TRIAL 02

[thecomputer]

Attention, Citizens! You have ten minutes to proceed to the Loyalty Chamber. Anyone who is late to the Loyalty Chamber, or who brings any weapons into the Loyalty Chamber, will be immediately executed.

[Once you arrive, you will find a large chamber, with twenty podiums spaced around the room in a circle. On the ceiling, a massive screen showing the digital eye of The Computer, turning to look at whoever is talking.]

You have one hour to come to a consensus about who to eliminate. Ties will be broken randomly.

[The floor of the chamber begins to split apart, eventually only leaving the twenty podiums as safe places to stand, above a seemingly bottomless abyss. Each podium lights up with a touch screen showing twenty user IDs (the dead are grayed out), plus the word “ABSTAIN”. However, ABSTAIN has now been grayed out as well. The trial begins now!]

[[Vote here.]]

Comments

[alchemicals]

If you can come up with a better reason for all this structure, I'd love to hear it.

[standbyrival]

[s'all good he's from pokemon world, they're legal at 10]

. . .

Sorry to hear you're getting married to someone that loudly obnoxious. Anyway, personality doesn't stop him from being a suspect.

[respring]

I didn't want to hurt anyone either. But what was done had to be done. [ there's a restrained kind of anger in her voice. seems his words hit a little too close to home with her. ] In this kind of environment are you really surprised that someone's going to adapt? Maybe Newman-san was scared, or panicking. Not everyone seems to have the perfect composure you do.

[standbyrival]

Why not? Unless she has a role, there's no reason for her to keep quiet on the votes. We were all pretty loud about why we wanted Moge-ko to die.

[in_plain_sight]

We can't not execute someone today. We don't have the option to abstain anymore. So we can either sacrifice someone at random, or take our chances with circumstancial evidence. If nobody has a better argument for anyone else, I'm leaving my sights trained on Yomiel.

If my reasoning is wrong and it's a string of coincidences, you can blame me after the fact. I'm used to everyone seeing me as an enemy.

[alchemicals]

[There we go.]

You're not wrong there, either.

What do we have, then? We don't have any leads outside of Phi, which we all seem to agree is bullshit and aiming for her is strategically a dumbass move. We know Puppington's on our side, so we might want to avoid aiming for him, either.

So we have Yomiel, we have the supposed Loyalty Officer, and we have whoever decided to try to shove Phi under the wheels of a moving train. Is that about it?

[fullonbraced]

[Never be sorry. sob]

OF COURSE I FEEL BAD FOR IT, MAN!!! [She shouts, more distraught than ever. Her right hand instinctively grips her right arm, just at where the sleeve ends.]

But then that Yomiel guy started talking a lot and everyone was listening and... and it seemed like a good idea, maaaan!

[Robin always was one to get caught up in the moment.

....Blinkblink? She tilts her head slightly, confused.]

Anthy? We've been rooming with Kimbley for the past few days!

[harshwords]

I'll keep that in mind for the future. If we manage to get a Communist off the list today, we might be able to investigate the other rooms.

[alchemicals]

It's nice that you're willing to play martyr and all, but we've got more important things to worry about. Like not picking off anyone else on our side.

[fullonbraced]

[......right.]

I-I mean, we have to be smarter than them, man! We gotta out think them and figure out who they are before they do anything else!

[standbyrival]

So were you just following the crowd? You're a really simple guy. No one would suspect you at all if you just went with the flow.

Someone please explain to me how who you share rooms with has anything to do with how you become friends with someone. Aside from reminding her of her fiance, do you actually have anything in common? Seriously.

[alchemicals]

...well, I meant the setup of the game in general, but there's that too.

[in_plain_sight]

Are you even listening? The only way we can avoid losing more people to the trials is to be absolutely certain who the communists are. If we can't do that, we're going to have to risk making mistakes. There's no way around it.

[harshwords]

Because if she wanted to tell us, she would have done so after the votes were all revealed.

[alchemicals]

[There we go.]

So it's a matter of figuring out what play they're running, too. Right?

[standbyrival]

It's not perfect, but I try. [is he boasting, or is he flatly stating what he thinks is true?? MYSTERY]

You're right, that is a possibility. But it still feels off to me. I'm going off our brief interactions with each other. I am a little suspicious of you as well, but not nearly as much at the moment and for a completely different reason.

Anyway, if you have a better lead for me, go ahead, share it.

[standbyrival]

Not really. Not everyone spoke up to as why they abstained, did they?

[alchemicals]

Yeah, and I'm telling you that offering pretty words like "Oh, I'm willing to be a martyr if this goes badly! Please hate me, I'm used to it! I just got an innocent person killed, that's all!" isn't going to get us anywhere.

There's a chance we won't fuck this up if we don't all jump to one conclusion and refuse to let go of it like we did last time.

[standbyrival]

Just about. And if Phi's under the light because of how she voted, I want to know why.

[a beat]

What are your thoughts on that loud kid? Robin. He said he was rooming with you.

[harshwords]

Well, think about it this way: in the worst case scenario, everyone can die and there would be no winner. A stalemate. That would happen because nobody bothered to trust each other, and everyone was crazy trying to figure out who was a Communist and who wasn't.

I'm not really sure as to why the game was set-up this way, though Communism was rather common in the 20th Century. There's obviously a reason for it, since it seems to have occurred over 20 times, but those actual answers are unclear at this time. Plus, they're not really important for the matter at hand, anyway.

[alchemicals]

Maybe the kid is rooming with me because I don't treat him like a fucking moron, and we actually like what we've seen of Anthy.

You know, just a thought.

[alchemicals]

What, Newman? He means well, even if he's kind of a musclehead.

[standbyrival]

And that makes you all best friends forever? Didn't know you were the type.

And if you have such faith in his intelligence, then you can't rule out that he's using his nice kid act to cover for being a Communist. Right?

[in_plain_sight]

Nobody's stopping anyone from making other sugggestions. I'm not some mastermind or detective; if you or anyone else comes up with a better reason to suspect someone, we should give it our full attention.

But if anything, people are less likely to keep investigating if you're going to lose your cool every time someone comes up with a theory.

[alchemicals]

Funny, I don't remember ever saying I wasn't ruling that out.