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

[blazeit]

[ yes let's get back to business... ]

Also, how about this. Is there a way to use the hammer as a weapon without having to lift the full weight yourself? Like some lever and pulley shit, I dunno.

[sunsong]

You'd think the victims would've fuckin' dodged that, though.

[rickdiculous]

It was waaayyyy too brutal-looking to be some - machine shit. Nothing in the art room pointed to that.

[sunsong]

Yeah. I think we can assume the culprit actually swung the hammer themself.

[rickdiculous]

Once again, I'm...totally saying that Mordecai did it. It's so fucking obvious.

[sunsong]

How so?

[rickdiculous]

The creepy ghost writing? The letter to his wife? Somebody found him killing people and told him to cut that shit out. By killing him.

[blazeit]

... Well, he is connected to the art room, isn't he? The writing on the easel.

[rickdiculous]

Yeah, exactly.

[sunsong]

We matched the handwritin'?

[blazeit]

I dunno about a handwriting match, but we've figured out that he likely had a possessed pen, right? The handwriting might not even matter that much so much as the... extreme existential crisis that went on in both the easel and the letter.

[sunsong]

Yeah, but the part before the pen would probably be matchable, right? And we do have the petitions, of which I know he fuckin' signed at least one or two.

[blazeit]

Oh yeah, I forgot about those. Then, let's check the petitions against the letter... if there's a match, I'd be willing to theorize that he was the guy who wrote that shit in the art room too.

[rickdiculous]

...I don't think we had anything to pair it with.

[sunsong]

We have all those dumb-ass petitions. Didn't Mordecai sign a bunch of them, and write at least one?

[rickdiculous]

We do. Huh. That's - that's something.

[openterrain]

Yeah, whoever it was would have had to tie them down or something.

[rickdiculous]

Dick Dastardly isn't - he isn't a student here.

[openterrain]

... I don't know who that is.

[rickdiculous]

...He's a really cartoony villain who twirls his mustache around whenever he does evil things.

[openterrain]

... Is that why you think Mordecai did it? Because he also had a mustache?

[rickdiculous]

Jesus, no. It's - it's basically saying that nobody here'd go to the fucking length to set up a ridiculously complicated murder like that.

[sunsong]

Which we found no evidence of, so...

[openterrain]

So they were probably on their feet when it happened.

[blazeit]

So I guess it does come down to who was actually able to lift and use a warhammer. Well, that fucking blows for us, doesn't it.