Fifth Trial

[bathymetric]

[ There's a long while of examination before the Mayor speaks up. There's plenty of evidence to pick up yet again this week, after all. ]

Annnd that's going to do it. Wrap it up and head to the bathyspheres, kids, you've got some business to attend to.

[ The bathyspheres take you all down, down, into the now-familiar dome below the city. The similarly familiar red glow persists until the lights properly turn on - the projection of Fontaine's silhouette is gone, of course, replaced by that same flickering "please stand by" message. But your mayor's voice is still the one that speaks over the increasingly empty circle of podiums. ]

If you somehow need a reminder of why you're here, three of you are dead. Get away with it, killer or killers, and the execution room gets to really work overtime today. But I guess if you wanna live, you should find who murdered three people. Could be important for you guys.

[ Welcome to your fifth trial. ]

Comments

cw: robot gore

[inaclearing]

[Brett doesn't really say anything, just puts his head down on his podium. Give him like two minutes here.]

cw: robot gore

[specialyellthing]

That’s… a lil over the top, ain’t it?

[allatonce]

Kind of explains how they overpowered him, I guess. From the way Misfire talked about it, the... pink stuff is basically blood so I can't imagine that leaking it all over the place would be good for him.

[honeyedtea]

But– who here would be insane enough to come up with a plan like this? If they were going to kill someone, why make such a spectacle of being so cruel about it?

[allatonce]

[deadpan:]

Gee, I don't know. How would you kill an alien robot, Mielle? This doesn't seem cruel so much as practical.

[inaclearing]

And why pick Misfire at all?

[He says it like he's just upset about it, which he definitely is, but also:]

Not for nothing, but I think anyone else would be easier to kill.

[specialyellthing]

Wrong place at the wrong time, I’m guessing.

[asymptotes]

At least it's clear what it is on there, I guess.

[asymptotes]

Hm. Wouldn't know, I've never used it.

[onemillion]

Agreed. I'm not sure what the point of it was.

[Yes, some parts of this had to be done in order to actually kill Misfire, but like??? C'mon???]

[allatonce]

Yeah, what Z said. I don't think there was a lot of "picking" going on here.

[honeyedtea]

Do you suppose he might have witnessed whatever else was going on last night... and he was killed to ensure his silence?

[allatonce]

I'd personally just say that was practical. Removing a robot's head is pretty normal to ensure that they're "dead."

[onemillion]

Why throw it in the lake, then? Not to mention whatever it was they did to his arm.

[specialyellthing]

Could be. Or he was the first person they saw out, when they were gonna do the do.

We’d need to figure out what order they all died in, first.

[specialyellthing]

That’s the part that just seems disrespectful.

[allatonce]

I mean, possible but not likely? The crime scenes are weirdly positioned for that.

[onemillion]

Exactly. It was entirely unnecessary.

[allatonce]

You usually have to separate the head from the body so a robot can't self repair—which I'd normally say was a "power" but in this case it might have been a "biological" function like Nandor's blood drinking. I assume the arm was to weaken him.

[onemillion]

To prevent him from being able to fight back while they were... removing his head. I suppose I can understand that.

[He doesn't like it, but... yeah, maybe it was done for practicality.]

[allatonce]

My mom's into "natural" medicine so I unfortunately have to keep on top of what's harmless or even helpful and what's potentially going to kill us.

[inaclearing]

You're right. The only two that seem clear are Jonathan and Hild, though - it seems like they must have gone in that order, if someone tried to frame her with the ice pick.

[sastruga]

I wonder who he was addressing... I guess there's no way of knowing.

[specialyellthing]

We could guess, based on context, right?

Who is us and what could have been bein provided?

[honeyedtea]

It sounds like... a goodbye letter, doesn't it?