15strangers | (no subject)

Entry tags:

*round 6

(no subject)

W̡͜E̶EK ̵̕2̕͠

[The blight would not stop.

The world's leading experts have been trying to find a cure, to no avail. Th blight keeps changing, keeps foiling all attempts at being fully understood. It's almost sentient, or at least more sentient than any disease that's been encountered before. People fear the disease jumping from what's left of the grapes into other plants, into animals, or even humans.

You can only watch as entire economies and ecosystems collapse. You can only bury your head in your hands as your own business comes to its end. The destruction of the clusters of grapes has not simply destroyed the wine industry, either-other businesses are being destroyed by the plague. Food, transport, retail, nothing is untouched.

You look on your own vineyard, its yield almost entirely blackened and dead.

This can't keep going on.

-

A week has passed since everyone's arrival. No one has died, yet. But surely no one is holding their breath to see if they would survive this unscathed. They are veterans of the game, and they must know that whoever it is that is in charge demands their pound of flesh. The question is when it will happen.

It is the second week, after all-and when the second week of the game comes, death is not far behind. Not even when you wake up, feeling something different in your mind as you remember the truths you originally woke up with, deep in your mind. You feel...lighter, somehow, when you realize there is a change.

Even so, there are 15 strangers left in this place.]

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[At least he seems to be having a good time, and he's....mostly being careful about keeping a safe distance from people? This umbrella thing is questionable.]

What would you do with it?

Use it to shield me from the sun or the rain? Like how you're supposed to?

[This...should be a common sense thing? He's kind of worried now.]

But there's no sun or rain here! So what do we do with it?

[WE JAVELIN IT APPARENTLY this is not going to work. It's got terrible balance and he's puny and weak and doesn't actually know how to do this. He'll be lucky if it goes ten feet.]

[He just...face palms. Pawlm? Oh, who cares; he's just happy Arthur actually does know what an umbrella is.]

I don't know, but using it as a weapon looks ridiculous at best and could get you hurt at worst. If you're going to practice with anything, why not something else?

[There's literally three perfectly good weapons right there, as well as those that are in the weapons storage.]

It's just for fun! [Arthur you already got hurt today.] I'm really not a physical fighter, so pretty much everything here isn't a lot of help to me anyway. I'm way more of an explosions guy!

[King sighs and just barely holds back the urge to drag a paw over his face. If he keeps doing that he's going to get a cramp...]

Can you...try to be careful? Make sure you don't actually hurt anyone or yourself with that thing?

[He can understand wanting to have something to protect yourself with, especially when his main weapon isn't a choice here...

…ignoring how concerning that weapon of choice is for a kid...]

Doing my best. If I was actually in trouble, I'd probably use the knife, but I'd rather knock someone out if I had to. Instead of stabbing.

[He prefers a staff of club to hit things with, if he can't explosions, actually, so maybe not the knife if he had to. But shh.]

Yeah, that's probably for...the best...

[He's actually looking at the knife, and realizing that it looks a little familiar...]

Uh, just to make sure, did you get that knife from the vending machine? Or was it from the weapon storage room?

I got all of this stuff from the sock box. I don't really go to weapon storage much.

Yeah, of course, makes sense...

[Whispered a little bit, before going back to his normal volume.]

I think I know who this belongs to. Someone from the train I was on.

[Headtilt.] So it doesn't belong to anyone here?

No, but I think I'd like to get it back to the person it belongs to. I'm pretty sure Ris really liked that thing.

[He didn't see it that much, but she wanted to stab Kyubey with it, so...]

[Next time we see Kyubey, get a stab in for her.]

Sure. Here. [He'll pick up the knife and hand it over. Casual as he is about it, he is experienced in handling knives, so he's quite careful with it.]

[He takes it carefully, and examines it a little bit, before sighing.]

Yup. This is definitely Ris'.

I think they're mocking us again.

[It's Bailey's bandana all over again...]

Probably. The sock box gave me some of the ice cream we made with Rosa, but it still tasted like sand.

[Rude.]

Yeah. The popcorn I got was both stale and tasted like sand.

Good to know they're being as petty as The Conductor, then.

[And he still doesn't forgive her for all the stuff she put them through.]

I guess it'd kill them to make this place actually nice. It doesn't suck, but the bar's not exactly high.

[Spider. Mansion.]

Probably. As soon as they show some actual kindness, I bet they'd drop dead of heart attacks or something.

[He won't mention that this is a downgrade for him, then.]

....If that is the Link Zelda mentioned, maybe they already did...

…I really hope that's not it and they're just possessed. I'd prefer to not find out they're really walking corpses.

Might be. Our memories did get changed, so she might've been wrong.

I can't believe I'm hoping someone's memories are wrong for the second time in my life.

[He's hoped for worse, but the fact that this is happening twice just makes him feel more awful.]

Any idea why they messed with your memories that way instead of getting some taken away like us?

[Referring to the train group when he says us.]

Yeah. They had some kind of morality manipulation machine, but it did that instead of directly affecting morality. ...I know I wouldn't have been as desperate, if I'd remembered properly. Though....knowing what I do now, things might actually be worse...

Point is, it's more of the stuff they cooked up to try to make us go insane and kill eachother.

Seems like that's the main reason why they mess with our memories. I didn't know about the first train I was on when I got on the main train and had to deal with all of the crazy stuff there.

I'm sorry you had to deal with that.

[While he hates what taking away his memories did to him, he feels like it's better than having you memories changed in some way to get you to murder sooner. That's gotta be worse.]

I thought Ricky'd turned against my guild, and that there were five more Gungnir units....and other stuff. I know better now, but it only kind of makes things better and I still need to get back home.

[King probably doesn't actually want to know the whole situation. It's not Minato level bad, but it's pretty bad.]

You were on two trains?