DXXM

[Somersault]

Kelly nodded at her counsel, face schooled into the perfect picture of attentive as she continued to sit on her- well, not perch, but cushion. And that was enough. Enough to stay smiling at least, just a slight one, because anything more was gauche, distasteful, but just enough to show Darlene she cared, that she had chosen her as her counsel for a reason. Didn’t she have a good reason?

Of course she did, even if perhaps it wasn’t exactly a reason intimately tied to actually winning the case. The thing was, winning the case wouldn’t mean winning much of anything, would it? At the very least, not in the whole arguing foes into submission sort of manner. Sure, she’d be not guilty, absolved in the eyes of perhaps one person here, but going to such depths to be deemed innocent? That seemed as much a signal of guilt here, if anything else. Kelly shifted minutely, still smiling, but now gaze focused on the judge.

No, the smartest thing was to choose someone lonely, someone who could trust her, or at least be skeptical enough of her wrongdoing, and if things went bad, let everything fall apart. Pick up the pieces, all over again.

Simple as that.

[Deamon]

This was going nowhere fast. The entire cringeworthy charade unfolding as she expected. The pretense of law still existing hung over everything like a cloud. Not that it made a difference. It was all an elaborate game so Max could have an excuse to do what he wanted with Kelly. It was selfish and cowardly. No one wanted to rock the boat so they all just went along with it. Wasting what time they had left on a pointless joke, and it was pointless and it was a joke. They could have been doing anything else with their time but here they were. Sat on a couch, watching the amateur dramatics club play out a courtroom drama, except everyone, was improvising.

It took all of about five minutes for Arizona to be well and truly done with it. Then she spent another five minutes trying to will herself to sit through it. Unfortunately, her tolerance for bullshit wasn't high enough. She gently patted Jonah on the knee and whispered to him.

"Follow me in a few."

Then she stood up and slung her bag over her shoulder.

"I'm going to go outside to get some air." She said as she moved through the court setup.

"Been cooped up in here too long."

Without waiting for a response she opened the door and stepped outside.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Max gazed sidelong at Arizona as she withdrew from the designated courtroom space. He was required both by logical imperative and emotional impulse to internally actualize her decision as a respectable and wholly agreeable move. Max, too, was currently struggling against his own desire to walk away from this space. Every minute he wasted on this fruitless toil against self-imposed bureaucratic hurdles was a minute that another more major killer lived free to murder once more. He wiped some sweat from his brow that collected prior to this moment without his noticing. The air was stifling. It was time to get a move on.

"To begin, then, my line of inquiry," Max said, turning more to face his captured killer, "Kelly, how long have you been in the mansion?"

"A day, only," Kelly said, "I was with Mercy, we were travelling together, scared, hungry. We heard some noise, and so we came in."

Mercy as original companion. Mercy betrayed. Scared and hungry as pointed language, to be sure, but language that can be turned against her. The victim was scared. Kelly was not. Desperate for help, as shown by noticing of noise.

"Were you with anyone other than Mercy?"

"Madison," she said, adding after a pause, "and Ramsey."

Hesitating. Possible omission of detail. Unspoken acknowledgement that parties found inside were not at fault. Cooperation. Emergent frame of things looking up. Kelly as opportunist. Kelly as wanting all the boons new company brought. Kelly, hiding in the mansion. Kelly with access to the supplies of two people.

"What happened to them?"

"Madison was the one who left me with this," Kelly replied, indicating the bruise on her forehead, "if that helps. Ramsey ran out of the house after, but I can’t tell you where they went."

Lack of prompting event for 'running out of the house' leads to omitting of detail as likely occurrence. Sign of a struggle. Dispelling of idea that prior contact was amicable, but it could be related to the detail that she is leaving out, which there most certainly is. To recap: Mercy and Kelly are scared and hungry when they come across the house. Madison and Ramsey inside at least. Madison and Kelly have a confrontation. Kelly is bruised. Possibly related either to being startled upon entrance to the house. Possibly related also to death of Mercy. Discovery of corpse prompts attack?

He needed more detail.

"Describe the events leading up to Mercy's poisoning; what were you doing before that?"

"I had met up with Mercy during the night," began Kelly, "and she seemed tired. She told me she didn’t know if she could make it here. She showed me the poison in her bag, told her to use it if it got too bad. That afternoon, when she…y’know, she came to me again, gave me the bottle. I stirred it into her water, handed it back. I thought it wouldn’t hurt. I was wrong."

