trusthell | Take Responsibility.

Take Responsibility.

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."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[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.]

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

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.

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.

...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.

So whatever we're dealing with is something huge...

[ How scary... ]

But they were in the same pattern as your hand? Not, for example, talons.

The anatomy does seem to be generally human - even if the proportion is a bit off. From what I can make out its either that the nails were extremely long or the hand itself is bigger than the average human hand.

Alright. That rules His Majesty out.

[He seems a little relieved to put that in the air.]

In that case, we're looking for someone who we previously assumed to be human, who is not.

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