Take Responsibility.

[antitrust]

And when the door at the bottom of those stairs unlocks and it swings open gently of its own accord, allowing everyone back down into the courtroom, there are decidedly fewer of them than there were just a few days ago. The change in the podium circle is massive this time; Dio, Logan, Marty, Yuuri, Hibiki and Mordecai have all joined the ranks of the deceased, their podiums adorned with black cloth and greyscale photographs. Furthermore, the mass of shadows in the pit at the center seems agitated again, shifting and breaching upward toward the glass if one looks at it long enough. It's been something of a bad week, to put it gently. Not that it's evident from the Conductor's behavior; as usual, the proceedings are being watched from behind that panel of translucent glass behind podium 30, and he'll speak as soon as everyone has found their place in the circle. His words are a bit more rapid than usual; he seems interested in this one. "Temporal, Lucent, Vivacious and Universal...all four of them have been taken from you. Does whomever is responsible for this really deserve your compassion? There can be no hesitation; you should offer no mercy. It's you against the guilty. Take control of your fate, and hold them responsible." Thirteen Participants remain. You've lost five people this week, and eight since the last investigation; we'll see how many more you lose today.

Comments

[icysemblance]

What about Mordecai's?

[blazeit]

Youko says slash wounds.

So the murder method for the art room murders kinda lines up? It's the fourth floor murder methods that are... weird.

[icysemblance]

...this is leading me down a train of thought I don't like, but it seems like there were two murderers. One that killed Hibiki and Yuuri, and the other that killed Mordecai and Marty.

[blazeit]

That's probably more likely than one person going to fucking town on all four of them...

[sunsong]

What the fuck, we didn't even have a proper motive!

[blazeit]

Not that we know of publicly.

... But Observant can talk to us one-on-one.

[sunsong]

...Why're we callin' him that again?

[ SHE'S BEEN OUT OF IT SINCE LUNA DIED, ADMITTEDLY, BUT. ]

[blazeit]

I dunno about everybody else, but I've been calling him that for a while. 'Cause if he's going to give us titles, why not return the favor.

[icysemblance]

The wound differences and the locations of the bodies make a lot more sense if there are two murderers. If it was one person using the hammer, they didn't necessarily need to stop mid- yeah.

[perpend]

[....Ugh]

It's..... certainly possible.

I didn't examine Marty, but the state of his body was veeery different from Yuuri and Hibiki.

[icysemblance]

That seems to be the case for Mordecai, too.

[announcemyvictory]

Could it be that one person among the dead... Wait. The bartender, he was married and we're fairly sure none of the rest of us are, and he had regrets, didn't he? Did he own one of those pens?

[icysemblance]

He did, according to a few people. I think it's safe to say the creepy letter was Mordecai's.

[announcemyvictory]

That's what I thought.

...He was capable of a lot of things. Do you think lifting the hammer was one of them? If it's one of those colossal things that were laying around the machine the other day, most of us probably couldn't.

[openterrain]

Was Marty stabbed before he was set on fire?

[ninehundredlives]

It was hard to tell, but I think so. The fire was controlled - the carpet wasn't burnt at all. If he were alive...

[PEOPLE FREAK OUT WHEN ON FIRE]

...it was still damp when I got there.

[openterrain]

Was there any blood nearby?

[ninehundredlives]

No, not at all.

[blazeit]

How big were the stab wounds?

.... And for that matter, how does somebody control a fire.

[ninehundredlives]

With water, apparently. [She doesn't really know either; that seems like a lot of effort just to burn a body that was going to get identified anyway.]

It was odd - one of the wounds was smaller, and it looked like they knew what they were doing? It got him in the lung. The other one looked like it was from a different weapon. Bigger. It was more...violent.

Oh, and I tried to find his room key, but it was gone.

[blazeit]

.... Wait, what?

I got into his room because it was unlocked and looked around, but his key wasn't in his room either... I thought it must've been on him because he thought he was going to be coming back to his room quickly.

So, I guess the key could be related to the murder...

[ninehundredlives]

...could you tell if anything was missing?

[She can't imagine what he could have in this place that someone would want that badly, but there must have been some reason.]

[clearasmud]

Mordecai's key was missing too.

[zomgboom]

What do they even teach you in school?

[SERIOUSLY.]

[blazeit]

So fucking sorry, I'm not the one who sets things on fire! And the one who can does a shitty fucking job of controlling it anyway!

[ ANYWAY... ]

I was more asking, what method was used?