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]

[Give her a minute. Weiss wipes her face down, and takes a few deep breaths. For all that she is Very Much Not All Right, Thank You Very Much, she knows that there's a job to do.]

Wasn't there salt around there, too?

[sunsong]

I don't think we found any. The salt shaker only had pepper in it, right Jean?

[openterrain]

No, it had both. That's what stood out to me.

[sunsong]

Oh, gotcha. [ SHE DIDN'T LOOK... ] Maybe they mixed it on purpose?

[blazeit]

[ Well, that definitely is weird. ]

Hey, Youko, refresh my memory. Did you sniff out any pepper in weird places?

[clearasmud]

Yeah! On Mordecai! Specifically, his fingertips!

[blazeit]

... While I'm at it, one other thing. The sword's the most likely murder weapon, right? Was there anything special about it?

[clearasmud]

...I wondered if it could be Logan's. All his and Reaver's weapons were missing by Tuesday morning.

Given that he received two identical ones from the machine, however...

[ There's no way of knowing. ]

[clearasmud]

[ salt.

salt. chickens.

"S"

salt, chickens, "S"- ]

Sukuyo...?

[icysemblance]

...it's possible. I don't know how likely, but it's possible.

[clearasmud]

She was doing that haberdash of a ceremony earlier this week. Tried to kill a chicken, used lots of salt.

So: who knew about it?

[ maybe this is still just a frame job ]

[perpend]

[......]

To be fair, I don't believe she was trying to kill a chicken.

[ninehundredlives]

Would they be any good for ghosts to possess if they were dead?

[Not that she is convinced that would have worked anyway, BUT]

[perpend]

I... can't imagine they would be, no.

[But he also doesn't think it was going to work to begin with.]

[clearasmud]

Oh, yeah. She just wanted to bleed it out, right? Chickens are great at walking that kind of thing off.

[perpend]

No, she wanted to use the chicken as a vessel so we could contact Logan.

That's what she told me, anyway. I don't think she'd want to risk hurting Evelyn.

[Come on, Sukuyo, he believes in you, but this doesn't look good...]

[icysemblance]

...you don't think some kind of thing like that actually worked, do you?

[clearasmud]

Huh? No. I'm saying she might have tried it again.

...But with bigger, better sacrifices.

[blazeit]

... I'm just guessing based off of your description, but are you seriously saying that she tried to make, like, a salt circle and sacrifice a chicken?

[ He didn't know about that, no. ]

[clearasmud]

Yeah, something like that. She had no clue what she was doing beyond that, though.

[ so she could have rationalised This as the next step. ]

[announcemyvictory]

I knew about it. She wasn't trying to kill the chicken then, though. She was saying she wanted the dead to possess it. Ridiculous, really.

[housenurse]

Eh?

[sorry wasn't nearly paying attention]

[clearasmud]

[ ...how does she do this...? ]

...Uh...

What were you doing last night, I guess?

[housenurse]

Sleeping!

[pause] Once I figured out my plan to get Logan-sama to put his soul in Evelyn-chan's body wasn't going to work, I gave up! I haven't tried anymore ghost things since then!

[clearasmud]

Why did you want to do that, anyway? Why wasn't the seance method enough?