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

[notaccurate]

I still stand by what I said. We had eight hours. She probably would have spent seven of those hours trying to find another solution before doing something like this.

And that isn't even going into the fact that the setup for all of this would have had to happen well before the timer ran out.

[destage]

...That's the thing, Luca-san. We didn't have a clear cut view of when the timer was going to run out, beforehand. They never saw it fit to give us an exact time.

Eide-san may not have wanted anyone else to get hurt.

[heritrix]

He means what happened after Tabby was killed. They said we had eight hours before they would kill someone else.

[notaccurate]

That's what I meant, yes. Sigrun would have given it an honest try at least, I think.

[destage]

...I apologize, then.

[Just. Kind of bows her head from her podium.]

[sleepytimegal]

[ Gentle worry... Keeping a close eye on Sayaka. ]

[perpend]

I think we've all been under the assumption it would run out sometime on Friday, without actually knowing.

[Since that is when the murders have been taking place.]

[notaccurate]

Honestly, the timer itself doesn't really matter much. The evidence we have points towards someone else doing this to her.

[matchbreaker]

... Does it? I mean, I'm all for thinking about [ See: conspiracy theory earlier ] but I'm not sure I get how it's for sure pointing to murder. It seems a little hazy.

[notaccurate]

Signs are pointing towards Sigrun being drugged and then getting cut. Regardless of who did the drugging, what matters is that she had some particularly strong sedatives in her.

Do you really think she could have done one clean cut on her arm, in the opposite direction of what one would do for this type of wound while also drugged?

[matchbreaker]

... If anyone here could, it'd probably be her. But yeah, you've got a point.

[ Plus what she just deduced about the note ]

[heritrix]

There's something else about that. With a normal suicide, wouldn't there usually be other cuts? Signs of second thoughts, and the like. I could see Sigrun not having any of those; she was the kind of person who struck me as always confident in her decisions. But if that was the case, why use sleeping pills? If she wasn't afraid, she wouldn't need both.

[ninehundredlives]

She could have killed herself perfectly well with the pills, for that matter. Especially that and whiskey.

[notaccurate]

That is true too. She wouldn't need both methods. The only reason you would need sleeping pills along with that cut is if you were trying to keep someone asleep while cutting them.

[firstaid]

Let's say the culprit didn't know that the timer was going to run out this morning and was setting up to murder. The timer did then run out and they decided to set up the scene hastily as they did-- perhaps they even wrote the note quickly so they could pose it like Sigrun had killed herself.

Instead of the timer being a part of the initial plan, the culprit took advantage of the fact that the timer happened...

[destage]

...That...

[Actually makes far more sense than she'd like to admit.]

...Perhaps that explains the bolts you found, Estelle-san? The confrontation, it could've started in the shooting range, then?

[matchbreaker]

[ Oh, right- She waves the crossbow from Sigrun's room around ]

By the way, this thing's unloaded and there weren't any bolts in her room. If that matters - forgot that earlier.

[destage]

...So she was either using another crossbow, or she had enough time to go put the other one back and go to the bar, perhaps...?

[This timeline is starting to get confusing, what the shit.]

[matchbreaker]

Possibly...?

[ Honestly, she doesn't get it either, and she brings a nail up to her mouth to chew on it to think more. ]

[firstaid]

Perhaps it did and it escalated from there. However, that's all I found were the accurately aimed bolts and the fact an additional crossbow was missing. Perhaps Sigrun was doing some target practice before all this happened.

[A beat...]

However, that wouldn't explain how the crossbow got to her room unless Sigrun and the culprit each used a crossbow and the culprit put theirs back. Even then that hardly makes sense...

[explosivecombat]

So we're presumably looking for someone who can shoot, then? Or at the very least, someone who had reason to be in there at all, if we're assuming this was the case.

[destage]

Yeah. Someone who's been around the shooting range, and could actually use a crossbow.

[She...does try to think.]

I know I saw Katniss-san and Ushiromiya-san in there, when I was trying it out. They both gave me pointers, but with a bow and arrow...

[notaccurate]

How accurate were the shots too? It would help to know if we're dealing with an expert or a novice.

[hesperos]

In comparison, did either of them appear to be more skilled than the other?

[explosivecombat]

I don't know, actually. She seemed determined to get us out with minimal casualties, not with no casualties at all.

She had several thoughts on this situation that I didn't agree with, but she wasn't unrealistic. It doesn't seem out of line to think that if we didn't find a method of escape within the first entire month of being here, we certainly weren't going to find one within eight hours.