Take Responsibility.

[trustbound]

This investigation seems to have been difficult for many; while your time here hasn't been particularly easy on anyone, it's been eight straight weeks of people dying, of losing those you care about - or at least, losing those you had some sense of solidarity with. There's only about a quarter of your original number left. Either way, however, there are some things that remain constant, even if your numbers do not - the corridor down below the dorms, the way the door sounds when it unlatches, the gentle outward swing of the door. The darkened stairwell that it leads to. The courtroom. The podium circle remains in the center of the room, the spots marked out from the dead having increased in number yet again; Aligula, Hibiki, Sayaka, and Alex all have had their podiums altered, draped in black with greyscale portraits set atop them. They'll be keeping an eye on the proceedings today, for better or for worse. As always, the thirty-sixth podium remains blank. Once everyone has found their place in the circle, Jericho can be heard over the public-address system; he doesn't seem to have settled any from the investigation. "Attentive and Submerged are gone - and trust me, for at least one of them, it's better for everyone that way. Maybe you disagree with that, maybe you don't, I don't really give a fuck - and at least for the guilty party, their deaths might be their ticket out of here. So it's probably better for them, anyway. Either way, I'm pretty sure I don't need to tell you what you're here to do. Once again and as always, it's the innocent versus the guilty. Whichever side wins is mattering less and less every week, isn't it? Even so, you should still put some effort in, just to satisfy the dead - so you know what, do your best!" Nine Participants remain. However many leave here at the end of the day is up to you.

Comments

[matchbreaker]

[ Honestly, Elda considers going to the blacked out portrait of Sayaka, picking it up, and throwing it across the room. She thinks better of it though, just... walking up to her own podium. She tosses the used Stun Grenade she found on the first floor staircase at whoever looks likely to handle it (probably Luca given he's close) and says, in a dull voice, ]

This was in the first floor staircase, maybe we all ran past it.

[ And then just settles down onto her podium. She's wearing one of Aligula's lolita dresses as she has been all week, but there's basically no life in her as she leans against it there, squeezing and molding Ditty. Most of her bravado she blew on her rage during the investigation. ]

[chessturner]

I see...so somebody threw that stun grenade down the stairwell?

[heritrix]

I thought there was a sound like a gunshot everyone ran up into the stairs after. It must have actually been the stun grenade.

[notaccurate]

[Luca is there at his podium right next to hers, and he gives Elda a sad look. It's not just pity this time either, it's genuine grief on his part too.

Wordlessly he offers a hand out to her, just like he did a week ago.]

[hesperos]

I kind of went past the art studio and headed straight for the art storage room first. I found one of the red paint cans wide open and a lot of the paint was missing from the can. Also, I checked out one of the boxes of clay and found that some of the clay was missing.

When I walked back into the art studio, I noticed it was feeling warm in there, but that'd be because the kiln was still warm too. Looks like someone had used it for whatever, and there was nothing inside.

[chessturner]

That indicates the trail left on the stairs was made of red paint -- unless someone believes it was a different substance?

[bloodisthicker]

Shut up, Jericho.

[it's petulant and childish but he's done on several levels. regardless of who the fourth was. he's so fucking done.]

...anyway, in the seventh floor stairwell, I found a trail of red paint like the one we saw in the library. Part of it was smudged, but it was a little hard to tell what had actually smudged it.

[chessturner]

Wasn't the cat covered in red paint? The cat may have smudged it -- it did seem fond of rolling around in paint.

[perpend]

I looked through the chemistry lab. Several large plastic containers were missing.

[hesperos]

Wonder why that is. You think they were using those to help get rid of something?

[heritrix]

[...Well, Rin's just going to alternate standing by Elda or Tarrlok at any given time for this trial, lord knows there's enough empty podiums for it. But for the start of this in presenting her evidence, she's probably actually near Rideaux, because of how much the evidence they found connects to one another.

Also they have props? They have so many props. Rin also has a pair of the ghost goggles, for some reason, that she got off Elda before coming in here, but those are ignored for now.]

Someone really had their work cut out for them in the library with this one. A trap was setup on a bookshelf nearby them, high in the shelves. It was simple, but would have taken time and careful attention to detail to set up.

