cradleproject | WEEK 9 - INVESTIGATION

[Jason and Clover are her company, huh? Both are well-equipped, it seems, so she shakes her head as a sleepy Arbok slithers closer to the elevator doors.]

Arbok! You stay with Todomatsu.

[And, as soon as Jason and Clover are close to the elevator, well. There's really only one way to do this.

She shoves both of them in.]

This is no time to be asking that! Alice! We're going down!

[And in they go???]

[There's nothing in the elevator itself. Once they get off it onto the lower deck, they'll notice in that hallway that there's a blood trail going between the doors of the zero gravity room and the airlock. Both doors are currently shut.

Which do they pick?]

Well... That's not a bad sign at all.

[He's frowning at the trail of blood, already bracing himself for the worst. He makes sure Clover and Jessie are behind him before he gestures towards the Zero Gravity Room.]

We might as well make sure nobody stuck a corpse to the ceiling.

[It's said like a joke, but... Onwards?]

[Clover definitely yelps when Jessie just SHOVES HER INTO THE ELEVATOR, all right okay she's awake now!!! and if Jason's determined to take the lead then she's going to at least make sure she's in front of Jessie, scythe in front of her now instead of just kinda chillin at her side, partially because she likes Arbok enough to notice his absence even though she's half asleep. No sassy commentary on the way in, though.]

[Jason better hang on tight to the handle or door frame when he opens the door, because if he doesn't, he's going to go floating straight up towards the ceiling. Looks like the zero-G's been turned on!

This wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't for all the dismembered limbs, chunks of torso, entrails and blood also floating and pinwheeling around near the top the room. Have fun!]

[Once she sees the blood trail, Jessie rips off her kigurumi to reveal she's still wearing all of her Rocket clothes underneath. This begs two questions. Why did Alice give her a tearaway onesie, and how long has she been wearing the outfit underneath? These are questions best saved for another date, because as she moves into the room and starts to lift herself, she shoves Jason higher as she hurriedly grabs onto the door.]

Jason, what do you think you're doing?!

Edited 2016-08-05 22:47 (UTC)

[Yeah. No. He's still not used to having no depth perception, so he's narrowly missing the door frame when he moves to grab it. Jessie shoving him doesn't help at all, so. You know. It's practically tradition at this point for shit to happen to him.

Up, up, up he goes — until he's floating towards the ceiling and joining all the limbs and guts hanging out up there.]

Aw, fuck.

[How eloquent. He's just going to try to find the head while he's up here, or maybe some sort of identifying mark listed on the profile cards. Guess getting covered in gore is his destiny now.]

Could someone turn the gravity back on? Preferably without, y'know, letting me plummet to the ground face-first.

[SHE IS DEFINITELY AWAKE NOW and holding the handle of the scythe out to keep Jessie from going forward enough to pull a Jason and end up floating around in a cloud of gore. There...there he goes. She is not following him. The console is all the way over theeeere...]

Holy shit. [And then, calling up to Jason:] Um—lemme know when you're ready to land ass-first instead? [Clover just lower the gravity gradually it's not hard???] Eeewww, it's all gonna fall with hiiimmm...

[The first thing Jason will notice while stuck up there is that there's an enormous scorchmark on the ceiling. In the center of the scorchmark, the ceiling panels have been dented enough to form a crater.

The second thing he'll notice will literally bump straight into his face as they both float around up there. Oh. It's a head with green hair.

Machias Regnitz is dead.]

Jason Todd, neither of us are letting you down until you finish looking for things! That's how investigations work! Probably.

[But alright. Since she's an action girl, she's going to try and push off from the door now. Is there anything along the floor or walls that she can use to pull herself to the panel in the middle of the room? If not, she's going to have to get to a wall and...kick towards, it right? tl;dr does Jessie make it to the panel.]

Oh, fuck you!

[It's 2AM and he's holding Machias's disembodied head in his hands. Please excuse him for being a little bit cranky.

He's grimacing, though, carefully inspecting the head before he moves on to take a closer look at the scorchmark. Besides the dented ceiling panels, is there anything else of note? Perhaps any remains of whatever caused the explosion, near the panels or just floating around the room with the rest of Machias's body? Assuming Jessie doesn't make it to the panel too soon, he'll also check the whatever he can see at this altitude as whatever other limb he can reach.

Might as well check if there's anything embedded in there, even though he's feeling a teeny bit sick. Inspecting the corpse of someone he actually knew is awful. Ugh.]

Careful!

[GO JESSIE GO clover's just gonna...wait here. with her laser scythe. she's guarding the door?? and clinging to the doorframe when she peers around it. It's kind of hard to tell what's going on from here.]

Who is it?!

[Oddly enough, there's a long blue scarf tied to the machine by the console, the end floating up thanks to the zero-G. If Jessie aims carefully, she can grab it and pull herself to the console.

There's bits of shrapnel embedded in the ceiling, reminiscent of what you'd get with an explosive. There's also a few pieces of shrapnel floating around with the body parts. Finally, towards the center of the crater, there appears to be a shred of something small stuck to the ceiling that doesn't resemble shrapnel at all.

While Clover's waiting, she'll notice that the blood trail continues into the zero-G room along the floor, ending at the machine by the console.]

[And catch! Jessie grabs onto the scarf and then immediately grabs onto the console. If it's big enough, she'll be wrapping her legs around it or her arms or whatever works best, holding onto that instead of the scarf.]

