WEEK 5; TRIAL

[killerwaves]

TRIAL

Three dead, one vote. This might be a pit of a pickle, huh? Perhaps appropriately, the kittybots are serving pickles of all flavors today, along with food that might remind you of your childhood like ants on a log, gummy worm sundaes and adorable toast in sweet and savory profiles. To drink, are their best attempts at replicating the DD refreshers with a whole array of silly straws.

Off to the side in a booth of their own are the bodies as well as attendant kittybots (well two bodies and one arm); simply request which body you'd like to look at and the kitty bots will direct you appropriately, given the number of arms floating around. The kittybots continue to do their best.

(( OOC: Welcome to your third trial! You'll have 7 hours (8PM EST/5PM PST) to vote one (1) person guilty of murder. Since this is scapegoat style, finding the correct killer is not mandatory!

Please remember to vote before then unless you've spoken to a mod, as votes are our stand-in for AC. ))

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EVIDENCE TOP LEVEL

[killerwaves]

[ Comment here with your investigation findings! ]

Lab Lab Lab

[chosenwang]

Lacus and I arrived at the lab and there was a poison gas of some sort loose in there. I contacted our local expert to look over the chemicals, while I checked out the destruction. First, there was a cabinet with a bloody dent in it. It was something oval in shape and was made with quite a bit of force.

Then there was a blood trail leading over to the freezer. I found bloody finger prints on the handle, which appears to be a match for Zelkov's hand. Inside of the freezer was his missing hand with a ring on it. It may be the ring from his profile. [ A look at Lacus. Help us Lacus Kenobi. You're our only hope of confirming anything about it. ]

His hand looked like it was crushed, but there wasn't a significant amount of blood inside of the freezer. Just on the outside and by the cabinet.

Mods!

[idologue]

[ Lacus is going to come over and take a look at the ring. She's spent a lot of time with Zelkov, and she's had him transform for her up close and personal during last trial.

Is this his usual ring? ]

Lab Chemicals

[solutionary]

Wang Lu requested that I come double check the chemicals in the lab. There were two glassware that look to have fallen off of the workbench, labeled sodium hypochlorite and hydrochloric acid. They were close enough, that spilling and combining them must have been what caused the poisonous gas.

There was also another mystery liquid that didn't show any signs of being a mixture of compounds, or at least not a mixture that was unstable enough to react with itself. I brought that one here with me [in the box he's holding here, with it safely capped] in case it proved useful.

arcade

[plunges]

[ top level ]

I went to the Arcade with Shuda. I had to use light from my U-Pinion to navigate, since the lights were blown out completely. The room was covered in debris and dust.

The first thing I noticed was damage to one of the televisions on the walls. It was cracked, with some blood splatter. None of the blood was centralized over any of the cracks. Furthermore, directly underneath the device were two things: A large puddle of water, and a pool of blood. The two were next to each other and starting to fuse together at the edges.

[ Then, he'll showcase a cup from the arcade that he's holding, which contains something inside: ]

There was a pile of knocked over drink cups near the entrance. I found a bloody scalpel, haphazardly thrown into the pile. I have it inside of this cup for further examination.

[ Forgot to mention that Xiao has also taken pictures of everything! ]

[dancing_flames]

[Adding to this:]

I also found a trail of blood leading from the arcade towards the railway. But here's the interesting part: it got lighter as it led away from the arcade, yet there was a smeared puddle of blood closer to the railway itself, almost like something had fallen and was then dragged towards the railway.

[Like, you know, a body or something.]

Sungem -> Kakapo railway

[chrysaline]

[ Psyche has been studying the great(?) investigators of the resort as best she can. So here she is, armed with pictures and a reference scale for feet prints. ]

I was on Sungem when I heard the announcement, so I was looking around there... from the footprints, it looks like two people went over the railway from there to Kakapo, towards the lab. There were a lot of trampled plants all along the way, so maybe they were in a fight? There was blood on the rails near some knocked down trees, closer to Kakapo. Oh! And a little blood leading towards the lab, too.

[idologue]

Then it appears that Zelkov and his assailant fought all the way from the garden to the lab.

