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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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.