Mercy as innocent bystander victim who could have been anyone. Kelly as willing murderer. Mercy as wanting of mercy killing conflicts with the discovery of Madison and Ramsey and potentially unknown third party, as they would have supplies and potentially be willing to trade. Additional compounding with the fact that it is only the third day, and running out of supplies this early is unlikely. Kelly feigning ignorance of poison. Mercy potentially attempting to communicate something else by handing over the bottle. Unlikely that Mercy even would hand over the bottle. Likely pilfered. Additional suspicion of robbery. Lack of communication between Mercy and Kelly that would indicate a consensual practice.

But he could not get any more with direct questions. He would need to turn things over to the defense.

"Thank you, Kelly. Let's allow Darlene, the defense," Max said, "let's allow her to ask some of her own questions, yes?

[Ruggahissy]

Arizona left the room and he was alone on the couch now. Alone with a 30 pound bag of Lucky Charms marshmallows. He squeezed the bag with one hand while gazing at Max.

It broke his heart to think of leaving him. Jonah looked sadly into his handful of marshmallows and snapped one, hoping no one noticed his demeanor in the midst of the proceedings. If Max wanted to kill Kelly, well, he wasn't exactly choosing an innocent target. But Jonah couldn't participate in such a thing, even if she did poison someone. In the end, he had more responsibility to Arizona and Darlene. He knew Max would be upset if he left, but he had to make sure the girls were safe. Arizona was depending on him and she'd risked her life to find him, and he cared about her too. If it wasn't for him, Darlene would still be safely ensconced in the bushes and she would never have encountered Max or Beryl.

He looked at Darlene and he could feel the trust coming off her in waves. As much as it hurt to leave Max or to think of what would become of Kelly, it was more painful to imagine if something went wrong and hurt Arizona or Darlene.

So then it was time for a decision. Jonah knew that it was the right decision, even if it ached to make it. Jonah carefully picked through the marshmallows for a few moments. Jonah set this pile aside. He then opened the first aid kit inside his bag and scooped as many marshmallows as he could into that, and scooped as many as he could into his pockets. He zipped his bag and picked up the carefully curated pile from his side, leaving the rest of the bag, which was now around 25 pounds.

"She's been out there a bit. I'll go check on her," he said, no sign of nerves in his voice. Kelly would possibly die if he left, but to be honest, he wasn't so concerned with her. She deserved what she got, even if he didn't believe they were the right ones to carry it out. He was concerned for the girls who have been mentioned already, but as well one other for the effect such an action would have.

Jonah picked up his bag and went to Darlene first.

"Um, good job out there!" He hugged her and whispered to her.

"Arizona doesn't think this group is safe, but neither of us want to leave you. Please, follow the rainbow to find us," he said quietly, giving her a rainbow marshmallow as he pulled away.

Jonah swallowed air and passed by Max's portion of the table. He put his fist on the prosecution's side of the table and smiled. His hand became slack and a handful of only heart marshmallows spilled out, forming a tiny, pink mountain. Jonah quickly turned away and walked out, hoping no one would see his eyes.

He closed the door behind him, starting to spill little bits of cereal behind him as he walked until he found Arizona. Jonah came up behind her and took her hand with his left. With his right he held the cereal, creating the trail behind them.

"I hope she'll be able to find us," he said looking back. As he did, his eyebrows stitched together in worry and guilt and he hoped that Abel would forgive him.

((Jonah Heartgrave continued in Life Is Just a Memory ))

[MurderWeasel]

Darlene's eyes went so wide when Jonah whispered in her ear. She thought of that saying about wide as saucers. Nobody she knew used saucers, but she'd seen them, and it was a crazy exaggeration of a saying but she could imagine it right now, especially with her glasses making her eyes look bigger! Fortunately, the message came in the moments between turns, before she had to ask Kelly questions. Even so, it threw her for a total loop. Without even thinking about it, she popped the marshmallow in her mouth like it was evidence she had to swallow so that she too wouldn't end up on trial.

Except, she kind of had already, hadn't she? She'd received a very pointed response to her mistakes, but Jonah had intervened and saved her. Jonah had vouched for her, looked out for her, and he still was. Darlene wasn't totally sure she agreed with Arizona's assessment, but there was no time or opportunity to argue. Jonah was gone, like that, just a cryptic message to chase after. Darlene might've made an excuse and followed then and there, but...