ALICE...BODY...EVIDENCE (gore/dismemberment)

[necrotiem]

[Someone’s going to have to keep it together today, so Waltaquin remains as steady as possible while delivering these gruesome details. Perhaps it’s best that someone like her found this?]

I found Alice's beast Athos alone at the go-kart area. He was injured and behaving erratically, hunched over by an overturned vehicle and…something else.

When I approached, he tried to attack me. He had been guarding Alice’s arm. One of my undead subdued him. While Ibuki, Crea, and Xiao came to help calm him, I tried to look at the arm.

It’s… in very bad shape. It was removed at the shoulder, not cleanly, for the tissue is still attached to it. It was extensively damaged with a lot of shredding on the flesh.

…It’s all I could find of her there, and the announcement was given shortly after that.

It’s difficult to say with full certainty, but I believe the arm could have been removed after she was already dead. It certainly wasn’t done in that area, for there simply wasn’t the blood to match the injury.

For what it’s worth, she had no puncture bruising that would indicate our rogue poisoner. [Waltaquin pauses.] But it was only one arm…

garden~

[finalmix]

[ sighs. ]

[ anyway throughout this entire sharing he has. pictures on his u-pinion showing what he's talking about so feel free to ask him for comparison pics and stuff! ]

There was a crater outside the entrance to the garden. [ okay it is not really a crater but a point of impact according to mod text but josh will call it That because-- ] It looks something like what happened with the... Vergilius and Lobelia Incident, but not as deep, or destructive, I think. It's about 1.5 feet by 2 feet and not as deep, so much smaller than that destruction fiasco.

That said, there seemed to be a fight...? Of some sorts, at least, in the garden. Most of the plants in the tropical exhibits were trampled, and I can't really tell whether there was like, a start point to the fight or something since it seems fairly even all around, but it was mostly closer to the garden entrance instead of reaching the herb garden in the back.

Sooooooooooo. There are footprints. Going into the garden - they're bigger than my feet so we're probably looking at someone around 6 feet tall who made those prints, and there's another set of two prints leaving the garden buuuuut they're kinda scuffed up because clearly some people have been learning over the past 3 weeks or so not to make things easy for us.

[ is he a little salty? a bit. ]

Oh and, one of the sculptures that is not a trash heap or glass bottle animal escaped any trace of destruction, along with the art supplies that were used to make it? Weird. Probably someone didn't want to like, destroy their magnum opus or something. [ he is getting minamimoto vibes so he is staring into the middle distance a bit. ]

... The memorials weren't spared, by the way, sooooooo someone might want to fix them after we leave the sandbar.

[ anyway he's going to go get some ramen. and maybe some strawberry crepes. ]

[idologue]

The footprints going into the garden my have easily been Zelkov's own. He was planning to spend the night in the garden... to finish that exact sculpture.

Zelkov and I have been working on it tirelessly for the last two weeks. It's a display of our group. Each cabana, each person who was here.

[ If they check the sculpture they'll probably be able to figure out which color combination is meant to be which cabana, too. ]

It signifies that we were here. For however short a period of time, we existed on this island together. We felt and fought and loved and died. There is meaning in each and every one of our existences in this place.

That's what we were trying to express.

Unveiling it here and now, when one of you has bloodied their hands on the artist... Even then, its meaning will not change.

[dakicover]

Hate to immediately put myself as part of the list of suspects, but I think that "around 6 feet" could be used to narrow things down.

[ a pause. ]

Though we also have to consider that Zelkov was about the same height as me. So those footprints might actually be his, if those were clear versus the scuffed ones.

[necrotiem]

Just the one sculpture? Strange that it would be spared; it sounds as if the other destruction was wanton and indiscriminate.

Did it seem intentionally left alone?

all about athos

[divector]

[ Ibuki looks a little worse for the wear, considering the whole go-kart fiasco, but he's going to do his best to describe all this anyway. ]

Waltaquin found Athos in the go-kart area. Xiao and I went to help her after we saw her message on the network.

