18. Chapter Two: "The Secret Ingredient Is Never What You Expect" Part 7
Chapter Two:
“The Secret Ingredient is Never What You Expect”
Part VII
With the matter of Derpy’s scene of death decided, we’d solved some significant aspects to the mystery. We proved that the entire trap setup at the truck was a fake.
What I still didn’t understand was why the culprit did things this way. Why not simply leave her body as it was in the museum? A dead body could’ve confused Big Macintosh, especially as he was flailing in the dark, and could’ve easily led to his death as well.
My eyes fell upon Rarity, the suspicion still deep in my mind. Was she so bloodthirsty as to try to take out two people at once?
Then I saw Juniper Montage gesture for attention, and corrected myself: three people.
“Okay, so like, if Derpy died in the museum and her body was moved, what the hell was she doing there to begin with?”
Shining Armor reached up to adjust his police cap. “Good question, Juniper. That’s what we need to figure out next.”
Sour Sweet beamed at Juniper. “Oh, yeah, that’s a great question, Junie!” she said sweetly. Then she waved her wrist in everyone’s face. “But did we all forget I almost got killed by a trap too?! Huh? We haven’t done a thing to solve that yet!”
“Hold your horses, we haven’t forgotten you,” Cranky grumbled, running a hand down his face. “It just hasn’t been relevant.”
“Relevant?! I almost died!” Sour Sweet raised her wrist like she planned to club Cranky with it, and the only thing keeping her from doing so was the distance between them.
“And so did Big Macintosh, but you don’t hear him complaining, now do you?” Cranky snorted, not budging an inch.
Sour Sweet dropped her wrist to her podium and began muttering obscenities under her breath.
“So, as far as we’re aware, the note that Derpy was given is likely to be fake,” Shining said with a brief nod to me. “Wallflower already showed it was too pristine for her to be holding it if she had touched the truck, and given the timing on it matches Big Mac’s note, it must be a fake. It’s the only way it makes sense for Derpy to be in the museum getting killed before Big Macintosh arrived.”
“Was Derpy doing anything suspicious at all?” Cheese asked, raising a finger. “I’m just wondering… maybe she was, I dunno, working with the culprit to set up the traps, and then the culprit killed her so she wouldn’t sell them out during the trial?”
“That’s absurd,” Rarity snapped, scowling at Cheese. “How dare you suggest a darling dear like Derpy would ever commit something as atrocious as attempted murder?”
“Yipe!” Cheese ducked back from his podium as if Rarity’s words had been physical objects flung in his direction. “I’m sorry, Rarity, it’s just after what happened with Sunset, last time, we can’t be sure of anything.”
My breath hissed through my teeth as he mentioned Sunset’s name, and I saw the same happen with Big Macintosh. “Maybe,” I allowed, trying to keep from growling. “But that doesn’t mean we need to speculate wildly. For all we know, Derpy just happened to show up while the culprit was working and was a victim of circumstance. Or she was deliberately lured there by the culprit to die first.”
“Seems like a pretty foolhardy move to lure Derpy into the same place you’re already planning to try to kill someone else in,” Cranky said with a brief shake of his head. “I think it’s more likely Derpy just showed up out of the blue unexpectedly.”
“I agree with that,” Fluttershy said with a brief nod. “I think Derpy showed up at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I still don’t understand why anyone would go to the museum that early in the morning,” Juniper interjected with a brief glare at Derpy’s podium portrait.
Autumn raised a hand. “Maybe she just likes early morning education?”
“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Sour Sweet snarled. “Look, Derpy had to be running around for some reason. Cheese asked a good question earlier. Was she doing anything suspicious?”
Her eyes fixed on me, with a brief whisper of Now? on her lips. I softly shook my head, prompting her to throw her hands up and let out a high pitched growl of frustration.
Shining caught this exchange and narrowed his eyes substantially at both of us, before locking his cold gaze on me. “Yes, Wallflower. Was she?”
I thought back to the day before, where she seemed so desperate to speak with me, and nodded. “Y-yeah. She… she kept trying to speak to me about something. I don’t know what, exactly. Yesterday morning, she…”
~*~
Aside from Trixie, the only fly in the ointment seemed to be Derpy. Despite the way she’d been getting along with Big Macintosh the night before, she wasn’t sitting next to him this morning. Instead she was sitting next to Sour Sweet, while Big Macintosh was near the other side of the long table. Unlike everyone else, she seemed… pensive. Maybe even worried. She kept fidgeting, and every so often she’d glance around the room. After a while I spotted dark circles under her eyes, and her lips seemed dry, despite her tea.
And she was shivering, like she was cold, despite the morning desert heat.
~*~
“She was cold, shivering constantly. Her lips were dried out, and she had dark circles under her eyes, like she hadn’t slept. I tried to talk to her after breakfast, in case something was wrong. She played it off like it was nothing, and then ran off when I pressed the matter, especially after I…”
Sour Sweet’s glare intensified at me while Shining’s laser-focus homed in like a heat-seeking missile. “After you what?” he demanded.
~*~
“...Derpy,” I said, my voice dropping in pitch as I let a small amount of irritation show. “I know you said something. Sour Sweet wouldn’t tell me at the table. I just want to hear it from you, okay? So will you tell me? Please?”
Derpy’s face paled to a color like sour milk as she stammered wordlessly, shaking her head till she jumped up to her feet. “S-sorry, I…bye Wallflower!”
~*~
“...after… I…” I swallowed, and looked Shining right in the eye as I delivered a bald-faced lie. “After I asked her if Big Macintosh did anything to hurt her.”
As I expected, Big Macintosh stiffened, one mighty fist smacking his podium like a fallen tree trunk, while several others gasped in shock. “What? Why, he’s nothing but a perfect gentleman!” Fluttershy insisted, in a rare show of genuine anger. “How dare you suggest otherwise?”
“Really, Big Macintosh is a total sweetheart,” Autumn added, giving me a disgusted look. “Why would you think he’d hurt Derpy?”
“Seriously, Wallflower, that’s pretty low of you,” Cheese said with a disgruntled roll of his eyes. “You ought to be ashamed.”
