WEEK 4 TRIAL

[foundationmods]

It was noon on Saturday.

No matter where they were, no matter what they were doing...the moment the chimes rang out through the hall, they felt a change.

The world...began to expand, as they felt themselves leaving the world they were on, and towards another, much larger world...🗈

...As always, the courtroom was there - along with the audience, watching, waiting for the entertainment before them.

The Witch - Nirrti - was there, sitting in the most important place, watching all of them with a sharp, cruel gaze, though no smile could be seen on her face today.

Watanuki was also there, but he merely lounged in the back behind them, smoking a kiseru pipe in silence.
...It seemed as if he was content to watch - that he had to watch - as part of the rules of the game.

There was no music to be heard, but... perhaps on another plane, in another place, someone else heard music as they gazed upon the proceedings.

Again, their forms had changed - perhaps into something different than last time, but...still a change, no matter how dramatic or inconsequential it was.

...There was a deep silence in the room, one that no one wanted to break. It was the faint tension in the air, like the moments before a race or a competition begins.

Truth was elusive, yet they had to find it.
No matter how painful, or upsetting.
No badly how much they all hurt.

For the sake of the dead...and the sake of them all.

Comments

[anonnomnomnom]

[Anon's trial form today is nominally the same as always -- except that it's grown to the point where he no longer has any room to fly around the courtroom, rendering the wings mostly useless. He's just a giant, black blob pretty much from floor to ceiling. As with last week, the bony protrusions on him are now real spikes. They seem larger and sharper. The perfect circle of the pompom is a mess, longer black fur trailing behind him like pennants. The rictus skeleton grin seems the same as ever. His tone is bright and conversational, even, as though nothing has happened. It's also extremely cold.] I thought we could just get down to business, after looking around yesterday -- I looked around at everything, but I might have missed some things! So help me out, won't you? First, the body was in the library and covered in red paint. There was red paint on the ceiling and red paint on the floor and everywhere. That's all I saw. Oh, and the stake, of course. They really wanted us to know he was a vampire, didn't they? Speaking of which, I explained a little of this yesterday but Koide is a jinrou, which is a special type of stronger vampire. The regular vampires he talked about were called shiki, and I'm pretty sure he didn't have any of their weaknesses. Those were sunlight, the inability to live on anything except blood, and automatically falling asleep at dawn! I think you can also kill them with enough stakes, but in general vampires are really durable, so one stake is a little funny, actually. Hmm... Oh, he also wasn't weak to running water, but he didn't like crosses and ofuda and stuff like that. They're like vampire bug spray. [Is this explanation making any sense at this point.] It's the same with temples and shrines, probably, and of course the chapel. So that means... it does look like he was killed in the chapel, because there was a fight there that knocked the pews around and a big pool of blood. And, uh, a bit of black cloth, but it wasn't from Koide. He wouldn't have entered the chapel normally, so that part of the fantasy was probably accurate. The library part, though? Hahaha, what a joke! [The laugh sounds more like a death-rattle in his hollow throat, but them's the breaks.] And... there were white flowers by the chapel, next to where it looked like there was a fight or a struggle in the grass, like in the vision. That's... he was going to say goodbye to someone with those flowers, so he probably went there himself. He said Tateyama gave them to him, I think for flower crowns, but he doesn't like white flowers for himself. One more thing: he was killed with one of the blades from the master bedroom. There were two blades in there that smelled an awful lot like blood when I went to look. They were a broadsword and a double-bladed knife. It was hard to match up to the wound... [His voice does get a little quieter there, but it's the end of his spiel, anyway.] ... That's it.

[excavated]

I saw that there was a missing knife from the kitchen, which apparently Gebura-san found in the boiler room - but if he was murdered with a blade from the master bedroom, it was probably a fake to throw us off.

[anonnomnomnom]

It was a very careful killer, wasn't it? I wouldn't have expected anything less.

[excavated]

Yes. But we'll figure out who did it.

[improbablenotimpossible]

There's more evidence that the library scene is staged.