But Jonah had gone to bat for her, and now it was her turn to do her best for Kelly. If she just left now, she'd be abandoning her post and letting whatever happened to the girl for being guilty happen. Darlene would figure out what Jonah meant, and catch up lickety split just as soon as this was done, then. This was just a little delay. Maybe she could even bring Max along! It was probably Kelly scaring Arizona, because Kelly had killed someone, or maybe Lucas, because she thought Lucas was possibly a pervert, but Max was Jonah's friend. He'd given Max a whole handful of marshmallows, when Darlene got only one! Max was definitely probably invited.

A rainbow could be a house, maybe? A building? They seemed pretty colorful around here. Or, or maybe the waterfall? Darlene had read something about how light refracted off of the spray, she thought, and made rainbows.

She'd been standing around like a useless lump even longer than usual, she realized abruptly, and gulped. Right, she had to ask Kelly questions. Mostly she knew about grilling witnesses dramatically to catch them in lies, and she was just about to get started on that when she remembered she was supposed to do exactly the opposite. The point was to ask Kelly questions that let her exonerate herself, and Darlene had been paying enough attention to have a good starting point. She had!

"So," she said, looking Kelly straight in the eyes for a whole half second before she had to look away, "you say that, um, you—Mercy asked you to kill her?"

"She told me she didn’t want to—couldn’t live if living meant, well, this," Kelly replied. Darlene nodded. They'd seen something like that with Nick, hadn't they? A killing born from some misguided attempt at kindness? Except, except Beryl hadn't even been able to ask!

Darlene didn't dwell too long on the whys behind that state of affairs, instead hurrying to the next question.

"How did you feel about fulfilling her request?"

That felt like prying, like the sort of thing you asked a close friend only, but maybe that would make it more convincing? Darlene hoped so. She hoped that Max would be convinced.

She hoped to be convinced as well.

"Awful," Kelly said, "but like I should respect her wishes? I didn’t know what else to do, so I did it, and now she’s dead, and I... I don’t know what else."

This seemed a fruitful line of questioning. That was an expression of remorse. Darlene was all set to leap on it, but she tumbled over her own tongue on the way.

"When it be... became clear that," she started, "that it wasn't... that it was hurting her, what did you do? What happened then?"

"I... I puked," Kelly said. "I stayed with her, but there was so much blood, I couldn’t do anything else."

This was the part where Darlene wanted to say that there was an awful lot of puke around. It was in several different places! Maybe that was what happened when you literally barfed blood until you died; Darlene (thankfully) had no idea. But maybe it wasn't. But nobody else had been named, so it had to be, didn't it? But, but, but luckily that didn't actually matter because Darlene knew the goal of the justice system was for each side to do the best they could for their client and ignore awkward inconsistencies. Those were the responsibility of the opposition. He role was to let Kelly tell her story, so once again she opened the door.

"And, and why did you stay here afterwards?" Darlene asked.

"Well," Kelly said, "Madison got angry, which okay, she was probably right to do, and honestly? I didn’t know where else to go. I hoped I could keep watch over Mercy’s body, try to make up, in some small way."

Oh no.

Kelly was lying. Even Darlene could tell that, because when they found Mercy she was covered in blood and vomit and just lying there like so much garbage. When they found Kelly, it was later, upstairs, and she didn't seem all that worried about Mercy's being a lump of stinking rotting meat until right this very moment. Kelly hadn't wiped her clean. She hadn't dragged her somewhere, or covered her, or closed her eyes or anything. She hadn't been in the same room. Involuntarily, Darlene glanced at Max. Did he know? He had to know.

And, come to think of it, why couldn't Mercy pour her own poison? Then, if she'd done that, Kelly would've never been named, never involved. It wasn't the first day. They all knew killers got announced. Why involve Kelly? Choosing to drink, that was an action on Mercy's part, if the story was true, so she was killing herself... so why did Kelly need to play any role?

Darlene wished, suddenly, that she'd just jogged off behind Jonah after all. Was it too late to call an emergency bathroom break? She was feeling a lot less responsible all of a sudden.

But she'd decided to try, just like she'd told Jonah the first day that she'd try to help him find Arizona. And now, the only way out of this that Darlene could see was to get it in the open, confront it head on and hope Kelly could figure out the magic words.

"Why should we trust you when you have every reason to lie?" Darlene asked.

"Well," Kelly replied, "couldn’t I just lie at this question? The simple answer is no, you don’t have any real reason to trust me. I just want to tell you what happened, why I did what I did—and nothing else. And if you feel that merits something—well, you have your right to do that."

This was not what Darlene wanted to hear. It was the opposite! This had been going more or less alright at first, but now Jonah and Arizona were gone, and it was just Darlene and Max and Lucas, and Darlene didn't even know how they were deciding if Kelly was guilty or not, but more and more she was pretty sure herself that the girl was.