[She's still getting out all her props here. And a diagram if anyone needs it? She drew a diagram.]

I wasn't there, but we found this heavy necklace by Sayaka's body. As you can see, there's some string attached to it, too. [Rin holds up the talisman, the kind you can get from the vending machine, and sure enough it has some string attached.] It was probably hanging in the air or somewhere nearby. When Sayaka pulled it, it set off the trap.

[And here's where the diagram comes into play, with Rin pointing out each part of the set up as she found it.]

The string was attached to a block and a homemade spring mechanism that someone set up in the shelves, which was designed to launch the weapon Rideaux found. There were two more strings lined in the blade's path, though, and it cut them when it was fired, setting off the next parts of the trap.

[...EVERYONE FOLLOWING ALONG SO FAR? Breaking to make sure (and so I'm not holding things up forever/sake of digestion), but she'll keep moving right along the diagram if everyone's got it.]

[bloodisthicker]

...

You know, I get there's a non-zero chance this was done so the culprit wouldn't have to pick one of us to kill, but this is... a little much? A little much.

[notaccurate]

[...huh. What a complex trap.]

I wonder if the weapon was meant just to cut the ropes, and not to kill anyone specifically. It feels like the other part of the trap wouldn't be needed if the culprit intended on using the weapon to kill someone.

[evilfrenzy]

[Once Rin has finished up with her explanation of the trap, Rideaux will speak up.]

I will present what Rin and I found in relation to the victims and their causes of death.

[...and he seems about as happy to present it as he's sure everyone is to talk about it. Everything happened so quickly, after all.]

Starting with Sayaka, her death was caused by a deep cut to her neck. Due to how deep the cut was and the location of the cut, she would have died rather quickly. She...probably had no idea what had just happened to her either.

[Lovely.]

I found what I assume to be the murder weapon near her body. [He's going to present this nice and bloody machete. He does not intend to pass it around for everyone to see, for the record.] As Rin detailed, it seems to have been launched into Sayaka once she unknowingly activated the trapping mechanism.

As for Alex, I...believe most of you saw what happened to her firsthand. But I will go ahead and confirm that her cause of death was electrocution, which occurred when she stepped into the charged water on the floor. As Rin explained, the water spillage was also triggered by the trapping mechanism. There was nothing else to be found on either of their bodies.

While Rin searched the bookshelves, I found the source of the electricity that caused Alex's death. There was a lamp switched on nearby with a frayed electrical cord sitting in the pool of water. I wouldn't be surprised if this was intentionally done, because I could not find any such damage on surrounding lamps.

[notaccurate]

[Oh god that weapon.]

Something like that could be found here?

[I mean, the vending machine does spit out weapons sometimes, but goddamn.]

[chessturner]

[Good explanations, guys. Now that the settings of the trap were told -- unless there's something else to be revealed? -- Kyrie makes her move. She cared about Sayaka and Alex, she's willing to be a tad more assertive than usual -- and she's plenty assertive already]

That's certainly a complicated trap. It sounds like most of the items involved were available to all of us, and those that weren't, came from the vending machine.

The armoire continues bothering me, though, and the fact a stun grenade was involved is worrying, too. It pains me to raise this possibility, but...

...could Sayaka-chan or Alex-san have been involved in this plan, somehow?

[heritrix]

All of the lamps were on when I got to that room, it was so bright. They must have done it like that to avoid anyone finding the one with the frayed cord, and getting tipped off to the trap before it could be sprung.

[chessturner]

This is getting nowhere.

[Frustrated, Kyrie tries to take lead of the situation. There has to be something that can point to the killer!]

We know a trap was set, and that a trail was left for people to go to the library. We also know a stun grenade was used to attract attention -- most likely.

Let's try to consider this from the culprit's point of view, in other words, let's turn the chessboard around. Think like the culprit. If you set a trap and were waiting for people to set it off...

[Kyrie mulls it for a moment and snaps her fingers, a potential lead occurring to her]

Wouldn't you stay in the back, letting other people walk ahead of you? Maybe you wouldn't be absent, but you'd stall and be one of the last people to enter the place where the trap was set...could that be something to consider?