Athos was injured—he had claw and bite marks all over him. They were rather big and elliptical, so around this size? [ He spreads his arms enough to try to show around 40mm. ]

And while I couldn't get a good look as to the exact reason why, he was favoring one of his hind legs. I took a few pictures from a distance, but he was too agitated to let me get close enough to see his legs clearly. I got...sent flying during this [ goddamn nat 1 roll ], but Crea was able to heal him when he showed up. Thanks for answering the call again.

Anyway, thankfully he calmed down enough to just keep growling at us, so I was able to take a closer look at his condition and take more pictures. His eyes were the most focused I've ever seen, his paws and claws don't have anything stuck on them...what else. Right, his little headdress and bow are all intact.

I also managed to take a picture while he was yawning. There was...blood-red goop there, as well as black debris stuck in his teeth.

The before and after-Crea pictures should be pretty self-explanatory, but I'll clarify when they were taken if you can't tell.

[ He'll have a huge amount of pictures ready for further examination if anyone asks, but he's also going for refreshments. Let him have this, wow. ]

[chrysaline]

What... else could have made claw and bite marks? There really aren't other beasts on the island, are there?

SNOW ROOM AND ALSO NONA BODY MAYBE (1/2 Shay don't kill me)

[gluttoning]

[He looks exhausted and like he's been crying heavily. But he still clears his throat, wiping at his eyes.]

Um.

Nona's body was in the snow room over on Kakapo. Temenos looked at that, so he might have more to say. [His hands wring a bit as he looks at the ground, but he takes a deep breath and continues.]

There was blood across the top of the bench that we found Nona on. It doesn't look like it matched up with her body, but I did look through the snow and it does look like there was dripping down to the ground. Just a little bit, though. There's a lot of fresh snow, so there weren't tracks besides me, Crea, and Temenos...

There was red staining on the inside of the snow room door next to the door handle. It was messy, but there wasn't any sort of shape to it.

[A beat, and he holds up the coat he's brought with him from cold storage.]

I also took a look at the storage locker. One coat was missing, but this other one has bloodied gloves in the pocket, with the blood mostly on the palms and fingers. I haven't done anything with them other than checking the size. They're way too small for me, but still a little on the larger size. Medium-large, maybe.

[A beat.]

There was also a snowman, but I think... Temenos got to that. [Glancing over at him, hi.]

NONA'S BODY + SNOW(BLOOD)MAN (cw for head injuries and gore)

[dupiety]

[Temenos speaks evenly as he gets started on a rather difficult investigation.]

I examined Nona's body. She was lying on a bench in the snow room, covered with a coat from the storage locker. it had a slight layer of snow on it, suggesting it had been there for some time. While there was nothing inside the pockets, I found glass shards embedded into the outside of it, and blood smears on the inside.

As for her injuries... She sustained massive blunt force trauma to the left side of her head, enough to break her skull and distort that side of her face. Whatever she was struck with left a two-inch long laceration behind as well. There was a considerable amount of blood and bruising at the site, and...disconcertingly, older, similar injuries that seem to have had mostly healed up. The freshest injuries already showed signs of healing as well.

Her head also showed signs of exposure to the elements, suggesting that she had been in the cold for at least several hours.

I made a note of her hair being swept back and neatly braided, contrasting with the chaos around her injury. Perhaps those closer to her could tell me if she typically wore her hair like this?

The rest of her body was fairly untouched, though I did find glass shards, as well as frays and tears in her clothes. There was a minor amount of blood present, but no traces of wounds left behind. I flipped her over to check her back, and found signs of livor mortis on the areas where her body would have rested against the bench.

Given her injuries and the evidence that she had been there for some time, I found it odd that there was so little blood on the scene. Well... [He sighs.] There was a snowman constructed near the bench. I found it to be rather hastily and haphazardly made, so I took the liberty of dismantling it. I found...so much blood tucked away inside. It was fresher the deeper I dug. Its arms were comprised of a bloodied nailbat, which had been broken in half. It is safe to say that an attempt to hide evidence certainly was...made.

zelkov's body, cw: mild gore, dismemberment

[diabolizes]

I helped with examining Zelkov's body along with Lacus. He was found slumped against the table in the lab like he had collapsed there, of which the pool of blood underneath him seemed to attest to. His left arm had been severed around the elbow area, and the cut was rather clean.

