guiltrip | WEEK 5; TRIAL

WEEK 5; TRIAL

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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[ Comment here with your investigation findings! ]

[ If you want to talk at them for any reason, here's where you shout. Be sure to mention who you're addressing! ]

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.

[ Lacus is dressed in the regalia of friendship. Unrecognizable to anybody around her, but enveloping her like armor are the dress that Nona chose for her and the hairpiece that Zelkov crocheted for her. Her hair is in a ponytail for the first time since the day of arrival, a signal of her determination to all who know her from home. ]

One vote, once more. I see that I am getting my 'wish'.

[ She looks up at Shigaraki specifically, her eyes a little tired but determined. ]

Would you mind confirming how many culprits there are or are we to figure out our dilemma as we go?

Edited 2023-06-17 17:07 (UTC)

[ 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! ]

Edited 2023-06-17 17:11 (UTC)

[ 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.

Edited 2023-06-17 17:10 (UTC)

[ 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? ]

[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…

[ 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. ]

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

[Lacus will indeed recognize his usual ring!]

[ 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. ]

Edited 2023-06-17 17:20 (UTC)

[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.]

Sounds like more than one victim was cut up this time.

[ Can't we ever just Kill Someone. Why is it always a production! ]

The ring is Zelkov's. He used it in order to transform into the white haired stronger version of himself that we have seen before.

[ Why would someone shut it in the freezer...?! ]

It sounds like it... it's a little surprising there wasn't more blood, though. [ Just the one bit of spray. ] The footprints were all bigger than mine, so I suppose whoever was with him would have to be about as tall as Zelkov.

[ Actually that answers half the things. ]

Do you think he would have wanted to keep it safe? [ Just to kill that theory in one go ] His prints were the only ones on the door, and I don't want to go back to it later on.

Yeah, there was like, a really odd lack of blood in the garden too - I kept trying to find some but nada.

[ he is maybe also a little weirded out by that ]

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.

I guess if they were similarly skilled, maybe it was hard for either of them to land a hit? I don't think anyone here can heal fast enough that there'd be no traces otherwise.

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.

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

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.

Edited 2023-06-17 17:28 (UTC)

[ makes A Face ]

So, a killer who believed in the same message at least enough to not destroy the sculpture it stood for but not enough to spare the creator of it.

Sure, that tracks. [ sighs. ]

It appears so. Though judging by the descriptions, the arms were removed in very different fashions.

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WEEK 5; TRIAL

EVIDENCE TOP LEVEL

OVERHAUL/SHIGARAKI

Lab Lab Lab

Shigaraki

arcade

Sungem -> Kakapo railway

Mods!

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

garden~

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all about athos

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

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moving to here

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zelkov's body, cw: mild gore, dismemberment

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