trustfell | Take Responsibility.

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

...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.

...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.

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

[kanye shrug.]

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.

[That's right.]

That's how I remember him, too.

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.

We can do that after we figure things out here.

Or - or we can have an intermission. I'm tired already.

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

[ TBH

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

It really was.

[ here rick, here is your moment of "dio brando is an asshole, tho ]

Someone's clearly competin' with him for head asshole of this joint, though..

I dunnnooooo, the time where he - he scared the shit out of Ashley...that was a thing.

And the time when he killed two fuckin' people for the sake of a shitty vampire plan, yeah.

And being an overall douche?

I actually didn't mind him much 'till the whole Dio Brandoing himself outta the school thing.

Nah, he was a total - total tool before that. Could've been on that one Tim Allen show about - about the tools. Home Improvement. Real classic show, that one.