Chapter 1: Trial

After exiting the elevator, the 13 students found themselves in a courtroom.  The walls were adorned with a garish wallpaper purple and muddy yellow plaid, with the curtains a matching yellow.
Each podium was labeled with a small pixel face of the student assigned to it, though three of them had been obstructed by stands of some sort.  Details could only be seen once the students took their places.

"Upupu... what heart-pounding exitement!"

Monobear stood in his seat, arms raised high.

"Our first trial of life and death! Hope and despair!"

He leaned forward, a menacing glint to his red eye.

"Then again, the only hope in this room right now is that the right person is killed!"

With a flop, he sat back down.

"Here's how this is gonna go! You guys will be debating your hearts out and presenting your super secret evidence! When I think everything's been covered or I get bored-whichever comes first- I'll call the trial! Then, you guys all vote for the culprit. If the majority find the right student guilty, they die for their crime! If the majority find the wrong student guilty, then they'll be responsible for their death, and the killer gets to walk amongst you once again!"

He tapped a paw against his chin, deep in thought, before making a final declaration.

"Normally, I'd let you bright kids decide how to start it, but... since you're still amateurs here, why don't you all make small opening statements with... I dunno... your alibis! Keep it brief, though. Time is dead kids!"

After flashing claws at the crowd, he leaned back in his chair, resting his hands behind his head.

Judas looked from the bear to his peers and gave a quiet nod of acknowledgement to them, pulling off his hood. He took in a deep breath and averted his eyes.

"Alibis…?...uh…Last night I…" he laughed a bit, then continued, looking up at his peers with a surprisngly serious expression on his face, "I have no goddamn idea what I did, to put it bluntly. Jason was doing shit, not me. I kind of woke up in the hall when…you know, we…found them."

He bit his lip. "If it's worth anythin', Jason gets all fainty around blood. He couldn't hurt a fly, honest."

Caleb laced his fingers under his chin and smiled confidently, leaning forward on the podium.

"Suspect as I am, I shall not receive judgment for any misdeeds today," he explained calmly. "For I spent yesternight in Jason McDorne's quarters, burning the moonlight as I wrote."

His eyes fluttered close as his right hand opened itself to cup his cheek.

"Per contra..." he pointed his other hand at the young boy to his left.

"This dove-feathered raven may encounter tumult defending himself. So swear it! Prove thou art honest."

Cobalt continued to avert his gaze from the others. He stared at his bloodied gloves for a moment before clenching his fists, dropping them to his sides.

"I have no alibi."

With fists clenched, Martin looked as though he was about to explode. He was holding onto a bundled white sheet.

"My alibi." Martin began the sentence as a confused question, but ended it as a bold opening statement. He gathered himself into a stiff posture.

"I spent the entire night with Jason and Lisa." He nodded towards Judas, as if explaining it to him. "None of us let the room once. I swear." It was clear he was sweating already.

Lisa nodded along as Martin spoke.

"And I can back that up. Judas did nothing, Jason did nothing, Martin did nothing, I did nothing. Well I mean, we did stuff, we didn't just sit around staring blankly at each other, but nothing relevant to... this. We were in my room all night long."

"On the subject of doing nothing," Jordan began her alibi, getting lost in the garish patterns on the walls surrounding them, "I did nothing more than read and sleep." Her gaze circled the room, lowering when it passed the pictures of the deceased and finally Monobear's seat. "Not much else I can add to that, I'm afraid." She shrugged slightly.

Aris didn't look too happy to be around. Specifically due to the fact that she wasn't present during the investigation. Well, during the tail end, when everyone already arrived at the trial room. Which was why she took a while to get to her seat, and was as loud as she could be about it.

"Well, I sure as hell knew what I did." She hissed, already shifting her heated glare from Cobalt to Martin and back and forth. "I dunno what the fuck Minerva was doing, probably doing... stupid things I dunno, but when I came back I was in Ruby's room! Stuff happened I went back at... before midnight I guess."

She gave a violent shrug, trying to see if anyone disagreed with her.

Rachel nodded and stood up a bit straighter at her podium as everyone turned to her, making her the center of attention. She smiled for a second before reverting to a serious expression, brushing off her immediate instinct.

"I stayed in my room during the night, so I guess that means I have no alibi."

Jaden seemed frustrated that he didn't have much to say for himself. He crossed his arms and looked down at his podium.

"I... I went straight to sleep," he admitted. "I'm in the same boat as Rachel, not an excuse to my name, other than that I get tired real quickly."

Jason scratched the back of his head awkwardly, trying not to look at the stand-ins for the dead students.

"I-I can't vouch for what Caleb did after I went to bed, but we both spent the night together. J-just don't make me say anything more. I didn't do much..."

He sighed heavily, starting to play with the bangles on the ends of his braids.

Ruby swallowed uncomfortably, trying to avoid looking at the stands on either side of her. Then she sucked in a breath while pulling off her shades. Mustering the best voice she could, she gave her alibi.

"I-i can say that Minerva and Aris were in my room for a while. I went to bed after she left. An' tha's all I got."