[hesperos]

[ Okay, wow. He is giving her a look here. He knows what she's getting at. ]

Or the culprit could've went along with everyone else at the same time. That's possible too.

[bloodisthicker]

[





HM. WHAT DOES HE TAKE FROM THIS.]

Maybe we ought to do a shoe check or a general clothing check first.

[heritrix]

[There's three people who all showed up late, and one of them is her. Rin is going to narrow her eyes a little bit at this, but add her own two cents.]

The order to the library doesn't matter. So far as presence goes, those who are most suspicious would be whoever left the foyer first after Hibiki's execution, or who weren't present to begin with.

clothing check!

[hesperos]

So, the culprit could've gotten either paint or clay on their clothing from either the trail, the clay, or messing around with paint. I'm going to be coming around and checking to see if anyone has anything on them.

[ So he's going to be checking people's clothing including asking to see their shoes for any clay or paint. If anyone was scoping him out, they'd see he's clear on both ends. ]

[matchbreaker]

[ I mean Elda's not wearing shoes. There is some red on her shoulder? But that's not paint, it's a small handful of little drops of blood from her scuffle earlier.

Otherwise she's clear.

That said, she's cooperative. ]

[chessturner]

[Kyrie looks around with satisfied expression. Wow, everyone's turning against her...what a surprise. She saw it coming the moment she noticed the paint smudge on her shoe at the beginning of the trial. Of course]

I see. So you think I set up a trap, the next morning I threw a stun grenade to get you all to go to the staircase, and tried to stop Alex-san from dying because I was the one who set the trap in the first place. Okay, that's...good reasoning, for the most part.

I'm glad I let you all chain this all up, because now I get to destroy such flimsy evidence. I'm sorry, Tohsaka-san...I lied. I had to see how far you all would go with your reasoning.

[With a smile, Kyrie reaches into her coat and takes out...a stun grenade. It's intact]

Stun grenades come in sets of two. I used one grenade long ago, to test its effects, therefore of course I'd have a grenade here. As you can see, this grenade hasn't been used at all.

I haven't received more grenades from the machine, and even if I did, what are the odds I'd receive more grenades, right before this trial?

In other words, I can't have been the one who used a stun grenade today -- and only the culprit would have a reason to do that. Do you see now that I'm not the culprit?

[Shall we play chess, Trustfell Round 6 edition]

[notaccurate]

If they come in sets of two, then there's no reason why you couldn't have two sets total. Or even more, I suppose.

SELECTION - 1/2

[trustbound]

[Jericho's voice can be heard cutting through the sound of Kyrie's...that; he sounds a little worked up, because hahahaha holy shit, but still.]

Well, that escalated quickly? But you know what, sure. If everyone is-

2/2

[chessturner]

...oh, that won't do, that won't do at all!

[She grabs more crossbow bolts, prepared]

All of you: move to where Rideaux-san is standing!

[She looks at everyone, calculating how quick she could strike if someone refuses to cooperate.

You guys may want to cooperate.

If it's any consolation, it'd be impossible to kill anyone when you're all standing in a group]

ACCOUNTABILITY.

[trustbound]

[And as soon as everyone's said what they need to say, the lights go out almost immediately; it happens all at once, abruptly, as though the power to the room has been cut, enveloping the entire courtroom in darkness. It's disorienting, perhaps, the suddenness of it – but it isn't impossible to see why it happened, in hindsight.

After all, there was a majority vote put in.

The darkness lingers for what feels like several seconds too long, suffocating and heavy, before the pit begins to illuminate itself in the center of the room. Red light after red light, occasionally punctuated with white, sending a dim and eerie cast over the walls of the arena. It's almost enough to look like blood, cascading down from the light sconces beneath the podiums; it's more than enough to make it clear that Kyrie is no longer among you in the circle, having disappeared from the courtroom entirely without a sound.

As usual, the pit isn't empty at the start; Hilda is waiting down there, beneath Podium 2; she's keeping an eye on the space beneath Podium 4, though, and when the door starts to open she makes her way to the center to wait rather than remaining where she is. She folds her arms low across her body as she does so; she's still got that white baton from earlier with her, and she's tapping it idly against her arm as she waits.