The books are pulled from random shelves, if there really was a fight, there would be piles of books from the same places where someone was knocked or thrown again. The carpet was also too neat, aside from the paint, the only marks is some intents that look like it came from a ladder, which would explain how paint got on the ceiling...

and there's footprints on the ceiling starting from the window towards where Natsuno's body laid, it looked to be the victim's but wearing shoes.

[goldenmaniac]

I can confirm that there was a ladder, tall enough to reach the ceiling easily. I found it in the shed with paint splattered on it. From the angle, it looked like the paint probably fell on it from above. When the culprit was marking up the ceiling, I guess?

I didn't find anything else in there out of place, and I double checked just to be sure.

[improbablenotimpossible]

That is likely the case, between the footprints and the larger splatters, and given how fresh it was the set up was fairly late.

[goldenmaniac]

Yeah. Paint dries slowly but it wasn't even tacky. Still wet enough to drop? It had to be nearly right before we all woke up.

[anonnomnomnom]

... All of the paint was still fresh, too, wasn't it? Our killer was careful about their setup, but maybe a bit too careful. And you got the paint all over the place, Holmes.

[improbablenotimpossible]

Well, I did not get it on the actual scene.

[Anon and Erhard don't count, they're not part of the crime scene]

[youkaiwatch]

I really don't understand why the scene in the library was staged like that, though. For one, wouldn't it have been easier to pull books out from a single shelf than to go around the room picking out random ones? And it's not as if anyone would be fooled into thinking the paint was blood for more than a few seconds.

[improbablenotimpossible]

There so much to the scene that after the initial appearance is either sloppy, careless - or intentionally off. It's as if after we recognize to the victim was, they want us to immediately realize that it was staged.

[fullbodied]

Do you think the paint was the killer's attempt to make it look like blood had spattered everywhere, as in Nirrti's story?

[aleph_armed]

Wait, you said you smelled blood from them? Dammit, that was a miss.

[...Us robots don't have a sense of smell... This was our loss this time.]

There was a scrap of a bloody handkerchief stuck to the boiler's door. I assume the handkerchief was used to clean off the weapon before being burned inside the boiler. Obviously, the stake itself came from the Master Bedroom, as one was missing from there.


There was a kitchen knife in the boiler room as well, but we're all pretty sure it wasn't the murder weapon.

[cryosurgeon]

I can confirm the kitchen knife wasn't used. The wound was made with a double-edged blade.

[anonnomnomnom]

We're going to have to be more careful about letting you robots investigate by yourselves, aren't we? [Sorry, this is still the zero-tact corner for the foreseeable future.] They really wanted to distract us from what was going on at the chapel. Koide was probably never in the library while he was alive.

[literalidiotball]

Hey! We did our best!

[He shouts. Keeping away from the corner.]

[youkaiwatch]

I think that's right. There was very little actual blood at the scene in the library.

[keydomhearts]

I think the killer may have used Koide's bath tub to wash off the paint! They also left his shoe's there! It looked like someone painted the bottom of his shoes from the paint brush and empty paint can!

[improbablenotimpossible]

And that would be the source of the ceiling footprints, it's a touch sloppy for what is suppose to be a carefully set up scene.

[youkaiwatch]

It's more than a touch, isn't it?

[ he's supposed to have walked on the ceiling in blood, gone back to his room to take off his shoes, and then gone back to the library again to die?? ]

[anonnomnomnom]

It's sloppy, but it moved our focus away from the chapel for a long time, didn't it? [He seems unrepentant to have been the cause of some delay. Oh well.] And we still haven't found something there that would point to who the killer is. That's the important part.

[fullbodied]

[her form is simple today, and not panther. for once.]

We'll figure it out, Anon.

[anonnomnomnom]

We will. One way or another. [She probably isn't happy to see Akira get used in the fantasy either, but sadly there is no sympathy from this quarter.]

[fullbodied]

[her feelings on that... are surprisingly difficult to tell, except what she's shared already.]

... Are you trying to get vengeance for him?