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

[schrodingers_man]

I guess we'll know for sure how innocent I am if the Loyalty Officer ends up dead.

But you've got a few things wrong. I pushed hard for Moge-ko at first, sure, but that was because I thought she was a threat to the entire exercise. It turned out I was wrong, and after that, I didn't do much of what you could call "pushing". I just threw out a few theories. Moge-ko wasn't my only one, but she was the strongest. I turned out my best guess was still wrong. I got ahead of myself and we should've abstained last night instead. I'll admit that. That girl's blood is on my hands, more than anyone's here.

Greed didn't tell me for sure that Clay isn't a Communist, and he definitely didn't say it was because they were partners. I had no idea. What Greed told me was that Clay was probably safe because of how much he hated Communists. At the time, I brushed it off as a stupid reason, but I didn't really suspect Clay of being a Communist myself, so I didn't say anything. I didn't think anything of it. Not until this morning, and then it all clicked together. We were talking suspects, and there wasn't anybody else Greed said was probably innocent. It... had to be Clay.

Clay hates Communists. Ask him yourself, he's not shy about saying it. None of us were likely to suspect him. That's probably why they targeted him, and probably why they targeted Seryu Ubiquitous, too. Anybody they killed would lower our pool of suspects, so they aimed for people we weren't likely to suspect in the first place.

That's... what I'd like to say I was thinking, at least. I'm a civilian programmer, kid. The only dead people I'm supposed to know are my grandparents. Not murder victims. I lost my head for a while there. I didn't... exactly react well to the body yesterday, either.

[in_plain_sight]

...We can't afford to lose them, even if it paints a target on your back. [...Not that she can really be sure he hasn't already passed on the information...]

It doesn't matter who hates communists in the real world. It's just a stupid team name. The computer didn't make it sound like the communists volunteered to kill the rest of us for political reasons, they were just given a job to do if they wanted to survive. You might have a point about Ubiquitous, but Puppington was no less suspicious than anyone else before today.

And honestly, your tendency to overreact is a little suspicious too. Doing a little acting is good for an infiltrator. [/cough]

[schrodingers_man]

[ This interrogation is starting to feel a little familiar. He. He has to stay calm. Panicking got him killed the last time he was suspected of something he was innocent of and he can't afford for that to happen again. He has to stay calm. ]

I'm not infiltrating anything. And I'm not lying, either. You're right, I'm terrible at that. If I was trying to hide something, I'd just clam up. That's the kind of guy I am! So the fact that I'm arguing with you is proof enough! I'm not one of the Communists, so lay off!

[ Yes perfect the very picture of calmness. ]

[in_plain_sight]

...That's not really proof, but if you want time to think about who else might be suspicious, I guess I don't have much more to prove by arguing with you for the rest of the trial.


[She doesn't feel bad for him, but, well, giving him a break couldn't hurt...]

[alchemicals]

Hey.

[His words are sharp when he replies; hi, Mukuro, sorry-not-sorry about getting that roommate he saddled you with yesterday killed.]

You know what they say about overreacting? Because I spent a long time dealing with my country's esteemed legal system while they figured out what to do with me when I quit the military.

Guilt complies. Innocence flips the fuck out.

If you don't have anything solid, leave him alone.

[in_plain_sight]

[Eh, she's not really taking that SUPER personally. She's been on vaguely good terms with lots of people who died violent deaths.]

Do you have any better leads? He must be telling the truth about the Loyalty Officer contacting him; even if he's a Communist, twisting their words around would make them out him. So we don't have a real basis for suspecting Phi anymore, and someone has to be executed today. I can't say I'm 100% sure he's guilty, but he might just be our safest bet.

...Besides, if guilt really complied before someone was totally cornered, nobody would ever get away with anything.

[alchemicals]

I never said we had a real basis for suspecting Phi, because as far as I know we don't.

At the same time, you've given no solid reason for sending Yomiel to die, either. At this rate, either the communists will take care of him or he'll be outed - "we don't have any better leads" won't hold up if we kill him because we don't have anything better to do with ourselves and we end up knocking out another one of our own.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

Don't keep pushing unfounded theories and people won't get mad at you for them, Princess.

[in_plain_sight]

[She hasn't killed anyone other than in self-defense in a while. She's past that. She's not exactly One of the Good Guys, but she's helping people. She has weird reasons for it, sure, but that's still what she chose, and trying to learn to think like Naegi--to care about other people just because they're people--is an important part of walking that path.




But dear god she wants to kill Kimbley for calling her Princess.]

I made my case. If you don't buy it, don't vote for him.