[Ryoko's voice echoes in the dark cave Shannon's mind has been curled up in for this entire, watery and distorted but nonetheless providing a lifeline that is desperately needed. She grabs hold of it, pulling herself inch by painful inch out of the blackness, giving her reprieve from the endless repetition of every permutation that this horrid crime could've taken.
She looks over at Ryoko, feeling unsteady at this last step. There will be no going back after this.
She'd been prepared since the morning, even before they discovered the corpses... but stepping out from in front of the fire to reveal herself to everyone else in this cavern rather than acting the part of a shadow puppet still felt apocalyptic. A metaphorical cataclysm that she detonated a literal one to avoid confronting.
But she can't let this go on for any longer. Especially when the lives of so many others, not just Ryoko, rest on her shoulders—and she knows now that trying to give the burden to a roulette would never produce the miracle that she hoped for.]
...I'm sorry for lying to you, Ryoko-chan.
[There's a small, exhausted smile on her face for a few seconds as she says that. Somehow, it's more genuine than anything that Ryoko has seen on her face before.
Then:]
Ahhh, it's no good. [Her voice rings out, less speaking and more orating. Her voice is nothing like anybody's heard out of Shannon before—a few heads turn, almost expecting to see Battler on her podium instead of where he is arguing right now. It's an octave or two lower from her usual chirp, rougher and volatile.] Ahahahaha... I said it's no goddamn good at allllllllll-
[She gulps.
Then, the steel is back again, and her finger whips out, pointing at one of the podiums.]
HARIME!
[The index finger is leveled squarely
at
Battler.
The room is shocked into silence, and Sayo uses that spare moment to begin fashioning a new mask. A shoddy one, Frankensteined together from a dozen different fragments of a story, one that will fall apart the instant this trial is over... but it'll do for now. The hidden detective, the spy who was waiting for the opportune moment to strike, confident and full of righteous fury now that she's been forced to abandon her cover. That will work; half-truths form the best lies.
Sayo slams her hands onto the podium, cutting off an eruption of babbling and exclamations before it can start with the sound.]
For the duration of this trial, we've been assuming that just because we found Nui Harime's eyeball that she was really, truly dead. After the state Cú was found in, it only makes sense that the other corpse was similarly mauled, riiiiight?
[No, no. Reign it in. Bringing the witch out now will only damage her credibility, nevermind that she seems completely insane for her personality turning on a dime.]
And that's where you've all been wrong this entire time. The first clue should've been in how Harime's corpse was completely splattered as opposed to Cú's, which while cut into pieces was still recognizable as the Hound of Chulainn! The kind of damage inflicted on "Harime" could only be done postmortem. If we spin the chessboard around—ahahahaha [she can't restrain the desperate, manic laughter that escapes at that turn of phrase, even as she imitates Kyrie's signature finger snap]—we need to ask:
Why was Harime given special treatment as opposed to Cú, or even Spamton?
The first motive is some special distaste. While we can't rule it out entirely, it seems unlikely; Harime is annoying at the very worst, but hadn't done anything to make us hate her enough to desecrate her corpse that badly. There might be some secret grudge involved, but if that was the case, why not solely target her instead of getting two more people involved, even in the case of some ridiculously elaborate double-bluff? Strike it out.
The second motive is some dissociative fugue that would cause the killer to lash out violently. This one is even more absurd. Putting aside how Cú's corpse would've been in just a bad a state, somebody under that sort of effect wouldn't be able to reliably plan a closed room this complicated. Strike it out.
The third motive is to hide the true cause of death. Once again, a reasonable question, but if the killer had access to a method that would be so identifiable so as to instantly levy suspicion at them, we should have been able to find at least some indication of its existence somewhere, either as a physical feature one of us possesses or as an item gifted to us by our illustrious host. [Sayo has never been particularly fond of Knox, but his rules do apply in this circumstance.] It can't have just popped up out of nowhere. Strike it out.
From there, the "what-ifs" only grow more absurd. I won't list them all at this point. The only reasonable motive for desecrating the corpse like that that remains is to hide its true identity.
Which, of course, is a point that we've been over several times, and have since dismissed as who would be insane enough to pull out their own eye for the sake of setting up the perfect crime, much less still be functional and able to nigh-perfectly imitate one of us hours afterward? The answer is simple.
Somebody whose eye was already so damaged that its nerves were deadened and it was useless anyways. Might as well cover it with an eyepatch, isn't that right, Harime-san?
[She spits that name out with such venom that nobody but Ryoko will notice the trembling in her voice.]
But of course, nothing is absolute. You can contend the Devil's Proof all you want in this case. This is just a theory.
...however.
Ryoko. We never found Harime's ID card, and "Battler" didn't approach her discarded pile of clothes even to fetch it under our noses.
