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

[mermaidkin]

Please don't get ahead of yourself. I think you recall very well how either era of civilization can end up hideously chaotic without IT's influence.

[He rolls his eyes.]

You can probably look at the calendar and make an educated guess about your last "independence day", but don't get too hung up on the precise form that the collective will take - or has already taken, for that matter. The left hand doesn't always know what the right hand is doing.

[Hiyori is the sinister hand in this sentence, it appears, though he steers the axe in place as everything else with his right.]

[backuphero]

Oh, I can look well enough to know it won't be the Fourth of July, that's for sure, even if there are... fireworks planned.

[If Jonathan thought of himself as cute enough for capable of getting away with it, he'd probably have batted his eyelashes coquettishly with that. He can look guileless without that oversell, though. Big blue eyes like his don't need anything fluttered in front of them to seem like there's nothing going on behind them.

Besides, from the sound of things Hiyori probably does remember him as the kind of naive idiot who wouldn't have set out to burden that sentence with any implications.]

But from how you're talking it sure does sound like "no man may know the hour" applies to you and Link, too. Even if the past "games" all had a time limit, and they all matched up... you're not sure what's going to become of us either. Are you.

[mermaidkin]

Of course I don't know for sure! Why on Earth would I talk to you so much if I didn't think I needed to influence the outcome at all?

[this is just like
actually not a rhetorical question. Literally why would anyone talk to Hiyori]

Don't get me wrong. If I thought there were even the slightest possibility of the pretty picnic you're imagining that all the past games actually ended in, I'd be acting very differently. But you're not buying anything we're selling! So it doesn't matter. I'm sure Link will be preparing the sandwiches right on schedule.

["I'm sure" once again implying he doesn't actually know...?]

[backuphero]

I don't know why you'd bother with the likes of me for anything. But you did. Really, just to influence the outcome?

[There is disgust in his voice, but it is obviously aimed at his own self. This isn't what he wanted from today. It may be early yet, but this... it's too much.

Jonathan steps back, and looks away. He knows whe he's been dismissed.]