FIRST TRIAL

[bathymetric]

[ After a while, once all the appropriate clues have been found, Mayor Fontaine calls out again over the speakers. ]

Alright, citizens, pack it in quick and head to the back of the Hall of the Founders. You have business to take care of.

[ When they do reach the Bathysphere station, Eleanor is manning the controls, gaze quiet and even over the crowd. The hatch at the front of the strange elevator is open, and everyone is gestured inside. A series of small submerisbles are lined up, waiting to be ridden. ]

Just hop into the bathyspheres one or two at a time, and the system will get you where you need to go.

[ It's a long, cramped ride from here, but Fontaine's word is true. At least you can tune into the radio in the pod?

The bathyspheres take you down until even the few lights of Rapture are out of sight, down until lights of a different kind are visible - the reds and blues of bioluminescent sea creatures, a little too out of your way to make out what they are, blending to a strange sort of not-quite-purple as the bathysphere reaches its final destination: a glass dome built into the sea floor, about the size of an average house.

As one by one the bathyspheres arrive carrying the new citizenry of New Rapture, less natural lights than those of the creatures around you begin to click on in the dome. In the center, most of the space is taken up by a circle of podiums, each with an image of one of you engraved into it.

A projector of some kind kicks on, which combined with the lighting allows for the familiar silhouette of Mayor Fontaine at his chair to appear on the side of the dome, watching over you. ]

Time to do your best to figure out who killed the Diamond in the Rough. And do yourselves a favor: keep it interesting. I'm here if you have any burning inquiries.

[ And here it is.

Welcome to your first trial. ]

Comments

body investigation report

[visiblepattern]

[It takes him a moment to find his podium, but Forrest is...here, eventually. He hadn't wanted to leave the body, but...well, this has to be done, doesn't it? The lower portion of his dress is faintly bloody from where he was in the water with Adaman, and further still from where he was checking out the head wound after turning him over. For once, he's not fussing about being dirty.

Once he's gotten his position in the circle worked out (and he's yelled at Jonathan), there's only one thing left to do. Right? He seems surprisingly settled, all things considered, if emotionally vacant; he's saying the words with no feelings behind them, as though he hasn't really processed anything that's going on.

He's used to this. He's seen more than enough bodies on the battlefield to be used to this. He doesn't have time to feel anything about it; he has due diligence to perform. That due diligence doesn't involve healing anyone this time, but it does involve doing them some kind of justice all the same.]

I found Adaman in the garden, facedown in the shallow pool of water that can be found in there. I turned him over, but he seemed to have been deceased for some time, seeing as the body was cold. Aiba assisted me in investigating him. Brett, Misfire, and Jason were also in the room.

He sustained a wound to the back of his head - it had bled out quite a bit. It was difficult to tell if it was a piercing or blunt injury; it looked somewhere between one or the other. Not sharp enough to be explicitly piercing, but not as though it was solely a blunt force injury. It appeared that whatever hit him only did so once; there was no reason for me to think that he was struck multiple times. The wound was also clean, in that there was nothing foreign left in it.

[His words remain clinical the whole time; his expression seems to waver a little bit, but he manages to deeply breathe a bit and get that under control before he continues.]

His face was also massively bruised. Centered on the left cheek. It was dark in color, though nothing pierced the skin. It...looked as though someone punched him. Hard.

There was also, for some dreadful reason, a bite mark on the inside of his left forearm. [He raises his own arm and gestures toward it, making the location clear.] It appeared relatively clean in that nothing was...torn out, but it was clearly a mark made by a human.

[Okay. Okay, almost done...]

I'm a little...concerned, about his cause of death? I don't have much experience with this specific thing, but when I've seen it, it hasn't been a good sign - there was frothy discharge around his mouth, and some in the water. In my experience when that happens, it means there's fluid in the lungs, whether blood or water.

So despite the head wound, I...believe he may have drowned? Please correct me if this is unreasonable.

[pairtner]

[Well it's time. Aiba settles herself at a good spot and focuses on projecting into literally everyone's retinas at once, so they can see her human form at the podium]

...this is...dizzying...

[It's so resources intensive it takes several seconds for Aiba to recover. When she talks, she seems a bit lethargic, but at least she's able to participate in the trial properly]

Forrest and I performed a general investigation of Adaman's body and its immediate surroundings. Our findings are as follows. [Everyone sees a diamond-shaped image in their vision, with a map of the garden and a 3D image of someone dead lying there. Mercifully it's a generic blue person instead of an image of Adaman. When Forrest explains his findings, Aiba makes sure to display them in the illustration.