“If you think Ah’d ever even so much as touch a hair on a woman’s head wrong, Miss Wallflower…” Big Macintosh rumbled like a growing thunderstorm, all fury.
In fact the only ones who weren’t angry with me were Sour Sweet, who simply rolled her eyes, and Vignette, who gave me the slightest smile of approval.
I wilted under the negative attention, my confidence waning even though I knew I’d incur this sort of reaction. “Listen,” I said, my voice shaking, “I-I wasn’t trying to accuse Big Macintosh of anything. I didn’t think it was likely! B-but I’ve seen abuse before, okay? She was acting like there was something she wanted to say but was scared. I was worried for Derpy. I was trying to watch out for my friend.”
That seemed to placate most of them at least, especially Big Macintosh, whose anger fled as if the thunderclouds had dissipated into thin air. “Ah suppose Ah can understand that. Is that why you came to me right afterwards?”
I blinked, surprised he brought that up on his own. “Err…”
“Wait, she what?” Zephyr murmured, glancing back and forth between us before gasping and throwing his hand up over his mouth. “Oh my god, were you two sleep--”
“If you finish that sentence, Zephyr Breeze, I will bury my boot so far up your ass you’ll need a goddamned telescope to find it,” Shining snarled.
Zephyr looked askance at him. “Aww, but come on, Shiny Hiney, can’t you see it?”
“Zephyr Breeze…” Fluttershy cut in, her tone full of warning.
A look of betrayal crossed his face. “Et tu, Flutter butter?” he said, almost weeping.
She crossed her arms and flashed him a look of sisterly disapproval. “You heard me.”
“Fine… sorry, Wally, Big Mac…” he groaned.
“Err, apology accepted… I think,” I muttered, my body crawling all over with disgust at the thought of Big Macintosh touching me. Not that he was unappealing or anything--I’m sure he was a great guy, but… guy was the key word in that sentence.
“A-anyway, to answer your question, Big Mac, yes, that’s why I came by,” I continued. “I was a lot more worried for Derpy after she ran off, so I thought I’d check with you… just in case.”
He nodded glumly. “And then Ah gave you a look like Ah was gonna crush you like a bug, as Ah recall.”
“Not just that,” I said with an apologetic frown. “You also kind of slammed your fridge door shut before you glared at me.”
Shining turned to him, and for a moment the laser bore that had worked me over was focused on another target, making me feel like the temperature had just dropped by fifteen degrees. “Why would you slam your fridge door like that?”
Big Macintosh gave him an evenhanded look. “Ah was in the middle of thinkin’ about mah Momma. She left me somethin’, an apple pie… she was always so good at makin’ pies. Ah was gonna get some, and then when Ah saw it Ah just… lost mahself in thought, starin’ at the fridge, till she suddenly showed up. Ah was so startled I slammed the fridge door shut ‘cause Ah felt like Ah was gonna get judged or somethin’.”
Shining uncrossed his arms and nodded sympathetically. “Of course. That’s an understandable reaction, considering the circumstances.”
“And then what happened?” Trixie asked, her tone subdued.
“Like we even need to guess?” Sour Sweet grumbled. She threw a hand out dismissively in my direction. “Wallflower probably pissed her pants and fled like a little wimp.
Vignette coughed for attention. “Excuse you, Sour Sweet, but I think that’s a bit uncalled for. Anyone would be afraid when a big, strapping stud of a man like Big Macintosh gives them a look of anger.”
Monohuman abruptly sat up, looking around eagerly. “Stud?! Did someone say stud? Where? Where’s the pony?”
Rolling her eyes, Vignette stuck her nose up and said, “It was just an expression, you stupid hologram. Calm down. I wasn’t accusing anyone of anything.”
“Hmph! Don’t get my hopes up, then,” Monohuman grumbled back before adjusting his seat on his podium.
“Anyhow,” I continued, after giving Vignette a brief nod, “I… did, actually, run away.”
Sour Sweet cackled. “Aww, it’s okay Wallflower, we understand,” she said sweetly. “That you’re a complete coward.”
“Sour Sweet--” Vignette began, but I threw out my arm.
“No, no, she’s… she’s not wrong. I get scared a lot. I can admit that. And Big Macintosh scared me. So I ran. I didn’t have a chance to confront him again after that.”
“What about Derpy,” Shining asked, bringing us back to the original point of all of this. “Did you see her again after that?”
I thought back to that evening, a coldness coming to roost in my heart. Not a chill, not like I trembled or shook with fear or anxiety, but the deadly rime of regret, icing up everything so it felt as if my heart stopped altogether. “I… I did,” I said, my voice frosty. “But I didn’t get a chance to speak to her. Vignette was giving me a pep-talk.”
“A pep talk,” Vignette said with scorn. “As if the information I gave you were a mere self-help guide. It was more than than, Wallflower, it was a path to bettering yourself. To being a better you.”
“That’s… that’s not the point!” I struggled, finally blurting it out louder than I intended.
And to my dismay she recoiled as if burned, hurt mirrored in her eyes. “Sorry I tried,” she murmured.
“Vignette, I didn’t…” I sighed, feeling so torn in two directions I just wanted to scream at everyone to leave me alone. “I”m… ugh, look, the point is, by the time Vignette was done speaking to me, Derpy had left the room. So I resolved to speak to her in the morning, since it was really late, and, well…”
“You never got the chance,” Shining finished for me with an understanding nod.
“No, I didn’t.”
A quiet descended upon us for a few moments, until Cheese abruptly cleared his throat. “You know, I hate to say it, but the way you described Derpy sounds kinda… almost like she was on some kind of drug. Maybe we were wrong about what poisoned her after all.”
“But we found nothing at any of the scenes to suggest it could’ve been a drug overdose,” Fluttershy objected. “Besides, she could’ve just been tired and dehydrated; that would explain her symptoms just as much as being on drugs would.”
“And it’s far more plausible,” Autumn said, giving Cheese an apologetic squeeze of the shoulder. “Sorry, Cheesy, I really don’t think drugs are the answer here.”
