Investigation IV

[lesmodsalouette]

INVESTIGATION

Being forced asleep the second the clock struck midnight has been an ill-omen for weeks now. Yet this morning sees you waking not to explosions and smoke, but to the comfortable feeling of eight hours of uninterrupted rest. It's 8 in the morning and the sun is already out, and all is quiet around Chateau Ambregris.

Do you dare hope that you can face the day without further bloodshed? That Ish's announcement of needing no more bodies has stilled the restless violence in everybody's hearts? They say time heals all wounds, but has this ever-repeating week truly had the same effect?

(( OOC: Comment to this entry with where your character is going in the morning. A mod response will let you know if there’s anything to be found there! The Investigation is a free-for-all until all bodies have been found.

Once the victim(s) have been identified, there will be an IC announcement, and mods will provide Investigation sub-headers for the relevant locations. Up to 3 characters are welcome to investigate under each header unless indicated otherwise. ))

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[lesmodsalouette]

[As she's pulling at one of the spikes at the edge of the rows, then, she can also hear the muffled rustle and thump of something underneath the snow.

Is Homura going to continue trying to uproot the spikes like weirdly stubborn carrots?]

[antemeridian]

[ hm.

she will come back with a hockey stick and attempt to see if she can use it to get better leverage to lift the spikes with. from a slightly safer distance than right on top of them, while we're at it. ]

[lesmodsalouette]

[Thump. Thump. Thump.

Slowly, quite slowly since it's a pretty decent surface area she's working with -- the snow starts shaking off the series of spikes. A latticed wood frame comes into partial view beneath the snow, along with the thing making the noise: a small cloth bag underneath the corner of the contraption, filled and heavy.

That said, past a certain point, no matter how much Homura yanks she won't be able to completely unbury more than a corner of the frame from this side.]

[antemeridian]

[ closes my eyes. does the frame look like something that could've come from the solarium or gardens? is this a trellis, basically.

but we are grabbing the cloth bag and adding it to the evidence pile (not literal), apparently. pause on the wood frame and spikes for now, we'll come back to it in a second. is there anything notable about it, appearancewise, before we open it to check it for rocks or bullets or whatever is inside this thing? is it also bloodied or is it nice and neat.

otherwise, she's going... to go to the other side... and try to loosen up the frame from that end too, just in case there's anything else underneath the snow... there's no way she's carrying the entire wood frame and spike ensemble to trial unless it covers a significantly shorter stretch of wall than i assumed. ]

[lesmodsalouette]

[It does not look like one of the trellises!

Just a note, though: the cloth bag needs to be unhooked from the latticework before it can be pocketed, since it's secured on there. When checked, it contains rocks and metal bits. It is also not bloodied, as it's been buried pretty deeply in the snow until now.

Homura is able to unbury more of the frame from a different angle, though it again takes some work. She'll find a similar set-up on the other side: the cloth bag, and the spikes set in the intersections in the latticework. As she works on the whole thing, she'll be able to guesstimate from the distribution of the spikes and the uncovered frame that the whole thing measures around 10 ft x 8 ft in size.]

[antemeridian]

[ ah so it was to weigh down the contraption like my first thought was before i read that it was underneath... someone really went to a lot of effort to plan this out and set this up. anyway wow, wonder what this wood frame is or where it came from. surely not also the workshop, home of a woodworker's tools. but sure, we'll grab the second bag too . . . sure hope there wasn't critical evidence somewhere in the messy everything of disturbed snow before we started doing this. like, there's plenty of bloody snow right over the spikes we sure know that. but anyway.

if she tries to move the entire thing a bit to the side with her trusty hockey stick, are there further secrets hidden beneath the snow? there's no way for her to safely move this entire thing to trial... probably... so after she's done combing the area she might have to settle for collecting some of the spikes after lifting the latticework up. or maybe calling for someone else to move the frame after separating spikes and frame. ]

[lesmodsalouette]

[It’s fine, she spent so long staring at the blood, snow and spikes she’ll probably dream about it at this point. We will allow her mind palace to store this information forever whether she likes it or not.

It’s still a bit bulky for her to move much with only two corners uncovered, but with all the yanking and bumping Homura will notice that there’s a seam about halfway down the frame lengthwise where the parts of the latticework seem to be coming a bit loose from each other. Same goes for along the width of the thing.]

[antemeridian]

[ hm. does it look like new damage, or more like those are the points at which two (four?) separate pieces were affixed together? she'll methodically move first to around the other two corners, then roughly the center point of one of the longer sides to try to uncover those as well in pursuit of making it easier to move, to see if there's much else to be found with this lattice. ]

[lesmodsalouette]

[It looks like part of the frame’s design! The seam is clean and the two pieces overlap neatly. Once Homura uncovers everything else, she’ll be able to see that the seams bisect the latticework of spikes horizontally and vertically all the way through, making for four distinct smaller panels.]

ALL CORE EVIDENCE FOUND

[lesmodsalouette]

You may still ask for details and clarifications.