Take Responsibility.

[trustbound]

And once everyone has done what they need to do and gathered at that bottom of that stairwell in the dormitory, the door before them once again seems to unlatch and swing outward, lightly and of its own volition. It's the fourth time in the span of about a month; perhaps there's some strange, dark sense of familiarity in it. Perhaps, too, that stairwell leading further down is beginning to feel familiar, dark and unwelcoming though it is; the courtroom is still illuminated at the bottom of it, sending a slight amount of light up the stairs and guiding everyone down to that stark room made of concrete and steel. The podium circle stands still and silent in the center, waiting for everyone to take their place around the darkened pit below; once again, there's been a change in the circle itself in the form of three more podiums joining the ranks of the deceased. Fern, Tabby, and Sigrun all have their places in the circle marked with black cloth and a photograph in greyscale, keeping watch over all of you in a manner both unseeing and vaguely judgmental. As always, the thirty-sixth podium stands blank and unoccupied among you. Once everyone has found their place in the circle, Jericho can be heard over the public-address system; he seems to have collected himself at some point during the investigation, it shows in his voice, as little as anyone really wants it to. "For better or worse, Boundless is no longer among you. I'm sure you guys all know what that means by now, what you're here to do. And before you ask, because I know it's going to come up eventually and now's as good a time as any - yeah, we'd have you down here if someone tries to be a big damn hero for the group, because someone's still dead because somebody fucked up. It just means the dead person and the guilty person are the same person. So you know what, the game's the same, no matter what happened here - innocent against the guilty, fourth time, let's go! And as always, do your best!" Twenty-six Participants remain. However many leave this place is up to you.

Comments

[matchbreaker]

I can see two possibilities for that. The first is that Kyrie over there's right and Sigrun killed herself to save our bacon. Second's... well, we've known roughly what the timer is for a while, but what if someone wanted to test the precise length and method of it? They had her ready to be killed at any moment?

[ Admittedly, there's 0 evidence for the later, so it's just speculation. Wild speculation. But it's something she thought of by trying to think laterally??? ]

[notaccurate]

...or it was meant to give the killer an alibi.

[matchbreaker]

Oh, that could work too. Like they set it up to have Sirun die while they were out of the room with us?

[notaccurate]

That's what I am thinking. Drug her, give her a cut that has her slowly bleeding out, and then go be with everyone else while Sigrun dies. That way they could say they had no way of killing Sigrun, and they would have the chance to push the murder onto someone who had no alibi.

Everything that happened this morning might not have even been intentional. It might have just been good fortune for the murderer that we had a distraction.

[matchbreaker]

Well, maybe! We're not going to know until mage-girl gives us some body details.

[ sorry girl, joins the chorus ]

[explosivecombat]

Ah, I see what you're saying - although the problem with that latter theory is that we actually had no idea that the timer would go off this morning. We had assumptions, but no proof whatsoever - for all we knew until this morning, the timer is just a method of keeping us from stalling two weeks in a row.

[It could have gone off, like, a week from now. Then what, other than "well, now I have this unconscious person."]

[matchbreaker]

Oh... oh drat, you're right. It's all been anecdotal before now, hasn't it? [ sigh, a long suffering sigh as she deflates onto her podium. After she cornered Fern she was looking for some other win to feel good because that one got robbed from her. ] I guess I just got stuck on that.

[ Man and she thought she was being clever. Sigh. ]

[explosivecombat]

No, I can certainly see where it seemed sound. Don't let it concern you too much.

[No, really, you're doing good, Elda - he is here for thinking outside the box and you are putting forth a good faith effort, so!]

[paralogical]

Yeah. Someone might've been waiting to see what happened, but I don't know about using it as an alibi. Or testing it in-depth. Seems a little too complicated.

[firstaid]

Another thought is what if it pushed someone over the edge to finally murder? But... this seems too complicated to have happened in ten minutes.

[perpend]

We won't know for certain until we hear about the state of Sigrun's body.

[C'mon Rin.]