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]

It's possible the killer was already planning on committing murder, so they had the materials on-hand but hadn't done anything yet. Then Tabitha died and the killer was forced to rush things. That would explain the hastily-written note, at the very least.

[heritrix]

If we're going with the theory that they planned to act on the motive but ran out of time, the note should have already been written. Murdering someone in the morning is risky. It would be disastrous to have a body that's not even dead yet before the morning bell. You'd want to be out out of there long before everyone else was waking up.

[notaccurate]

Mmm, but it's possible they weren't planning on doing it this morning. More like, they were getting ready to do it, maybe tonight? But panicked. And not all of their groundwork was done, so they had to rush some parts.

...mmm, I'm trying to think of how the crossbow stuff fits in with all of this, though. That part just doesn't make sense to me.

[ninehundredlives]

If they were planning to do it before, maybe they meant to use the crossbow? And then...I don't know, this seemed easier? Suicide is a good cover after what happened, but nobody could shoot themselves with a crossbow.

[bloodisthicker]

I thought of a possible explanation for the crossbows, actually.