Aewin

Minutes to Manhattan

@Altered Tundra #neverforget #riphoe

Danganronpa: Tower of Carnage (Finished!)

^{A lot of thought and barely any action. Would recommend skipping this if you want action instead.}

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Despite the surge of pride she felt as Max and Felix agreed with one of her many desperate attempts at theorising and defending Shaun's innocence, the moment did not last very long as Ice placed his hands on Krista's podium, with an aura that did not feel very... welcoming. One by one Ice picked out the contents of the wallet, letting it spill across her podium with little care, leaving Krista no room to argue.

There was no denying that Shaun was the owner of the wallet. Or was it Erin now? Krista could not tell whether she could call the web designer Shaun anymore. “I…” What? Did she want to apologise for being so horribly wrong? To stop Ice from mocking her desperate need to protect? Krista shut her mouth , feeling it fail her in that moment. She couldn’t say anything, there was nothing to say. She was wrong, and everybody else knew it too. Her eyes remained lowered in shame, glued to the identity cards left on her podium as Ice began to retell his encounter with the mafia, the awful group responsible for murdering and butchering Ice's younger brother so heartlessly- the group Shaun was a part of...

Was she really defending such a cruel person...?

And why was it always her that was being used in such cruel a way...?

Krista was barely around to listen to the entirety of Zach's rant, unable to think past Ice’s story. All she could imagine was being in Ice's position: losing Herman in such a cruel way until she was left with nobody to turn to... Her hands wrapped around her body, clinging on as if she were trying to give herself little comfort from such dark thoughts. Would she even be able to live without him? Krista was only suffering through this death and despair to return to Herman... without him... Krista would have nobody... She could barely imagine the pain Ice went through, her heart was hurting too much to even begin to imagine it and yet...

"Ha..."

The chuckle was so dark, so full of despair and insanity... Krista shivered as the chuckle grew into something more sinister. Tearing her eyes from the cards on her podium, she finally looked at Shaun and felt her body grow cold at the sight. The innocent boy she was trying to protect was no more... instead, a monster was in his place. This was not the boy that reminded her so much of her precious brother... This was what Ice was trying to tell Krista.

The trickster did not even seem the least bit ashamed of his past actions, taunting Ice and even Davis with a cruel sneer. Every reveal was no less horrifying than the last. It took Krista so long to realise what she had been trying to defend so passionately and yet the smallest part of Krista could not help but wish that this was all just a dream...

But alas, no matter how many times Krista pinched the skin below her elbow until it bruised and bled from the pressure under her nails, she would not wake up. She had been so blinded by her need to protect a friend, someone she so suddenly had come to think of as like a little brother, that she had ignored the evidence and vehemently argued as if Shaun could do no wrong.

"Pl-please..! T-tell them I didn't d-do it! I-I didn't k-k-kill anyone..!" The monster in Shaun’s clothes then directed his attention towards her, his eyes pleading her for help the way it had done back in the dining hall. Only this time Krista realised that it was not innocent, but all just a trick.

Krista immediately looked away, feeling her stomach twist in guilt and shame for falling for the act so easily the first time. Jezabel really was right, she really was stupid. “N-no… stop it… I won't do this again... please...” Krista’s grip on herself grew tighter, till all she could feel was pain to avoid looking into Shaun’s eyes and get fooled by his innocent act. Calvin tried to help: Krista acknowledged his outcry telling Erin to stay away from her with a surprised look, but everything was still not over…!

There was a clash beside Krista as she snapped to look towards Ice’s podium, only to realise the blood donor had disappeared sometime before, and when she finally spotted him she could see the hunger for revenge in Ice’s action, filling the air with tension and…!

“Calvin!” Krista cried out in surprise as the dark-haired metalsmith stood in Ice’s path, and she felt absolutely terrified for him. There seemed to be no stopping the blood donor and yet he stood in the way to protect E- no… to protect Ice. Calvin’s actions began to make sense as he tried talking Ice out of his plan to hurt the gleeful trickster, only to be shoved away. Krista wanted to leave, to help, but her legs didn’t seem to want to listen. Both infinites hit the ground, both looking in rough shape but there was no time to celebrate. Krista turned on her heels, the heels on her boots making a squeak against the flooring as she looked at Mercy, then at Dr. Killgood desperately.

