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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. |
ACCOUNTABILITY.
She walks into the arena of her own volition; she's looking around, her gaze flicking over the sides and her head cocked back a bit, and while to a casual observer she would probably look like the biggest goddamn tourist as it stands she is actually a woman on a mission.
She's looking for those shadows.
And when they make themselves known, they don't do so halfway; she faces the tremendous black mass almost casually, hands on her hips as though she's waiting
And when those shadows strike she doesn't flinch – rather, she runs toward it, and as she does so her fingers have dipped into the pocket of her skirt and when she pulls her hand back out from the fabric she hurls the flash grenade directly into the creature's face, and for a moment the entire pit lights up, throwing blinding white light up into the courtroom itself.
And when everyone's eyes have adjusted and the courtroom is no longer so bright it hurts to see, the creature is gone entirely.
Any relief from this realization only lasts a moment, though; it seems that the shadows take a second to regroup but not much longer than that, and before long they're amassing themselves again, and Tabby doesn't wait for them to take any sort of corporeal form before she's sprinting toward it, throwing another blast of explosions and light into the creature's face. This is followed by another, and another, and another, drawn from her pockets and her jacket and the holster at her thigh – the blinding white flashes are brief but intense, and each time it takes the shadows longer and longer to regroup themselves. By the time almost all her flashbangs are spent, it's difficult to say whether the thing is just getting smarter about dodging it or legitimately dying.
The last time she does it, however...well, things don't go as planned.
The Conductor's voice cuts through the blasts of light and sound.]
Goodnight, Dynamic.
[The white light from the next makeshift flashbang she throws is joined by another ring of light from around the edge, bright energy shining out from the outer edge of the arena, crackling and heady, the sound similar to a sharp electrical charge, far stronger than anything that's been witnessed in the Academy so far. And it's no sooner charged up than it lashes out, a bolt of it whipping out and striking her in the back.
Like last week, this, too, was probably a tactical error; at least whatever remains of the shadows have the common sense to get the hell out of dodge and retreat back from the pit before the explosion hits.
Fact: Rick wasn't the only one who brought a concealed weapon to trial.
Fact: If you can make flashbangs, you sure as hell can make a makeshift bomb out of enough match-heads and the stuff you find in the chemistry lab upstairs, and you can certainly think to wear it strapped to your back under your jacket.
Fact: Undyne wasn't the only one with strange body chemistry happening.
Fact: Unlike Undyne, Tabby doesn't explode into dust.
Fact: Tabby does, however, explode in general.
It's very, very fortunate that the building is reinforced as thoroughly as it is, and that the entire place seems designed to withstand bomb blasts with all the concrete and steel reinforcing everything; the explosion is massive, rocking the foundation of the building and everything above it, though the building remains standing.
Thankfully for everyone in it.
When the shockwaves wear off and everything seems to be returning...well, as close to the status quo as it can, given that a girl just exploded and Rick's bloody body is still lying behind his podium, the room is completely enshrouded in darkness; the light from the pit seems to have gone out entirely, and given the breaks in the ground it can be assumed that it took some serious damage. God only knows if the glass is still there. The lights are completely down in whatever room behind the glass panel the Conductor usually occupies as well; after a while, the main lights in the courtroom will come back up, though they're incredibly dim, and when the Conductor addresses the lot of you it takes him a bit longer than usual to speak.
When he does, his words are breathless; the light in that observation room of his is still darkened, presumably due to the blast, but at least the damn intercom still works.]
Return upstairs; there's nothing more for you to do here today.
Oh, but when you go – mind the rule change that has been posted as of this evening. Rule Seventeen is effective immediately.
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only on top if you discount everything Ryuuko-chan or Satsuki-sama have ever done, so.]... Gosh, she really was prepared!
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....slow. applause.]
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Hopefully Tabby left some instructions on how to create more of those.]
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warn the Conductor that also trying to ironically blow him up is a similarly bad idea or assume the Conductor will know better now that he's done that fuck-up once? Yeah, he's not going to give warning, the Conductor really should know better than to go for the irony anyway.
Either way, is anything going to happen if he happens to linger few more moments than strictly necessary? He isn't going to approach, he's mostly just trying to assess from a distance if he can tell how much damage was done to the glass at podium 30, or whether it's too dim to notice anything. Human vision in dim light ain't that great, after all. ]
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