Cheese frowned. “But, but if she died of some kind of drug overdose, then--”
“Then nothing,” Trixie interrupted. “Trixie will not allow you to muddle this issue further. There was no evidence of drugs but there was plenty for poison, and we have a means of dispensing poison in our evidence. Stop wasting time chasing geese!”
“Tch. Fine. Don’t have to be so mean about it,” Cheese grumbled.
Sour Sweet snapped her fingers for attention. “Hey, hey, dumbasses, let’s try to get back on track here, huh? We were trying to figure out how Derpy got into the museum. Can we solve that, or not?”
“I think at this point, we don’t have enough information to conclude for certain why Derpy was in the museum,” I said after a moment of contemplation, “but we know she was there and that she died there, so we can set that question aside for now.”
“Okay, what about the knife? How’d they get it back to the museum before Big Mac touched it?” Sour snapped.
I shook my head. “Wrong question. They didn’t need to. Once they used it on Derpy they put it into position, cleaned up her vomit using the soapy water, then left the puddle there as a part of the trap itself, to further trip up Big Macintosh into grabbing the knife.”
“Yup, almost worked too,” Big Macintosh said with a brief shudder.
“Then they dragged Derpy’s body over to the truck with the tarp, set up the fake trap, and bailed before anyone could see them. Then whoever it was showed up when the alarm rang.”
“Great, so we’re right where we were when the debate ended,” Sour sneered. “Can we finally move on and ask about my trap? Ya know, the one that nearly killed me?”
Shining let out a quiet humming sound. “Yeah, that trap has been concerning me for a while. It seems kind of strange… I can understand trying to kill Big Macintosh in the museum, and I get faking Derpy’s death with another trap once she died by the knife, but what was Sour Sweet’s trap all about?”
Cranky snorted. “Everyone knew she went to go get one of her disgusting sodas every morning at about the same time.”
“That’s right, you could practically set your watch by her,” Autumn agreed with a brief nod of her head.
Juniper eyed Sour Sweet, her mouth twitching in amusement. “So if someone wanted to kill, she’d be the perfect target. Set up a trap, and wham, she’s dead.”
“Fuck you, Juniper.” Sour Sweet flipped her off with her good hand. “I was lucky I didn’t get my head bashed in.”
Vignette chuckled. “Yes, quite lucky, weren’t you?”
“Lucky isn’t the word I would use,” Rarity abruptly spoke up, standing straighter at her podium. A look of rage filled her face. “Indeed, dare I say it, it’s too convenient, how her trap failed to kill her. It certainly looked deadly to me!”
Sour Sweet froze, staring at Rarity in shock. “What… what’re you saying, Rarity?”
Rarity turned to me. “Wallflower. You examined Sour Sweet’s trap, yes? Tell me… was there anything strange about it? Peculiar, even?”
I looked back at the evidence, already certain of what Rarity was suggesting… and my heart sank. “...yeah. In fact…”
Fact #13: Convenience Store Trap: “The trap at the convenience store was a complex mechanism designed to swing a cinder block on a pivot at Sour Sweet’s wrist when she opened the cooler; it was explicitly designed as a non-lethal trap.”
“The trap was set up in such a way that it swung at Sour’s arm, not her head. It was never meant to be a lethal trap.”
The shock and horror written all over Sour Sweet’s face at my words couldn’t be understated. She almost fell to her knees, stumbling over her podium as she stared at me. “What… what’re you saying, Wallflower?” she murmured, her usual dose of malice and sarcasm missing from her voice.
“Well, it is a bit strange that it was set up that way,” I said, despite the creeping feeling crawling all over my nerves, as if a cloud of insects had settled in to begin biting and stinging.
“Strange? Try intentional!” Rarity thundered. She pointed at Sour Sweet. “You’ve been constantly against the idea of Derpy having anything to do with the museum ever since it was first brought up.”
“Y-yeah, well so were you!” Sour countered, raising her good hand to point back at her, as if that would accomplish anything. “And we were wrong, so what?”
“So, Sour Sweet, I think it should be obvious,” Rarity shouted back. “You set up your own trap! You deliberately engineered it to be non-lethal, so you could get caught by it. Like they said, everyone knows you go after that soda. So you had the perfect cover to murder Derpy and then get away with it by deliberately injuring yourself.”
Sour Sweet paled till her complexion resembled spoiled milk. “I…. you…. You fucking bitch!” she finally roared. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why would I throw a goddamned cinder block at my wrist if I was trying to fake an injury? If I did even the slightest thing in the wrong order it could’ve killed me!”
“Ah dunno, Sour Sweet…” Big Macintosh said softly, cutting her tirade off as surely as if he’d screamed at her for silence. “Ah’m thinkin’ she’s onto somethin’. It’s too good of cover. Ah… Ah dunno why you’d want to hurt Miss Derpy, but…”
“But, but, I-I didn’t do it,” she murmured.
Shining scratched at the back of his head before placing his cap squarely back on. “I don’t think this answers everything, but you have to admit it’s pretty sound logic.”
“No, it isn’t,” Sour complained quietly.
Cheese wrapped his arms behind his back and gave her a calculating look. “So how do you explain your trap, then, hmm?”
“Wha-well, I, I uh… I don’t…”
“I gotta agree with them, Sour,” Autumn Blaze said, her eyes full of sadness. “It even gives you time to kill Derpy, then get back to the scene of your own trap and be injured just in time for us to show up and help you.”
“Oh come on,” Sour Sweet interrupted. “Listen to all of you. I didn’t kill Derpy, okay? I never had a reason to, and I didn’t buy into the secrets bullshit. Besides, I saw what Monohuman did to Sunset Shimmer, just like we all did. You seriously think I’m gonna risk whatever hell comes out of his imagination to kill some girl I didn’t give two shits about?”
“And yet, it all adds up,” Rarity said as she brought her hand up to count off one by one. “You knew the area better than any of us, since you always shopped there. You have your motive, which would’ve given you all the incentive you need. You had the opportunity. I think it’s an open and shut case.”
“Bullshit!” Sour snarled back, her eyes wild and unfocused, like a bear on a rampage. “It’s not open and shut at all. Wallflower, help me, please!”
