15strangers | (no subject)

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*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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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?

[Yeah, he has no idea what a Gungnir unit is, and is just assuming it's something dangerous, while he's assuming Ricky is a friend of his. Not as bad an Minato, yeah, but still not exactly good.

King holds back his sigh this time.]

Yeah. The first time it was The Vespertine. Something weird happened there, then I got put on The Eventide. You can probably imagine what it was like.

[He found a body, a smug guy got someone else executed, then immediately after got killed. Normal murdergame stuff.]

Geez. Once wasn't bad enough, huh? Was everyone on the first train fighting the whole time or something?

No, it wasn't that bad, but...

[Lets out a small growl, thinking about Cayenne again.]

Let's just say that one guy was a pain, and everyone is glad he's gone.

[…except maybe Minato, but they need to work on getting him angry.]

Sounds a little like Felicity. And maybe Eddie. And definitely Bingbong, or whatever her name was...

Most of our group was at eachother's throats the whole time.

B-Bing-

[He knows this is an emotional moment. He knows this very well. Laughing at a time like this would be very inappropriate and would probably earn him some hatred.

But now there's an image in his mind of an elephant made of cotton candy that cries candy being an unrepentant murderer and he's trying so hard to not laugh why is this happening to him

He's...mostly holding it back. But he also has to keep a paw in front of his face to hide the grin that he can't control.]

I'm...very sorry you...had to deal with so much...at the mansion.

[He looks like the biggest a-hole right now, doesn't he?]

[It's fine you can disrespect Bangladesh, Eddie, and Felicity all you want.]

....d'you know someone named Bingbong too?

[Thank goodness, he didn’t need anyone else hating him.

He takes a deep breath, trying to steady himself, and succeeding somewhat.]

Sort of? I know of a person with that name and...let’s just say, the idea of him trying to kill anyone is laughable at best.

[WHO’S YOUR FRIEND THAT LIKES TO SLAY]

[Listen they deserve it.]

Huh... Bandanna was really loud, I never talked to her so that's all I really remember. She stabbed Jun or something though? And was ready to kill from day one.

[Still feels weird to laugh about dead people.

And that nice feeling is gone now, hearing that this woman, whoever she was, stabbed a child.]

That’s...completely awful.

You said she didn’t make it out of there, right?

[Or at least implied it? Because otherwise King’s going on a hunt for an attempted child murderer...as soon as he gets out of here, anyway.]

Yeah. Torn in half by the three-eyed freak.

Only six of us got out. The three of us who are here, plus Eric, Krone, and Harriet.

I’m probably a bad person for being happy she’s dead, but at this point I don’t think I care about that.

[Morality is relative and all that.

For a second he’s questioning who in their right mind names their kid Krone, before thinking about the fact that so few people got out of that incident.]

And their were fifteen people at the start of that one, yeah?

Like I said. Sounds kinda like that guy you said everyone's glad is gone.

[But he gets more serious, regarding the survivors. Because they're not terrible. Some have done terrible things, but morality is more complicated than that.]

Yeah. Fifteen to start, and nine people died.

Cayenne.

[Said with as much bitterness as possible.]

I’ll tell you about him if you want to know. Though there’s not that much to tell on my end.

[Sad to think about those numbers.]

That’s...pretty much the opposite of my group. Fifteen people when we started. Six died, while us other nine got out alright...physically speaking, for the most part.

[Psychologically speaking, a lot of people are messed up, probably. And Minato still has the whole ‘glass hands’ issue...but they’re alive.]

[So more people escaped from the other games.....all of them.]

Vita seemed surprised we didn't all get out.

[He doesn't get that. Why would she think that was the default.]

Maybe it makes sense....most of us didn't really get along. There was a lot of fighting, especially at trials. [That's why he hates it here so much.]

[Well, that just seems like another reason to hate Vita, at least in his eyes. But he won’t be saying that. He’ll simply let out a somewhat frustrated sigh.]

Well...everyone has a moment where they don’t think things through. That was probably Vita’s moment.

And I don’t think it was your group fighting. Our group got along really well, and none of the people that died came back to life for us.

At best guess...we were unlucky. The incidents we were in didn’t give us some way to bring the dead back. I doubt it was anything about who was there or how things went.

I can understand wanting to believe her sister escaped. [People are complicated and life is hard.

He hears what King is saying. But he didn't think that was why they couldn't bring anyone back, either - that's just not the default anywhere as far as he's concerned.]

I meant....maybe it made sense so many of us died. We were really close to only five of us surviving.