What do we have here? Does anyone recognize this scarf?

[She'll probably say that before she finds out who the victim is because that's upsetting. While she's here, it's time to investigate! Let's take a look at the scarf and the control panel. Any clues over here?]

[He doesn't look down to see what scarf Jessie is talking about, so he can't provide an answer for that. Oops. He can, however, answer Clover's question. If the head floating around the room isn't obvious enough...]

It's Machias. Seems like someone cashed in on that proximity mine.

[It's the first explosive that comes to mind, unless someone created something on their own while here.

Regardless, he's moving closer to the center of the crater, squinting at whatever is stuck to the ceiling. He'll try to remove it if it's possible, but if not, then he'll at least attempt to identify it while he's up here.]

[she's all the way down here and jason is in the way of the head okay!!!! but she does recognize that scarf; she'd been the one to hand it over to him.]

That's—that's Machias's. [She's gone pale even before Jason confirms it, covering her mouth with her hand.] That's Machias's, Arumat gave it to him... Why...

[STOP KILLING HER FRIENDS SHE'S GONNA CRY???????

nope sorry you guys can keep floating around with her friend's body parts she's just gonna stand here being sad and useless, even if she's totally seen grodier corpses (never forget ventgate), Machias was her friend, she needs a minute for this to process. please keep the head OVER THERE FOR NOW]

[There's a little blood smeared on the console. It looks like the gravity's been set to the lowest setting.

Jason will peel off what appears to be a shredded scrap of tape. He's also going to get hit in the back of the head with a shotgun while he's up there.]

No! It can't be him! Why would someone target him?!

[Jessie works on untying the scarf next since it's evidence and they'll need to bring it to the robots at some point.]

Hold on, I'm going to bring you down!

[And she looks at the gravity dial, scarf under her arm, and...

...looks straight up.

She looks at the dial.

She looks straight up.

She looks over to Clover and kicks off the console and back to the door, Clover you better extend that stick or she's grabbing onto her.]

I changed my mind! I'm not doing it! Someone else can take a Machias shower!

Edited 2016-08-06 00:31 (UTC)

[He's peeling off the tape to take a closer look just as the shotgun proceeds to hit him in the back of the head. Then he's grabbing the shotgun on one hand, and holding the tape in the other. First of all, he's checking to see if there's anything off with the shotgun. Maybe if there are scorchmarks on it, or anything else that's noticeable beside it being, well. A shotgun. Presumably the one that belongs to Machias.

After that, he's examining the tape and the spot it was stuck to. Any sign or hint of what it was being used for? Not that he's hoping for much, since there was an explosion here and all.

That said—]

Are you kidding me?! [WHIRLING AROUND SO FAST TO LOOK DOWN AT JESSIE, THAT HE JUST KIND OF... SPINS AROUND IN ZERO G. MAYBE CAREENS TOWARDS THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM. THANKS.] Jessie, you goddamn coward! Get back to that console and let me down right now!

[IT'S JUST A LITTLE CORPSE JUICE, GODDAMN IT.]

[so Clover's instinct when she sees Jessie careening towards her is definitely to BACK THE FUCK UP but she does remember as she's doing so that Jessie is a kind soul with an adorable snake friend and she does stick the handle of the scythe out for Jessie to take, and once she has, Clover just uses the momentum to fling Jessie onto the goddamn ground.

And she looks at Jessie, looks at Jason floating around like a champ, looks at Machias's corpse bits, looks at the scarf, wipes her eyes—]

I'll be right back!

[And FUCKING RUNS AWAY

BYE??? BYE

happy 2am judar enjoy the frantic knocking at your door]

[The tape's shredded and scorched, but there's nothing else about it that stands out.

He'll recognize the shotgun as belonging to Machias. It's bloody, but that's probably not a surprise given that it's been floating around a room full of blood and body parts. Since it looks like he'll be up here for a while, if he checks the gun up close he'll find that it's unloaded but smells a little like smoke.]

[Clover is sure taking a while, isn't she? Well, the door slides open after two or three minutes, and...in floats a few bottles from the recreation room. Two beers and a plastic bottle of water! And then the door shuts and Jessie presses her face against the window, trying to see if she can spot Jason.

She can't, he's too high up, so she opens the door again but doesn't dare step inside the gravity zone.]

I thought you might get thirsty while you're up there and my hair is down here keeping as clean as possible~! You're welcome, Jason~!

Golly, how thoughtful of you!

[THERE IS SO MUCH VITRIOL IN HIS TONE. SO MUCH. At this point he's resigned himself to crossing his arms and legs, letting his body pinwheel around the center of the room along with Machias's blown apart corpse. The bottles do make it up to where he's floating, though, and he stares at them.

Stares some more.

Reaches for one of the beers.

Opens it.

Watches all the liquid float away. It gently hits Machias's disembodied head, some of it probably making its way up his nostrils and whatnot. It's a very lovely sight.]

... Shit.

[NOBODY SAW THAT, RIGHT?????]

Edited 2016-08-06 01:35 (UTC)

[Clover's going to have to hammer on his door for at least five minutes straight, so Jason has plenty of time to...enjoy...that beer. Despite the bedrooms being soundproof, she can definitely just somehow tell there's a great deal of cursing and yelling coming from in there.

Eventually Judar manages to slam the door open snarling angrily, hair down and dressed in a simple Chinese robe, and also holding a literal ball of lightning in his hand just in case this is some kind of stupid murder plan.]

What?!

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