FINAL INVESTIGATION

[whimsicalism]

INVESTIGATION

The relative peace of this week has, in some ways, been a welcome reprieve from the past month and a half of terror. There's no escaping reality for that long, though. The swarm of dolls late on Tuesday night were a rude reawakening, serving as a reminder of the game that everyone is still playing, even if your host is quieter than normal.

By the time Friday rolls around, there's virtually nothing of Kakuya's presence remaining. Though Ira Academy has been alarmingly silent many mornings before, it's never been quite so...abandoned. The power in the building is struggling. Runner lights have come on to illuminate the flickering hallways in the event they're plunged into darkness (and every so often, they are). Looking out at the playground reveals it has fallen completely into an Autumn fog, the different play structures moving slightly on their own in the bitter wind. The Little Brother units have all been deactivated before they even had time to retreat to their normal closet hideaways. Their still figures linger around the school, unmoving, eyes dull.

With the loss of any other presence around, the students are completely alone, but there's no escaping the school itself just yet. On your morning wanderings, you'll find that a new area has opened up on the fifth floor. A wall, previously thought just to be a wall, opens up in the Little Fears room. A plaque on the newly opened door tells you clearly that you're not supposed to be here: Staff Only. If Nanami knew of this area she's long forgotten it.

This area has three smaller subsections - a large room with a heavy metal door, a fancy looking bedroom with adjoining office, and several spacious meeting rooms - just enough for a few of you to explore each. It's time to rely on one another and try to unravel the final questions of this school and this horrifying game.


What will you find?

Comments

FATHER'S QUARTERS - Group B

[whimsicalism]

[A very elegant bedroom, meant for a villain, is set up but it's looking a little... torn up? A personal office is set up next to it.

Kuro, Yasu, Rosalinda, and Nanami go here. Girls night!]

[copycut]

Hm hmm, we'll have to remember this place the next time we want to have a sleepover~

[ is now the time for this, Kuro

But. Though the personal office is likely the better source of information, there's just something so... tempting about rifling through Father's personal effects. Kuro is first going to look through any drawers—starting with a nightstand if she can find one, and then moving to any dressers that happen to be in the room. ]

[imprefect]

Are you joking? This place is a mess... I feel like something bad happened in here.

[Here is your class Prefect, Kuro, who it seems will be seeing you all to the end of this... Albeit mostly in the form of peanut gallery commentary. If she needs to step in further to help the others out, she'll contribute to the rifling. Happy investigating!]

[keyringwitness]

You ready, partner? [Yasu calls over her shoulder as she strolls into Father's bedroom, the hands she's stuffed into her hoodie's pockets balled into tight fists. Kuro is one of the only people in all of Ira Academy that might be able to recognize how brittle Yasu's bravado is at this moment.]

And, um. Lady Prefect. [...and how embarrassed she is about treating Nanami like she isn't there. Whoops.

Yasu is most interested in Father's office, gravitating there first. What's inside?]

[whimsicalism]

[It looks like... a whirlwind's been in here, much like the bedroom. A '>:(' has been etched into his desk, for example.]

[keyringwitness]

[That's Yasu's girl... or is it?

Does the devastation look like something approximately human shaped marching through the office and tossed things around, or is the mess arranged more like random objects were picked up from across the room and thrown around?]

[whimsicalism]

[It looks like someone human shaped did come in and threw things around. Someone probably had lots of fun doing this.]

[keyringwitness]

[Tabling that question for now, Yasu gets a closer look at the area around the >:( frowny face. Does anything in particular stand out to her?]

[whimsicalism]

[There is a feeling of malice lingering here.]

[keyringwitness]

[Weirdly enough, that helps calm Yasu down. (A little bit, at least.)]

You really hated him, huh...

[Alright, let's take a closer look at everything that's been tossed around. Does anything in the mess itself stick out to Yasu?]

[whimsicalism]

[It seems disrespectful. Plaques knocked off, pictures flipped over. Drawers from the desk pulled out and papers thrown around.]

[imprefect]

... You can quit calling me that, you know.

[It's sort of irritable, the way she says it, having less on the emotional awareness/intelligence side. But she's also not doing a very good job of hiding her own embarrassment.]

I stopped playing that game already, [Nanami says to Yasu's back on her way out into the adjacent office. Hopefully they can follow her out there soon!]

[keyringwitness]

Sorry, it's, um, habit.

