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

[oftheland]

Hmmm... maybe, but it's hard to tell from just an oval indentation in a pillow.

[zomgboom]

Well it was, like, important to him? So he might have, like, slept with it close by.

[icysemblance]

That bears the question of where it might be now.

[zomgboom]

Well, it wasn't in Hibiki's room. I, like, haven't seen it.

[icysemblance]

If it wasn't in his room, and wasn't in Hibiki's, Marty's, or Yuuri's, then my next guess would be that he kept it behind the bar. Anyone check back there?

[zomgboom]

Jean and Sol checked there, I think. You'd have to ask them.

[icysemblance]

All right.

[looking across.]

Any luck, Jean? Sol?

[openterrain]

I checked, but I didn't see anything like that.

[icysemblance]

All right. It was worth a shot.

[openterrain]

It was his wife's. It was incredibly important to him, and it really freaked him out that Observant somehow got his hands on it.

[blazeit]

Why would anybody want that?

... And just making sure, but it wasn't on or near him when he died... right?

[openterrain]

I... I don't know. Youko was the one who checked the body.

[ He kind of wasn't in the right mind to poke around at his dead space dad's corpse. ]

[clearasmud]

It wasn't.

[blazeit]

So probably the murderer has it, huh. [ Along with the keys... ] This is a total shot in the dark, but what about near Marty's body?

[zomgboom]

Do you know what it did?

[openterrain]

I didn't really get it, but he said it was for Troubleshooting. Fixing technology and robots that got out of hand and stuff like that.

[zomgboom]

Sounds useful. I'm guessing it didn't work here, though.

[openterrain]

I don't think it did, but I'm not sure. I don't really understand the future technology you guys all use.

[housenurse]

It was his wife's! He was very worried that Conductor-san had hurt her somehow.

[openterrain]

So you were trying to use it to contact her.

[announcemyvictory]

I wonder what the killer would want with--

[She freezes, looks at the Conductor's podium next to her, and then looks around the room nervously.]

[openterrain]

[ Well that's suspicious. ]

Elise...?

[announcemyvictory]

Sukuyo was trying to summon ghosts. What have... people been using for that? A mix of things they've heard about. Blood, salt, things that were important to the dead.

[icysemblance]

Are you okay, Elise?

[announcemyvictory]

It's that ghost nonsense everyone's going on about, it was important to Sukuyo, wasn't it?