Rarity raised an eyebrow. “Help? Seems to me like an open and shut case.”
“Except you haven’t explained why I’d want to kill anyone, let alone Derpy,” Sour Sweet retorted. She slammed her good fist on her podium. “I never wanted to hurt anyone, okay?”
“Well to be fair, you do have a bit of a temper,” Zephyr said, immediately ducking behind his podium when Sour Sweet hurled an empty glass bottle at him, narrowly missing his forehead.
“Shut up!”
“Hey!” Monohuman leapt off his chair, shaking his head in annoyance. “Miss Sour Sweet, there is to be no littering in the courtroom! Please pick that up immediately, or else I’ll be forced to punish you.”
Meeping in sudden fright, Sour Sweet ran around the set of podiums and picked up the bottle before stuffing it back into her pocket and resuming her spot. “Sorry, Mr. Monohuman,” she murmured. “I won’t do it again.”
“See that you don’t,” he sniffed before sitting back down.
Fluttershy reached out to Sour Sweet. “Sour… I-I wouldn’t put it the way he did, but you do get riled up easily.”
Sour Sweet made a face, and turned to Fluttershy, said face rapidly crumpling into a look so distraught it made me wonder if maybe Rarity was right after all. “Fluttershy… you…”
Fluttershy squeezed Sour’s hand. “I’m… I’m so sorry, Sour,” she said, barely more than a whisper. Moisture dotted her cheeks. “But, well… it makes a lot of sense when you put it together.”
“Fuck…” Sour grimaced, looking away from Shy even as she clung to the hand in hers. “I know it looks bad, Shy, but come on… I don’t have a reason to kill anyone. I told you that the motive he gave us was full of shit, remember?”
“I know that, but…” Fluttershy gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “I don’t believe you could kill anyone. I’m… I’m not ready to vote. But I don’t know how to defend you. You can understand where I’m coming from, right?”
A dull whimper crawled out of Sour’s throat. She sniffed, loud and hard, and managed a quick nod. “Yeah. Yeah, I get it.”
Rarity grinned triumphantly. “So shall we take this as an admission of guilt, hmm? Well, that was certainly quite easy. I see why Wallflower was able to handle this so well last time.”
“Ouch,” I muttered, rubbing my cheek where her words felt like they’d slapped me.
Sour Sweet’s temper flared as she let go of Fluttershy so she could flip Rarity off. “Fuck no, it isn’t. Just ‘cause I understand where my friend is coming from doesn’t mean I did it!” She glanced at me, jerking her head towards Rarity.
“As far as Trixie is concerned, Sour Sweet is far too suspicious. Why else would her trap fail to kill her?”
“Gee, I don’t fucking know, maybe because it was deliberately set up that way to make me look suspicious? Fuck, last time we had this whole bullshit about the guitar; I don’t get why you people aren’t thinking about this shit.”
I briefly looked over to Vignette, raising an eyebrow in silent question, to which I received a nod.
“She makes a good point,” Cranky admitted. “Still, though… anyone who likes that disgusting sweet Sluggo crap has got to have some kind of screw loose. I wouldn’t put it past her for this to be a double bluff.”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Sour Sweet screeched before erupting with a horribly loud noise at the squeakiest heights of her lungs. “I’m that fucking stupid. Jeez, might as well just wrap a noose around your necks already, ‘cause that’s what you’ll be doing if you keep this up!”
Before anyone else could speak, I cleared my throat. “Excuse me, everyone… but I agree with Sour Sweet. She didn’t do this.”
“Thank you!” she shouted, letting her hands fall to her podium flat on their palms with two meaty smacks.
Rarity flashed me a disgusted look. “Truly, Wallflower? Why do you believe Sour Sweet?”
“Besides the fact that she makes an excellent point that another person could’ve easily built a non-lethal trap to attack her to deliberately make it look like she did it to herself, there’s something that she related to me during the investigation that implicates someone else far more.”
“Oh?” She raised both eyebrows. “And what is that?”
I locked my gaze onto Rarity, ensuring my next words would burrow into her and refuse to let go. “Yesterday, at breakfast, Sour Sweet was told by Derpy that she overheard you saying something quite incriminating.” I brought up the statement for all to see.
Fact #14: Derpy’s Statement: “According to Sour Sweet, Derpy overheard Rarity saying the best way to kill Big Macintosh would be via poison.”
“She said what?” Big Macintosh grunted, gaping at the fashionista.
“Well, well, well,” Cranky Doodle said, a deep scowl sketching lines all over his face. “Looks like we’re finally starting to get somewhere.”
“Rarity said that?” Fluttershy gasped, holding a hand to her mouth.
“Trixie is entirely unsurprised,” said Trixie as she adjusted her cloak.
“Does anything faze you, Trixie?” Juniper said with a roll of her eyes.
Trixie huffed and refused to respond verbally.
Autumn Blaze reached a hand out to Rarity. “Did you really say that, Rarity?”
“What? No, of course I didn’t!” Rarity shrieked, her eyes blazing with fury, aimed at me like she could channel them into flamethrowers to engulf me in an inferno. “Sour Sweet is the killer! It’s just smart of her to lie about this, to put the suspicion on me!”
“I don’t think she’s lying,” I argued, somehow standing my ground. “I heard part of their conversation, and I know Derpy was talking about you. And when I asked her about it later, she ran off.”
Rarity gaped at me, clenching her podium in wordless rage. “You think it’s true?!” she bellowed finally. “How dare you accuse me of saying such a thing, Wallflower Blush? Have you no shame?”
“Big talk coming from the bitch who was just accusing the injured woman of setting up multiple traps to murder people!” Sour Sweet snarled. She pointed an accusatory finger. “Besides, I’m not the one who’s been constantly ducking out of things or vanishing.”
“Yeah,” Zephyr added. “She’s been acting sketchy. None of us even know what she’s been up to for days! She’s just been hiding alone in her room all the time!”
Shining leaned forward to look closer at Rarity. “It’s true. She left dinner early last night, she wasn’t with us this morning when we were going on our jogs.”
