Take Responsibility.

[kingmakereffect]

And once the allotted time for investigating comes to a close, those elevator doors slide open at the end of the first-floor corridor, offering another of those fast, smooth rides down to that black void of a courtroom Twelve out of the original twenty-seven are dead; there are four less of you present for this trial than there were last week. That's incredibly obvious as soon as the doors slide open and the podium circle comes into view where it's encircling that dark pit in the center of the room; Norman, the King, Tarrlok, and Lynne have joined the deceased, photographs in greyscale watching the proceedings from their podiums draped in black. Of course and as always, the Kingmaker is watching too; he waits until everyone is settled at their podiums to begin speaking, though it's still impossible to tell exactly where his voice is coming from. "Assured and Perceiving have been taken from you. You guys are really getting excited, aren't you? Two people dead in one night... Whether the guilty party succeeds or not, though, is up to the rest of you." Fifteen Survivors remain. However many will be down by the end of the day is up to you.

Comments

[garudynamic]

Alright, so... we have two bodies this time, so we gotta focus. Who found what? Bruce, you looked over Tarrlok's body, right?

[amygdalae]

Yes.

[Hello, yes, Bruce is here and ready to give his report like a good doctor.]

I'll be listing everything I've found on the first victim that we discovered. Detective Mouri and Mr. Colress have their own things too, so I'll let them talk about it after me.

[It's kind of terrible how used they are to this by now. It's not easy, but they're... used to it.

...he'll think about that later.]

The cause of death is, in all likelihood, his broken neck. The damage done there was fatal, and there are also no other signs of injury on his body aside from bruising that seems consistent with a fall down from the stairs. The blood on him is already dry by the time of the examination, which means that the incident had taken place a good while ago.

In addition, I also found this [Holds up a small ziploc bag of glitter for everyone to see] on his body. It was pretty much everywhere on him, as far as I can tell - the glitter in here is from after I got it off my hands.

[sleepingkogoro]

B-but the body can't have fallen down the stairs! At least not where the body was found.

It could be possible he was killed in a set of stairs higher than where it was actually found, though. Not that it explains the broken neck.

[penduli]

They might've moved him so he wouldn't be in the way of the stairs and they wouldn't have to step on him to get over him, or something like that.

[ratingspoint]

Couldn't he have broken his neck in the fall? Humans break easily in some places, and I'm pretty sure the spine is one of them.

[amygdalae]

As you mentioned earlier, there is a high possibility that his body had indeed been moved after the deed was done. He could have easily fallen from elsewhere and then brought to where we all discovered him.

[garudynamic]

Glitter? Well hell, with all the costumes last night that coulda come from a lot of places.

[captainobnoxious]

My thoughts exactly. I'm gonna be coughing that out for the next week.

[a minor exaggeration]

[penduli]

I think Mr. Tarrlok's death might've been an accident.

[ It's not just conjecture either! He's brought his notebook today, and in that notebook, there's... some scraps of paper. They're almost too signed to make out, but Black'll lay them flat on his podium as best as he can manage. ]

Yosuke and I found these in the incinerator—which was turned on by the way. I guess we were lucky that we got there in time before it all got burned up...

[ But again: why would you ever use the incinerator. ]

There's not a lot to make out except for two words: TARRLOK and ACCIDENT. [ which is why he thinks it may...be an accident, congratulations Black, you did the fucking detective work. ]

[sleepingkogoro]

Idiot...did you think the culprit wrote a note saying it was an accident and then decided to burn it?

[...no, that won't fly]

I think it is more likely that paper is from something like, I don't know, the secrets the Kingmaker gave a week or so ago.

[amygdalae]

But if it was merely an accident, that doesn't explain why the body was even moved in the first place.

[Since its at least clear that the position he was found it definitely didn't come from a fall down the stairs.]

There's also too many gaps to make it concrete.

[Actually, wait--]

Can I see the paper?

[pokexplorer]

[Colress is about as solemn as he's ever been as he starts into his findings once Bruce is finished with the description of Tarrlok's body.]

I will provide some information about the scene of the body.

As you all saw, there was very little blood at the scene, but there were still some items out of place for the location. I discovered several bottles of chemicals from the laundry storage room both near the body and on the stairs. They were all sitting upright and still had liquid inside. As for their intended purpose for being there, I cannot say. It seems as though they had not been put to use.

Stranger still, just like Mr. Banner discovered on Tarrlok's body, there was glitter attached to a few of bottles, as discovered when I picked them up to examine them.

[prismbloom]

[ So that's where it went. ]

I investigated the laundry room--the one upstairs, and I noticed the chemicals were all gone. All of them--not a single bottle was left.

[ ... ]

I found something else, too. Someone used the sign-out sheet.

[goodforsomething]

...people actually use that?

[captainobnoxious]

I'm more surprised by that than any murder.

[sleepingkogoro]

Who?

[A valuable clue! Reveal away, Aqua!]

[amygdalae]

[...]

Who was it?

[garudynamic]

Okay, so Sigrun, Speedwagon and me examined Lynne's body.

She was found in the men's sauna. it didn't look like it had been used and she was still fully dressed. I'm guessing she was face down and you guys moved her, right?

[He showed up late okay, let him be]

Anyways, there was no signs of a struggle. No bruises or any way to tell what killed her for sure. But she did have slight chemical burns on her face. They looked like something was poured down her face- most of it was centered around her mouth. Sigrun checked her mouth and I checked her nostrils. It doesn't look like she drank or inhaled any thing that would have burned her.

There was also an empty bottle of bleach. Which I'm guessing caused the burns. Plus there was water all over the floor- it hadn't evaporated yet.

[happysweets]

How could you tell she didn't drink it..? She didn't have any burns or anything in her mouth?

[garudynamic]

None. Trust me, I thought she was forced to drink if our had it poured down her throat too.

[isafraid]

Right. She was face down. And despite the sauna not looking like it was used, there was water all around miss detective.

[captainobnoxious]

The water, for the record, was perfectly safe to touch.

[amygdalae]

The water might have come from condensation and if that's the case, then perhaps the sauna was used much earlier and then turned off.

[captainobnoxious]

Yeah, I moved her like that. Her clothes had damage too, I guess from the burny water, and it was wet 'cause of the not-burny water. Maybe they tried forcing her to drink it and it didn't work out.

... Still don't know what could've killed her though, short of drowning. If she was knocked out.

[garudynamic]

There wasn't enough water there to drown her, but at this point unless someone had poison I have no idea how else she could have died.