“Help them! Ice is bleeding…! Calvin is hurt!” She urged the plague doctor to help, the only one with the skillset out of the rest of the group to do so. She looked at Monokuma, expecting the bear to shine the spotlight onto the infinite she asked for help from, to give the doctor permission to leave her podium.

Danganronpa: Tower of Carnage (Finished!)

my reaction to the @vocab post

Danganronpa: Tower of Carnage (Finished!)

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Krista’s second rebuttal against Jezabel did nothing to stop the trickster from trying to argue Krista’s points with assumptions and theories, with even more personal attacks against her. Despite knowing that there were faults, Krista couldn’t put it to words. Her mouth grew dry and no sound seemed to want to escape her lips. ‘Why are you doing this?’ They both wanted to protect their friends, but why was Jezabel so forceful that it was Shaun?

Shaun finally spoke up for himself, and Krista shot him a big smile for support. The poor boy was shaking as he emptied his pockets and revealed his shirt beneath the large jumper and scarf he hides under, the scars along his left arm visible to everybody around him. Both Felix and Cyrus supported Krista by calling out the flaws in Jezabel’s argument but the emergence of Cyrus (mentally dubbed as Ragerus) absolutely terrified the violinist, fearing that after wrong thing she’d suggest during the trial, or otherwise, would trigger the assault of words against her. Ragerus made Jezabel taste her own medicine, and Krista felt slight guilt seeing Jezabel look miffed and actually stop derailing the topic… only because Cyrus accused someone Krista would have never guessed: Alice Masson.

Alice deftly avoided the subject, but showed she carried nothing but a pocket watch and a handbook - Krista held back her question as to why she’d give away her note like that when she clearly had a pocket in her jacket, but her attention was stolen by Ice calmly interjecting his own take on the case.

...By revealing himself to be the wallet retriever.

“Wait!” Krista called out desperately, gripping the podium tightly whilst staring at Ice. She had to ignore Jezabel’s taunt… this was just too important... “Show us the contents of the wallet first! We… we can’t just take your word for it! You mentioned fake IDs, right? How would you be able to pin these IDs to Shaun? You’re asking us to trust what you’ve found without giving us any proof!” She looked at Shaun then Ice, her body shaking from adrenaline.

There were too many things to take in, Krista could feel her head starting to hurt. She was supposed to be helping Shaun damn it… why was this getting worse and worse? Was she making a mistake trying to help him? Did she wrongly assume Shaun was innocent? Going by what Ice was saying… it felt so easy to just turn back on Shaun and accuse him of being the trickster; everything seemed too perfect.

“You say that it’s Shaun because he could be the only one to throw that wallet and be the person refered to in the trickster notes, right? But what if we’re going about this the wrong way? What if Cyrus made a mistake with the notes?” She then scratched her chin, thinking hard for more suggestions. “O-or, as Alice said! She could’ve been followed into the vault too! Or Shaun! You found the vault without Shaun or Alice’s help right? Wouldn’t anyone else be able to do such a thing too? They could know about the vault and throw their wallet there, thinking it would be safe because they thought nobody else had found the vault yet!”

Danganronpa: Tower of Carnage (Finished!)

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Elias watched the ping pong battle of logic between the violinist and trickster- er, new trickster?- devolve into a silly insult match on Jezabel’s part. Weren’t the two girls trying to achieve the same thing? They both wanted to protect their friend, so why not look at other options. If Elias had a watch, he would’ve tch’d impatiently.

As the court began talking about the wallet, Braden hung Erica’s limp body against the podium carefully before sticking Elias out and trying to grab everybody’s attention. Braden showed everybody the inside of his trouser pockets, turning out till all that would come out was lint. “Before you start pointing at him~” Elias explained to anybody that was paying attention. “Now you may contin-”

The sound of laughter stopped Elias from continuing. It came from the absolute hottie of a politician. Elias barely had time to let out a strange moan before all hell broke loose. Gone was the calm, rational leader that was Cyrus and out came the beast. If Elias could drool, the puppet would. On the other hand, the outburst had caused… mild surprise from Braden. Mild? More like complete shock. Was this how a politician really was? Braden felt himself respect the politician less, despite agreeing with mostly everything the beast was saying.

What? It made sense. The girls were just going back and forth - Jezabel refusing to acknowledge proof and throwing out baseless theories to counter Krista’s increasingly weakening points - they wouldn’t get anywhere without a… “guiding” hand from Cyrus, no matter how unnecessary some of his jabs against the trickster and the archer’s relationship were.

