INABA'S NOT A GIRL WHO'S MISSING MUCH

[strangerpeople]

HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN

[...or knife? Whatever.

Soon after the final piece of evidence is found, there is a rumble beneath the house. The rumble emanates, coming closer to the living room, until finally--

There is the sound of brick shifting.

The back of the fireplace slides open as the lights flicker green.]

It is time.

Enter. And I suggest you bring whatever clothing you have with you.

[Huh?




Anyways. It's clear the fireplace has been deliberately altered to have a secret staircase leading downwards. It's not too far, and ultimately, it leads to...well, there's no way to sugar coat it, but it turns out the house has a basement. Old, a bit dusty, and with a washer and dryer. There's also bits and pieces of black and green nanotech covering it with dimly-glowing lights. Vyce just can't help himself, it seems.

What's better is that you don't get food, and you don't get chairs or podiums. Nope. You get to sit on concrete and metal floors. It's clear Vyce doesn't seem to think those things are particularly important. It might be a good idea to run back up and grab what you want or need before everyone is settled.


Once all 14 remaining strangers are in the basement, a hologram appears.

Because of course Vyce isn't going to come here directly. He's no fool.]

Computer. Begin recording and remote transmitting to my ship.

Activate the list.

[beep boop]

THE BRITTLE	THE CHANCE	THE HUNGRY	THE IMMUNE
				THE NOODLES

Champion. As you can see, one of these individuals has murdered another. Now, as in the game you were in, justice must be served for this crime, and you will watch as your failures to protect even one person from your actions continue to compound.

[A slow point to the strangers.]

As for all of you, you must decide who is responsible. A majority shall suffice for your chosen culprit to be punished. As for what happens if you should choose wrong and an innocent is punished, then I suggest that, should there be a next time for you to end up in such a situation as this, that you be more careful with how you discern your evidence.

Now. I suggest you get on with it.

The clock is ticking.

[A clock appears above the suspects' holograms. Well.

What are you all waiting for?]

((OoC: Remember, voting ends at 9pm EST!))

Comments

[carryabigstick]

Oh no you're not trying to pin this on me!!

[Estelle, don't get too excited, you're carrying a knife--]

Urghhhh... fine!! We're doing this thing.

Lithia and I found the trail in the kitchen that led us to the living room where Inaba was, so we were the first on the scene. But I let her investigate in there and decided to check out the kitchen. Where I found this knife behind the gun locker. All the other knives were missing. So there may be others in play yet, we have to act carefully.

[stopfen]

Does it look like the knife was used?

(cw: emeto)

[stopfen]

[Why is it in the fireplace? She has to duck to get through. So they're the judges huh? And she nearly punches the hologram before realising that she can see through it, because of course that's it.]

...I found her- little computer... Her phone in the bedroom. It was covered in blood and vomit.

[nightmareofdivinity]

Why was it there? We hath found the trail from the stairs outward, unless the killer took it later.

[starswink]

How did anyone get it in there without alerting me, you and Jack...? That's the most confusing thing about this case to me.

[carryabigstick]

It was in the bedroom? That was... There's no way she'd just leave that thing behind. It's her item from home after all...

[starswink]

[Yoosung is the sort of person onto whom grief sticks and never lets go, so he is looking pretty downcast as he enters. Seeing his name on the suspect list brings a spark of anger back into his eyes though, so he just turns toward the nearest Vyce-seeming object to exclaim] Oh my god... You bastard!

[Before taking his spot. He's still a bit whiny in position, it's his first time in the hot seat.]

Ugh, my testimony as a lookout is useless now... but, I swear I didn't move from my post! Anyone could have seen me last night if they happened to wake up, right? [here's hoping some of you are light sleepers, but it would also be pretty risky to lie about something like that with this many possible witnesses, so. That's his two cents.]

[stopfen]

[Sorry for locking herself away and taking a nap yo...]

Did you manage to work out the phone?

[Carefully neutral. ]

[nolongerasleep]

[Lithia frowns upon seeing herself as a suspect, but she'll try and stay calm and let the evidence show she had nothing to do with this.]

As Estelle already stated, I did investigate the body. What I found was actually quite strange. I admit that I'm not familiar with human physiology, but none of the knife wounds I saw appeared deep or bled enough to leave the trail we saw.

Of course if there are any other questions people have, I'll be glad to answer them to the best of my ability.

[starswink]

The cause of death was poisoning... I bet the stabbing is just a diversion!

[galesanctuary]

Is it possible the culprit could be injured?

[ inaba was a tiny but still ]

[nightmareofdivinity]

[He just sighs and sits down, spreading the bulk of his cloak under him. He still has the fire poker.]

While we will not deny we hath killed in the past, this is one execution we hath not committed. Ask your questions.

[He's more used to a single judge and little in the way of a trial, but apparently this is what they're doing.]

[whatsmytalentagain]

[Hi, tapping your shoulder and pointing to the fire poker in your hand.]

[touchsensors]

[Lala's brought drinks! A pretty sizable pile of sodas, which she's carrying with both arms and holding steady with her antennae (...which probably just looks like her hair accessories have gotten stuck to the pile somehow).

Fortunately, she's already set them down before the suspect list pops up, so none of them get suddenly dropped.]

--no-lun! I wouldn't kill anyone-lun!

[...there's a lemon peel, and the bitten-into lemon innards, on top of the cans. That's evidence, but she's a little distracted right now.]

[starswink]

What's with the sodas...?

[he kind of wants one. But also, this is a poisoning case.]

[nolongerasleep]

[Lithia will gladly grab one of the soda cans. At least she has no cause for concern at drinking it.]

