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

LET'S MAKE A MODERN ART INSTALLATION - I MEAN, COMPARE NOTES

[backuphero]

[Be it by note ("We've had time to settle down since yesterday. Time to plan for the future. Come to #2, bring your fridge magnets." in slightly smudged cursive), or by telephone call, or by being flagged down in the street and asked to show up by one red-coat-clad blond or the other... congratulations, Strangers, you're invited to a meeting of the minds.

Arthur's house is probably never going to be quite the same, but, as he'd told Jonathan, he hadn't been staying in it anyway.]

Right. So. We're partly here because I'm a dumbass who hasn't been doing what he was trained to and keeping detailed notes at meetings. I know I don't know everything everyone else has brought up, and I don't think I'm the only one...

But especially after yesterday, we need to put all our information together. There's pens, there's paper, and the walls in here are metal so you can just hang stuff right up with a magnet. [He tosses one at the wall, where it hits and sticks after slipping down a little.] It'll be easier to group stuff by subject if we can see it, right?

[illusionarymelody]

[Well obviously Vita was brought here by the blond she's married to. She also went ahead and brought the maple ice cream and the journal so they have some more paper and some junk food to eat.

She's going to go ahead and create a category for "Host" and add the following note.]

Host appear to be under mind control, not possessed. They do recall their time before being hosts. Possible they were captured after the events of the plane?

[backuphero]

[And, pausing to give her a quick kiss on the cheek, Jonathan will stick a scrap of paper with a few notes up beneath that.]

It's been a year for them, WAY less for J+V

Asking questions even THEY aren't supposed to ask (like "is it possible to turn off the fog?") can put them into a fit - NOT sure if this loosens control any though

They aren't actually omniscient.

[illusionarymelody]

[Vita will gladly give him a quick kiss on the cheek in return along with a smile.]

They have admitted to having means to watch us. They stated they do not watch more private actions but do spy on our meetings.

Asking about things in their worlds, loved ones, etc. tends to result in dodging the question. Link appears to be better at this than Hiyori.

[katzenpfote]

[Caleb's been dragged here by a different red-coat-clad blond, and he's just sitting in the corner with a small book and a pen, watching everyone and not saying anything just yet. He's pokeable, though. Though doing that literally might be an issue.]

[backuphero]

[Jonathan's bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet, trying not to fall into double-time with the ticking and mostly succeeding.]

Anything you'd like to share with the class, Herr Widogast?

[Sarcasm: it's what's for dinner the last refuge of the damned.]

[katzenpfote]

[He stares directly at Jonathan and spins his book around so he can see the page. It's messy but appears to be half covered in a jumbled version of German along with several types of symbols he probably will not recognize.]

I'm trying to figure out what sort of mind control that thing has on them. That's what's concerning me the most - that we have no clue how to free them at this point.

And if we can't figure that out, we can't save each other if one of us falls to IT, as well.

[incendiarize]

[Arthur is here, and he's brought string. It'll help connect things!

His first order of business is to transfer his notes to the walls in a (marginally) more organized fashion than he could manage on a sheet of paper.]

I should've been taking notes at the meetings, too, I'm a Librarian for Yggdrasil's sake...

[He'll update his notes with new information once it's all up there.]

I can replay the visions I've had for anyone who resonates with me, in case notes and verbal description don't do enough.

[backuphero]

More eyes on a problem means more ideas on how to fix it, right?

[Because no offense, kid, but even though he can understand those... that... that diagram made out of words, he's not sure about the other people here.]

If you're sharing the vision there's not a risk of just seeing something without warning, right?

[incendiarize]

Generally, yeah. It can clutter the table, but wecve gotta have everything on the table before we start taking stuff off.

[As for the question about visions.....hm.]

It's not impossible to see something without warning. Caleb and King got replays of one I got before, but it kicked in sooner than expected and wasn't what I was trying for with Caleb, and I didn't expect it to just go again when King put me on...and the first time I saw Akira, Kurama, and Karma wasn't here - it was in a vision I got for the first time when Emma put me on, back at the mansion.

I can try to direct it but my control is less than perfect.

[otherworldlyking]

[ He'll just put the small chalkboard up against the wall here.

If anyone expected him to write any notes it's not happening. But also he didn't need to, lucky enough. ]

[backuphero]

Still can't figure out if I'm creeped out worse by that if it's a metaphor or if it's meant literally.