"If you were given the cho—er, um, I mean, hang on.. hang on a sec..." Darlene was flailing now. She really, really hoped Max wasn't going to judge her for taking this side. She had to think! But she wasn't any good at thinking quickly on her feet like this. She wasn't an idiot, but she thought of herself as smart, not clever. She thought of The Hobbit, Bilbo muttering, "Time, time," to himself and just happening to save himself by it, but that wouldn't do the trick here. But then, a moment later, the obvious answer came to her, the hail Mary, a chance to just maybe give Kelly one more opening to save herself.

"Okay," Darlene continued. "Okay, what do you think the fair thing to do with you is?"

"Take my things," Kelly said, "take Mercy’s. But if you could, I’d like to be left here, if only for a little. Maybe you can’t agree with that, but I’d like to try to clean up Mercy’s body, try to make everything right. I can’t, no, but I’d like to try."

Okay. Okay, good, Kelly had realized she'd messed up the body detail. Maybe there was a chance. Maybe, maybe they could let her stay. She probably had more stuff stashed somewhere else, a backup. It would take them ages to search the whole house. Darlene didn't care. Right now she didn't care about Kelly being guilty (she totally was!) or the trial. She wanted to chase after Jonah and Arizona. She wanted to walk over to Max and say they had to go. She didn't really want to shoot Kelly, for a lot of reasons.

Maybe, if they had to, Lucas could do it?

[TheLordOfAwesome]

Lucas had listened to the questioning that had gone on, carefully listening to Kelly's explanations as to what happened. He hardly paid attention to Jonah and Arizona leaving. He figured they were just trying to get away from Max's possibly crazy ass, which is what he would do if he found his girlfriend. Regardless, at this point he wasn't quite sure what to think of Kelly's situation. It sounded like a pretty solid explanation, but the lack of other witnesses to question left as only her word to go off. He suppose the pun Tracen made about Kelly doing a "mercy kill" might be evidence towards supporting Kelly's claim, but it was circumstantial and it wasn't exactly a good idea to take farcical claims from a sociopath at face value.

"Right, now that questioning is done with, let's move to closing statements before sentencing." Lucas said. "Max, you have the floor."

[Somersault]

Kelly sat still, then, listening. She'd given her answers, paid her dues, and all that was left to do was hope that Darlene would pay that forward.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Max had the floor.

Already, the time for closing statements was upon them. The dwindling assembled members of the courtroom. The jury long departed. Key witnesses never summoned to testify. Ideas for cross referencing scattered to the wayward winds, useless in this marsupial municipal massacree. Darlene's questions, revealing nothing, giving Kelly the opportunity to obfuscate the truth. The seconds elongated themselves into minutes that painfully dragged their flesh into the shape of hours that in all metaphysical senses had truly occupied the meaning of entire calendars. Every second spent arguing was a second Max lost in his crusade. A second lost to fatigue. Democracy, always a spinner of the wheels. Collaboration, always a poison of the mind. Max remembered his essay he had co-written with Liberty. Was that process not excruciating? Was this not an extension of that same procedure, the ceaseless compromise? The end result of such a venture was nothing less than intellectual excrement. The courtroom was purulent, and he would stand for it no longer.

Max had the floor.

Wordlessly he disengaged the man-catcher, letting Kelly free. He pulled it back to him where it felt the most safe, held with both hands. Max's eyes went from Kelly, to Darlene, to Lucas, as his mind struggled to find some words for any of them. What he wanted to do was deliver a sumptuous summation of each and every singular burning coal in his infernal stomach that fueled the hatred he felt in this moment. A hatred he would not let show on his face. Max searched for the right cadence, the right diction, the right syntax. He searched for the right way to address this wrong arrangement of celestial bodies and earthly players in this calamitous charade. God would speak through him. God would deliver the fury that he so craved.

Max had the floor.

Enraptured, enraged, Max turned around and walked out the door without a sound.

[Max Rudolph continued elsewhere.]

[MurderWeasel]

Darlene had, in an instant, come up with exactly what she was going to say. It probably wasn't exactly what Kelly would want. That was okay, though. Kelly was probably a murderer! There were more important things than getting her precisely what she was after, especially when that could be a prelude to even more murder. Darlene had taken on the responsibility for defending the girl, but was coming to think that included defending her from herself, which in turn included defending her from her own tendencies towards doing horrible, awful, reprehensible things.

