FOURTH TRIAL

[splitaseam]

[To what I'm sure is everyone's joy after a sad investigation like that, after everyone reaches the Stretching Room, Oogie's voice can be heard.]

Is this haunted room actually stretching? Or is it just your imagination?

[Well at least he's honoring Ghostave's memory, except he starts laughing, almost tauntingly, after he says that.

In the very least the graveyard seems identical, with three new epitaphs for our dearly departed.

Here lies Lea
Slaying bugs he made a name
And got sent to the deadliest game

Here lies WALL-E
They were our dearest friend
But that didn’t help them in the end

Here lies Tarzan?
????
?????


... Ok then.

Oogie speaks before everyone can get to their tombstones.]

Don't keep me waiting!

Comments

[sixfingeredstan]

Why have you thought about this so...thoroughly?

[aboyandhiscar]

Less thought about it and more it's what I do back home, Pops.

[sixfingeredstan]

Well, I have to stay impartial, like you said. If that's what you do back home, what's stopping you from pulling it off here if it means you can get out?

[aboyandhiscar]

Dude, I'm not gonna throw you guys under the bus for my sake. I won't lie though, if I HAD to go after someone, it'd be the bot, just to make sure Tarzan's not getting hacked and slashed. But I'd try to make the trail a little more obvious, at least.

[terribibble]

... Do you think it could've been... a distraction?

There was a catgut string on him, just sort've draped over. You think they could've smashed the cello and put the string on him as a clumsy sort of frame job?

[It's... it's a big logical leap. But Mike seems to be trying to imply it wasn't the murder weapon, or at least they shouldn't assume it is, and he's willing to pursue that idea. It's as good as any.]

[aboyandhiscar]

If it's a set up, yeah. That's the only way I can look at it--either someone went out of their way to frame Demyx, OR it is what it is cuz that's all the killer knew. It's either one extreme or the other.

[toogoodforhim]

...Yeah, that is strange.

[aboyandhiscar]

Like I said, it's what I do. I can take down just about any bot at home. Aaand I'm sort of wanted? So yeah.

[outsidethecircle]

Also, um, if I can say... a robot is a lot easier to fix than a human. If the mother board wasn't damaged then we could have fixed him.

[aboyandhiscar]

Yeah, that's the other thing. Whoever did this probably doesn't know much about robots, so it's like they took a stab in the dark.

[sixfingeredstan]

Well...that counts out a few of us at least. But some of us are...from a different time, shall we say.

[mmmmMMMMM.]

[aboyandhiscar]

I mean, pretty much all of you are super old school to me, but yeah.

[sixfingeredstan]

Yes, but most of us are from after the invention of androids.

[defyingfrigidity]

[... But if they narrowed it down to the guys whose hands kind of match, and narrow that down to people who don't know this sort of technology... then...

No. No no no.]

Wait... can't that be some sort of false lead? Something the murderer did to try and throw us off?

[sixfingeredstan]

It could be. [And he really, really wants it to be.] But we can't discount that merely on conjecture, I'm afraid.

[capulion]

Well some of us don't even know what a that 'machine' is, that Lefou found the soap in. At least I don't.

So whoever did it knows how to use that thing, right?

[sixfingeredstan]

That's a fair point. They'd have to have knowledge of what the washing machine is in order to know to use it.

[terribibble]

[He nods, a little reluctantly.]

I think they just got lucky bein' honest. They were tryin' to smash him to pieces. They hit hard enough to get lucky and damage his control center. If they were goin' for it in specific the damage would've been more localized I figure.

[It's easier to talk about a robot than it is about a dead human body. That doesn't make him heartless, right? It's like how doctors handle cadavers enough to get desensitized, or how a human body makes him squeamish but he could look right at a butchered pig and not care.]