She mirrored the gazes of her fellow classmates, one by one. It was the least she could do.

Miranda leaned slightly away from the podium, her left hand akimbo while the other hung down.

"For the evening, I went to sleep at ten pm, though I was in my bed much earlier. Clearly suspicious, though I was only looking for something to read beforehand." She sighed, not an emotion playing on her face. "The only thing I saw was Dark going to the dining hall after we left the pantry. If I followed him, I'm sure whoever decided it was a good idea to kill him would probably have every bone in their body broken."

He shrugged, then looked over her shoulder at Monobear. "Speaking or murderers, can I give whoever it was a parting shot to the face? Nothing lethal, just a nice 'fuck you' before they get what's coming."

Claire gripped the edge of her podium backwards, with her fingers wrapping under it. "I-I honestly stayed in my room the entire night. I didn't sleep, so I can be sure of it. No sleepwalking for me, at least." She bit her lip nervously, and squeezed her eyes shut.

Jaden was the first to speak up after the alibis. "Alright, let's just put out the obvious," he began. "Dakota would have made an easy target. She's small, probably not the toughest. It would have been easy is all I'm sayin'."

"But Dark... He was a Super High School Level Assassin, wasn't he? And he clears six feet easy. That's our first lead. Whoever did this was able to bring him down. We can count out Lisa Field for one, and probably a few others too."

He shrugged, his arms still crossed. "That's all."

"Look, I'm not trying to throw myself or anyone else under the bus here. But isn't it a tad too early to go and rule things out?"

She crossed her arms and sighed.

"Dark was big, and Dark was an assassin. We aren't, obviously. He could've let his guard down and been snuck up on or something."

After a moment, she pursed her lips.

"Nice as he was, he seemed to be the kinda guy to get flustered under the right circumstances... I don't think height or ability should rule anyone out."

Lisa shrugged.

"Still, I didn't get to investigate his body or anything."

"Miss Tawfeek and I spent the entirety of our time investigating Mr. Dark's body," Caleb said. As support, he pulled out his trusty notebook and turned to the Investigation 1 page.

"To my knowledge, this is what I discovered:

Mr. Dark had a bruise on his forehead.
His neck was cut. The slit in his neck was thin, but deep enough to be lethal.
There was an unbroken vase of lilacs lying by him. On the bottom of the vase, there was a small hand print on the bottom with fingers curling around the edges. This hand print did not have any visible lines like you would see on a bare hand."

Jordan thought over the notes for a few seconds, "Now, I didn't observe the body myself, but it sounds like the hand print had a glove...If the murderer got a hold of Dark's vase without it breaking, I don't think there was much of a fight." She paused, trying to put the image of the scene together in her head, "Were there any signs of a fight?"

Claire gulped and tightened her grip on the table. "Signs of a fight? I haven't really been in a fight before, but I imagine there would be knocked over furniture. We've got that, the chair was knocked over. And maybe his bruise was from someone punching him on the head?"

"Sounds like a typical fight to me. Everything was knocked over, and he had a bruise to show for it."

"But Dark was easily the tallest out of all of us, right? How could someone punch him on the head hard enough to leave a bruise? I mean, sure they could make contact, but wouldn't it have been easier to land a hit in a... different spot? It just doesn't make sense."

Lisa stared at her lap before finishing her thought.

"I've seen a few fights in my time, and there are much more efficient ways to take someone bigger out. It just doesn't make sense."

"A'ight, so let's take a few steps back for a second. There was a struggle, but Dark being punched in the noggin makes zero fuckin' sense. So there...probably wasn't a fight. So...huh..."

Judas paused and tapped his chin before looking back at everyone.

"Lisa mentioned that he's easily flustered. Maybe he...maybe the culprit sprang up outta hidin' from somewhere and Dark topped over in fear or somethin'? I 'unno."

"Wait a sec, that can't be right. Dark was for sure laying face up when we found him. If he toppled over, landed on his back, and then had his..." Jaden paused. "Had his throat slit... He wouldn't have a bruise on his forehead, right? It'd be the back of his skull or somethin'." He patted the back of his head for emphasis.

"I think there's more to this struggle than we're figuring out. We need a logical reason why he'd be bruised up like that."

Lisa was resting her chin against her hand as Jaden spoke. She continued to stare intently at nothing when she began to speak.

"We're all talking about how tall he is and stuff... Maybe the whole 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall,' comes into play?"

She looked up.

"What I mean is, we don't know for a fact a fight caused the chairs to get moved around and all. If it was dark in there, for all we know he fell in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"We're talking too much about schematics and not about what Caleb had said. There's obviously some discrepancies I would discuss to no end, but we haven't touched on Dakota and the blatant clues on Dark's surroundings."

Miranda folded her arms.

"Now. Dark was the second death, no doubt. A slit to the throat is much more serious than a stab, or so I think what happened to Dakota. But Dakota is not my court to play in. I want to address the handprint. It was bloody, appeared to be a glove. Now, Cobalt, what were you doing touching Dark's neck and then the lilacs?"

She shot a questioning look to the boy in question, tapping her boot on the floor slowly.