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

[poorlovefool]

Thanks, but I'm not sure the people involved have much to do with my idea.

So, anyway, there was this thing going on in the Depths where stuff would appear in random places. Like a bee statue covered in blood that suddenly appeared in my room and freaked the shit out of me... We learned these were coming from a group of people who were going through a version of the same murdergame, in the same place, but with a completely different group of Titled. ... Titled are what they called all of us, I'm not sure if that's the same in your death games or not.

But, so then, in the end they appeared in our world and they helped us out in the last trial. That's how I met Linkara, my friend who also helped everyone in the space house. Akane's brother was there too, and a woman named Camilla. All of these guys had titles that matched people in our group too. Like, Futaba Sakura was the Balanced, and so was Aoi Kurashiki. What we came to understand was there were a shit ton of parallel universes of the death game.

So, what I'm getting at is... Maybe that's what happened to all of you guys too? It'd mean you forgot about being there, but, we all had some pretty huge memory losses in the Depths too. And losing your original power could be because everyone always loses their powers in these things if they had some.

[illusionarymelody]

That's definitely interesting. Were all the titles in the parallel universes the same then, or just some like we have here?

However, I did regain my powers after the plane and then lost them again coming here and gained back the same power from the plane. The same was true with Jonathan, he lost that power and got it back.

We did have memory loss at the Base, but we regained them in the end other than our supposed willing agreement to being involved in the mission that led to it. We lost no memories on the plane other than not knowing how we ended up there to begin with.

[poorlovefool]

No, they were all identical to the ones in our round, but I mean... that just means they got the power set from the Depths. I was guessing that if you had a Mall power, maybe you were in a parallel version of the Mall before you got taken to the plane and you just don't remember. It's like that Sleeping Beauty coin toss thing....

[wait, he doesn't want to explain the sleeping beauty problem, he's too dumb. Eric sighs]

Look, all I know is that I've seen powers and titles hop around like that, but it could always be wrong just like thinking you can contact the dead in the base. Maybe none of this is ever going to make sense no matter how much we poke at it.

[illusionarymelody]

It may not be completely wrong, but it just doesn't match up with things. The Base happened after the Mall and it sounds like the one behind those events had no reason to do it again. Our captor at the Base is dead. Halley has no reason to be anything but be a normal child who now has a good family. So Jonathan, Atsushi, Kokoro and Link couldn't have been at a new version. It is true that parallel universes seem to be involved, but the reason for the power changes and duplicates is more likely something else.

[poorlovefool]

[There are so many time loops in Zero Escape that he really doesn't think it's impossible for these things to have happened out of order, but he'll keep that to himself in favor of getting more information.]

Oh, well in that case. Do we know the exact order of events for all of these...? I thought time just kind of jumped around in these places, but you can correct me if I'm wrong.

[illusionarymelody]

At the Base we had someone from the Mall. That would imply the events of the Base came after. After the Base, Jonathan and I went to his world, seven months have passed since and then we ended up on the plane. We haven't gone back home after the events of the plane yet before ending up here. It wasn't immediately after the plane landed, but not long after.

Since one on the plane ended up on the train, it sounds like that may have occurred after. Time may not be flowing at the same pace with each event though because I do think you are correct about parallel universes and our captors can take people from different times even in the same timeline. One on the plane was from an earlier time than Jonathan and I, but was from our timeline since he had been to the Base and went home with Jonathan.

[poorlovefool]

....Then maybe the Depths were first since we didn't have anyone who'd been through a game like this before. I probably don't count.

[illusionarymelody]

From what I think I heard before, it sounds like the only evidence for order we have for the Depths is that it was before the space house. Those could be between other ones or even at the same time for all we know. It just sounds impossible for the Depths to be after the space house.

[poorlovefool]

Why's that? [he hasn't heard a lot about the space house yet, unless he just forgot. It's hard for him to keep these all straight.]

[illusionarymelody]

Your friend Linkara who saved the people in the space house. At the time you were in the Depths he was in a parallel version. Or is there some way he'd be capable of going to save the space house group before the Depths group?

[poorlovefool]

No, you're probably right. I don't think the Comicron has time travel powers, unless there's some kind of wormhole involved.

[illusionarymelody]

So it sounds like the only one without a clear order as far as time goes is the Mansion. There's the link with Eddie being there, but we only know they have the same name and weird interests.

[poorlovefool]

Well Arthur said that one did have time travel, so trying to put it in order might become a fool's errand.

[illusionarymelody]

True, and just no way to even put in order beyond this yet. Some happening simultaneously is also possible and it's clear time flows differently. The events at the Base felt likes weeks to us, but in our worlds was only about a day.

[touchsensors]

I don't remember being in anything like this other than the space house, but I guess if I had a memory loss that would be expected-lun.

[illusionarymelody]

It's possible to figure out memory loss exists. For example, at the Base Jonathan couldn't remember Charlotte's name. It was definitely odd because she's his best friend and they grew up together. However, we had no memory loss on the plane, so not all groups had that.

[touchsensors]

[...

Lala grips both sides of her head with both her hands and her antennae.]

I don't even know how we would find out-lun. There's nobody else ere I knew before the space house-lun.

[illusionarymelody]

Are there others here from the space house with you? Try asking them if they have noticed anything. If none of you have, then it's probably safe to say your group also had no memory loss.

[touchsensors]

Lun. I'll ask one of them later-lun.

[katzenpfote]

But we didn't have any titles that seem to match yours.

[poorlovefool]

It just means some of these are a mix of titles and others aren't... or something like that.

[he shrugs. not like he knows for sure]

[katzenpfote]

What makes them differ, I wonder... I guess I don't know enough about the other incidents to say for sure.

[poorlovefool]

Vita was saying she thinks this lady called Rachel who called their plane might have something to do with what's going on now. If that's the case, maybe the mixed incidents are just caused by people who can access a greater part of the multiverse and are looking for us specifically.

Kind of a creepy thought, but Hiyori already said we're here because we were in death games. Someone had to be stalking us!

[katzenpfote]

Hm. I don't recall a Rachel showing up in ours, but maybe one of the others has heard of her. The Empress also seemed to have some sort of universe-spanning power - or at least could reach many worlds caught in the fragmentation.

[poorlovefool]

Yeah, I just meant if Rachel isn't involved in yours then that could be why all the titles are unique. Suppose this lady only kidnaps people from existing games, that's why it'd be like that.