Day 13. The Final Chance...
Serenade had been awake since the class trial, he couldn't stop thinking about the SHSL assassin and mastermind that were hidden among them all. This was to much, these two had been deceiving everyone the entire time? His first thoughts? The SHSL Mastermind was...her...at least that was he was hoping for but the assassin, he had no clue.
*Ding dong, bing bong!*
"Alright, you bastards, it's 7am and as of such Night-Time is officially over! Let's make today great!"
"Fuck..." Serenade rubbed his eyes, he was tired but still didn't get to sleep, the trial ended at 11pm at night. "This isn't how I wanna spend my day..." He groaned, getting up and heading for the cafeteria.
"Oh! Serenade..." The familiar voice of B came from behind. "Were you able to get to sleep last night?" She asked, walking over to him.
"None...I'm exhausted..." He sighed.
"Really? Nothing at all?" Serenade shook his head. "After we meet up in the cafeteria-"
"Do you really still want to go in there?" B paused. "I mean, go in there and pretend Hammer's corpse wasn't strung up there?"
"...of course not...but I don't want to just avoid places because that's where we found bodies either..."
"Well, sure but still...it just feels...wrong to me..." Serenade sighed. B didn't say anything to that, she had no real way to answer back to it.
"Hey, guys" Samurai's upbeat voice greeted them.
"Morning, Samurai." B responded.
"So, how come you two aren't at the cafeteria yet? You're usually first there"
"We've just been talking here..." Serenade tells him.
"Oh, right...cool" Samurai gave a small smile. Samurai may not be the smartest but at least he's able to lighten the mood... "Well, c'mon! Knowing everyone else, Beau or Grimdark are probably there already..."
"True..." B agrees as the trio head to the cafeteria and just like Samurai had suspected, Beau and Grimdark had already gathered there.
"Morning" Samurai smiled.
"Why are you so happy?" Grimdark asked.
"Cause that was the fifth trial, right? So according to what Beau told me, we just need to uncover the mastermind and we get to leave!"
"Yes, that may be what I told you, but that doesn't mean that it'll happen in this occasion"
"What do you mean?"
"The mastermind has learned from the past mistakes, she knows what went wrong, do you seriously think it's going to be so easy to figure out who it is?"
"But we have you and Serenade! Finding out who it is will be totally easy!" Samurai protested.
"Well...we don't know that for sure..." B said.
"Seriously, B? You too?"
"Sorry, Samurai. But with everything that's happened we still have no evidence to figure out who did it..." B rubbed her forearm.
"That's true. The only one here that has any information on the mastermind is Beau and I suppose, Nimbus as well...but obviously he isn't here..." Grimdark said.
"Right, I showed Nimbus the archives yesterday...maybe later I'll show you all where it is" Beau folded her arms.
"You said it was behind the bleachers in the pool, right?" Serenade asked.
"Well, yes. But there's a secret to unlocking it..."
"So how did you figure it out then?" Samurai gave a suspicious look.
"I sorta just stumbled on it completely by chance. I wasn't expecting it to exist at all but it was a good source of information on our current situation."
"I see..." Grimdark closed his eyes. Serenade looked back at Beau and noticed a small pale tint to her face.
"Hey, is something wrong?" He asks her.
"Hmm?" She looks at him. "It's nothing..." She bites her nail.
She seemed fine just before she mentioned...the room... "Is there something about the archives?"
"No..." She answered almost to quickly, making it look like she was trying to hide something even more. At that point, the door opened and Olive walked in, accompanied by Orion.
"Good morning, guys. Did we miss anything?" Olive asks.
"Nothing much, but apparently, there's a secret to getting into the archives that Beau talked about." Grimdark explained.
"The one behind the bleachers in the pool?" Olive tilts her head.
"I don't think there are any other ones..." Samurai says.
"There could be, we just haven't found them..." Serenade says.
"Well...yeah, I suppose."
"...but, it doesn't look like we have much to discuss today, since the fifth floor was the final one, we have nowhere else to go..." Beau says.
"The archives?" B reminds her.
"...I'm only going to show those that I believe aren't the mastermind. It's only fair, right?"
"No way!" Samurai protests. "I'm not the mastermind, I don't need you doubting me about that!"
"Yeah, Beau. Why can't you just trust us for once?!" Olive adds. Beau closes her eyes and tilts her head down.
