CHAPTER 3 ; INVESTIGATION

[themodsgrimm]

The Story Continues... CHAPTER 3 - WEEK 3??? Narrators Remain ; The clock begins to chime, and on the first note, curfew lifts. Your doors swing open, whether you are ready or not. Leaving your room is a blur. The person you fell asleep beside — are they still there? Have they vanished? Were they ever there at all? You can't seem to recall clearly. What you are most aware of is the pervading sense of wrongness in the air, and how you can't hear anything but the chime of the clock. Even the sounds of your own voice and your own footsteps do not reach your ears. By the time the time the clock strikes nine, you know one thing to be true: blood has been spilt. Search the castle carefully — you wouldn't want to miss a single important detail, would you...? Welcome to this week's investigation post! This time, the mods will be providing top-levels for you to search. Please note the Locations page for your reference. Evidence — or lack thereof — will be noted in these threads. We ask that group threads consist of no more than 2-3 characters. After the discovery of the body (or bodies) and any pertinent evidence, an IC announcement concluding the investigation will go up. You are then free to make your own toplevels on this post for any threads you would like to have between the end of the investigation and the start of the trial. If you have any questions, please ask on our Discord server or ping us on plurk. Please direct pings to Britt (bloodthirstiest) and Danielle (entrappings), as they will be taking point on this investigation! Instructions on this week's investigation can be found in a pin in the General chat! full navigation. locations taken (statuses) stories (profiles) info & faq wishing well private conversations

Comments

[themodsgrimm]

[Well, the good (?) news is there's no obvious blood in the armory! Natsuo, as he's digging through the weapons for the gauntlets, will knock aside a wooden shield, a rusted dagger, a shiny katana, and two half-rotted arrows. Yikes! Looks like someone here really doesn't care about organization!]

[asswipe]

[OPENS HER MOUTH TO LET HIM DOWN GENTLY

and then spots the shiny katana among the pile of shit he just knocked over. Thank god. A distraction.]

—Sorry, hold that thought. [Just going to move closer, so she can check out the katana. Is there anything that sticks out about it, besides it being shiny?] You've looked through this place last week. Was this here before?

[randori]

Uhh. I've been in and out but I haven't been keeping track of anything.

[ He crouches down to look at the katana that'd caught Veronica's attention. ]

But something shiny, you think it belongs to somebody here, right? One of us who dropped it?

[themodsgrimm]

[Honestly, it just looks like a katana. It's shiny and sharp, but there doesn't seem to be any blood on it. In comparison to the other weapons around it, though... it definitely stands out!]

[asswipe]

Yeah... It's weird that it's so well kept compared to everything else, isn't it? [And with a resigned sigh, she slips on the gauntlets so she can pick up the katana without leaving her fingerprints all over it.] It doesn't look like it has any ink on it, though.

[If it's unrelated, well. One more sword for Natsuo's sword pile, maybe.]

... Let's take a look at the cabinet.

[Maybe there's a decapitated head inside. That would be nice. (No.)]

[randori]

[ Awesome. He's working his way up to three so he can be Zoro. ]

I'll meet you there- I'm going to put all this stuff back first. [ With his gauntlet protected hand! he will shove everything to the side, looking out for ink or blood, and re-positioning some of the axes and stuff next to the suits of armor.

These are empty, right? He knocks his knuckles against each chest plate as he walks by. ]

[themodsgrimm]

[The less-than-pristine weapons are abandoned on the armory floor. They'll remember that, Natsuo.

As he crosses over to the cabinet and raps on the chest plates of the suits of armor, they all make roughly the same sound - a hollow sort of echoing noise.

Meanwhile, if Veronica opens up that cabinet, she'll find a few dusty cleaning cloths and a few vials of oil! No decapitated heads, thank goodness.]

[asswipe]

The cabinet looks clear. [Thank god.] How's everything over there?

[She checks the cleaning cloths to see if they're completely unused, and then examines the vials of oil to, uh, confirm that there's really oil inside. After that, she checks the table to verify that there's nothing else on top or underneath.]

[randori]

Not a repeat of the first week.

[ No bodies inside, he means. Whole bodies. Can't say anything about body parts and this whole investigation has made me paranoid about this, I hate it ]

Did you find anything interesting? [ He trots over with the katana in tow, pointing the tip of it at one of the vials of oil and giving the glass a poke. It is oil, right? Not ink. ]

[themodsgrimm]

[These cloths seem unused! They only have dust on them. No blood, no ink. Good thinking with the oil, though - it smells just as it should! The vial of oil that Natsuo pokes gets knocked over, and spills its contents on the table.