I cannot imagine anyone wanting to bite into a lemon. That would be far too strongly sour to tolerate.

ALIBIS PLUS POWERS

[whatsmytalentagain]

[Rantaro seems to be getting an idea... Give him a moment to write all this down, then flag down a non-suspect to read it out to everyone.]

I know nobody really used their new "powers" much during the week, but we don't know if anyone used them for the murder.

Here's what I remember from the profiles of the suspects:

Fou-Lu: turns into paper/wood?
Lala: extra food (not sure if it was enough to share with everyone?)
Lithia: can eat literally anything
Yoosung: resists other powers
Estelle: can make hair into blades?

Can we have the suspects confirm this? And we might as well ask them what they were doing last night just to be sure. (Sorry Yoosung-san.)

[miraclecontact]

Didn't Inaba have a power too? We should probably keep that one in mind.

[nolongerasleep]

[Lithia will go ahead and confirm her power by eating one of the metal tabs off the can of soda she got from Lala.]

As far as what I was doing, I went to the sleepover and was with all of you until people started falling asleep. I tend to get nervous about sleeping around people, so I went to the place I'd been sleeping in most nights, which was under the bed in the master bedroom where I woke up originally.

When I woke up I first used the bathroom nearest to there and then went to go to the kitchen and spotted the trail of blood and met up with Estelle.

[starswink]

It's okay. I'm definitely immune to powers though. Mikasa tried it before.

I was watching everyone at the sleepover, but some people did leave early...

[There's not like a spreadsheet for this tho so I leave the mods to confirm any alibis he's supposed to corroborate :|d]

[nightmareofdivinity]

We left the party once it seemed like people wert going to their rest and curled up in the usual corner in the large room that we hath been using.

As for the power, we hath not used it yet... let us see.

[He holds up his hand and removes his glove and focuses. His hand turns to a deep bark color and hardens. He taps it with his other hand to confirm.]

Indeed, it doth seem true.

[Aaand turning it back so he can put his glove back on unless someone objects.]

catherd!

[miraclecontact]

I think I'm following everything so far, but this isn't how I usually do things so I might've skipped something.

So right now, we're still trying to figure out a few of these mysteries. We're not sure how Inaba was poisoned—or even with what. It was something that caused her to, uh... [ He's got this??? Don't help him, he knows this...! ] Aphys...

... physical? Yeah, somethin' like that. I haven't got any guesses on what here could pull that off, but if we put our heads together we can probably figure it out. The two theories for "how" right now are either one of the knives was coated with poison or she ingested something. Thing is, there's no evidence anyone made or ate anything, and there aren't any leftovers either. That could mean it was disposed of in a way we couldn't trace or it could mean the knife was used. There was a bloody knife found next to Inaba, but besides that one? Only one other knife was found. The rest are all missing. [ As far as he heard. ]

It's worth noting, Johan mentioned the reaction of ingesting poison is different than an injection, but without knowing what kind of poison it was we have no idea how to tell. If anyone has any other clues about the poison, now's the time to speak up. We're looking for something that, if ingested, would be hard to detect. I think that's why only way it could've slid by someone unnoticed.

We did a few tests with everyone's powers, too. It looks likely somebody used one of them, though I think we're leaning toward Inaba not using hers. She would've been able to do more damage with it, right? And from looking around here, no one seems to have any obvious injuries. Plus, not like we found fur or anything around. Though, wasn't there too much blood? I didn't see it myself, but someone mentioned her injuries might not have been severe enough to leave a trail like that.

What else...

[ Ah. ] The alibis. Using another power, we were able to more or less confirm everyone's alibis were truthful. Dunno how accurate that power is, and one of the people up there is immune to powers, but it's worth a mention.

Right now, I think we should focus on the poison, knife, and building a timeline. If we compare a couple of different scenarios, we might be able to figure out what really happened by a process of elimination. We should make sure to account for Inaba's phone being upstairs, too.

cw: emeto

[nolongerasleep]

I had Sierra take pictures of the wounds a bit more close up than the diagram.

I do have one theory about the excess blood. Could she have vomited it up, implying severe internal injuries?

Also regarding the alibis, Mr. Nanaki's profile states that "This power cannot help to discern more obscured half-truths or lies by omission that are made." Some of those alibis had a lot of room for omission and half-truths. All of them have something missing, some more than others.

THAT HALFWAY POINT

[15unknowns]

[Vyce speaks, finally.]

A little over half of your allotted time has now run out.

[And that's all he says.

Thanks, Vyce.]

[carryabigstick]

Oh hush!! Unless you want to add something worthwhile!! This is still your fault you know!

surprise clothing check;

[galesanctuary]

Regardless of what happened, it sounds like we'll need to start looking more closely at our suspects. I believe we should examine their clothing for any signs of damage or anything they have missed.

I don't mind going ahead with doing that. Someone could also help, since a set of two eyes are better than one.

[ So hop to it ! ]

[carryabigstick]

Sure, I don't mind. Check away.

[She'll cooperate gladly if it will help clear things up. If it was going to be someone, she's glad it's her fellow Ouroboros hating Zemuria pal.]

and that, as they say, is ballgame (cw: self harm mention)

[touchsensors]

[Lala shrinks back.]

It was me-lun. When I went to the bathroom I saw Inaba had left her phone there-lun. I took it to try to get it back to her in time-lun. But by the time I found her it was too late-lun.

I didn't do anything with the knives-lun. I think she must have done all that herself-lun.

Inaba was nice to me-lun. I never wanted to hurt her, or anyone-lun.

[nolongerasleep]

If she was the one who left her phone, how does that make you a killer?