Week 7 - Trial

[productions]

week seven trial



victim



suspects



Character Statuses
Setting
Manor Rules
Voting

Comments

[inthebones]

[Susan returns from the chapel far too quickly, carrying the communion cup.]

Somebody has drunk from this. Is anyone here willing to say they have? Speak up now, please.

More to the point - Stiles. I think it's time to use the poison-detection kit.

[humanic]

[He smiles wryly - the kit is already in his hands.]

Way ahead of you there. People kept throwing around the idea of poison yesterday before we got distracted and I figured...why not make sure? I hung out with the guy a lot, I can't see him attacking a ten-year old girl out of the blue.

[inthebones]

[She'll hand the cup over to him, then.]

A drug that causes bloodshot eyes, madness, and hallucinations - I can think of several of those, but nothing that would stain the eyes themselves red.

We can only trust that this kit is sensitive enough. ...Or that it works at all.

[or really there's probably nothing.]

[humanic]

It's a magic house, maybe they give out magic poisons.

[He frowns down at the cup.]

I don't think there's enough in here to test. It might be better to run it using Beat's blood instead. We can only do it once after all.

[inthebones]

...Beat's blood?

[Susan frowns.]

We only have one use, it's true. If there was poison in this cup, surely the traces are more evident here?

[humanic]

If it affected him to the point where it changed the color of his eyes, it should be in his bloodstream. They can preserve corpses so they don't rot even after being out in the open for three days, I bet it's still in there.

[He shakes his head.] I don't wanna take the chance that a trace would be too little to detect. And the instructions say I need enough to put into the vial.

[inthebones]

[Susan will exhale heavily. She has little experience with crime detecting; it's clear she's extremely agitated about this.]

Three uses is much more fair. What if you get nothing solely due to user error and unfamiliarity with the procedure?

[Another exhale.]

...Please. Be very careful, Stiles.

[The second time she's said 'please' in as many days it's a miracle.]

Poison Detection

[humanic]

[The 'please' gets him to double-take in surprise, but he doesn't bother joking about it. Instead he just nods back at her seriously.] Trust me, I will. I want to know what really happened just as much as you do.

[He'll then head over to Beat's body and set up the kit.]

...sorry about this.

[Normally he'd be squeamish about cutting open a corpse, let alone one of a friend, but he feels partly responsible in a way for Beat's death. He knew the guy was deadweight and had tried his best to keep him alive but ultimately failed. The least he can do is catch his killer.

He takes his pocketknife and cuts shallowly into Beat's arm, using the vial to collect the drop of blood that spills out. Then he does vague chemistry stuff that I'm too lazy to look up but that are laid out in the instructions. According to the kit, if there's any poison in whatever he's testing, it'll turn black; otherwise, it'll remain unchanged.]

[productions]

[The liquid inside turns a dark blue.]

[inthebones]

What does dark blue mean?!

[Her cry is surprisingly - or not so surprisingly - fervid.]

Was that in the instructions?!

[humanic]

[He just stares at it.]

I...have no idea. If he was poisoned, it should have turned black. If he wasn't, nothing should have happened at all. Dark blue definitely wasn't covered under the realm of possibilities.

[inthebones]

[Susan takes a moment to calm herself down.]

...
...
...

There's something in his blood that shouldn't be there. It dyed his eyes red. Perhaps it changed the color of this outcome as well.

This is it - the first bit of proof we have. Proof that someone gave Beat something to make him act the way he did. To set everything up to provoke this confrontation. There was a third person - no, a fourth. A fourth person involved in everything that happened on Wednesday morning.

We're on the right path.

[humanic]

There's only four suspects. Unless you're saying they were all involved, three's my best bet. May who Beat attacked, Gundam who set up the scene to frame himself...and someone who dosed Beat into a person who'd kill a ten-year old girl.

Now we just need to find out what the hell this thing that isn't poison actually is.

[inthebones]

...Beat, May, Gundam, and a fourth. We're up to four people fiddling about or creating the crime scene.

[Susan sounds grim.]

Is that very important, do you think? We know someone used a drug. Unless they still have it on them, which would be quite silly, we can't say definitively that identifying the thing-that-isn't-poison will be helpful.

[humanic]

Have you heard of a drug that can turn someone into...this? If it was just hallucinogenic maybe, but like you said, red eyes and psychopathy isn't exactly common. Whatever this thing is, the killer had access to it. If it actually is one of the deadweight poisons then yeah, dead end. But if it's not, figuring out where the killer got it from might help narrow it down.

[inthebones]

...No. You're right. I latched onto 'hallucinations' because it was the only explanation that made sense at the time, but it seems this was even more potent.

[The number of times Google has been searched for red eyes + poison is approaching an embarrassing number now]

Where the person got it from, if not as a prize...

If it isn't May and it isn't Gundam... Rapture has only awakened to the seriousness of the circumstances this week. She may have chosen to play her hand. ...Kaoru, however, is familiar with plants and medicine. Additionally, there's the matter of the secret passage, which almost certainly exists, whether or not we can find it.

[vytis]

We found the secret passage. It doesn't look as if it's been used at all, I'm afraid.

[humanic]

If the secret passageway wasn't used, then someone must have set up the poison ahead of time. I had breakfast with Beat, he wasn't acting weirdly then.

What if it's like with Minatsuki and we're looking at separate symptoms to separate problems? Does anyone on the suspect list have any items or abilities that could cause someone to go nuts? Leaving aside Gundam's dark magic, obviously.

[teenspirit]

It means there was something, right?

[inthebones]

...Y-Yes.

[Her words are shaky. Susan's wide-eyed stare at the vial is entirely unlike any other expression she's ever exhibited. Two moments, though, and it is gone in the blink of an eye, her usual calm restored.]

Yes, there must have been something. The poison - the drug hypothesis. There's proof for it now.

[teenspirit]

...

[ A pause, then she nods, smiling. ]

There was something in Beat's blood that affected him physically. We can be fairly sure of what much. As for the other ways it affected him... Well, it is not much of a leap.

[inthebones]

...Either he saw May as something he wanted to attack, or he didn't care at all, either way. The exact details don't matter.

What this means is... no one would be content to allow May to kill in self-defense. This was done for a purpose. The person had to kill themselves in order to claim their prize.

[teenspirit]

...

Perhaps they tried using Beat as a tool, a weapon... or... [ She trails off. ]

[inthebones]

...Do you think that would suffice to get a prize?

[teenspirit]

...

I believe it could still make a person culpable.

I... shall consult Miss Doris.