He looked like he had been through a fight, given he had bruises and bloody cuts all over his body. The cuts weren't particularly deep or long and looked to be more like surface wounds, and most of the bruising on his body was not concentrated in one specific area save for where his left arm had been severed off. As for where his arm had been cut—the stump itself had evidence of being crushed and mangled, severely enough that there were cracks running along the bone that I could see sticking out.

Although he was rather stiff by the time we found him, Lacus managed to dig a few things out of his pockets, namely a U-PINION, Dove cabana key, travel sewing kit, and a kitchen knife. The kitchen knife was of most interest, as it had seen signs of use and had small wood splinters caught in the nicks.

I also found another kitchen knife next to him, but this one was bloody. I gave it a thorough look over and there were quite a few nicks on the knife, and while it otherwise looked incredibly sharp, I would say that the damage was consistent with a lot of force being exerted with that knife.

[ He'll even pull out both knives in separate bags from his robes too, in case anyone wants to have a look. ]

And because there was dangerous gas in the lab and we've had some incidences of poisoning, I got a good look at his face too. Zelkov had light blistering around his face, which also had similar blistering to that on his right hand. His eyes were also red and irritated.

[idologue]

I imagine that the knife in his own pocket was used on the sculpture he was working on.

As for the second one... there is no way to cut off an arm with a kitchen knife, is there?

Dodo -> Sungem Railway

[butcherspice]

I found quite the mess of destruction on the railway area between Sungem and Dodo isles. First thing I noticed was Alice's veil stuck in a tree and torn up. Only other traces of her were some blood-soaked white scraps that looked like they mighta come from her flouncy frock and enough blood soaked into the earth and splattered on the debris to be deadly. Judging by Athos' new chew toy, that might be all that's left of the lass.

There's a big shallow crater smooth as a baby's bottom with different types of debris scattered about on the edge. Mostly standard rocks and leavs, but I managed to pick up a few trinkets: some dark shiny little pieces of somethin' and what's left of Alice's riding crop. I got it right here for anyone else to take a gander, but looks like there's some tech in it that got busted.

Now I ain't from anywhere that's got gadgets that control animals, but puttin' two and two together from what I know about Alice, girl was probably right fucked the moment somebody smashed this thing.

[finalmix]

[ alice how the fuck did you get exploded ]

... Yeah okay so, someone probably smashed it and then left Athos to do their thing.

[ he's not saying that athos ate alice ha ha ha unless??????????? ]

[divector]

[ alice, what the hell happened to you??? but first off ]

Debris and dark shiny little pieces... Do any of them happen to be black by any chance? I found something like that in Athos's teeth.

[necrotiem]

Was the veil very high up? For it to get up there, I can think of only a few methods of transportation.

Added to the crater you found, I think we might not want to label Athos our cause of death so quickly.

AVIARY

[microtransactions]

[ s'up everyone, magolor is going to show up with two (2) weirdly relatively unharmed but very dead pheasants before sighing and going into his bit. ]

I checked out the aviary. Probably the weirdest thing is how not messed up and undisturbed it is. There were some glass shards on the ground, and these two dead pheasants, but other than that...

The glass bits were all really small, like barely getting as big as someone's fingernail at best. Clear in color, and kind of start from the door in a sort of, hm, shotgun spread pattern? They're closest together at the entrance and spread out further from each other the farther in you go.

The birds are uninjured other than a single thin, long, controlled slit across both of their necks and a broken neck. The glass bits look too small to have sliced them up, plus there wasn't any glass on their bodies. It's weird, because there wasn't blood on the ground anywhere I could find. But the birds are pretty pale, which makes me think they were bled somewhere else and then dumped in the aviary afterwards, maybe? There's no bloody trail or drag marks or anything like that, and they were left like ... right in the middle of the main path, so they were pretty obviously noticeable.

I checked the slits against one of the kunai a bunch of us got a while back, but it looks like the edge was too thick to have made them. Whatever it was someone used to cut into these birds, it was pretty thin and precise.

I looked all over for whatever they might have used in case they dumped it there, and a source for the glass, including in the little shop there, but couldn't find anything.

[idologue]

There was a bloody scalpel in the arcade - that might correspond to their injuries?