“Because I was asleep!” Rarity protested.
Juniper took her glasses off for a moment to wipe them clean, then slipped them back on. “Were you? Because it wouldn’t be that hard to fake a sleeping body, especially with what little people can see through the keyholes of these doors.”
Sweat ran down Rarity’s brow. “Wha-I, I, I don’t know what you mean. Why would I do that?”
“Because you knew we were going to be jogging together and you needed a reason to be absent from the jogging,” Cranky said. “So you’d have time to set everything up.”
“That’s absurd!” Rarity slapped a hand on her podium. “Why would I ever want to hurt Big Macintosh? Or Derpy for that matter, or Sour Sweet?”
“Well I think anyone might want to hurt Sour Sweet, on account of she’s a total bitch,” Juniper said with a wink to Sour.
“Fuck you too, Junie,” Sour replied, tossing up a middle finger, though the grin on her face belied her tone.
“As for Big Macintosh, I think we might have a pretty good reason, Rares,” Vignette answered with a flashy smile.
A choked gasp escaped Rarity’s lips as she faced Vignette. “Et tu, Vignette? I thought we were friends.”
“Oh we are, Rares, we are.” Vignette’s smile didn’t wave an inch. “But, well, just because we’re friends doesn’t mean I’ll let you get away with murder. Show her, Wallywall.”
“Hmm? Oh!” I brought up the requisite evidence.
Fact #12: Motive Paper: “One of Monohuman’s motives, found in the museum. The beginning and end are illegible, but what is reads ‘...Belle had just long enough to scream one last time, desperately trying to stuff her intestines back into her abdominal cavity as she plumm…’”
Rarity froze as those words appeared on the rotating central display. “That… where did you get that?” she gulped.
“Like it says, we found it in the museum,” I answered. “Rarity, your last name is Belle, right? But you’re not the only member of your family with that last name.”
Fluttershy let out a louder cry. “Oh no! You can’t… surely you can’t mean Sweetie Belle!”
Juniper stood up straighter. “Wait, Sweetie Belle? Rarity’s little sister? What’s she got to do with this?”
“If this motive is anything to go by,” Shining replied, “she’s got everything to do with this.” He examined it more closely. “This suggests that Sweetie Belle died somehow.”
“Most probably in the first killing game,” Vignette offered up. “Maybe that’s what these are from; some kind of written log.”
“It would explain why they’re composed like a narrative,” Cranky admitted.
“Wait, yours was too?” Sour Sweet blurted, staring at him. “I thought it was just mine and Shy’s.”
“So was Trixie’s,” Trixie offered with a snort. “But it was ludicrous. It described something that never happened.”
“Err… right, mine never happened either,” Fluttershy offered up.
“That’s right, you told us about yours the other day,” I said.
~*~
“Um, I guess I’ll start, anyway,” Fluttershy announced, expression firm. “I don’t have them with me, but…” She shuddered. “The first one described me saying something about Rainbow Dash. She was in danger somehow, but I don’t know any more. That was scary, but the second one…”
She fell silent, eyes watery. When she eventually spoke, it was trembly and weak. “It was a description of a machine grabbing on and holding me in place, and I was frightened and screaming and… awful things happened, awful and violent and…” She sniffled, but kept herself from bursting into tears. “I just can’t understand how anyone could write out something like that about m…me.”
~*~
Fluttershy withdrew into herself, her face lit up with red. “...it’s so awful,” she whispered.
Wincing, I said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad about it.”
“No, it’s… it’s fine,” she waved it off.
I gave her a solemn nod. “Right. Anyhow, getting back to the point…” I returned my gaze to Rarity. “You could’ve seen this as some sort of threat.”
“Oh really?” Rarity drew herself up and wiped the sweat before adopting a dismissive demeanor. “And how is that?”
“Well, Sweetie Belle hung out with Apple Bloom, didn’t she?” I ventured.
“Apple Bloom?” Big Macintosh broke in, looking askance at me. “What’s mah sister got to do with this?”
“Possibly everything," Shining suggested. "I mean, she and Sweetie Belle were best friends, along with Scootaloo. They did everything together.”
“Stop being ridiculous,” Rarity huffed, her demeanor not wavering an inch. “I think I would remember if my sister died in a horrid game like this one.”
“Would you really?” Vignette asked, her smirk growing. “Sunset claimed you were in the first game too, you know, and yet you don't seem to know a thing about it.”
Rarity's teeth ground together as she fought to maintain her temper once more. “Whatever Sunset Shimmer may have said is irrelevant. My memories are perfectly intact. And my first memories involving killing games was waking up to this one! So there was simply no reason for me to be afraid for Sweetie Belle when I knew she was safe.”
Vignette chuckled. It was not a nice laugh. “Rarity… if you really weren’t worried, then explain this.”
Fact #17: Rarity’s Letter: “An unfinished letter to Applejack, supposedly written by Rarity and found in her room. She says she has discovered ‘something terrible’ and is tempted to ‘do something she’ll regret the rest of her life.’ She ends with, ‘Sweetie Belle is safe, right? She couldn’t have–’ and then it cuts off.”
Rarity let out a frightened shriek. “That’s… where did you get that?!”
“From your room,” I admitted. “We told you we were going to search it, remember? And you let us.”
“Wha, I, I, I didn’t expect you to find something like this!”
Sour Sweet’s giggles filled the atmosphere of the courtroom. “Oh wow, Rarity, that is so sweet of you to be writing to Applejack… you freaking creep. How’d you ever expect to send that out, huh?”
Rarity huffed. “If you truly must invade my privacy this much… I admit that I wrote this letter, yes. But it was for my own sake… I, I’ve been so stressed, being in this killing game, I needed an outlet, alright? And I was hoping that maybe somehow I could get them sent out… one day.”
“Ah thought we were friends, you know,” Big Macintosh said, his tone heavy. “Ah thought Ah could trust you, Rarity.”
“Wha--of course you can! And you still can, because I didn’t do anything!”
Zephyr Breeze butted in. “Hey, Big Mac is an honest dude. Sometimes people like that don’t always know how evil people can be, even right in front of ‘em! Especially someone like Rarity.”
