FIRST TRIAL

[bathymetric]

[ Eventually, time seems to run out. Davy Jones takes a lap around the boat, rather tersely instructing everyone to gather in the theatre.

Once everyone is inside, he herds all of you onto the stage, which has been cleared save for the controls to the elaborate pipe organ built into the room. ]

Step lively, passengers! There's a long ride ahead of ye!

[ And once everyone is on that stage, Davy Jones sits at his organ and begins to play. It's not a familiar song to any of you, and it doesn't sound kind, but it does sound wildly complicated. Or it would be, for someone who can't play with his many tentacles.

As the piece begins, the stage begins to descend. Well, at least the part you're all on, as well as where Jones sits at the organ. And it keeps descending, at least through a few floors before long. The elevator shaft is dark, the music echoing until it fades, the controls apparently too far from the pipe organ above before long. Jones sits in silence as the cramped ride continues. Dull bulbs set into the wall provide just enough illumination to tell where you all are, but the walls are thick steel.

You have to have descended several floors, you imagine, when light starts to creep in at the edges of the platform, along with voices. They sound distant and distorted, but the first thing you hear when the platform breaks into the trial room is men singing, rough and distant.

You can also see the... surprisingly somber room, considering where you are. The walls and floor are all made of glass, allowing you a view of the sea as the ship you now stand on the very lowest deck of pushes through the water. Lights illuminate enough to tell that it is indeed water out there, but the water is perhaps not the most interesting thing out there in the dark.

Below the ship, illuminated by a ghostly aura, sails (for lack of a more fitting word) The Flying Dutchman. If you look closely, sailors more monster than anything else man the deck, and seem to be the source of the song. Davy Jones casts the ship a sad look, then stops a foot on the floor and the song quiets. ]

Take your places, passengers. Ye have this chance alone to find the killer among yer number.

[ In the center of the room stands a circle of sturdy metal podiums. Carmen's seems to be almost... decades older than the rest, coated in rust and barnacles. In the center hangs a circle of screens, currently switched off. ]

If there are questions, I am going anywhere no sooner than the lot of you.

[ Jones moves to look out the window, leaving you all to talk amongst yourselves.

Welcome to your first trial. ]

Comments

[ahelpingpaw]

I know we were all talking about she maybe falling into the ocean, so maybe it's at the bottom of the sea right now -- if she had it when she fell. Things falling off pockets happen.

[paucipan]

You would think that our dear friend under the sea might have tossed such a thing back up, though...

[Guess it just tosses bodies and not devices? Maybe?]

Or someone's keeping it on them. It's a stupid possibility, but it is one none the less.

[hellahighwater]

Why would anyone do that? It'd be like a big friggin' sign screaming HEY, I KILLED HER!

[scouserer]

[Constantine shrugs.]

People are stupid.

[hellahighwater]

...Point.

[magycks]

Well, you all were talking about how it might have been an accident, weren't you? People do stupid things when they don't go in with a gameplan, or experience trauma, or whatever.

[sivard]

That's a good point, actually.

[magycks]

Actually?!

[sivard]

[Wow he compliments you and you take it as an insult because of how he words it??? Rude!]

[magycks]

[ listen at least she didn't screech it this time, that's almost like a thank you!! ]

[hellahighwater]

[ how the fuck is magica the almost sensitive one here ]

Mm... [ Chloe frowns, but nods along. ] Stupid incriminating shit.

[magycks]

[ nobody point out that she's almost contributing, this is like a cartoon character running off a cliff and the second she becomes self-aware it'll stop ]

Not sure how that lines up with the whole folding the coat thing, though. That's deliberate.

[sivard]

...Yeah. It doesn't line up.

[hellahighwater]

No, I... I think it does. [ Mrrgh. This is- ] You can do stupid fucking shit, like...snatch up incriminating evidence, but still have like. A sympathetic bone in your body. Especially if you're not thinking straight. Like a bunch of contradictions all adding up.

[ignobel]

Is it really sympathetic to fold her coat up and steal her stuff before dumping her in the pool...?

[Half a real question here?? This seems like a confusing metric, you guys.]

[hellahighwater]

Okay, when you put it that way— it's like...having like a spec of respect for the dead. Folding up someone's things.

[ignobel]

Hmm, I guess there's not that many other explanations for just leaving the coat there. Hat could've fallen off but the coat...

[She can accept this reasoning!]

[sivard]

It's ritualistic, maybe.

[ignobel]

Maybe they thought she'd come back and haunt 'em if they didn't do something to appease her spirit? Some people believe in stuff like that, and there's all sorts of rumors. And.

[Glances at the Flying Dutchman???]

[sivard]

[.......]

Yeah, that could be.

[magycks]

Look, I said deliberate. But maybe? The killer knows what they've done and knows they have to cover their tracks, but they try and add some order to what they can — the coat — without considering the aftermath.

[scouserer]

And the hat was in a different state of...soaked? [Being wet???]

[magycks]

Apparently! No idea what's up with that bit of evidence.

[onlyyoucan]

Wait. The phones would keep records on them, right? Like messages with the Captain. Someone might have taken the phone because they wanted to see what was on it, though I don't know why.

[paucipan]

[Oh, that's actually a good point.]

Perhaps our culprit here is someone rather nosy. People do like to snoop on other's business when they have the opportunity to do so, don't they?