Week 0 - March 31st

[cartesio]

Week 0: Investigation

The deadline is fast approaching and the one thing that should be on everyone’s minds is, “what’s going to happen now?” Last night there was a strong thunderstorm, and thanks to it the air still feels cold, moist, and even a little murky. Droplets of water cover many surfaces outside, and there are few clouds hanging in the sky. It’s rather fitting weather given, in just a few hours, all of your lives will be claimed. Have you made peace with this seemingly unavoidable outcome?

Whether you have or haven’t, it would appear your musings are doomed to be interrupted. Outside the motel sirens can be heard as a patrol car zooms by. Maybe nothing’s wrong, and maybe it’s something unrelated to everyone’s current situation.

...but, even if it is, how many of you can really sit around and do nothing? The events of the 30th proved how eager to help some of you are—enough so to put even your own lives in danger.

Abruptly, the patrol car makes a sharp turn and disappears out of sight.

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March 28^th
March 29^th
March 30^th

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PARK

[cartesio]

[theserpentsmiles]

[Let's get right to it. Nagisa isn't one to freeze up, and he's an observant one. So let's just sidle right up to that tree and start observing. We have a head, where's the body? Start with the head. And neck.

What can we see about how it was removed from its body?]

[cartesio]

[The head seems to have been separated from the body with some sort of serrated object. The skin is ragged and rather damaged]

[theserpentsmiles]

[Some kind of saw...? Not a quick process, then. Ouch. He'd have kept it short and sweet. Well, not sweet, but you get the idea.

Doing it this way would probably result in an awful lot of blood, so let's look at the immediate area. How much blood is there on the ground and tree around here? Was this head moved, or was the body moved?

Or both? Both is possible too.]

[cartesio]

[The thunderstorm washed out a lot of the blood that may or may not have been here, unfortunately. There are only faint traces right underneath where the head is hanging at]

[theserpentsmiles]

[Alright. This is to be expected. Water flows downhill, and would take the blood with it, so let's go see where it went. He remembers there being a pond. Anything down near the pond?]

[londonstar]

[ since he's already here, waver might as well begin by examining....the head. ]

Excuse me, my Lady.

[ anything worthy of noticing around the cut? was it a clean slice or did it look like it took many tries for it to be severed? ]

[cartesio]

[Take a good luck, Waver! A rather unpleasant thing to see, that's for sure]

[londonstar]

[ he's seen worse, unfortunately.

since there's no blood on the scene, he'll look around the bushes for any sign of footprints or the murder weapon ]

[cartesio]

[The murder weapon isn't anywhere nearby. However, once Waver leaves the cluster of trees and gets to the bushes, he'll find the soil is muddier here, enough to cave under his feet.

And under another person's feet, apparently, those are footprints. The thunderstorm from last night has softened the mud and deformed the prints, but they're there]

[londonstar]

[ is there anything that can be noted about the footprints? are they large or are they small? ]

[clearities]

[All of this is horrible. But she can't just sit idly, either. She wants to help, but she can't... deal with the dead body right now. Wiping away her tears, she'll be checking around the area of the park for anything besides dead bodies, crouching down to see if she'll notice anything better. What do we got here?]

[cartesio]

[Maybe it's a welcome reprieve to see a squirrel, alive and living its everyday life. It stops near the path, watching Sakura.

It's holding something in its front paws]

[clearities]

Ho~e? [She blinks several times, a little confused at first.] Can I see what you're holding there, squirrel-san? [She puts out her hand, as if to see if the squirrel will give it to her. If not, she can probably just see it from here, probably. But she doesn't want it to eat whatever it's holding, either...]

[cartesio]

[Apparently you can't, Sakura, because talking to the animal spooked it. There it goes, running as fast as possible towards trees some distance away from where the head was found.

It climbs a tree and gets inside a hole in the trunk of that tree, getting out a few seconds later without whatever it had in its paws, and climbs further up the tree]

[clearities]

Aaah--!! [She was trying to keep her voice gentle as to not spook it, too! But she'll definitely follow it where it goes (thankfully, Sakura's a fast runner) and sees if she can't find what it was holding somewhere around here.]

[monstrology]

[A trial? Of course it wouldn't be so simple to get out of this mess.

Well, they do have the rest of a body to find, so Will opts to have a look around the park in search for it. He starts by searching around the immediate area, making his way toward the pond. Any signs of it here?]

[cartesio]

[Between the pond and the place where the head was found, there's an arm, shoved inside one of the bushes]

[monstrology]

Seriously...?

[Will frowns at the arm as he crouches down to check it out. He can't believe this turned into a body scavenger hunt.

What can he learn about the arm? And is there anything else stashed in here?]

[cartesio]

[The arm is covered with drops of water, it must have been there for a while during the thunderstorm. There doesn't seem to be any wounds or bruises on it.

What Will may be able to tell, though, is that the cut of the arm was made with some sort of serrated object.

These bushes don't have anything else stashed in there, but a few faint bloodstains on the nearest stone path leads away from the bushes and into a few planters]

[detegoergosum]

[ Oh, hello, this thread exists, whoops.

So where are we on the whole pond situation? ]

[cartesio]

[The pond is reddish. Through the murky water Naoto will be able to see the faint outline of some sort of large object at the bottom of the pond.

The water itself doesn't hint if it's mere algae or if it's blood, but it's bound to be unpleasant to get into the pond anyways. Thankfully it's not very deep, only getting up to the hips in the deepest parts]

[detegoergosum]

[ All things considered, she has a pretty good guess what it is, but she's going to wade on in and reach for said object. Is it something she can get a good grip on with one hand, or is she really gonna have to get up in this business? ]

[cartesio]

[It's easy to get a grip on it! It feels like cloth, and there's enough to get a good grip and drag it out of the pond]

AREA CLEAR

[cartesio]

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