SECOND INVESTIGATION

[bathymetric]

Your third Friday in the facility dawns like the last two, where you've historically had a 50-50 shot at not, you know, having someone be murdered somewhere. Needless to say, the atmosphere is probably tense. You've already lost someone, but... is that enough? There's a whole chest of maybe literal pirate gold at stake, here, and for all of you who have derided the motive there's no doubting that money isn't exactly something that nobody out there kills for, right?

The lights of the facility click on to signal the end of nighttime, and one by one you start to wake. Things seem pretty normal as you all leave your rooms, but... didn't you feel this way last week, too?

Comments

[bathymetric]

[ They might be! It's hard to tell for sure without more time to clean things up and look at the pattern, but "human" is well within the range of terrible possibility!

There's some other weird things about the body, too, if the bite marks are a little Much. ]

[snackooed]

[ Mind if she handles the cleanup? And checks his rigor mortis, while she's at it? ]

[archboxer]

[Go right ahead. Rhea is a bit... disturbed about the bites.]

[bathymetric]

[ Would you like to take a look elsewhere on the body, Rhea? There's other less disturbing things to note, I promise! ]

[archboxer]

[Okay, what about his hands? She'll just take a look to see if it looks like they were bit or cut.]

[bathymetric]

[ There is indeed a cut on his hand! ]

[archboxer]

[A scratch or something more akin to a knife?]

[bathymetric]

[ It's a decent cut! If it was done with a knife it was a pretty glancing blow, but it had to sting like hell. ]

[bogwife]

[Welp, this is a good time to have the lady who literally lives among wild animals and has treated her fair share of bites, mostly on herself.]

Ouch. [She slides over to Ema's shoulder, pulling out a scrap of fabric from her shoulder bag to pass to her.] Here, in case you need it.

[archboxer]

[She won't say anything because what does a sheltered holy woman know of animal attacks, right? Still. This... is definitely something she's going to watch even if she won't say much.]

[snackooed]

Yeah, it's bad, right?

[ She'll gladly take that fabric, though. Thank goodness there's a sewing room around here... ]

Never do have it easy on this job...

[bogwife]

Do you think it could have been one of his whats its, his animals...um...Pokemon?

[archboxer]

I... do not believe so. Would it not be more... torn up?

[His throat.]

[snackooed]

I'd have to examine the size of the mouth to be certain, and the strength of the bite...it seems like whatever, or whoever bit him used enough force to break skin, but not enough to bite straight through the flesh.

[bogwife]

Hmm, possibly but it also depends on the size of who or whatever attacked him, how sharp the teeth are, all sorts of things. [She'll...reel back from giving more details for Rhea's sake.] I'd just prefer not to think about a human person doing something this, ah...savage? Hits a bit too close to home, honestly.

[archboxer]

[She's thankful, for reasons that she's not going to say.] Yes... right. A human... it would be difficult for a human to actually do something like this...

[ladygeryon]

Slade wouldn't do that. Piers was his trainer! [Pretend she hasn't left to look for the Pokeball yet, okay?]

[bogwife]

I'm not accusing him but it doesn't mean we can't rule him out. I love my pets as much as anyone but that doesn't mean things like this can't happen.

[ladygeryon]

Even if someone managed to Confuse him into attacking, Piers could still have recalled him! And their bond is strong-I doubt he'd mistake Piers for an enemy!

[bathymetric]

[ As near as you can tell from the onset of the rigor mortis, Ema, we're again looking at at least a couple hours since death! ]

[snackooed]

[ Understood! She's going to clean up the area around his neck and take a nice look at those bitemarks, then.

Can we tell what kind of pearly whites we're looking at? ]

[bathymetric]

[ It's hard to be 100% sure, actually? They're pretty messy.

Cleaning things up does reveal something else kinda weird, though. ]

[snackooed]

[ Oh, joy. Lay it on me, Chip. ]

[bathymetric]

[ Well, politely put, this is a severe neck wound for the relatively neat crime scene. And maybe it's more how not weird it is with regards to the body specifically?

There's clearly been massive blood loss here. He's pale as heck. ]

[snackooed]

[ ...Uh huh.

So, any signs that the body has been moved, here? We're looking for some indication that he's been dragged or carried to the chapel... ]