Take Responsibility.

[trustharder]

And after all has been said and done and all clues have been found, those large steel doors at the end of the hallway open up. The elevator both is and isn't a particularly nice one; it rides smoothly and quickly and it's obviously been kept-up, but there's nothing on the interior walls, lending a claustrophobic feeling to what's already a relatively small space, particularly with all of you in there. (Well. Almost all of you.) No distractions from what just happened, nothing to take your mind off of considering what might, just you and your fellow Survivors in an unadorned steel box. There's no visible panel for buttons, either; looks like it's pre-programmed; at least the ride is a relatively short one, though it's difficult to tell the distance traveled before the door opens again. You would be forgiven for your initial thought being that it opens into a void. It isn't complete darkness, but it's enough of a visual shift from the elevator that it probably takes your eyes some time to adjust; instead of the usual concrete and steel, the walls are a dark, heavy black, making the room look far smaller than it is. There aren't any corners to it, either; the room is tightly circular, complimenting the setup in the center of it. In the center of the room is a circle of podiums, twenty-seven in total, arranged so that everyone standing at them can see each other. So everyone can look each other in the eyes, if they so choose. The podiums are interlocked - there's no cutting across the center of the circle, and for good reason, it looks like there's a lot of nothing down there where the floor should be, just a massive black pit in the center - and each is bearing the title of the person who's assigned to stand at it. No names, just adjectives, emblazoned across two brass panels on the very top and the front of each podium. Affixed to the podium itself is a glass touchscreen panel; it's dark for now, but it'll probably be relevant later. At least the glass is shatterproof, in case things get heated. In general, though, all of the podiums are identical, except for the one intended for Zagi. The podium that should bear Adaptable's title has had a black cloth draped over it, and a copy of Zagi's profile photo is sitting on top of it, framed and colorless, an image in greyscale. It's hard to tell where the Kingmaker's voice comes from, when it does; it seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, like it's being piped in from someplace you can't see. But he's very definitely audible when he does speak. "Adaptable has been taken from you. Looks like the guilty among you is attempting to end the exercise by carrying out Rule Seven. It's up to you whether they're held responsible for their actions or not."

Comments

[prismbloom]

[ She's quiet, too, until Cherryblod speaks up. ]

Pearl, Shirazu, Black, and I investigated the library. The only thing we really found was a lot of duct tape.

[goodforsomething]

Duct tape? What, like they tied him up first?

[prismbloom]

That's the strangest thing: The duct tape was completely clean.

[goingdigital]

Where was the duct tap exactly? Like on the doors?

[prismbloom]

No, not on the doors. It was on the walls, floors, and chairs. There were also books attached to the wall with duct tape. As far as I could tell, there was no pattern in what books were taped up.

[penduli]

There were books that were open, but... they weren't open to any passages that stuck out to me. [ There goes any hopes of clues from literature. ] It just seemed sort of random and unnecessary.

[lackinginfaith]

Sounds like a whole lot of distraction to me.

[bloodisthicker]

...are we entirely sure that Zagi wasn't interrupted while doing some sort of art project? I don't mean to insult the man's memory, but from the little I knew of him he... seemed like the kind of person who would do that.

[prismbloom]

I can't be sure. That may be true, but it's hard to answer, since...

[captainobnoxious]

If I'd do it, so would he.

[and she should]

[goingdigital]

What.

[That was really odd, especially considering that the library is at the other end of the building.]

Zagi was found in the dining hall right? That's a bit far from the corpse, isn't it?

[prismbloom]

I'm not sure, either. The library is far out of the way compared to the dining room.

[goodforsomething]

Clean? So what, it was just sittin' in the library?

[That's weird, but doesn't immediately ping him as murder-related.]

[prismbloom]

Yes, exactly. [ ... ] It wasn't hiding anything, from what I could see.

[amygdalae]

Speedwagon, Detectives Mouri and Lynne and I took care of the dining hall. [...as well as Zagi's dead body...]

First, let us go through respectively on what we've managed to find.

[wokeupdead]

[Lynne will pop up here.]

I'll leave the technical description up to Bruce but it's pretty obvious that there was a big fight in the dining room. Zagi had been cut multiple times by what looked like claw marks and his neck was... slit.

[She falters a bit on the end because it's so horrible to think about.]

[happysweets]

That lines up with the claw marks in the chair! Does that mean Zagi was trying to defend himself with it, maybe?

[amygdalae]

It's a possibility.

[They need to have whatever they can get first. Putting the pieces together will come later.]

As Detective Lynne mentioned, there were numerous claw marks on his body, but none of them were deep or big enough to be fatal.

So I think its safe to assume that it was the wound on his neck that dealt the killing blow.

[happysweets]

Are we sure they were claw marks for sure? Just to be super-safe! There's no way that they could be knife wounds made to look like claw marks?

Misa-Misa doesn't know why anyone would do that, but, it's easier to believe that than that someone here has claws we don't know about.

[amygdalae]

...the marks do look like claw marks, at least, but when I tried to measure them against my own hand, it was too big for me.

[garudynamic]

Makes sense- Zagi told pretty much everyone that he could fight. Sure as hell doesn't seem like a smart target.

[goodforsomething]

Nobody here really looks like they got the hell beat outta them with a chair.

[pokexplorer]

That's true...yet I find it hard to imagine they could come out of a battle with him completely unscathed. Unless they somehow had the upper hand the entire time?

[garudynamic]

Well it's not just that- Zagi told me outright that he uses knives. If the killer had claws or some kinda tool why would they have kitchen knives too? There's no way Zagi wasn't already armed so I bet those knives are his not the killers.

But none of us look slashed up either!

[sleepingkogoro]

It may have been a crime of opportunity! Zagi-san had the misfortune of being awake and out of his bedroom and the culprit took advantage of that.