It, too, smells like oil.

Under the table there's nothing except some dust.]

[asswipe]

No, just oil and dust. Which should be a relief, but that means something awful is happening elsewhere. [A beat, and she pushes the knocked over vial of oil with her foot.] ... I'm leaving that for the castle to clean up.

[Or Natsuo can do it if he feels like tidying up, but her nose has suffered enough!! She's not touching that just in case the smell sticks to her. :/ Just to be thorough, though, she takes a look at the empty shelves and hooks. Does it look like any of them were damaged when the weapons were tossed to the ground, or...?]

[randori]

[ There's cloth here, so he goes ahead and tosses one of the them over the spilled oil. Doesn't exactly clean it up, but it'll warn whoever comes in here next not to slip on it.

Super dusty... He picks up another cloth and waves it around to get the dust to scatter. ]

Wonder if somebody was using this stuff? [ ...He picks up cloth number three, some more oil, and wipes down the katana. ~*sword maintenance*~ idk how to investigate, he's trying ]

[themodsgrimm]

[The empty shelves and hooks look fine! They're just not housing weapons anymore. Sad.

Meanwhile, now the katana's blade has a mixture of dust and oil on it. Icky. It's not going to stay shiny for long at this rate.]

[asswipe]

[Turns to tell Natsuo that the hooks are okay.

Stops.

Stares.

Internally shrieks.]

—Oh my god, what are you doing? Put that rag down! We don't know if the katana is evidence!

[Anyway, she's kicking some of the weaponry on the floor as she scurries over to him to take the katana back. They should......... probably try to clean the mess since that's the last thing in the description, maybe.]

[randori]

[ lmfao why did she let him carry it

He lets the rag drop to his feet— it's actually good that she said to put the rag down and not the sword, because then fingers wouldn't be the only missing appendages here ]

Alright, alright! I'll set it down, okay? [ goes to set it down on that table back there ]

[themodsgrimm]

[Veronica seems to be having a hard time. A few rusted weapons scatter across the ground where she kicks them, but it could be worse... she could have tripped!]

[asswipe]

[Veronica has done enough unpaid babysitting in the past three weeks to qualify for a professional babysitting job. Trusting Natsuo with sharp, pointy weapons was a mistake. Save her.

She takes a deep breath, looking at the ceiling for divine guidance. It is presumably a murder-free ceiling, maybe.]

... Let's just put the weapons back in their place to make sure we haven't missed anything, okay?

[And then she's going to start picking up after whoever the heck messed up the armory. Murderers these days have no manners, wow. Besides the now dirty katana, there's nothing else weird to be found as she starts depleting the weapons pile, right?]

[randori]

People take stuff from here all the time, though?

[ He helps her out bc I suck at investigations so you're welcome for the dead weight. He at least has spent enough time in the armory to know where things are supposed to go, and can make quick work of replacing things? ]

...We need to look for whatever killed Hijikata too. Don't forget.

[themodsgrimm]

[There isn't anything especially shiny or especially rusted mixed in with the weapons they're putting back! Good for them, cleaning up after yourselves, guys. A+ work.]

[asswipe]

They do. But I thought there might have been something else hidden in this mess. A needle in a haystack.

[But everything seems normal now that they've tidied up, so she removes the rusty gauntlets and finally sets them down. Her nails and skin are never going to forgive her for this. :(]

I know. There's something I want to ask, uh— Tiger? Or Dragon, whoever is hosting the trial tomorrow. Nothing about Hijikata's death made sense. [Well, it made less sense than normal.] ... Anyway, it doesn't look like there's anything here. Do you want to go meet up with the others?

[randori]

I guess... [ He will... leave the katana there ig just in case it's evidence, nobody but Veronica will know that he's the one who ruined it. ]

What do you think it weird about Hijikata's death? It just happened a day early, but it's like what everybody said. One murder a week.

[themodsgrimm]

[And away they go!]

[asswipe]

Yeah, but isn't it weird that nobody came for the body? And there was no announcement, either. We had to bring him to the suites so we could get everyone on the same page.

[It breaks more than one pattern, is what she's saying.

Either way, as the mod tag says — away they go! Time to judge the killer for murdering Fitz before Akechi.]

[randori]

[ BIG SHRUG

but also
1. where tf is the body
2. Natsuo is perfectly okay with the killer murdering Fitz before Akechi tbh ]