Rarity’s eyes flashed with renewed fury. “How dare you call me evil, Zephyr Breeze? Of all the things to say about me… how dare you?!”
Zephyr yelped and ducked under his podium. “Aaah! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, don’t kill me next!”
“Oh for heaven’s sake…”
Big Macintosh coughed for attention. “Listen, Rarity, Ah know it's hard to believe, but after everythin' we've seen here Ah can believe someone tampered with your memories. Maybe even everyone's. What Ah don't get is why you'd want to kill me. Or Miss Derpy for that matter. Neither of us ever did a thing to you.”
“Oh, isn’t it obvious?” Cheese said, startling us all. He withered under the sudden attention before seeming to gather his courage and stand up straighter. “I-I mean, the only real way to find out if her sister is dead or not is to escape, right? So she needed to kill someone to escape.”
“Maybe she figured if she killed three people she had a one-in-three chance of killing a pony,” Cranky offered. “Though would that work? Hey, Monohuman!”
Monohuman teleported from his throne to in front of Cranky in two flashes of light. “Yesssss, Cranky?” he said, a slight tension to his tone, one I hadn’t noticed him possessing with anyone else save Vignette. Odd.
Cranky showed not the slightest bit of fear as he stared down the hologram. “Question. According to the rules, if someone kills a pony, then they get to leave scott free… but what if they kill more than one person? And one of them is human?”
“Hmm…” Monohuman brushed his fingers along the point of his chin. “I’ve given this a lot of thought,” he answered after several moments. “But the way I see it is, if you have multiple victims, it doesn’t matter if one is a pony: if even one is human, you still face trial.”
“Okay, good to know,” Cranky muttered.
Monohuman stared at him for another moment, then grumbled, “Did you need anything else?”
Cranky considered that, then nodded. “Actually, yeah. Did anyone else ask you this question before I did?”
A smile slowly spread across Monohuman’s face. “Clever thinking, Cranky, my man. But no, no one thought to ask for clarification on this subject. So if that was the plan of our culprit, it would’ve backfired.”
A frown tugged at Cranky’s jowls, the grumpy old man look once more prevalent. “Thanks for answering.”
Grinning wider, Monohuman tapped his cane and was back on his throne in an instant. “Very well, continue,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Oh, and do be advised, in the future: if you wish to consult with me before performing your murder, I’ll be all too happy to clarify any rules for you.”
“Gee, thanks,” Autumn muttered in an uncharacteristic show of sarcasm. ‘What a complete jerk, trying to enable more murders like that.”
“So it looks like if that was your plan, Rarity, you completely screwed it up!” Sour Sweet blithered. “Though it’s really quite a shame… who’ll fix our clothes after she’s gone? Hahaha!”
“Rrrrgh!” Rarity lost her composure, her delicate fingers curling into fists to smash into her podium. “Stop being complete fools! I’m not the culprit, I never was the culprit and I never will be the culprit, because I am not such an idiot as to believe murder is a solution to anything!”
“Well, this sounds familiar,” Juniper said as she fixed her glasses in place. “She’s sounding just like Sunset Shimmer did.”
A cold shock washed through my body as if I’d been doused with ice water. “Can… can we please not make that comparison?” I begged.
“...sorry.” Juniper flashed me a sympathetic look, and I gave her an appreciative smile in return.
“That said,” Cheese Sandwich declared, his voice going all dramatic as he adopted a look like he was making a huge declaration, “I think we’ve found our culprit. She had plenty of opportunity, means, and motive. She was overheard saying the only real way to kill Big Macintosh is via poison, and that’s how the trap tried to kill him. I say we vote.”
“V-vote?!” Rarity squirmed against her podium, her eyes protruding from their sockets. “You can’t. You mustn’t! If you vote for me you’ll be killing us all.”
“Uh huh. Heard that before too,” Sour Sweet said, raising a fist to flip Rarity off. “Sorry, don’t care.”
Tears of frustration ran down her cheeks as Rarity bellowed another wordless screech. “For goodness’s sake, I wouldn’t have done this! I couldn’t have done this even if I wanted to! Please, listen to me.” She turned to me, her voice quavering. “Please, Wallflower, I know everything is pointing to me right now. I understand. But I respect your intelligence. Use it! You know it can’t be me!”
I stared back at her, not sure what to say in response. “Rarity…”
She interlaced her fingers at me, the pleading gesture only adding to her desperation. “Wallflower, I trust you to do the right thing.”
I gave her a brief nod. “Okay… let me think about this.” I closed my eyes and began to run through the facts of the case one more time, thinking about everything that had happened, about where everyone had been and why.
“What’s there to think about?” Big Macintosh growled, his deep voice echoing through the courtroom. “It’s obvious now. Didja really think ya get away with it, Rarity? Didja set Sour Sweet up to be your fall girl?”
“What?” Rarity breathed. “Big Macintosh, please!”
He thumped his podium once with the palm of his hand. “Stop tryin’ to pretend you’re innocent, Rarity. We all know you did it. Hell, you left dinner early last night, remember? Ah’ll bet you did that just so you could get everythin’ set up.”
As a number of voices in the courtroom began to chant variations on “Yeah,” and “we should vote already,” Big Macintosh’s words rang through my head.
Rarity left dinner early. He wasn’t wrong about that. But…
~*~
I put together a tomato and cucumber sandwich, grabbed a bowl, and looked for a place to sit down. Derpy still looked just as off as she had this morning, and there were no open seats near Rarity, so I was left wondering.
Before I could pick a seat, however, Rarity let out a massive yawn, drawing everyone’s attention. “Oh, terribly sorry, darlings,” she murmured, before yawning yet again, her mouth stretched open so far I could see her uvula. “Goodness! I… I don’t know why I’m so...pardon me, everyone.” She stood and left the table.
~*~
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Rarity left early, yeah, but… she was exhausted. And it happened suddenly, almost as if… she had been drugged. Who made dinner last night?”
