Take Responsibility.

[kingmakereffect]

And once the allotted time for investigating comes to a close, those elevator doors at the end of the first-floor corridor open up; the ride down is fast, smooth, and understandably tense as far as atmosphere goes. You're down to less than half of your original number. The doors slide open and the podium circle comes into view, standing stark against the black-walled courtroom and encircling that pit in the center; Misa and Aqua have joined the ranks of the deceased, photographs in greyscale watching the proceedings from their podiums draped in black. Of course and as always, the deceased aren't the only ones watching; the Kingmaker will make his presence known once everyone has settled at their podium, his voice sounding out through the room for all to hear. "Resilient has been taken from you. Maybe this time the guilty party will actually succeed at fulfilling Rule Seven, seeing as this is the sixth try and all. Whether they manage it is up to the rest of you." Thirteen Survivors remain. However many will be down by the end of the day is up to you.

Comments

[amygdalae]

[If it wasn't obvious before, its certainly obvious now just how much they've lost. Only thirteen of them now--and after this, there will be twelve.

It just doesn't stop.

Bruce only casts a passing glance to the four empty podiums to his right before he focuses back onto the events at hand. They've lost so much, and today they will lose more - but they have to keep doing this, one way or another. If they lose now then they lose everything, and the cycle will continue.]

...here's my report on the body.

[He takes a moment to settle himself before he continues.]

The cause of death is extreme blunt force trauma to her head from the right [he uses his hand to more or less cover the general area on his own head where she had been hit] - I say 'extreme' because the force had been enough to cave in her skull. Upon closer inspection of the damage done I found that she was not hit once, but multiple times with an object that most likely has a dull edge on one end and a sharper edge at the other, as there are also shallow puncture wounds on her head.

Despite the damage caused, however, there is not as much blood on her as there should have been. Her face is clean of blood and there are remnants of older blood trails on her shoulders and neck. The dress that she was found in also has very little blood on it.

In addition, there are also bruises all over her body, most likely from a struggle beforehand; they're more concentrated on her right than her left, although her left shoulder has a large bruise that seems to have come from another impact injury. All the bruises that she had on her occurred before death.

...she was also wearing this. [Bringing up the gold bracelet that she had on her wrist for all to see before placing it down.] I took it off just in case if it was hiding anything underneath, but it wasn't.

[garudynamic]

...wait, so if both her and the dress were really clean is it possible that they... cleaned and redressed her body?

[Okay yeah he sounds pretty grossed out by the idea]

[cherryblooded]

Normally, she wouldn't be wearing that dress at all, so...

Probably.

[He's not happy at all.]

[amygdalae]

It's entirely plausible. Everything seems to suggest that much.

[goodforsomething]

She usually had her star necklace on her too, right? I found it smashed on her bed.

[He takes out a little bundle of cloth and lays it on his podium, holding up one of the larger Wayfinder shards for people to see.]

[garudynamic]

Damn... she loved that thing. That's just cruel.

[True, it was probably smashed in the attack, not on purpose. But still]

[goodforsomething]

Yeah...I'm gonna see if I can patch it up later.

[It's pretty delicate and probably deserves more than super glue, but options are limited]

[sleepingkogoro]

[Well done, Bruce. Mouri has something to bring to everyone's attention, too. He...has brought Aqua's default clothes, which seem to be covered on blood. It is not a pretty sight]

It seems Aqua's own clothes were used to wipe the blood off her. As I see it is possible she was wearing these clothes and...for one reason or another, the culprit redressed her? It is unlikely she was using that dress when she was killed. There's too little blood on it, just as Bruce-san said.

[garudynamic]

But why pose her like that?!

[Grossgrossgross]

Just to throw us off?

[notjustawriter]

Whoever did this is a sick fuck.

[garudynamic]

That's what I'm thinking too. All that effort to make her look like some, what, performer? It's twisted as all hell. It's just so damn... overdramatic.

[isafraid]

The murderers certainly not getting himself any sympathy so far.

[garudynamic]

They really aren't. Though hell, we've turned around on people before- who even KNOWS why it's set up like this. I just don't get the point if all you're wanting is to escape. I'd think there'd be easier ways to confuse us.

[isafraid]

[...He sighs.]

Maybe the murder didn't feel right leaving her in however way they originally killed her. That'd be as good an explanation for this madness as any.

[ratingspoint]

I've seen my share of morbid performances, darling - this is a bit over-the-top even for my standards.

[garudynamic]

Yeah, and you'd know.

...though hell, maybe that's the point. To get us talking about how weird it is and distracted.

[captainobnoxious]

I was going to ask if you ever had something like this on one of your shows. Just out of curiosity.

[ratingspoint]

Oh my god. No?

[...]

I mean, monsters don't leave bodies to begin with, so this specific sort of thing would be impossible, anyway. But even so, we don't desecrate the dead.

[sleepingkogoro]

...remorse, maybe?

[Judging by Mouri's expression he thinks having remorse wouldn't change a thing. A murderer is a murderer]

Redressing her and posing her on the piano doesn't hide clues or misdirect anything. Maybe the culprit regretted having attacked her so brutally and wanted to lessen the shock.

That makes it all worse, in my opinion.

[garudynamic]

Maybe? But it seems pretty over the top. Like, ugh, if it was me I'd cover her head or something. Ya know?

[amygdalae]

...why would her own clothes be used, though?

[That's just... strange, in the grand scheme of things that happened.]

[cherryblooded]

Maybe they didn't have anything else.

The music room isn't full of cleaning materials. And I certainly wouldn't use my own clothes - so hers might have been the most convenient.

[amygdalae]

I suppose... and they didn't want to get caught by taking items from the laundry room, most likely.

[cherryblooded]

I wouldn't want to walk over to the laundry room while bloody, personally. Anyone might be up.

[goodforsomething]

Anyone could've seen them goin' in her room, too. Carryin' her bloody clothes.