SIXTH TRIAL

[bathymetric]

Alright, same as every week before this - gather at the Vault Door so my Assistant can let you in. And I can start hoping to salvage at least the aquarium.

[ The Assistant, nee Failsafe, stands in her armor at the ready when you arrive, not saying a word and simply unlocking the door and elevator for you to head on down to the trial room. Second verse, same as the first five verses, but a whole lot quieter and a whole lot meaner.

The elevator is a lot emptier now, isn't it? Your number has fallen yet again since the last time you were here. Feels like yesterday, or maybe forever ago? Time's feeling pretty weird right about now, but trial days are for getting locked into the moment. You're here, you're present.

You're running out of allies.

The screens are the same as ever, though, and lower as you enter. ]

I see you haven't decided to continue to increase the number of bodies this week. Perhaps something to be thankful for, in all of this. Hotshot is dead, and the responsibility of finding his killer falls to you. Hopefully this is all old hat to you by now, no?

[The screens rise.

Welcome to your sixth trial. ]

Comments

cw: death

[blackmass]

[There was really nothing else to do about it. This trial had been decided the moment he'd hesitated and Vincent had fired. It was always a shot through the heart, wasn't it? The heart he didn't have, the heart he'd never had.]

[Kirei Kotomine had been nothing like Kiritsugu Emiya. Nothing like Seiros, nothing like anyone here or in all existence. He had lived alone, and even in a room full of people he would die alone.]

Give the Professor...my regards on your way out of here. And-...

[A weak, bitter laugh. Was he smiling, in his last moments? With Kirei, it was always hard to tell. The twisting cursed shadows abruptly stopped their motion. Flickered like a candle in a hurricane, and...disappeared.]

...well, I suppose that I did not detest these past weeks so much.

[With what was--to someone as emotionally backwards as Kirei--a glowing bit of praise, he tasted blood in the back of his throat, stifled a cough...and collapsed to the floor.]

[Kirei Kotomine is dead.]

[hardnosed]

... So do we just leave now.

[mouflon]

Yeah, it feels like a formality to make us vote at this point.

[nothingcanstop]

...He's just petty enough to do that, don't you think?

[fivestagegod]

[what exactly is an appropriate response to some guy just keeling over next to you]

...are we certain that he's dead, and are we going to want to make sure he stays that way?

[PROBABLY NOT THAT]

[blackmass]

[i mean i'd say check for a pulse but he never had one, so,]

[fivestagegod]

[...yeahno he doesn't like this]

Della, don't watch.

[nothingcanstop]

You're gonna stab him, aren't you.

[fivestagegod]

I- Yes, I'm going to stab him.

[nothingcanstop]

Oh, jeez- If he starts moving again, just be careful about it? I don't want the Professor trying to say you killed him.

cw: in which we double tap the corpse to make sure it died when it was killed

[fivestagegod]

If he starts moving again, killing him will probably have been a service to everyone.

[He's taking out one of those combat knives, though, and just kind of...approaching the dead guy and kneeling over him.

And...extremely precisely stabbing him in the neck, high up against the base of the skull. Setting him on fire would probably not be appreciated here, not would destroying his head, so functional decapitation is going to have to work.]