trustfell | Take Responsibility.

Take Responsibility.

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I just want to get a look at you. Take your pulse, see your pupils...

[Actually, you know what, she's coming to you. You don't look that good and she can walk fine.]

Ah... There's no need for that, Ms. Ashworth. The lt. colonel does like his space - there's no sense in invading it when I can tell you myself.

[Kimblee's voice is easily heard from over here; might as well, hm?]

There's no point in denying that I did bring him tea. I'm notoriously terrible at making it; it tends to be entirely too strong. It was a bit more deliberate than usual last night - it had to be that way, because I didn't want him to notice the fact that I drugged it.

[Well, then.]

I apologize for misleading you for so long with regards to it, but I didn't want all of you to get distracted from the case at hand or falsely present as a suspect when I had a perfectly valid reason for doing so. I would have owned up to it readily had the details of the incident with Captain Eide not been what they are.

...Well, explain your reason for doing so, then. Don't give us the runaround on it.

Certainly.

[And he does seem entirely willing to speak, now that all of this is out in the open - this is a little inconvenient, but ah well.]

Lt. Colonel Archer and I have a mutually beneficial arrangement, for the duration of the time that we're in this place. We'll work toward each other's best interests and keep one another grounded, as much as needs be. My methods last night were a little extreme, perhaps, but I do believe that what I did was best for him.

He's confirmed himself that he hasn't slept for several days; he also told me that he's concerned about another incident along the lines of what happened with Miss Fern - that someone is hiding something from him, or the from the group, that will lead to all of us getting killed. It's obvious that people will move to kill on Thursday nights, that's been a pattern for a while now... As such, I was concerned that he would get it into his head to do something that night.

If he wanted to kill me, it's possible that I couldn't have stopped him - my body has been presenting problems since I awakened here. If he wanted to kill someone else...well, it's possible he would have gotten in over his head quickly and been killed, or succeeded in his task and then we'd have to execute him for it. Either way, fighting with a deeply paranoid insomniac wasn't my idea of a good time, and as such I decided it would be better to simply drug him and avoid the fight, as well as ensure that he couldn't do anything without my knowledge.

[ . . . Know what, let's just focus on what she can. Because that makes a lot of sense to her, logically, and she likes Kimblee enough to almost dismiss it at that. But she knows in her heart it's not Susan, Aligula just confirmed that Archer was being needless about the penmanship...

So let's dig here. ]

Wait, wait, does that mean that his delusion includes the idea that there's a traitor in the group, like Jericho suggested when they executed Blue?

Well, that wasn't precisely what we discussed - we were mostly focused on the concept of a normal, albeit green, human being turning into a giant rampaging pus monster. But is it really so delusional to think that there might be?

[ After a moment of consideration: ]

No, it's not.

[ she glances at Archer, he can speak for himself if he wants too ]

From the perspective of a normal human, especially after that disaster with Green and the things inside of her, the existence of the likes of me, Terumi, and Aligula puts us a breed apart to begin with. That's not even mentioning people who could have sold us out to Alena or Jericho or have been plants to begin with.

[ . . . ]

I'm not sure how much evidence of any of that there is though. The most damning thing I can think of actually relates to Sigrun.

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