“As such, it could’ve only been YOU, Alice Masson, the infinite recon.”

Alice? Well, this was just getting interesting. Braden slipped Erica back onto his empty hand before looking at the recon, who had been standing silently up until now. Cyrus’s points were reasonable, but the ventriloquist still wanted to clarify something before the hottie leads everybody away from the blackened.

“Waaaait, Mad-Eye Moody?” Elias gasped in surprise, then turned back to Cyrus, who’d thankfully returned to normal. “Oh sweetie, you’re hot but you’re also wrong. Shaun couldn’t get the wallet, yeah; but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it was her either. You say that only two people knew about Parker, but how do you know for sure? Anybody coulda followed Mad-Eye or Shaun before they met Parker~

“Sooo, it’s possible that any one of ya followed her or Shaun, found out Parker exists, then done your evil misdeeds~ Unless… somebody can prove that Alice was at the study before the body discovery~?”

Danganronpa: Tower of Carnage (Finished!)

gonna post this here before dam dam does

Danganronpa: Tower of Carnage (Finished!)

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Krista was completely stunned by the trickster's personal attacks. She didn't expect Jezabel to fall so low to begin questioning her skill with the violin, or use the blonde stereotype against her. But she looked to Shaun from the corner of her eyes. '...Better me than anybody else.'

"You're really not sharp, are you?"

Jezabel still left some holes in her story, one that Krista wasn't sure whether she was imagining or was Jezabel actually slipping. "But wait. You just said Geina told you about the thing with Zachary but didn't you also say earlier that Zach told you at the staircase about the event? So how did you find out?"

She thought carefully about the syringe. Krista was no doctor, nor an anaesthetist. She had no idea how it worked but she could take a guess. "We don't know how long he had been knocked out for. By the time I spotted him, he was already on the floor. But if he injected himself, how could he have killed Marianne? The anaesthesia would have slowed his body and he would definitely not be able to kill someone even as... dainty as Marianne and tie her up to the ceiling!"

Krista could admit she was wrong with considering Geina telling somebody else about the fifth sister, but something still wasn't right. She squinted at Jezabel at the next part, however. "How would Shaun even know Marianne had a buzzer? It's not like Marianne would admit to him that she had a buzzer for him to conveniently set fire to the room to. Everything was planned around the fire, so the buzzer had to be there already! Also, we checked Marianne's room and it was spotless, so even if Marianne did not carry the buzzer with her, who would have known where she would hide the buzzer and have enough time to rummage without making a mess of her room?"

"And finally... you still have not refuted the fact that I have been with Shaun the entire time since he's been found. Unless you're suggesting that I'm lying about everything." She bit down on her lip. "Jezabel... you have a voice changer... doesn't that implicate you more than Shaun? I mean... you could have also gone into the study with a male's voice setting. Now I can admit that this is a very presumptuous guess, but just for the sake of your point..." She turned to Shaun. "Can you please turn out your pockets to prove to Jezabel that you have no such thing?" Krista hoped he'd listen. She wasn't sure whether anyone would regard her side of the debate, and thus her, to be reliable after everything Jezabel said. She also left the floor open for anybody else to interject should they have... better ways to shut Jezabel down.

Danganronpa: Tower of Carnage (Finished!)

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The debate continued beyond what Krista could contribute. She felt like she knew nothing in a room of smart people, prepared for their job. She listened quietly, chewing nervously on her bottom lip as everyone answered everyone's questions. Even as Shaun and Alice began to explain who Alice Parker was and how they met the fifth Carnage Sister, Krista just did not know what to do. Monokuma claims that Parker's testimony, in this case, could be trusted, especially if she really wants the blackened to be caught to escape this torture, but Krista couldn't trust the carnage sister herself. It was just too convenient...

And then Jezabel began her dirty accusations. In her attempt to protect her friend, Jezabel pinned everything that could have happened on Shaun, despite it just not being possible...

"Your logic is so out of tune!"

Krista gripped the podium hard, her knuckles turning white from the strain. She looked directly at Jezabel at this point, almost challenging the trickster. "I believe in Shaun! He couldn't have done it!" It just couldn't be him!

"Now... let's begin with Marianne's room. When Shaun and I checked her room earlier, we found nothing; no handbook, no note, no buzzer. And we found absolutely nothing in her room, so the buzzer found in Shaun's room had to be carried by Marianne herself! Shaun couldn't have gone into her room without her permission or handbook right? But Shaun didn't even have his own handbook until now!" Off to a strong start... right? But onto the wallet... now that was something Krista knew how to argue.

