trusthell | Take Responsibility.

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

...Thank you.

[And that's genuine.]

I'm sorry for all this. I really am.

You shouldn't be.

I know. But I am.

...Mettaton, your soul may be weaker than hers, but normally, a human's soul doesn't come into play when they're fighting. You can usually draw a human's soul out for a fight, but you can't do that here.

Your soul might be weaker than her soul, but is it weaker than her body?

Yes.

[And that's said with utmost confidence.]

It's the human body that makes them so much stronger than me, actually - our souls make up everything we are, whereas humans aren't as attuned to their own. They can influence us, not the other way around.

...That's true for most monsters, but is that really true for you? If you were just your soul, you wouldn't have been able to switch bodies.

There's metal in there. Not just a soul.

He told me before - the fact that his body is different from everyone else at where he comes from.

[Sigrun's pointedly looking at the empty podiums. They're hitting around where her doubts are.]

[Like Yato before her, Yosuke notices that look and gives her a look in return.

What you doing, Leader?]

[She is

very much looking the other way, when she catches his eye. Nope.]

[You might as well be flying the Yosuke Signal there, Sigrun. That look is now a Look]

[AND THAT LOOK IS BEING PAINFULLY IGNORED, THANKS, NEXT QUESTION.]

[Do you want him to come over there Young 'not old enough to be his mom but still older then him' Lady]

[If he gets anywhere near this podium she's got a dagger with his name newly etched into it.]

[Wow you wanna start another trial that fast?!]

(no subject)

captainobnoxious - 2016-04-09 20:53 (UTC) - Expand

garudynamic - 2016-04-09 20:54 (UTC) - Expand

That's...true, yes, but that doesn't mean I killed someone.

I'm not saying you did, but the possibility that you could is there.

[Which means that what he said earlier about being unable to hurt Aqua? Seems to be a lie.]

The...w-well, the process is complicated, Alphys could probably explain it a lot better than I could...

I'm not wrong, am I.

N-Not so fast! That doesn't mean that I murdered anyone, differences or not.

[He's stammering. That's bad.]

...So A is wrong. C, too, if it was self-defense. And B is wrong.

You don't have any reasons why you couldn't have done it left.

What you do have is Aqua's phone.

Why?

You're hinging all of this on the notion that anything happened in self-defense, right? So C still stands. I had no reason to try to kill her in the first place.

[...]

I'm tired of talking about this. You have a damning piece of evidence in your hands that you won't explain how you could have acquired innocently. Instead, you put on a big production of why you couldn't possibly have done it, two of three reasons we've now established were lies.

I don't know why you would have killed a friend, dear, if it wasn't self-defense. I don't feel like trying to figure it out because that requires thinking too much about my child killing an innocent person. As fun as this quiz show is for you, it's just painful for me, and I don't feel like indulging you today.

The others can pursue that if they want to. Let me know when we're voting.

[He puts his head back on the podium.]

[...]

It's hardly my fault you didn't listen all those times that I warned you.

But fine, sweetheart. Do what you want.

[nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn]

Does that still count for you in your metal body though?