'?]

[strangerpeople]

[It's...something, that's for sure?

Nothing happening here, though.]

papers PLEASE.

[backuphero]

[So, after that business with the radio on Tuesday, Jonathan wasn't exactly eager to go poking at anything else.

But there's one thing that he thinks should be safe to finally examine: those ID papers it just felt completely overwhelmingly wrong not to have with him outside the house he woke up in. He isn't sure why he hasn't sat down to go over these before, or just how he knew to bother with carrying them. They're definitely not just copies of his passport from back home stripped out of its cover... seriously, what's with these?]

[strangerpeople]

[They seem to be called S papers.They are a pale yellow, and there seem to be some thick black lines on the ends of it with the words PLACE FACE UP at the very top, along with what look like some punched holes.]

[backuphero]

[So... punch cards? Like the Census Bureau and the Army use to keep track of things, but with barcodes too? Do the holes line up between all the cards? And... is there any other text on them?]

[strangerpeople]

[Indeed, and they do line up. There is no other text aside from the usual punch card coding, save for INSERT INTO SLOT B on the bottom.]

[backuphero]

[There's no kind of discernible pattern to the way they're punched, is there.

What happens if he tries the static-clearing thing on the cards?]

[strangerpeople]

[Nope, nothing. They just stay the way they are. It looks like they are not, in fact, infected by any obvious static.]

[comesaround]

[ It was one of those things where he doubted either Kurama or Akira would want to come and check this place out so... Karma's taken it upon himself to come take a look at Crab-O-Licious to see if there's anything amiss about it.

Starting with the most basic observation.

Does it look exactly the same as the one he remembers from the mall? ]

[strangerpeople]

[It sure does.]

[comesaround]

[ How odd. It's like they took the exact restaurant and slapped it in here.

He thought back to some of the things Kurama and Akira had told him, and so, he's going to look for any possible static that may be around. Does anything at all stick out notably as he walks around? ]

[strangerpeople]

[Weirdly enough, no. At least, not at first glance with no scanning happening, at least.]

[comesaround]

[ He figured he'd do a basic check first, but now he's definitely going to be scanning. Something's gotta show up, and he's gonna try and be ready for it. ]

[strangerpeople]

[And something does indeed show up. Karma will absolutely see the static, the stencil-like beings that he had seen all throughout the Mall's murdergame. There is no doubt as to what Karma is looking at.]