Take Responsibility.

[antitrust]

After a while, 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; it's not as bad as it was last week, but again, there are decidedly fewer of them than there were last time. The podium circle has changed once again, with Rick, Tabby and Sukuyo joining the ranks of the deceased, their podiums draped with black cloth and adorned with greyscale photographs. The shadows are quiet down in the darkness of the pit; for the time being, it's hard to say what the pit itself looks like after the explosion last week. One way or another, we'll find out by the end of the day. As usual, the proceedings are being watched from behind that panel of glass behind podium 30; he'll speak as soon as everyone has found their place in the circle. "Familial has been taken from you. Regardless of what her affiliation was – whether she was with me or the lot of you – you know what you have to do by now. 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." Ten Participants remain. However many more we lose today is up to you.

Comments

[ninehundredlives]

I've found a letter by the body. I'll pass it around, but...I wouldn't take it too seriously.

[Jean is closest, so Susan will hand the folded letter over to him.]

It says that it's from Sukuyo, and that she killed herself. It's very insistent.

[perpend]

[That's a little weird.]

Does anyone have samples of her handwriting to compare it to?

[openterrain]

[ Jean reads it, and... ]

Well... it sounds like her, but would she just leave a note?

[ninehundredlives]

I don't know. But if she was really going to just kill herself, why would she be so worried about if we investigated or not?

[openterrain]

Yeah... and if she was worried that we might get ourselves killed voting for the wrong person, why not make sure there are witnesses?

[ninehundredlives]

They would try to stop her.

If it really was a suicide, our investigation wouldn't find anything to contradict that. We'd have to believe the note.

[announcemyvictory]

Exactly. I sincerely doubt this. She might not have thought she could help us herself, but she did have hope.

[openterrain]

But you said she poisoned herself, right? What's to stop her from just taking the poison first and only waiting until afterwards to tell everyone?

[ This is getting complicated, though. ]

My point is... I don't think the note is real. I didn't know Sukuyo very well but she always looked after. If she were gonna kill herself, she'd make sure there wouldn't be any confusion.

Right?

[ninehundredlives]

I don't know exactly how strychnine kills you, but a lot of things...you might not be able to make it to someone first.

But I don't believe the note is real either. It just...it sounds a bit like her, I suppose, but it still doesn't seem right. She says she's doing it out of guilt, but she never even apologized.

[blazeit]

[ He'll wait for Jean to pass it to him before making further commentary, but he's already got something to add! ]

I searched her room and found a note there too. There were two weird things about it, the first that it was crumbled up and shoved under all the blankets on her bed.

It was a letter to the Conductor. Couldn't tell what she was trying to say, though, it got cut off.

[announcemyvictory]

To the Conductor? Do the notes match at all? Handwriting-wise, like when we were checking the petitions.

CONDUCTOR

[blazeit]

I'll give it a look.

[ Well, Jean's right next to Bakugou, so I'll assume Jean passed the note his way and he's got both in his hands.

Any concrete similarities? His note is really short, after all... ]

[antitrust]

[In terms of handwriting, they match.]

[blazeit]

... The notes match.

[ He frowns and pauses for a moment, passing the very... chirpy suicide note on, he'll hang onto the note from her room. ]

But I think there's a possibility somebody could've forced her to write the one in the dining hall.

[openterrain]

Or that the same person, who isn't Sukuyo, wrote both.

[icysemblance]

Can I take a look at the letter that was on her bed?

[blazeit]

[ He'll pass it on! All it says is:

Dear Conductor-san,

I qui ]

There's... a whole lot of ways that sentence could've gone, so I didn't really want to. You know. Jump to conclusions.

[icysemblance]

I don't want to put words in her mouth, but do you think she was trying to say 'quit'? If she had been working with him, maybe she had just had enough.

[announcemyvictory]

But that doesn't match up with the time at all, don't you think?

[icysemblance]

The fact that we didn't know who these supposed moles were until Tuesday, or something else I'm missing with the time?

[blazeit]

Like I said, I didn't wanna jump to conclusions... but the mole quit before Tuesday. Why would she be sleeping with the note under the covers with her for a couple of days after that?

It's really hard to tell, I don't think we should try and guess what she meant. The important thing is the handwriting in the notes match.

[withabigsmile]

...There's one more thing that's wrong with the letters.

[ninehundredlives]

It could have been faked, like with the Inspector. Did Sukuyo leave a lot of writing in the petitions or anywhere?

[Susan kind of...stopped paying attention to those after a while.]

suicide tw

[announcemyvictory]

Well, insistent certainly sounds like her, but do you think she'd have done it? Does it say why?

[icysemblance]

Would she have been that insistent normally?