January mini-event

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01/12 06:00

✽ The silence breaks at six to welcome in another crisp Wednesday morning. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and there's a surprise waiting for anyone who decides to sludge through the snow to inspect the area in front of the auditorium outside. There's a deep indentation in the snow, just large enough for a frozen, charred body to fit in.
✽ There are a total of three bodies to find. All three bodies have now been found.

OOC

✽ Please use the sign-ups toplevel below to begin investigating. A mod reply will link to the corresponding section below, organizing investigation by location and body.

Comments

[notsosou]

He and Sara are now neck and neck on house keys. He does look at her PDA and it's siren call of pretending to be Maya so that Hiro gets some closure but... well he can at least see what's happened while he's been investigating.

...okay it's clear that Hiro has worked it out and 'this is necessary' doesn't bode well. Best not to touch it... Shin doesn't trust himself after this disaster and Natsume's sharp retort way back and... he does know now, the kind of anger you get at a sibling's death. He can't think of anything he'd say to himself that'd help right now, especially knowing she's dead. He's just... going to turn off the PDA and pocket everything, forgetting that the ping is going to come up as 'read' possibly, I can't remember if the network does that or not.

I know it says 'currently inaccessible' but hope springs eternal when you can't see the location page so he'd try to use the student council room key on the filing cabinets if they have a lock anyway.

After that doesn't work, he's going to look at the floor for signs she was dragged here, because he doesn't think she'd have just held still for this if she was awake... and also, looking at the table he's moved to get to her, if there's marks of the others having been moved for the same but more evil reason; especially if there's blood on top of any from this process. The person had to have gotten some on them, so is there any of that on the floor that's not just from the dripping, as well?

[adsum]

The filing cabinets use a different lock than the room, so Shin will unfortunately find that the key does not fit.

There is no other blood in the room, nor signs of dragging. The rest of the room seems relatively clean, or at least blood-free. The top of the table is clean aside from any dirt that Shin brought with him, and any blood that splattered on it while he was messing with the body. When looking for signs of the table being moved, is he checking for anything in particular?

[notsosou]

It was worth a shot, he'll clip it and the house keys onto his eye keychain and pocket it. I'm going to ask for details on what the lock looks like because I'm Like That I'm sorry. It's once more laundry day for Shin this poor jacket's seen way more blood than it was ever supposed to. It's haunted.

He's looking for mostly scrape marks across the floor, those dimples in the floor that form over time that would show where a table usually goes but currently doesn't have one occupying them, and disturbed dust, although if the room is pretty clean there's probably not that much chance of that one.

After that he's going to check the trashcans because there was something in them last time. No he's not procrastinating going back outside what are you talking about.

[adsum]

The filing cabinets just have standard locks, so it'd be something like this. Poor Shin's jacket, we need to get him a new one and just give it a proper burial at this point.

There's not a lot of dust in the room. The body aside, the room itself is quite clean. It seems to have been tidied up recently; however, if he's paying attention, at this point he might notice that the metal on the legs is showing signs of corrosion. The table does have a proper place to be put back to. The remaining furniture seems to be more or less where it belongs.

There is only the usual trash to be found in these particular trashcans. I'm assuming there's crumbled up papers, wrappers, probably some paper towels or tissues or something, that kind of thing - nothing useful.

Is there anything else that he wants to check?

[notsosou]

We really do... Shin's character development measured in how much of his original outfit is getting replaced over time. Unrecognizable lad. :' ) Who's making a mental note of the key type.

That's a lot of rust... does the student council just not have a budget or something? Is the rust in particular areas or just kind of scattered randomly over the filing cabinets and table legs? Is it noteable anywhere else?

Tidied up recently... is it recently enough there's still a smell of chemicals or suchlike? Do those paper towels smell of such?

Shin's realizing he's starting to reach the end of what he can do by himself even with reason to dither around looking for things so reluctance eroded, he last heads over to the tannoy, sits down and presses the boardcast button.

Hey, can Natsume come to the student council room? Natsume to the student council room.

Listen, he's always wanted to do this, morbid circumstances aside.

[crystallomancy]

Hilariously, Natsume's also wanted to do that, but there was never the time and now is not really the time...

Anyway, after bypassing the staredown and telling Hiro not to stab Miyuki (yet), Natsume... is here. He brought a hammer. He heard his friend was nailed to the ceiling, so he took longer to get here because he wanted to get a hammer. Somehow, still seeing her up there doesn't really register, and maybe he looks for longer than he needs to, and maybe he's a little slower than he should be going over, but, well.

Does Shin want to pry the nails out or, because if he does Natsume can chuck I mean throw I mean give him the hammer, if not it's okay. Natsume can do it. Nothing like decrucifying your crush at 6:50 in the morning.

[notsosou]

One day, Natsume. One day your dream will come true.

Shin was kind of hoping Natsume would do it, completely oblivious to the whole that's the guy's crush up there thing (as well as any potential stabbing going on outside), but it's clear that Natsume's being affected somewhat from the staring and slowness... he'll pry with methodical inches if Natsume's ready to hold Maya's weight so she doesn't thwack down onto both the table and Shin at mach speed.