Kyrie enters the pit after a brief moment; her eyes are narrowed a bit, but she's keeping her head up, and she pauses after she's out in the open. And after a moment, she reaches into her coat for something – that long coat where she's been concealing all of her weapons.

She finds the knife she'd brought with her into the courtroom – the one she hadn't thrown, the one from the kitchen, the one she'd grabbed in the half-second before she was sent down here because old habits die very, very hard. She pulls it out, and she makes sure Hilda sees it, making eye contact with her for a long moment before she moves.

And then she shifts her grip on the knife and casts it hard to the side, throwing it to the ground and sending it skittering up against the wall.

Her next movement is a bit of a flourished one – not overly polished or flashy, just enough to get her coat to spread open a bit as she moves, walking briskly into the center of the circle to join Hilda there. Hilda, for her part, seems to comprehend what's going on; it's not a submissive display in the least, but it is one that brings with it an understanding. Kyrie doesn't have anything else on her, and she doesn't intend to attack.

Kyrie stops a few feet away; her hands are tight fists at her sides, though she does keep her head held proudly high. Her gaze doesn't dart from that baton, but she does hold still; she doesn't have anything to say to Hilda, it seems, but after a moment her head does tip down in a nod, the movement slight but decisive. She tenses up noticeably when Hilda's hand moves, bringing that baton up with it; her breathing catches, falling jagged despite herself -

"A 1% chance is still a chance - "
"I'm going to drag every last one of you out of hell!"

She doesn't close her eyes, or try to look away.]

Good night, Pragmatic.

[Jericho's words can be heard a split second before Hilda moves; the blades don't materialize in the air this time, but rather out of the ground, a tight formation of ten or fifteen forming and erupting forth from the tile at a sharp angle to Kyrie's body, piercing through her abdomen and forcing their way out of her back, near her shoulderblades.

Her eyes widen as she jerks forward involuntarily, the movement sharp but halted abruptly by the blades stabbed through her, the faceted crystal surfaces stained a deep red with blood; when they retract they do so roughly, with a spray of crimson hitting the floor, and when she drops to the floor it becomes that for a few brief, mildly horrifying moments she's still alive – she curls in tightly on herself, the movement instinctive and involuntary, her arms folding up against the spot where the blades had entered.

Hilda shifts a bit, forming another one of those blades out of the air; she leaves it at one this time, and it follows her as she paces around Kyrie where she's lying on the floor. She stops in front of Kyrie's face, pausing for a long moment there; she twitches that baton a bit once she's gotten a good look at her.

Because maybe Sayaka and Alex would have appreciated that.

The blade arcs forward, sinking hard into Kyrie's throat. Severing arteries as easily as a machete launched at high speeds into a girl's neck.

Jericho can be heard again after a moment, once Kyrie's bled out onto the floor; he sounds mildly weirded out, as he goes, though not uncontrollably so.]

Holy shit, okay. Good to see you guys resolved that? That was an experience. A totally fair-play experience, though as far as the rules are concerned – you might want to watch out for that in future.

Good job; you're still doing really well. Not too much else for you to do here today, though – probably a good thing, yeah? Go back upstairs at your leisure... And thanks for all your hard work.

[heritrix]

[Oh, that technique again...

Whatever victory high Rin was on seems to crumble as Rin sees Hilda in the pit with the baton there. Maybe it's the reminder of Hibiki's death, or maybe it's something else? But something beyond dread or recognition is in her eyes there, making her grip her podium so hard her knuckles turn white.

Why does it have to be so similar to theirs?

That's the question in her throat, but she doesn't say it out loud. This isn't about her. Rin casts those thoughts aside, watching Kyrie submit; watching Hilda direct blades like a conductor. The way she's dragging it out, Rin can't help but think of a conversation they once had.

...as strange as that parting was with Kyrie, Rin can't say Hilda's not justified here. Rin watches, mouth tight, stock still... Until Kyrie is finally dead and Jericho has made his announcement. Then she breathes out a thin stream.]

...His reaction was somehow tamer than I expected. Though he did sound a little weird.

[Well, with all of that said... Rin's going to root around a bit until she's found Ange's drawing. She's going to collect that quietly, so it doesn't get thrown away with everything else, and then leave the room.]