WEE͠K ̸́4͝

[strangerpeople]

W҉͘E͜͠͝E̕K̡̛͡ ̡͟4̸

[The blight is all-consuming.

Within days dozens are confirmed infected, and you and your unexpected new scientist friend find yourselves trying to work on a cure. If not a cure, a stopgap of some kind. Anything to prevent this thing from destroying everything. It's hard work. It's not going very well. Really, it feels like with every step forward, you're taking ten steps back. Discouraging is an understatement, to say the least.

A week passes, and the death toll rises. It's really starting to look bleak. You constantly second-guess yourself, and even get into a fistfight with your new ally one night. It's getting to the point where you are working on fumes.

Then, unexpectedly, you get a phone call. It's been a long night, and the sun is beginning to rise above the mountains, when it happens.

You and the scientist are not the only ones looking for a cure. In fact, there are at least a dozen others-and they think they may be close to a breakthrough.

But-and you can't believe you're hearing this, after all of the failure you'd experienced throughout this blight-they need your help.]


---


[To say that the end of last week sucked would be an understatement. To say that no one knows what this week will bring is not even in question. Yet even as you wake, you feel a cloud lift from your mind, as one of the truths you've been living with since the beginning has suddenly changed.]




[But is it possible to abide by this new truth? The Hosts, and IT beyond, seem intent on making that impossible. And the rat...well. Obviously the rat's not an ally. Let's not kid ourselves.

There's only one way to find out if more deaths can truly be prevented-and that's to keep going, and hoping that the new floor that has opened up will offer something in the way of an opportunity.

In the meantime.


There are 11 strangers left in this place.]

Comments

[poorlovefool]

Oh! Wanna do it as glasses then? It might improve your odds cause that's your power's real form, or whatever.

[how bad could a flashback about the little mermaid be. He'd try that]

[incendiarize]

Sure, why not. The tunic vision was actually pretty nice, as these go.

[Poof he's glasses!



...



...





honk]

MOD PING

[poorlovefool]

Fuck! How did the goose get in the classroom!?

[He'll chase it down to get Arthur back and then put the glasses on.]

cw child emotional abuse

[mermaidkin]

[After a bath you have dressed yourself in light blue button-down pajamas and you are very proud of yourself which makes sense because you are five years old. You are reading yourself a story before bed. Other kids apparently have their parents do this. Maybe Mom will actually do it next time. Next time for sure, she always tells you. So maybe next time.

But this story... sucks. The part where the mermaid saved the prince in the water looked so cool, and then she just turns into foam? Where did she go? What is she, dead? What kind of happy ending is that? OK, good deeds, but you kind of thought a mermaid was going to hang out with a prince, here. Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, none of them are like that at all. Still, the water was so pretty. Maybe you can save the good parts or something...

There is still time before your dad even comes home from work. You decide you can afford to leave the light on a little longer and get out your crayons. You draw the blue-tailed mermaid with her blond hair, and use the same yellow crayon for the prince's crown. They have hands with the CORRECT number of fingers. (FIVE.) This drawing is awesome work.

It just... doesn't make you feel right. Maybe it's weird to draw a European-looking character? Though Denmark is probably in Europe. Or maybe it's one of the United States. That's where the Disney movies come from, actually. Well, the prince has dark hair, so he could be from Japan like you for all you know. It almost looks seaweed green under the water.

Aha! You have the best idea ever! You remember that nice boy you met at the swim club the other day! You blend a seaweed green tone underneath the prince's crown. Then you get out your brown crayon to cross out the mermaid's blond hair in an overpowering short-cropped square. Now she looks like you! Yay! The two are hanging out together! Perfect!

You shut your spiral notebook, turn off the lights, and congratulate yourself on a job well done. Nothing could ever ruin this memory.]

[poorlovefool]

[Eric had been pretty curious to see what it'd be like to see into the past, and as someone who's never had such an ability, the walk in someone else's shoes would be surprising no matter what it was. In retrospect that this would be a childhood memory seemed like it should have been obvious when the thing he'd dubbed a talisman was a kid's book. Experiencing childhood again, even or maybe especially if not his own, is super strange. The feeling of being innocent and making your first friend is one he'd absolutely forgotten after all these years, but he's sparkling empathetically at the feeling. But in any case, this was Earth, and there was even a swim club.]

Okay... I already kind of figured, but that book is definitely Hiyori's.

[incendiarize]

[Sorry if it's kind of weird that the glasses you are wearing can talk, Eric.]

Yeah, looks like it. That was nothing like Link's. Not a bad vision at all.

[poorlovefool]

[Just a little, but he only startles for a second]

It's kind of weird though, he didn't even like the book. It seems more useful if we had the drawing, but.... hopefully he still remembers all this stuff.