FIRST TRIAL

[bathymetric]

Alright, that seems like more than enough time to poke around the crime scene. Gather at the vault door, won’t you? It seems that for many of you it will be a short walk.

[ Once you’re all gathered at the vault door, Angel meets you there and quietly taps a keycard to the side of it. There’s an enormous whirring and grinding from inside as various mechanisms within the door move and whir - until with one last shuddering thud, the door starts to swing inwards, revealing a fully-glass tunnel leading off the side of the plateau the base is built on. Small lights built into the floor illuminate as you walk forward, until finally they light up an enormous elevator, perfectly capable of holding the twenty-four of you.

Angel comes too, putting a few numbers into a keypad just outside the door and inserting her card key once everyone is inside. She’ll gestures to get in if anyone seems unsure, but doesn’t really speak or enter the car herself. ]

Going down.

[ And down the elevator goes, leaving the lights of the facility behind - from here everyone can even see some parts of the facility you don’t have access to, it’s bigger than you realized. But it’s a long and uncomfortable ride to the depths, at least a minute or two before the elevator stops.

When the doors open, enough lights flash on to show that you’ve reached the ocean floor, some distance below even the depths you knew before. Lights around the outside of the massive glass dome you've found yourselves in illuminate the barren depths of the sea, with little if any ocean life to currently disrupt it.

At the top of the dome, among the lights, is an outward-facing circle of five or six different screens, each showing the telltale spiral that indicates The Professor is as present as he ever is.

Below them, of course, are the podiums, a circle of simple metal stands with some kind of video screen embedded into each, though they’re turned off for now. Each of your names is carved into one of them, though the podium constructed for Aela seems to have been just set to display a blank red light.

The screens lower down until they’re too close to eye level for anyone’s comfort. ]

Welcome to the trial room. You have as long as you need to discover who among you killed The Huntress. Once you have, I will explain further action. Take your places.

[ The screens rise back up - welcome to your first trial. ]

Comments

[bolderfell]

[Therion wordlessly holds up a Ziploc bag with a knife from the vending machine and a little bloody water in it.]

[snackooed]

[ Bingo. ]

Oh, excellent. That makes my job easi--

[ ...Wait, wait, wait-- ]

D-don't tell me it's wet...

[bolderfell]

It was in one of the bowls. They didn't even try to flush it.

[bogwife]

Ew. [That's just nasty and she lives in a bog.] It's possible whoever had it panicked and didn't think to try and get rid of it otherwise?

[snackooed]

[ Ema just sighs when she hears that... ]

Great. Well, at least we know the knife the culprit used. We should see if the edge is consistent with the wound to Aela's neck, just to be sure, but it's likely that the knife is indeed what we're looking for.

[ But she can't dust it for prints now. Not only have the prints likely washed off, but the fact that the knife is wet means that the powder will cluster up to the water instead of sticking to the oils... ]

[bolderfell]

You don't want me to throw it, right.

[He can bring it over for her. Only 'cause it's Ema.]

mods

[snackooed]

Absolutely not.

[ Be a peach and bring it on by. Let's examine this edge for good measure: is it consistent with the gash across Aela's throat? ]

[bathymetric]

[ It sure is! ]

[snackooed]

[ Excellent. ]

Confirming this knife as the murder weapon.

[emberserker]

Oh, that's disgusting. Did they try to flush a knife? Don't the washrooms have garbage bins?

[snackooed]

I can think of a couple of reasons why someone would want to put a knife in water instead of in the garbage can. ...Though it is indeed a bit gross to put it in the toilet, specifically.

[bolderfell]

Why? It makes sense to me. That's where you throw things out, right?

[nothingcanstop]

...No, that’s got other uses.

[lovelikeyou]

Oh! That's where humans put the food they don't use up!

[human facts! human facts! all human facts are fun facts!]

[nothingcanstop]

[ oh sweetie ]

Yeah, that’s a way to put it.

[hardnosed]

All this time, they've just been throwing resources away?

[ THIS IS WHAT YOU REBELLED AGAINST THE DIAMONDS TO PROTECT, ROSE
FOOD FLUSHERS ]

[bolderfell]

[?]

[mouflon]

[ Completely deadpan: ]

Maybe they thought if they put it there, no one would want to fish it out.

[drladysounds]

It was an investigation, of course it'd have to be fished out even if this is absolutely gross.

Maybe it was just a place to hide it -- who would think about looking for murder weapons in there?

[The underwater base is large, and some would think anything thrown into a toilet would be flushed away. It's not a stretch to think it was a hiding place]

[onefuture]

It does make sense, all things considered. It's likely one of the last places anyone would think to look, much less want to.

[outside of the people who have no decorum, apparently]

[bolderfell]

[??]

[bolderfell]

There would've been better places to hide it, even in there. Maybe they just didn't know what they were doing.

[fivestagegod]

So you think it was someone who would have known to do that?

[i.e., someone who would have both known about the whole fingerprinting thing and how it works.]

[snackooed]

It's probably too early to make that call. There could be any number of reasons, but that one in particular happens to make a fair bit of sense to me, and I feel it would likely narrow our options down significantly...

[fivestagegod]

Okay. So let's go with that theory for a moment, not making any accusations. Who are we looking at, do you think?