"The truth bullet even says so! Parker knew Shaun already, but the truth bullet states that the person that COLLECTED the wallet was unknown! A MALE unknown! And unless Zachary will tell us that he's met PArker before, it can easily be him that collected the wallet!" Krista gave a quick beam towards Shaun at this point, giving the poor guy a thumbs up. "Two! Even if you're still doubting that irrefutable evidence, I have another thing for you! Ever since we found Shaun at the staircase, he's been with me the entire time, and we never went anywhere near the study!"

"Aaaand three! Isn't it possible that Geina told someone else about Parker too? I mean, if she was willing to break the rules and talk to Alice about her sister, then surely she would tell anyone else that she likes!" Krista then crossed her arms over her chest, feeling satisfied but not quite done yet.

"Buuut~" Elias interjected, Krista's head immediately snapping in the puppet's direction in surprise. "He could still be the killer. You haven't refuted that~"

"Of course I have! Shaun was attacked when I found him. Mercy can even confirm that the thing in the syringe is anaesthesia! He was attacked and I was with him the entire time after-"

"And what if he was faking his attack? All you gotta do is pretend to have a silly little headache, right?"

"Well... maybe... but there isn't any proof to suggest that he faked his attack! Look at him now, he's still pale as hell! Shaun isn't the type to lie about things that happen to him, unlike some." While she didn't mean to be too harsh on Zachary for omitting his run-in with Geina, she still had to prove her point. "I found him lying face down on the stairs like he was drugged then pushed from the top, that's a lot of thought into something that is faked."

Still... not quite satisfied. Her eyebrows furrowed. There was something that Jezabel had said during her accusation against Shaun... She turned back to the trickster, still concerned.

"But... Jezabel... I want to ask you something... You said that Shaun could have stolen the arrows from the dojo right...? But didn't Zach already tell us that they were in his room? He never confirmed whether they were in the dojo after his... thing with Geina... so... how do you know they were in the dojo?" She ended it on an unsure note. Did she miss something, or was that a slip...?

Danganronpa: Tower of Carnage (Finished!)

>this case has me like

Minutes to Manhattan

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Despite Harvey responding to Ava, Anna decided to input her own opinion. "These parties do not necessarily have to be glamorous!" Analise chirped. "I'm pretty sure you know this since you're here but this party is hosted by Miranda Priestly. Audrey's grandmother would never host any ordinary party, she is too... posh for that." Anna played with her fingers. "But New York has a lot to offer if you know the right people, there are all sorts of parties and get-togethers that happen around here!" Feeling like a tour guide more than someone responding to a simple question, Anna slowly grew quiet. Feeling like she'd lose people if she kept talking, Anna decided to look around.

As she shifted her eyes across the crowd, she noticed a familiar brown face swerving through the people and making his way to the bar. 'Yousef...! I didn't know he worked here...!' While Harvey asked his date for a dance (and making Anna internally excited for Ophie), Analise quickly excused herself to try tracking down the elusive waiter.

Like Yousef, Analise struggled to push through the crowd to make it to the bar. She even crossed by her father, who tried to stop her to talk to an old friend of his but Anna's sights were set on Yousef. Too bad by the time she did catch up, Yousef had already vanished in a direction unknown to her. Despite standing on her tiptoes to try peering over the heads, she couldn't make out Yousef's face from the crowd once again. Well, it did not help that she was still too short despite her high heels.

Abandoning her plan to make it back to her friends (yes, including Ava), she was stopped as she heard the countdown begin.

Ten!

The crowd chanted along. She joined in.

Nine!

She looked around at the happy faces, finally spotting another familiar one emerging from the glass doors.

Eight!

Analise waved her hand in Audrey's direction, hoping to catch her attention.

Seven!

When she felt the eyes of other partygoers watching her frantically wave at Audrey, Analise stopped and averted her gaze.

Six! Five!

She closed her eyes, trying to think of a resolution.

Four!

What did she want to do next year? It was something she didn't know what to think about. She was a live-in-the-present sort of girl, not a planner.

Three!

'Just make a wish... Anything you want will come true...'

Two!

Anna felt her face relax as she figured out what she wanted.

One!

She released a shuddering breath, her eyes fluttering open and looking around her again with a smile. It was going to be a fantastic new year filled with love and joy. Anna was sure of it.