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]

...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.

[sunsong]

Huh. Well, if you're doin' it, I'll back you up.

[ AS SOME OF THE FEW TEENS WHO SURVIVED THE TEEN GENOCIDE, THEY HAVE TO STAND 2GETHER ]

[blazeit]

[ thumbs-up from across the courtroom ]

[icysemblance]

[And a third one, from Weiss. She's in this with y'all.]

[blazeit]

[ JEAN WHERE ARE YOU WE'RE HAVING A MOMENT OF TEENAGED SOLIDARITY AND YOU'RE MISSING OUT BRO ]

[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.

[icysemblance]

...I think that he probably could, but he was always talking about protecting people. Unless something happened that made him have a psychotic break or something like that, I just don't see him using one of those things to hurt another person.

[rickdiculous]

...fuck, holy shit. Do we think those things do work on - on possession or whatever? He could've been possessed by like, Dio's ghost or some-something.

[icysemblance]

I'm not going to start speculating on demon pens, but...

[kanye shrug.]

[announcemyvictory]

I don't know. It doesn't make sense to me, either. He was talking about hope for escape, the last I heard from him.

[icysemblance]

[That's right.]

That's how I remember him, too.

[rickdiculous]

Realtalk, can we just - just take a brief break from the trial and...and talk about how much we all collectively hated Dio Brando. Just go around in a circle, gro-group therapy style. Like, as a friend group. I - I need some reassurance.

[icysemblance]

We can do that after we figure things out here.

[sunsong]

His "let's make everyone vampires" plan was super dumb.

[ TBH

SHE'S STILL UNSURE WHY HE THOUGHT THEY'D AGREE TO THAT SHIT ]

[ninehundredlives]

I'm not sure he was that fit. A few days ago he was telling me about how his arm was tired from beating eggs for his souffle.

[SORRY MORDY...]