The Fifteen Strangers Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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15strangers2020-02-01 11:51 pm
strangerpeople) wrote in 15strangers2020-02-01 11:51 pm
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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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Coco... Yeah, she's... basically the equivalent of a solidified spirit.
[ Anyway, he's going to move so he can check Arthur's pupils real quick - that's the only way he really knows how to test for this kind of thing. ]
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[He's not terribly surprised, though. As for his pupils - maybe slightly dilated? It's not a bad one.]
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Same, originally. But... it'd be weird not to believe in something I'll become soon.
[ There's a nod. ]
It doesn't look bad, from what I can tell. Kurama might be a little better for checking this out. He has more experience than I do.
cw: uh......panic attack, reference to suicide, torture, emeto
[Become a ghost. Become. Ghost. Akira was taking a good look at Arthur's face anyway, so he gets to see the way his eyes dilate further as all the color drains from his face. His breathing stutters and he starts gasping for air and sweat beads on his forehead. His voice comes out oddly still and all but a whisper - quick and quiet. He doesn't seem aware he's spoken.]
Suicide?
[Or is he planning to let Vita...? No. Not again. Arthur knows what'll happen if anyone here dies, they all know it, but it's different for him. He's so tired. He doesn't want to die anymore. He does it, he's willing, but to hear someone planning on it, and soon, like this....he can't.
It's warm, too warm. The only word he can come up with for the sensation in his skin is burning, but that's not right at all. He's burned, before, has the scars to prove it. Burning is his. This, this isn't his, this was hers. But what other word is there for the feeling of blades underneath your skin? What other words can describe the horror and agony of that? There aren't any. There aren't, because Arthur's the only one who can tell that story, because he's the only one who's lived it. He's the only one who's died over and over and over again, and he knows, like an ice-cold stone in his gut, that it's not over.
Certainty is terrifying. The unknown, that's nothing. He's a scientist. But the certainty that there is nothing he can do, because this change in him is permanent and there's no going back to being an ordinary human now that he's a weapon. It will never be over.
He needs air, and he doesn't know if that's because he's stopped breathing or because he's screaming. Is he screaming? He can't tell, he doesn't know. He can't hear anything but a high-pitched ringing and that incessant tickticktickticktick.
He's wrapped his arms around himself now and his knees are on the ground. His knuckles white, nails digging into his sides so hard he'd be drawing blood if his coat weren't so thick. Three vertical eyes hover in the edges of his vision, shivering and staring, unblinking, They know, they know, they know. He feels sick, bile burning, burning, more burning, as it rises in his throat. Not again.
He completely misses Akira's diagnosis, that line of thought entirely lost to the void now.]
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... Then it dawns on him, and he looks ready to smack his own forehead. His wording couldn't have been worse, huh? Stupid. So stupid. Without hesitation, though: ]
No, no... Not like that. Never like that. [ something desperate enters his voice, though he's guessing Arthur isn't hearing it ] Hey... Stay with me, okay?
[ There's a moment where he just... takes a step back, studying Arthur closely. The scream causes him to flinch.
And, then, it'll be clear he's paying super close attention to the guy. Like he's listening to something, even as his face goes even paler and his own breaths hitch. He's having trouble steadying his breathing, but he closes his eyes.
He takes a slow breath.
Breathe... ]
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Arthur breathes. Gasping, stuttering at first, but give him a moment and he starts to unwind. His hands loosen their grip, his jaw slackens. Breathe. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. He's not there anymore, he isn't her, he isn't under their blades. The careful rhythm, counting, is a way to physically force himself out of panic.
Eventually, he shakes his head, only barely aware of Akira's presence at this point.]
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It's after a few more seconds, he finally speaks up. ]
Sorry about that... Let's find something better to talk about - when and if you're up for it, all right?
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Maybe glare isn't quite the right word, there's nothing hostile there, but it's sharp and it's untrusting and it's searching for something. There's no telling whether or not that something is found.]
Fine.
[He's carefully neutral as he makes a decision. It's not an easy one, he knows it's nothing healthy, doing this to himself. But he can't trust Akira not to do something stupid, after that. And he can't expect to get an honest answer.
If Akira is planning anything, then it'll help to know. So he focuses on Akira's future, still looking at him intently.]
cw: death by stabbing
But, in terms of finding an answer? Any successful searching will at least yield one specific answer: Akira's telling the truth about that part!
Although being a Composer does come at a price? And if we're gonna be looking far enough into this Akira's future, that comes with the danger of seeing how he becomes one. In this case, it was Akira jumping into the path of a knife - a kid (male, black hair) no older than sixteen was saved that day, but... it definitely wasn't Akira who walked away from there. He, instead, gets to collapse against the wall, struggling to breathe (it's hard to when there's a knife in your chest, okay), as the wielder of the knife runs away and the kid starts frantically calling the police.
There's no fear, at first - Akira knew his time would be coming, long before this. He'll finally be joining his fiances, after all, as a Composer. They'll be a team on mostly equal footing this way, right? The 'at first' is definitely important, though, since the fear will come creeping in, the colder he starts to feel. The more the pain starts to fade to the background, the more Akira realizes the weight of what's to come. The friends he will watch grow old and die. His parents. The life he knows now... It's all going to be gone soon and he'll become like a rock stuck on the side of a river, watching the world pass by.
A pity, really. He almost lived to see twenty.
Now nineteen is all he'll know for many decades - centuries? - to come. ]
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When he looks at Akira again, his gaze is softer. He isn't sure, but he doesn't think the other is nineteen yet. And that didn't look like the City. He can't be sure nothing will happen, but that wasn't planned. And it gave him some answers.]
Take care of yourself.
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... Huh? What...
[ Just going to slowly stand and look him over with obvious concern. ]
Are you... okay?
[ Well, okay as it gets, at least? ]
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But he is also obviously ignoring Akira's words.]
You're right... It's not suicide. It's heroic.
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... Did you just...
[ He opens his mouth, and then closes it. Maybe if not for knowing an actual "real world" psychic even before the murdering games came into the picture, he'd be more shocked? He's quiet for a moment. ]
Heh... Heroic, huh?
[ Akira looks down, falling quiet for a moment. Arthur might be able to catch hints of doubt, but also a look of... hope? ]
Wanna know a secret?
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[He'll admit it. Or at least let Akira think what he wants. He doesn't need to know the details, doesn't need to learn Arthur felt the knife in his chest.
But that reaction has him confused. Hope and....a secret?]
Yeah, alright.