trustfell | 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

So what are you claiming happened, then...? I'm not interested in half-formed guesses - state your theories and let your words carry your convictions through.

[ but Kimblee, she likes you...

Incidentally, she likes living a lot more, so let her collect her thoughts. ]

Something liiike... While Ambitious was drugged, you snuck out of the room and found Boundless, drugged her too, and cut her while she was asleep. Depending on where and how you cut, it can take a matter of seconds or several minutes, ooor even longer than that... which would give you plenty of time to get back to your room.

Hence, it'd also give you plenty of time to have an alibi! Yes, Ambitious saw you there when he woke up. Yes, you attended to the dead after people were done investigating things.

I can't say for sure how long she might've bled out though, since I wasn't the one who inspected the body—none of us doctors did, what a shame!—but like, it's whatever. That's all I got as far as "Boundless bled out while she was knocked out" goes.

Ah, if I may, then, Miss Aligula? Your timing is off.

The note is the problem with that little theory of yours - as I said to Mr. Lowell, your theory requires me to be clairvoyant. I had no way to know the timer would go off this morning, and yet the note clearly had to have been written after the fact.

[ ...Point, but she's not gonna give up? ]

Me neither, but that doesn't mean we haven't seen it reset every week anyway. That's because people've died, sure, but it still reset it. The countdown to the worst lottery win ever could've started tomorrow, or it could've been next week, but that's sorta risky.

Then how did I write the note stating that the timer went off, if - according to your theory - I had to have done all of this before Miss Tabby died?

[ ...right, actually. ]

Becaaause, Observant, we have two timers. There's the one that lasts somewhere between five days and one week—that's our initial one, where we have to kill someone. The second one is the one Coordy-J announced—that we have eight hours before they kill someone at random again. The bit I just said about us always having a murder that ends up resetting the timer refers to the first one there.

Or, if that's not satisfactory enough, here's another idea: Like I said, Boundless probably bled out. You can go from the bar and back to your room without anyone being the wiser because of how the stairs are placed—the reverse is true, too. Nothing says you couldn't have gone back up to the drugged out, slowly dying Boundless to plant a suicide note while the rest of us were occupied with the foyer. Basically... You wrote the note after that announcement, then snuck back downstairs before Sigrun was done dying so you could keep your Ambitious alibi.

...All of you are vastly overestimating the amount of effort I would be willing to put in to murder someone, you know. My alchemy is centered around explosions; I'm not a subtle man. This is all unbelievably convoluted, if you ask me.

Probably, buuuut that wasn't strictly a "You're wrong, Aligula."

[ ...take your victories where you think you see them, sure. ]

Everyone else seems like they've got their own ideas anyway, and those sound plenty good to me too.

Take Responsibility.

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