Darlene was going to move that Kelly become a ward of the court. That meant the judge, which meant Lucas. She would propose that Lucas keep custody of Kelly, indefinitely, which would hopefully be mostly okay. True, Lucas was probably possibly a pervert, but Kelly had killed someone for bad reasons! That had to make her more unattractive, right? And after Darlene made her pitch, and they gave Kelly to Lucas or shot her or whatever if the prosecution made the better case, she would sneak over to Max and tell him what Jonah had said and they could go solve the puzzle and catch up with the other pair. It was, she thought, if not the right decision then at least a right decision.

But then Max did something that threw everything off script. Darlene's eyes went wide as he disengaged The Claw. She half expected him to whip a sword from nowhere and take Kelly's head clean off, and half expected Kelly to howl and lunge, all rabid ferocity now that she was unbound, and tear somebody's throat out with her teeth, but none of that happened. Max just left.

Darlene was alone with Kelly and Lucas.

Darlene was alone with a murderer and a pervert!

"Um, I, uh, um," she stammered, then rallied and spit out the rest all in one breath: "The defenses moves that, your honor, that the defendant should be repriman—remanded into the custody of the honorable judge for safekeeping pending further developments and that he should keep her safe and, uh, and act with the professionalism that is his due and the defense rests thank you."

She wasn't even really looking at either of them. Her focus was on the outside. This was a disaster. Jonah and Arizona were gone. Max was gone. Max didn't know what the other two were doing. He wouldn't know to follow, wouldn't know the clues. She had to catch up, and tell him, and bring him back, and fix things. Jonah had been happy to see Max. He'd been so happy.

"I have to confer with someone really quick," Darlene said. Then she scooped up all her stuff and bolted for the door after her departing ally/opponent, with just a halfhearted wave to the pair she left to each other's tender mercies.

"Max," she hollered, "Max, wait up. I need to tell you something."

((Darlene Silva continued in But, What Ends When the Symbols Shatter?))

[TheLordOfAwesome]

Now, Lucas expected many things when he proposed this idea, what he didn't expect was max to walk the fuck out. Lucas' composure broke and sat sputtering as he watched Max silent let Kelly go and leave the room. He wanted to call out to max to get him to stop and come back, but he was so dumbfounded he couldn't form the words. Then Darlene chimed in, suggesting that Kelly be left with him and then she bolted out of the room herself.

Lucas sat quietly, looking towards the door Max and Darlene left through and looked to Kelly.

This did not go at all like he thought it would. His intentions for this trial was to hopefully figure out just what happened here with Kelly, whether it was deliberate homicide, an accident, or an assisted suicide. But Max left without providing an argument and now thinking back, he forgot to do a cross examination. So this was partly his own fuck up. This could have gone better, he could have done better. But now he was left alone with Kelly and he, as the self-appoint arbiter of delivering justice, had to give a sentence to fit the crime.

"Well..." He began, falling silent for a moment as he mulled over his words but came up short. "Okay, I guess we are done."

Sighing he stood up and picked up his shotgun, keeping his focus on Kelly.

"This went off the goddamn rails. Max left the room and didn't put forth any argument so I guess we'll declare this a win for the defense." He said with a shrug. "So I'm going to go through with Darlene's suggestion. You'll be under my custody until further notice so I can keep an eye on you to ensure you don't do anything. Uh... I'll keep you safe and all that."

Lucas shifted around uncomfortably, looking around.

"I... don't know what to do now. I guess we'll stay here for now? Safe-ish location, defensible... probably. I don't know. Is that fine?"

((Lucas Abernathy continued in Le Manoir du Diable))

[Cicada]

((Adopting Kelly Nguyen))

It was hard to tell without hindsight if it had been an earned victory.

She'd been the witness of her own trial, from beginning to end. The only one with knowledge of the crime. The only one watching the proceedings in the third person. The constricting bind around her neck remained a phantom that she touched at with one finger pressed just so that she could feel her own pulse. Her lips sealed dryly over her teeth, even as a nervous tongue explored the grooves between the enamel.

All pieces of the mask of her face polished, buffered against the baubles of sweat blighting the roots of her bangs. She watched Lucas, and smiled softly with her eyes. Nothing else, just the most subtle and innocent signals smoking up the room like a flare.

"Of course. I have no objections."

None spoken aloud. The weight of her alleged guilt remained implicit in her imprisonment. And nobody trusted a warden to treat their captive fairly.

He might. Her work was far from over. As expected and as anticipated. As relished- in a way.

((Kelly Nguyen, continued in Le Manoir du Diable))