"Last time I trusted someone with something this big...a lot of people died..." She stood up and headed straight for the doors. "I'm not letting that happen again..." and with the vaguely eerie explanation she had provided, Beau took her leave.
"Ugh! Screw that!" Samurai said. "We should just go figure it out by ourselves!"
"Before that..." Orion interrupts, Samurai's hype. "I actually came across something rather...elusive when I was cleaning the victim rooms this morning..."
"Why were you doing that?" B asked.
"I was trying to take my mind off last nights class trial...but anyway, I was going through Zoom's room, it was a rather messy place...but I found this..." She pulls out what seems to be a newspaper.
....wait....oh fuck...
"Looks like Mr Stereo and Ms Love...have a little secret..." She turned it to them, showing the picture of Beau kissing Serenade during the first investigation. Everyone's eyes' widened as they looked over at Serenade who's faced had turned bright red.
"Well then...I didn't expect Serenade to be a womani-"
"I swear it isn't what you guys think!" Serenade cuts Grimdark off.
"The picture though, Serenade..." Samurai says.
"The pictuuuuureeee...." Olive and Samurai say creepily.
"I didn't expect you to be into gossip, Orion" B points out.
"Oh yes, I love these sorts of things. The article itself is hilarious, my apologies for my rudeness of course, Mr Stereo..." Everyone had a small grin or smile on their face.
I thought this had passed away a long time ago... Serenade sighed. I really hope that Samurai and Grimdark have no interest...
"Hey, why so glum?" Samurai asks. "C'mon, we have something to do, right?"
"Yeah, we need to find the arc-"
"We should celebrate Benade!" Samurai cuts him off.
"W-what?!"
"Whilst a party might be a little much, a simple congratulations would be better" Orion says.
"And what kind of a name is 'Benade'?" Grimdark raises an eyebrow.
"You know...like 'Beau' and 'Serenade' put together?"
"Maybe 'Sereau' would be better?" B asks.
"C-can we not talk about this?!" Serenade yells out. "We should be looking for the archives! Not looking at a gossip column!"
"...yeah, I guess he's right..." Grimdark agrees.
"Guess we got a little carried away..." Samurai admits sheepishly. "Sorry 'bout that."
"Let's just go, and never, ever talk about this again..."
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The six gathered in the pool by the sideroom they found Grimdark in. "Alright, the archives are behind these bleachers." Serenade points to the bleachers over on the right side of the room. "But we need to figure out how exactly to get in there, so we won't stop until we find the switch. This might take a while though so-"
"I think I found something!" A voice called for the others attention.
"...Or you could do what Samurai did..." Serenade sighed.
"I think I found the switch..." He says hitting his knuckle against the wall. "This part sounds a little hollow..." He mumbled, pressing his ear up against the wall.
"Maybe it's a fake tile?" Olive suggests. Samurai shrugged and tried to remove it but his efforts were in vain.
"It's really stuck in there...." Samurai says.
"Try sliding it?" Orion says.
"Hmm..." Samurai turned back to the tile and tried to slip it through any gap that could have been there but it still refused to budge from its position.
"Well, we know what this calls for..." Grimdark smirks. "When there's an obstacle in your way...PUNCH IT DOWN!!!" Samurai jumped out of the way as Grimdark, suddenly readied his fist and punched the tile with his entire force. There was a click as the tile went back and a section of the wall behind the bleachers slid away.
"...Well that worked..." Serenade said.
"And the army doubted my regimen. Shows how much they know!" Grimdark chuckled.
"Nice work, Grimsey!" Samurai gave a thumbs up.
"...don't call me that ever again..." Grimdark shot a glare at the earth pony.
"Alright then. Let's see what we've got in here..." The six head over to the section in the wall. The room was as suspected, covered wall-to-wall with old looking books, it was rather large as well. Seeing it stretch back a little bit.
"So these are the archives, eh? How do we find the books Beau used?" Olive asks.
"We just search?" B says.
"Looks that way..." Samurai rubs the back of his head.
"Alright then, let's-" Serenade cut himself off as he took one step into the room. He could feel something staring at him, an eerie presence from inside the room.
"Is something-?" "Shh!" Serenade cut B off. Serenade slowly walked forward, squinting his eyes to see if he could make out anything in the darkness. Then he saw it: behind the bookshelf in the centre of the room, in a gap between the books, Serenade could easily see something he hoped he would never have to see again.
A familiar pair of emerald green eyes.