gamehead | graveyard part five

hunter's game the graveyard

You wake up in an unfamiliar cabin.

At first, it almost seems like you're in an entirely different place and that everything had been just a dream. The interior of the cabin looks nothing like the run-down, old-timey shacks that you had been living in before. Everything in here is sleek and modern, from the enormous flat-screen TV mounted on the wall to the fridge and mini-bars stocked with all your favorite foods. There aren't any individual rooms in here, just a common area large enough to house everyone comfortably, no matter how many more people join you...and there will be plenty more people joining you before the week is over.

Because if you look outside the window, it quickly becomes clear that not only are you still in Prayer's Pass, but that you are no longer among the realm of the living. Judging from the tombstones directly outside, you're now in what had been the abandoned broken-down cabin in the graveyard. The cabin's not all that changed; the world outside has gone completely grey and everything you see appears to be faded and blurry. The only things that remain sharp and in color are what's inside the cabin, including your fellow ghosts. Occasionally, people who are still alive may enter, but it's clear that what they're seeing is completely different from what you're seeing. The door's unlocked; however, a mysterious force prevents you from stepping beyond the threshold, no matter how hard you may try. After all, this cabin is a cage for the dead - a gilded one, perhaps, but a cage nonetheless.

On the flat-screen TV plays everything that is currently happening in the town. It will shut off once night starts...and something else will appear instead.

(The graveyard so far)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[waves a hand] Yes, yes, it's easy to act superior when you have all the information and all the power, isn't it? We wanted to survive. And if not that, at least see those we were more fond of make it out alive. You can't fault us for playing the game better than your side did. If you were truly serious about winning from the start, you would have never made the mistakes you did. Besides, Lithuania and the rest gave you plenty of time to figure everything out, and you failed. All the clues were there, but no one managed to put the pieces together.

Indulge my curiosity, though. I keep hearing about how it was a choice to play as a hunter. What would have happened if you'd turned the offer down, even knowing your incentive?

I have an idea. Why don't you detect it. Seeing as how you did such a bang-up job the first time around.

Hee hee, I did, didn't I? Thanks for the compliment.

[tilts his head] All right, then. It couldn't have just threatened to kill you if you didn't play - the nations would have gone along with that, perhaps, but the more noble of your team would have chosen to sacrifice themselves to guarantee the survival of the prey rather than risk everyone's lives to save their own. When Sanae had been a hunter, he left a note to me implying that Critter had threatened our city...but I don't really believe it has that kind of power outside of this town. And even if it did, there are still certain types of people who wouldn't kill for any sort of threat, especially if Critter couldn't prove that it had the power to back it up.

So then...the most likely scenario is that it somehow made you all believe that even if you didn't play, the game would go on nonetheless. The number of players in the extra rooms varied quite extensively from round to round - perhaps it claimed that not only would it kill anyone who refused to play, but it would then make the same offer to someone else in the town to become a hunter? That would explain why some rounds only had a few people, while others had nearly a hundred or so - the smaller ones had more people refuse to play as hunters. Am I getting close?

If we turned the choice down, Critter said it would kill us and make one of the Prey into a Hunter. Do you really think any of us would want to subject another person to what we had to do?

Ah...I thought it might have been something like that. Then perhaps that was the real game all along. The only way to win was to refuse to play...and to trust that the next person Critter made the offer to would be noble enough to do the same.

Perhaps. Frankly there are so many venues of what the "real game" could be that there's no way to actually tell. These clues aren't related to this game, but those past.

And besides...you weren't there. Critter killed Bonnie Hood in front of our eyes and brought her back the very next moment. We saw what it could do. I was ready to let myself die and not participate...but then I thought about my son. How he might be forced to become a Hunter next after me. My son took an oath never to kill again and I didn't want that oath to be broken because some monster wanted to play God.

Then you didn't trust your son to make the same choice you would have. To die instead of killing anyone, even with the hope of saving them. [he frowns thoughtfully] Well, it's a possibility, but it doesn't quite match up to the perspective Critter's shown itself to have.

Still, it's interesting, isn't it? All those clues about how the wolves were innocent, how this all started off because they were wrongfully killed...and then the last one. 'Don't let the hunters win'. Perhaps it was simply Critter trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes, but in that case, why send out the clues to begin with?

No, I don't believe this real game, whatever it is, is over yet. The living prey still have a choice to make. And if they get it wrong...then everyone will suffer the same fate as the man on the phone.

I trust my son. And I know he would go through with it, should he have the choice to do so for the same reasons I did. That's why I couldn't let that be.

[And knowing Critter he's certain Damian would be chosen.]

We'll see what happens from now. It's in their hands.

[He laughs under his breath.]

Is that supposed to be a message of hope or of resignation? Well, whatever happens, you should be fine at least. Unlike some of your comrades, I don't believe anyone would say no to bringing you back.

It's neither.

[He doesn't think the Prey reviving Hunters will be the end of it. At least, not the whole end.]

graveyard part five

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject