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

[rickdiculous]

You don't see the fucking easel? The letter? He had that fucking pen on - on him. I saw it, bitch.

[icysemblance]

Easy to fake, and more than one person got a pen like that.

[rickdiculous]

Yeah, exce-cept for the fact that I didn't!

[icysemblance]

Pens aren't hard to steal.

[rickdiculous]

He had it on him the whole time! I bet - bet he still does!

[icysemblance]

Susan's right, though: if Mordecai had tried writing with that pen once, he never would have tried a second time. He wouldn't have kept a pen on him that didn't work.

[sunsong]

Plus...he would have had to switch pens out halfway through his letter. In the middle of a fuckin' word.

[icysemblance]

Exactly, and why would he switch to the demon pen? It doesn't make sense.

[sunsong]

And since the start of the letter still looks like someone disguisin' their handwriting...

It's obviously not Mordecai's letter. Of all people, he wouldn't need to disguise his handwriting if he were writing a letter as himself.

[zomgboom]

Yeah, they're, like. On the same level as wallets.

[icysemblance]

Exactly.

[blazeit]

Out of curiosity, when'd you see him with the pen?

[rickdiculous]

When he threw it across the room like a pissy little baby.

[blazeit]

So you knew he had the pen before the murders happened.

[ Well, that's basically what he wanted to hear. ]

About that letter. I lied before. It's almost definitely a fake, and at the very least... it doesn't match the dead guy's handwriting.

[sunsong]

Besides that, there's something weird about writing that letter with that pen, right?

Those pens only write that sentence. Nothin' else. So unless someone changed pens halfway through, it wouldn't come up with a letter like that.

[ninehundredlives]

If Mordecai used the pen before, he never would have tried to write a letter with it anyway. You would think our brilliant scientist would realize that much.

[sunsong]

And like I said, no one would actually be able to write the letter like that...the pen doesn't write anything but that dumb sentence. So the parts before that started would have had to be done with an entirely different pen.

It's easier to assume the entire thing was done in the same pen, and all of it was faked.

[perpend]

It's a useless pen, he probably would have done the same thing I did with it and thrown it in his trunk so he didn't try to use it accidentally.

[ninehundredlives]

Poor man - it sounds like it startled him, doing what it did. I wouldn't be surprised if he never wanted to look at it again.

[perpend]

Same here.

It gave me quuuite the shock.