Non-Peace Weekend - Investigation

[mockmods]

[Two weeks have passed since your arrival. The Researcher has delivered a pair of motives, promising to reward some or punish others if rule 7 is not enacted by the end of the week.]

[Today is Friday, the deadline for your incentives. There is no morning announcement today.]

[Maybe It's nothing, but you might notice a faint, odd metallic scent in the air as you exit your bedrooms this morning.]

[Proceed with caution, Participants.]

Comments

[mockmods]

[Well, there's two more obvious things Izuku could use to distract himself from the body. First is all the freaking mannequins we mentioned earlier. The second is- at first glance, it's just kind of a big pile of junk? A whole lot of scrap metal.]

[mightdoriya]

[The mannequins...are strange. Izuku had no idea all of these where even here, but despite their curiosity he doesn't go for them first. Let's check out the big pile of junk before that. Is it just that, junk? Or is there something else here to find?]

[mockmods]

[Well, pile of junk is both entirely accurate and slightly misleading. It definitely looks to be a deliberately constructed-]

[...What the hell is this thing.]

[It's. A whole lot of moving parts, looks like? Almost like some kind of Rube Goldberg machine. What's it even- is that a fucking bicycle wheel?]

[mightdoriya]

[...okay, there is a lot to unpack here, so Izuku is going to take a slight step back so he can look over the machine properly. Is it still intact as far as being a cohesive machine goes, or did being set off reduce it to nothing but a bunch of junk? And also, since this sort of mechanism immediately brings Izuku to a particular conclusion...would any of these parts happen to be bloody by any chance?]

[mockmods]

[It looks as cohesive as it's likely to ever be, yes.]

[And good guess, there is some blood spray on the machine, especially on that weird bike wheel thing.]

[mightdoriya]

[Just as he feared... He'll take a closer look at the bike wheel mechanism. How is this thing set up? Is it just a normal-ass wheel, or did someone beef it up for murdering purposes?]

[mockmods]

[The wheel itself is pretty normal-ish? But it is mounted on a swinging arm of some kind that looks like it could hit pretty hard.]

cw: decapitation talk

[mightdoriya]

[Ow. Not hard enough to decapitate someone the way Yaiba was done, he guesses? Not unless there's something sharp here that could hack through someone's spine... He shakes his head, trying and failing to get the image of that poor guy's mostly-decapitated head out of his mind. It's been burned into it, and it's something he's never going to forget. Is there anything else of note with the machine here?]

Re: cw: decapitation talk

[mockmods]

[The arm and bike wheel are entirely blunt, unfortunately. If they were involved in the Furry French Revolution, it wasn't on their own.]

[And the only other thing to note about the machine itself is that it's pretty ridiculously complex. If it weren't for the gore, it would almost look at home in a more steampunk Dr. Seuss book.]

[mightdoriya]

[It's not an answer then, but it's something. This machine was clearly devised to hurt someone, and it succeeded in some manner. The complexity of the machine stuns him, though. Someone had to have been working on this all throughout the week to be able to finish it, right? There's no way it could have been put together all in one day. And how did they get all of these parts without someone seeing them do it? Izuku takes another step back from the machine. Is there any way Izuku might be able to deduce from the design how it was meant to work? Was the swinging arm the final part to be set off, or is there more to it than that?]

[mockmods]

[It's pretty hard to tell, but it looks like the machine was mostly built around the arm. It's probably a decent guess that making it swing hard and fast was the point of it all.]

[You don't have to figure out the exact mechanics of a Rube Goldberg device to solve this case, is what we're telling you.]

[mightdoriya]

[Listen Izuku needs to be thorough! This thing was at least part of what hurt somebody, whether it was Yaiba directly or something else entirely. Anything else need to be checked out here, or are we good to move on to the mannequins?]

[mockmods]

[You're good! Go check those mannequins.]

[mightdoriya]

[TIME FOR A MANNEQUIN ADVENTURE Anything unusual going on here? Other than, you know, mannequins.]

[mockmods]

[For one, there's kind of a lot of them. And they all appear to have been beheaded.]

[mightdoriya]

[Hey hey now let's not get ahead of ourselves- But okay, that's. Weird. That's super weird. He'll walk a bit closer to the mannequins to check them out. Is there any blood around here?]

[mockmods]

[Don't blow your top, Izuku, we're getting there.]

[And as seems to be a bit of a theme here, these mannequins have quite a bit of blood on them.]

[mightdoriya]

[But all of this investigating is giving him a headache!! But oh boy, that's fun. Izuku grimaces, reluctantly approaching the bloody mannequins. Does it look like they've just been splattered with blood by virtue of being near some sort of crime scene, or did someone try to blugeon someone with mannequin parts, here.]

[mockmods]

[There's not really any splattering, actually! Looks like the blood's been smeared on.]

[mightdoriya]

[Oh ew? Ew.] What even is this... [Just to make sure, is there any blood on the floor at all? Or just on the mannequins? And does the blood seem to be smeared on, like...on purpose, or does it seem more like they might have been accidentally rubbed against? With...a bloody something, he guesses.]

[mockmods]

[It looks like they rubbed up against a bloody something, all right, but it's hard to say whether it was intentional or not.]

[mightdoriya]

[Perhaps some sort of fight happened over here, then? It doesn't really explain why all the mannequins got dragged out though, or why all their heads are removed. Either someone was practicing for the real thing, or they've just gone completely insane. Is there anything else of note here?]

[mockmods]

[While we're talking blood, there is one more thing; there's a short trail of footprints leading away from the crime scene.]

[mightdoriya]

[Oh shit, that seems important. Izuku crouches down near the footprints which presumably are bloody? Are they bare or caused by shoes?]

[mockmods]

[Unless someone's tracking in strawberry m- wait, no, we already made that joke. Yes, they're blood. And while they look fairly shoe-like, they're too smeared to get an exact size or pattern.]