[It was a legitimate mistake, really! Even after learning about the truth at the heart of her existence and her destiny should she ever return home, there are some habits that Yasu can't shake, including being politely deferential to certified mean girls.]

[imprefect]

What, you mean you aren't just doing it to mock me?

[She sounds genuinely surprised. Certified mean girl with an inflated ego or not, no one is quite as aware of her own failures.]

[keyringwitness]

...it seems mean to do something like that on purpose, with how awfully Kakuya and the Principal both treated you.

[Listen, Yasu is the number one Kakuya defender, but even she can recognize that Nanami has had it rough for the past month.]

And, um... [she HATES being so vulnerable now that she has the option to pretend like she isn't but as long as they're having this moment] I'm sorry about the, er. Thing. You know. At the phone. With Ao. That was... really out of line. It's, uh, really not my place-

[Why is she STUTTERING again, it's so much easier to just act like a witch and pretend that she doesn't care,]

[imprefect]

[Interacting with Yasu is activating so many instinctual axes: her alpha girl posturing, her unintentional natural witch enmity... But they all have to get out of here before this school sucks them back in, and in a rare moment of maturity Nanami does not act on those instincts.]

... It's not gonna be that easy to get me to accept an apology from you. For starters, there's no point if you don't say sorry to her, too. [Huh. Maybe her weird talk session with "Neku" the cat made her think about someone else in this instance. Anyway, Nanami quickly waves Yasu off to her intended destination for the actual purpose of this investigation.]

The Principal managed to keep that doll girl under control for a long time. If I was her, that's the first stuff I'd try and destroy utterly. [Yasu probably already knows what to look for given that she's been speaking to their wayward host all along, but... you can't take the order-giving completely out of her.]

[whimsicalism]

[It looks like this area has been ransacked already. Things are in disarray, drawers pulled out. There seems to be a nightstand, yes, with spare pair of glasses laying on top that seem to have been untouched.

But what's more interesting to Kuro is... why are there pictures of men (and one teenager) you don't recognize stuck in here?]

[copycut]

[ Yeah, why are there. Kuro tries to gather them up into a (somewhat disorderly) stack in her hands and pulls them out, laying them out on top of the nightstand so she can go through them more thoroughly.

How many of these pictures are there? And... Do they look like candid shots, more along the lines of what they saw during the hostage motive, or did everyone involved know they were being photographed? ]

[whimsicalism]

[I'd say five, with some pictures looking like they were taken very early in the 20th century. All of them seem to be copies of pictures that they definitely knew were being taken. The newest picture, a young man, looks to be a yearbook picture while others could have been taken for IDs or portraits. Posed and intentional.]

[copycut]

[ INTERESTING... It's at this point that Kuro thinks to turn them over, checking for any notes written on the back. Names, dates... World numbers. That kind of thing. ]

[whimsicalism]

[There are names, yes. The names are written in the same orderly handwriting you recognize from the sheep. Four of the pictures seem to be from the Miroku family, the newest of which is a dour looking man with short black hair and round large round glasses. Probably about middle aged, with a tired look in his eyes. Yakumo Miroku.

The picture of the young man with the baleful stare is labeled Akira Kijima... there is one thing all of these have in common, though.

A child has scrawled the word DADDY on the back.]

[copycut]

[ HMMMMM okay well. Kuro is going to take her best shot arranging these in a stack with the newest photo on top and the oldest one on the bottom. Assuming there is nothing else to be gleaned from these photos beyond the forbidden knowledge of DADDY, Kuro will leave them on the nightstand until it's time to collect everything and move out.

So, assuming this is the only thing of interest in the nightstand drawers—and Kuro will also knock on their bottoms to check for secret compartments—it might be time to back things up and return to the state of the room itself. Does it look like there was an actual struggle in here? Or is it more like someone went through Father's stuff and then left in a hurry? ]

[whimsicalism]

[The name 'Yakumo Miroku' might sound a little familiar to you but other than that, there's nothing obvious here. There's not much here in the nightstand but for the state of the room itself?

It looks like someone just came in and decided to live here, messily. With closer inspection there's small drawings on the walls, etches on the furniture... as well as things being looked through.]

[copycut]

[ What looks like it's already been looked through? Kuro will go through that stuff first, to see if there's anything interesting left behind. ]

AREA CLEAR

[whimsicalism]