Autumn Blaze emitted a high-pitched sound. “I did!” she yipped. “Me and Cheese Sandwich! And Big Mac and Cranky helped! But! But but but but…”
“But it was made up all together,” Cranky interrupted. “We all served ourselves. What, we somehow just spiked the part of the soup Rarity ended up eating?”
“Could someone have slipped sleeping drugs into her bowl after she got it?” Shining Armor asked. “Or switched bowls altogether?”
“She does tend to spend most of the meals chatting…” Fluttershy answered thoughtfully.
“That’s right!” Rarity chimed in, pointing a shaky finger at her. “Yes, that’s it exactly. I wasn’t paying attention to my food for most of the meal! And I was so tired… you all saw how tired I was this morning too.”
“So tired you didn’t even bother with makeup,” I continued.
“Oh please, she’s just fakin’ it,” Big Macintosh insisted. “Ah’ll betcha anythin’ it was part of her scheme to make it look like she was innocent in case we caught onto her.”
My mind raced with possibilities. “Rarity’s not a mechanic or an engineer; a couple of these traps were pretty complicated. And that cinderblock was heavy. Could she even lift it to the height needed for the trap?”
I hadn’t quite fully processed that I was speaking aloud until I heard the murmur of others begin to shift. “Yeah, it’s not like Rarity is jacked,” Sour Sweet murmured.
“She’s stronger than she looks, but that cinderblock would’ve been really hard to keep lifted,” Fluttershy added. “It… it’s not impossible, but…”
And as I listened, other things began to click in my mind as lacking in sense. “Hang on a second,” I said as I raised a hand. “Derpy said she overheard Rarity talking about poison, but… how did she overhear it? Does anyone here remember talking to Rarity about poison? Anyone?”
My only answer was silence, though I noticed a few people open their mouths briefly as if to respond before closing them again. Only then did Rarity smile at me and say, “That’s right. I never said it to anyone.”
“Why would you say it to anyone anyway?” I wondered. “It wouldn’t make sense. It’d be like you were trying to incriminate yourself.”
“Exactly, exactly!”
Fluttershy coughed into her fist and fixed her gaze on me. “Wallflower, um, where are you going with this?”
“Sssh, I’m thinking,” I muttered as I held up a finger for patience.
Rarity probably wasn’t strong enough to hold the cinderblock in place, and she probably didn’t have the technical ability to build the trap. If we apply those standards to the other suspects, who did that leave?
I mentally eliminated suspects one by one, barely paying attention to the debate that was continuing around the circle. I tried to picture all the evidence in my head at once, just letting something coherent come into focus.
“And Ah’m tellin’ you, she’s a darn fine athlete,” Big Mac was insisting.
“It’s true, she frankly surprised me with her stamina when jogging,” Shining replied, skeptical. “But we’re talking about upper body strength…”
And then I realized it. It all came together. Someone standing beside me noticed.
“Oh Wallywall, don’t keep your audience waiting,” Vignette cooed, her hand slipping over to touch mine.
A shiver ran through me, an electric tingle passing through us both as her skin touched mine. I swallowed nervously as she wrapped her hand around mine to give it a squeeze. “Really, go ahead. I’ve got your back,” she said.
I squeezed her hand back, then pulled away, trying to ignore how much my face was burning. I stood up straighter and cleared my throat. “Everyone, we can’t vote yet. Rarity’s not the culprit.”
Rarity cried out in joy, fresh tears running down her face. “Oh thank you, thank you! I knew I could count on you, Wallflower dear.”
“Beg pardon?” Big Macintosh grunted. As his eyes locked onto me, I avoided my usual reflex of looking away to focus on him instead.
And I saw it. Hidden behind the bravado, the confidence.
Fear.
Firm now in my belief, I raised my hand and pointed. “Big Macintosh, it has to be you!”
“What?”
“Is she serious?”
“Big Mac? Really?”
Big Macintosh’s scowl darkened considerably, and his muscles tensed under his plaid shirt. He put his hands together and cracked his knuckles, the sound echoing through the courtroom. “Ah hope you’ve got a good reason for accusin’ me, ‘cause Ah don’t believe what Ah’m hearin’.”
“Frankly, neither do I,” Shining Armor added, crossing his arms over his chest.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” I argued. “Let’s think about things for a second here. Rarity left dinner early, yes, but she was exhausted. We all saw it, right? No one can deny that.”
“Ah’m tellin’ y’all, she was fakin’ it--”
I held up a hand to interrupt him. “No. It wasn’t faked. It couldn’t have been faked, because Rarity is too fastidious to leave her room without making herself look perfect. Every time I’ve ever seen her here, her appearance has been immaculate. Perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect makeup…”
Rarity tittered, holding a hand to her mouth. “Goodness, Wallflower, you’re going to make me blush with these compliments.”
My face burned more fiercely, but I did my best to ignore it. “Derpy said that she overheard Rarity talking about poison, but that doesn’t make sense. Rarity never would’ve said that to anyone; the only thing that makes sense is that someone asked Derpy to say it, to get us thinking that Rarity was trying to hurt someone. And the only one she’d trust enough to do that for is Big Macintosh.” I snapped my fingers. “And that explains her behavior last night! If she was worried about doing something she thought was sketchy, she’d be torn about confessing it.”
“That’s a bunch of phony speculation,” Big Macintosh grunted.
“And then there’s the traps themselves. These were intricate, two of them carefully crafted complex mechanisms. Rarity’s not an engineer; I don’t think she could make something like these.”
“Not without proper study,” Rarity agreed.
A quiet groan of thought emerged from Shining as he continued to watch me. “Big Mac isn’t an engineer, either,” he pointed out.
“But he’s certainly more familiar with building things than Rarity would be.”
Frowning, Shining rubbed his chin. “...alright, I’ll grant you that. But that still doesn’t mean Big Macintosh is responsible.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I replied. “Not by itself. But things start to add up when you consider other factors. Like the cinderblock. That cinderblock was heavy. And while Rarity might’ve been able to pick it up, she’d need to hold it in place for quite a while to fasten the mechanism together before she could let it go safely, and she doesn’t have the strength for that. In fact, no one here does, except you, and Big Macintosh.”