As for her own findings...

>Summarize for me.]

Adaman's estimated time of death is between 2AM and 3AM, according to the temperature of the body, as proven by my thermograph. I cannot be more precise, given this is a cursory conclusion from the data available. No possessions relevant to this crime were found on him.

His body was present on this end of the pond. As you can see, his shoes and feet are on dry land, while the rest of the body is in the water. There were no signs of struggle or fighting in the immediate surroundings, and none of the bruises and injuries show he was held into position. The conclusion I get to is that Adaman was on the verge of death upon arriving to this spot, and perished in this moment, falling forward into the pond.

[She could be wrong, of course]

One of his sleeves shows a bloodstain, possibly damaged by the water, here. [Aiba makes a red stain appear on near the cuff of the sleeve] There's also severe bruising in the knuckles of this hand, while the other doesn't show this kind of injuries. No residues were found under the fingernails. I should point out these bruises are on the hand opposite to the arm with the bite.

Other bruises could be found on the torso and arms, however none that are particularly of interest. [Just worth noting.

Aiba absolutely delivered all this with her usual cadence, dispassionate and to-the-point. Befitting of an AI who regularly helps with investigations, really]

[allatonce]

Yeah, uh. Pretty sure whatever it was happened upstairs. There was blood on the elevator buttons and I'm pretty sure I saw blood in the meeting room?

[bootyhunter]

You think he was struggling and tryin' to escape?

[allatonce]

I don't know if escape's the right word, but something like that. He definitely left.

[kninja]

Yeah. There was a bloody handprint on the glass. Kind of on the smaller side, right, Little Miss?

[He addresses that to Mafuyu beside him.]

[sastruga]

Mm, that's right. It wasn't the most clear -- not a full print -- but I could tell the fingers were smaller.

[bootyhunter]

Is there any way we could do a sort of... Comparison?

[He holds his own right hand up, as if to demonstrate.]

Right here, right now?

[kninja]

Think it'd be difficult to get an exact match just from our memory of part of a handprint, but I guess we could rule some people out.

[pairtner]

It is possible he drowned. He was face-down into shallow water. Even if he wasn't held down into the pond, there was enough water to impede breathing.

It's reasonable to think that was the cause of death.

[Still...]

Finding what made such injuries to his head will be necessary to proceed.

[At least it should give some direction, even if it wasn't the cause of death]

[giddyundertaker]

A bite mark, you say?

[ The expert on death has a second opinion here. ]

Drowning is a very reasonable guess, but the blood loss may have helped. Very curious about the biting and head injury, though...

[visiblepattern]

I would assume the blood loss would have been an effect of the head injury...?

[allatonce]

Wait, wait. Sorry. Head wounds bleed, like, so much. Like it looks like you died from a small cut bleeding and we didn't find blood anywhere but around the elevator and the meeting room.

[giddyundertaker]

[ He nods. ] Yes, plus the head wound was merely a bruise...

[visiblepattern]

...No, it wasn't?

[giddyundertaker]

... Ah! Sorry, got the face bruising mixed up with the stab wounds!

[allatonce]

I thought Forrest said it was like a stabby type deal? Whatever. I'm saying if it bled out that had to happen after. Which... which I think means that whoever did it left the blood upstairs.

[🙃]

[dullshooter]

Oh, hey, we talking blood?

[He’s paying attention he swears.]

I found a bunch of sorta-dried sorta-dribbling blood on a rock out in the garden. Like, a lot. So much that Brett had to sit down. And he was doing so well.

[allatonce]

Was the rock, like, particularly sharp?

[kninja]

...Hey, about how high up would you say the blood was on the rock?

[kninja]

A bite on the inside of his forearm? That's weird. That makes it sound like he grabbed someone from behind.

[pairtner]

That's a potential scenario.

[Oh, right, perhaps she should add:]

I considered the possibility Adaman may have bitten himself, given the position of the bite. Determining this was not possible.

[Although one must wonder why he would do such a thing, really]

[kninja]

That's possible, I guess...?

[Did Adaman have rabies? He doesn't really think so.]

I mean, he didn't seem the type to try to drag anyone off anywhere. Not unless it was for their own good.

[howveryglib]

…perhaps he was attacked and tried to apprehend his assailant, who began to struggle after being grabbed.

[pairtner]

Given the difference in heights and weights, such scenario would make it less likely Nandor is the culprit and person who bit Adaman. It's unlikely Adaman would be able to grab him in a manner that leaves biting as the only way to gain an edge over Adaman.

[Unless Adaman was hiding immense strength or something]