Speaking of mach speed pwease no throw hammer he'd likely as not miss the catch and get bonked.

[crystallomancy]

You can't say that and then not expect me to take the throwing option, what the fuck. Natsume's being nice because even if he's frustrated, Shin is at least doing more than some people who might be getting stabbed in about thirty seconds here, so he'll just toss it to him. Just don't fumble it and drop it like a loser, okay.

...

(where does he put his HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANDS) He'll be there to hold her weight, this is the better option, Maya didn't like people touching her anyway :/ Shin doesn't get the honor

[notsosou]

I'm wheezing I rolled to see what would happen and he got a nat 20. He catches it flawlessly, in a shining beacon of an example to nerds everywhere and also somewhat to his own surprise that he artfully pretends isn't there as he moves to help. It really is the better option, he's happy to not have the honor of getting crushed by a dead body... it's perfect teamwork!

[adsum]

There doesn't seem to be a distinct pattern to the corrosion on either surface. As far as other surfaces go, is he looking at anything in the room in particular? There's a few different things in the room, so what he would find depends on what he's focusing on. As far as what he's already observed, the hammer does not have any signs of corrosion

If he pulls out the paper towels and sniffs them he might notice the smell of normal cleaning products, but there's not a ton of them and it's not a strong scent, so it's unlikely that he'd notice otherwise. Elsewhere in the room, if he's paying attention he might notice the faint, lingering scent of chlorine in the air.

Good thing that Shin caught it so that I don't have to update this post from three bodies to find to four. The nails are dug into the skin pretty nicely, but Shin will be able to extract them as long as he's careful. In the process of that, he can appreciate the good job that was done here. The nails are spread out uniformly and neatly. As he's pulling them out, he might find himself noting that they're perfectly straight, without any real angling or bending or anything in that vein.

The body will come down normally, one joint and limb at a time as the nails are methodically removed.

[crystallomancy]

Once she's free and in Natsume's arms, he'll carefully get down to lay her on the table instead so him and Shin can take a better look at her. Unfortunately for the sake of investigation she gets to lay down face-first for the moment to check out her back side. Any injuries here for her head or neck or yknow, things that might be sus, etc... Let's start there I guess.

[notsosou]

It depends, I'm not sure what surfaces there are other than the tannoy, the filing cabinets, and the tables/chairs. Speaking of corroded metal, might as well see if the collected pile of neat, straight nails has any rust under the blood when Shin sets one a little to the side to take a photo of that as well, wiping his now-bloody hands on his jacket first but still getting some on the phone rip, he'll have to go at that with the isopropyl alcohol later.

After that he'll return to where Natsume's doing his examination, with a glance at him and then back down at Maya. He'll follow Natsume's lead here.

[adsum]

The blond hair that was found before is short. I'm having a hard time pinning down the exact color, but I glanced at a chart and it's probably close to a honey blond or something similar.

The blisters that Shin saw when investigating her before are also present on the back of her body. Aside from the holes where the nails were, there are no visible injuries.

There is no rust on the nails.

[notsosou]

Real quick q before things presumably hit the fan: are there signs of burns or damage in general to her uniform in addition to the skin damage?

[adsum]

There are not! There are no burn marks, nor has her uniform been damaged in any way, barring any damage that might have occurred in the process of taking her down.

[notsosou]

Checking here so that the aforementioned fan-spraying can continue uninterrupted, but do the mysterious blonde hair and Miyuki's match?

[adsum]

It's a perfect match.

[notsosou]

Okay asking also because it just occurred to me, what colour is the Vice President's hair?

[adsum]

The Vice President has the standard black hair and brown eyes.

[crystallomancy]

crawls here at almost 7am to ask some things i finally remembered to

1. i am not looking this up but i figure there's probably some kind of difference visually between hands that have had nails hammered-in vs once that have had them put in via other means (like a nail gun or brute force or some other implement idk). is there any kind of trauma or bruising to suggest the former anywhere where the nails were, or is it pretty clean, or etc?
2. how long are the nails used here, i'm just curious, every time i try to look up framing nails for visual reference they're like The Really Long Ones and i'm like closes eyes

[adsum]

The entire job seems to have been neatly done. The puncture wounds themselves are clean; however, there are probably impressions from where the nail head was on her skin. Clean, but overdone, as the nails seem to have been dug in deeper than necessary. It doesn't seem all that different than when a person taps a nail into wood just a couple times too many, causing it to sink into and splinter the wood.

They are long nails! What you're seeing is more or less accurate. They're long enough to pierce through skin and joints and secure it to a ceiling.

[notsosou]

Double checking since Komaeda asked during the meeting, but is Maya's hair burnt or singed in any way?

[adsum]

Nope! Her hair is neither burnt nor singed.

[notsosou]

Another thought connected to the same thing, but was Maya's uniform wet apart from the blood?

[adsum]

No, her uniform was otherwise dry.