You were with me while I was... recovering in the hallways. So you saw.
If that is all the case, how did Battler enter Harime's room to investigate?
no subject
She looks over at Ryoko, feeling unsteady at this last step. There will be no going back after this.
She'd been prepared since the morning, even before they discovered the corpses... but stepping out from in front of the fire to reveal herself to everyone else in this cavern rather than acting the part of a shadow puppet still felt apocalyptic. A metaphorical cataclysm that she detonated a literal one to avoid confronting.
But she can't let this go on for any longer. Especially when the lives of so many others, not just Ryoko, rest on her shoulders—and she knows now that trying to give the burden to a roulette would never produce the miracle that she hoped for.]
...I'm sorry for lying to you, Ryoko-chan.
[There's a small, exhausted smile on her face for a few seconds as she says that. Somehow, it's more genuine than anything that Ryoko has seen on her face before.
Then:]
Ahhh, it's no good. [Her voice rings out, less speaking and more orating. Her voice is nothing like anybody's heard out of Shannon before—a few heads turn, almost expecting to see Battler on her podium instead of where he is arguing right now. It's an octave or two lower from her usual chirp, rougher and volatile.] Ahahahaha... I said it's no goddamn good at allllllllll-
[She gulps.
Then, the steel is back again, and her finger whips out, pointing at one of the podiums.]
HARIME!
[The index finger is leveled squarely
at
Battler.
The room is shocked into silence, and Sayo uses that spare moment to begin fashioning a new mask. A shoddy one, Frankensteined together from a dozen different fragments of a story, one that will fall apart the instant this trial is over... but it'll do for now. The hidden detective, the spy who was waiting for the opportune moment to strike, confident and full of righteous fury now that she's been forced to abandon her cover. That will work; half-truths form the best lies.
Sayo slams her hands onto the podium, cutting off an eruption of babbling and exclamations before it can start with the sound.]
For the duration of this trial, we've been assuming that just because we found Nui Harime's eyeball that she was really, truly dead. After the state Cú was found in, it only makes sense that the other corpse was similarly mauled, riiiiight?
[No, no. Reign it in. Bringing the witch out now will only damage her credibility, nevermind that she seems completely insane for her personality turning on a dime.]
And that's where you've all been wrong this entire time. The first clue should've been in how Harime's corpse was completely splattered as opposed to Cú's, which while cut into pieces was still recognizable as the Hound of Chulainn! The kind of damage inflicted on "Harime" could only be done postmortem. If we spin the chessboard around—ahahahaha [she can't restrain the desperate, manic laughter that escapes at that turn of phrase, even as she imitates Kyrie's signature finger snap]—we need to ask:
Why was Harime given special treatment as opposed to Cú, or even Spamton?
The first motive is some special distaste. While we can't rule it out entirely, it seems unlikely; Harime is annoying at the very worst, but hadn't done anything to make us hate her enough to desecrate her corpse that badly. There might be some secret grudge involved, but if that was the case, why not solely target her instead of getting two more people involved, even in the case of some ridiculously elaborate double-bluff? Strike it out.
The second motive is some dissociative fugue that would cause the killer to lash out violently. This one is even more absurd. Putting aside how Cú's corpse would've been in just a bad a state, somebody under that sort of effect wouldn't be able to reliably plan a closed room this complicated. Strike it out.
The third motive is to hide the true cause of death. Once again, a reasonable question, but if the killer had access to a method that would be so identifiable so as to instantly levy suspicion at them, we should have been able to find at least some indication of its existence somewhere, either as a physical feature one of us possesses or as an item gifted to us by our illustrious host. [Sayo has never been particularly fond of Knox, but his rules do apply in this circumstance.] It can't have just popped up out of nowhere. Strike it out.
From there, the "what-ifs" only grow more absurd. I won't list them all at this point. The only reasonable motive for desecrating the corpse like that that remains is to hide its true identity.
Which, of course, is a point that we've been over several times, and have since dismissed as who would be insane enough to pull out their own eye for the sake of setting up the perfect crime, much less still be functional and able to nigh-perfectly imitate one of us hours afterward? The answer is simple.
Somebody whose eye was already so damaged that its nerves were deadened and it was useless anyways. Might as well cover it with an eyepatch, isn't that right, Harime-san?
[She spits that name out with such venom that nobody but Ryoko will notice the trembling in her voice.]
But of course, nothing is absolute. You can contend the Devil's Proof all you want in this case. This is just a theory.
...however.
Ryoko. We never found Harime's ID card, and "Battler" didn't approach her discarded pile of clothes even to fetch it under our noses.
You were with me while I was... recovering in the hallways. So you saw.
If that is all the case, how did Battler enter Harime's room to investigate?