[poorlovefool]

Lala said the dead have a grapevine picture too, on a chalkboard over there. That the chalk goes off the board and ... I guess onto the wall, I didn't really ask how far. My bad.

[poorlovefool]

Are we gonna talk about how the dead factor into all this? Cause I saw a bunch of reunions with people I never heard of, but that WAS crazy, right? I'm not missing a detail where everyone else already knew about the party bus of the undead?

[IT BOTHERS HIM DEEP IN HIS SWORDBRAIN... he's pretty sure whatever graph they have should expand in a major way with this info.

But also he's going to pin something to the R1 part of the graph mentioning their pyramid went missing, and has anyone seen it. It's very obviously the one from Menahoven]

[backuphero]

I mistook Mansion Emma for Vita's and my Emma. Didn't have a clue that was going to happen, didn't think it was possible for afterlives to overlap.

[He scribbles down "Dead all in one place now - chased from other places" on a scrap of paper, and frowns at it, then adds "ticking is there too = IT controls?".]

Not sure where I should hang this, do we have an afterlife section yet?

[poorlovefool]

What part of that's an overlap? Did your Emma die too?

Maybe hang it below. [Like hell.] It sounds like some twisted things are going on over there. Speaking of which, Kurama told me some shit about the frequencies, but I have no idea what to make of it.

[He will do his VERY BEST to draw this although he only understands half of it. It involves stick figures, some of which are dotted to indicate their invisibility, with wiggly lines drawn between them labeled RG, UG, and SG. Then he circles the entire thing and points an arrow at it saying QUANTUM BULLSHIT?????]

[otherworldlyking]

More frequencies? Though might be different from the one the kid was talking about.

[relieable]

[Osomatsu is here with his one piece of evidence, paper which just has a lot of ones and zeroes on it. he copied the sequence number for number:

01011001 01000101 01010010 01000111 00100000 01001100 01001100 01000101 01010111 01010011 01001111 01010010

and he places it somewhere, because he doesn't know how it relates to anything else. yet]

When I played the Polybius machine for a while, it spat this back at me, and now it's frozen on the screen, so you all can see it. This is called binary code, and it's a language back from where I come from. Before you ask, no, I don't know what it says. I usually use an online translator for something like this.

[otherworldlyking]

[ ...He'll stare at this. ]

And the likelihood one of us can read that is...?

[incendiarize]

I can turn it into decimal numbers if you gimme a few minutes, but if there's more to it than that I dunno.

AGGRESSIVELY STRINGING UP A TIMELINE

[poorlovefool]

All right, let's just put some shit together finally.

We think the Sapiarch who was at the Depths caused the "blight", which is spreading to all the clusters. That was probably the start of everything. The movie suggested that.

Then Rachel and Charles met at the mall, and we know that happened before the base and the plane. But Rachel had something to do with the plane, and also the mansion. AND Kyuubey said it helped at the mansion, but then it also showed up to bother everyone on the train.

Now it's here in the city, and Rachel is bugging the dead.... but where does IT come into this?

Right over here... [he points in front of the part Rachel and Charles met] When it made Shoe start acting weird, like he wouldn't have before! And Rachel busted him out of the trial too, right, Karma?

So ... uh .... what are we missing? [Eric turns away from the magnet wall to face the others] It's gotta be...

The reason they're all working together! That's what we should figure out!

[otherworldlyking]

Not a bad summary.

[ Grats, Eric...! ]

Too bad we don't know the answer to that question already, but it'll probably reveal itself eventually.

[ Whether by them figuring it out or stumbling onto it. ]

[poorlovefool]

Well... [Eric tries to think of an argument against that, but in the end he can only hang his head.] You're probably right about that.

Then, can we at least figure out which ones are responsible for whatever we've found so far? There's gotta be a crack in this organization! It's a total clusterfuck!

[comesaround]

[ He's quiet for a second or two, thinking about things before his eyes go a little wide. ]

I-I'm not sure, but that depends on one thing. Arthur. Do you have ANY description of Rachel that you can give me. I never got a name of the one who helped Sho escape, but I saw her.

[ This is really important, okay? ]

[incendiarize]

Yeah, actually. I saw her in the mall with Charles.

She was young, about the same age as him - uh, really young, by the way, Charles looks like he's maybe half my age tops. She's blonde, and has gold eyes....she was wearing a black hoodie at the time.