Saint James Infirmary 625: Everywhere I Go

[Daphne]

[GodWilling]

Things definitely swinging in a better direction this morning.

Unless that's Erin's conscience speaking.

[mns_95125]

Nah.  Three guesses who that is and the first two don't count.  I'd been hoping for an update on Caitlyn, but now I want to see what happens next here.  That probably means the next comic will be Caitlyn.

[GodWilling]

That probably means the next comic will be Caitlyn.

I'm guessing it's a bad night for team SJI. And by guessing I do obviously mean hoping. (I'm hoping that that's Dani speaking.) So I would guess that the outcome of Caitlyn in the cupboard will coincide roughly with the outcome of this. But the next update on Caitlyn won't necessarily be the outcome, I suppose.

Whatever, I'm still more interested in Caitlyn than Erin right now, but that interest could be ruined if her allegiance to Adrian proves too strong, again. How interesting this thread turns out to be (I'm sure it's very important but that's not quite the same thing) depends on the treatment Erin is about to receive. So, yeah, I'll be happy with whatever comes next.

[lifmcs]

Well the fucking well well......

[jmundt29]

Oh, perfect.  Jakob's doing a T.M. Riddle imitation.  Remind me again why can't they just let her die?  And I'm including Julian here too.  I know this is odd because we finally see there might be something deep down worth rescuing, but...um, this looks like the path to Destiny Dice Roll #2.  Ugh!

Although we haven't seen Erin be completely bad ass yet.  She keeps screwing up.  It would be kinda awesome to see her face down the shade of Jakob or Jakadrian or Dark Canary Dani or the red monster or Cherry's personified rage and win.

*ducks as the rest of the fanbase throws tomatoes.*

[Haight]

Things definitely swinging in a better direction this morning.

Unless that's Erin's conscience speaking.

Could be Jakob. Could be Julian, for a double dose of fucked up. Could be Cherry's own sense of guilt. Could be their old coven master from back home.

[GodWilling]

I did think about Aiken but the nefarious plan he's pursuing would then appear to be complicated beyond credibility. He had access to Cherry and Erin a long time ago; it's not obvious to me why he would send Erin to Wilmot (which it appears he may have done) just to get us to here.

Julian seems to have a definite plan: get Cherry healed and serve Jakob up to Adrian on a plate. That could all be a bluff of course, but if that were true then I can't see why he would go to Claudia and discuss this bogus plan with her.

Obviously we should also mention Rain, just in case.

Oh, actually: Astrid. That would plait these two concurrent strands together nicely. Though establishing a connection between Cherry and Astrid might require one of those lengthy bits of detailed exposition for which SJI has become famous.

The most unlikely twist... We don't know what Caitlyn was up to before she was recruited by the harem via Zenon.

I am just assuming this is a trap and that Erin is in danger here. But maybe this is just an end-of-level boss she needs to overcome to allow Cherry to be healed? Maybe we're supposed to be rooting for her to succeed here, rather than hoping she'll be subjugated to the will of some evil bastard or other? No, that would be ridiculous.

[jmundt29]

Why is that, do you think?

We already had something of an "end-of-level boss" bit with Pearl and the full ramifications of it are still unclear.  I choose to hope that this is something Erin can and will conquer awesomely on her own because

a. we've already had a trapped in a dreamscape scenario with Shade Jakob driving, so I'd rather not have her climb out of that hole only to fall spectacularly into it again.  Plus

b. While Erin was able to chase Cherry off and protect the house with some interesting spells, we've seen her declare that her early efforts were mistakes, and we've just seen her blunder again with Pearl and need assistance from Dani.  It would be nice to see her power and control bloom here.

Rain is a possibility.  Astrid would be really tough because she's already under two competing influences (Johannes and the pendant) and I assume your mention of Cait is as someone who was already a pawn before Xenon got ahold of her.  She has been the most vulnerable of all the members of the SJI consistently since her introduction.

[GodWilling]

No, with Caitlyn I was thinking more that it would be a nice twist if someone who fell into the SJI harem at the start of the story turned out to have been a significant opposition player some time before that. That's especially unlikely to be the case with Caitlyn though, because she and Cherry didn't appear to have been acquainted when they met earlier in the story. But however unlikely it is, such a revelation would be well timed to occur about now, since Caitlyn's loyalty to the harem might be under threat at this very moment.

The voice seems to be talking to Erin inside the dreamscape, so unless it's Adrian or Dani (Miriam is a stretch), this would appear to be a pre-arranged trap.