“That’s not proof either,” Shining argued. “That’s faulty reasoning at best. There are any number of ways someone could’ve rigged something to hold up the cinderblock while they installed it.”
“And there’s that letter of hers,” Sour Sweet added. “She literally wrote that she might do something she’d regret for the rest of her life.”
“Yes. Might. She was tempted. She didn’t say she was actually going to do anything,” I shot back. “All the letter shows is that she was scared. It doesn’t do anything to prove her guilt.”
“No, but it’s suspicious!” Sour Sweet insisted. “Come on, Wallflower.”
I shook my head. “Sorry, but just because it’s suspicious doesn’t mean she did it. After all, we already went through this with you, didn’t we? Your trap being non-lethal was suspicious, yet we decided you weren’t guilty.”
She reeled back, her injured hand raised like she planned to slap me with it before she exhaled a sigh and lowered it. “Yeah, okay, good point.”
Big Macintosh slammed a fist onto his podium, the sound of mulching wood echoing through the courtroom. “Ah still don’t see how any of this points to me bein’ the culprit. All ya got are a bunch of coincidences and things easily explained away. Ain’t nothin’ tyin’ me to this crime.”
“Oh?” I could feel it. This was it. Like with Sunset in the previous trial, there was a sense of confrontation here… like I just needed to break down his final defenses to finally get him to admit the truth.
The horrible, awful truth that he wouldn’t want to admit to, because it would mean his death by execution.
Big Macintosh glared back at. “Is that it? ‘Oh?’ Oh what, Wallflower? Ya ain’t got nothin’!”
“I beg to differ,” I responded. “Everyone, we speculated that the killer used the rattlesnake venom that was missing from the display, right?” There were various nods and murmured agreements, and I shook my head. “Well, we’re idiots. It couldn’t possibly have been that. It had to have been one of the cans in the coolers. Right, Fluttershy?”
“Oh, of course!” Fluttershy gasped. “That display was at room temperature. The venom would have gone bad years ago!”
“The killer used one of the cans we were all supposed to dump out?” Shining grunted. He glared daggers right at Zephyr Breeze. “Wasn’t someone supposed to have made sure no one did that?”
Zephyr just gaped back at him. “I did!” he squeaked. “I did!”
“Zephyr,” Shining said, clearly forcing himself to relax and soften. “It was a frantic scene, and the cans were there for a while before we decided to get rid of them. It’s not your fault. We just need to know if it’s possible someone might have sneaked one of the cans away.”
“No! I mean, I don’t think so?” Zephyr shrugged. “I counted them! But, you know, I count by threes, because that’s how my brain works, but there was an even number of cans, and…” He trailed off as he noticed the extremely imposing look on Fluttershy’s face. “I mean. It’s possible, yeah.”
“It’s more than possible, it has to be what happened,” I insisted. “And, it means something else. Between then and now, the killer had to be keeping the venom without it going bad.”
“So?” Trixie asked, raising an eyebrow.
“So, remember how I brought up the fact I went to see Big Macintosh, and he slammed a refrigerator door before glaring at me?”
“Big Macintosh does spend a lot of time in and around the museum,” Fluttershy said, as she gave Big Macintosh a look that stank of fear. “And I know he knows how to build things.”
“That’s right, he does,” Cranky admitted, his withering glare landing on the back of Big Macintosh’s head. “He’s pretty good with his hands. Always has been. I remember as much when he was in school. He was top of the class in math.”
“Wait, what’s that got to do with anything?” Zephyr asked.
“Engineering, obviously,” Trixie spat, her eyes blazing with scorn for Zephyr. I didn’t blame her; I was pretty annoyed with him too, with all his pointless interjections. “Any kind of engineering or construction work uses math; everyone knows that.”
“Everyone except this dumb fuck, apparently,” Sour Sweet added.
Big Macintosh’s face rippled with a sneer unlike anything I’d ever seen on the man before. He was losing it, and it showed. “Mah engineerin’ knowhow and math knowhow ain’t got nothin’ ta do with anythin’,” he snarled. “And you ain’t got no proof Ah had that vial of rattlesnake venom in mah fridge.”
“Oh really?” A smirk tugged at my cheeks. “Monohuman, could you--”
Monohuman coughed loud enough to interrupt me. “Sorry, but no. I won’t be doing that.”
My face and Big Macintosh’s practically flipped between us as I scowled at Monohuman. “W-why not?”
“Because that would be introducing new evidence!” Monohuman declared, thumping his baton onto the floor. “And no new evidence can be submitted after the trial has begun. If you want to prove this, you will have to do it without searching Big Mac’s fridge. You had all the time in the world to do that in the investigation anyway; not my fault you didn’t do it.”
“Hmmph.” Big Macintosh dared to crack a smile. “Sorry, Wallflower. But then, Ah weren’t worried anyhow, because even if y’all searched it y’all wouldn’t have found nothin’, cause Ah didn’t do this.”
I took a step back from my podium, feeling the momentum I’d had falling apart. I needed to get this back on track or else we’d lose. “What about the paper you said you saw? We never found it.”
“Ah’m pretty sure you did,” he said. “Where’d ya think that motive paper you found came from?”
“Ugh… damn it,” I moaned. “Stop denying this already, Big Macintosh! I know you did it!”
He shook his head. “Ya don’t know nothin’, Wallflower. Maybe you should shut up and let someone else run things. Cause no matter what you say, Ah ain’t got a reason to kill Derpy.”
Autumn Blaze coughed for attention. “Wallflower, he’s right… Derpy and Big Macintosh were totally in love with each other, like, super falling for each other. You knew Derpy, you know she falls for the big musclemen, and Big Mac, he’s such a total sweetheart, like a real softie, totally not a killer.”
“Yeah, I mean, you’ve had a few fair points,” Shining added, “But those two were definitely romantically inclined.”
“That’s right,” Big Macintosh said, any amusement fading from his tone, replaced with thick sorrow. He stared down at his hands, open and fingers splayed apart. “Ah won’t say love just yet… we didn’t know each other that well yet, but… Ah cared for her. Derpy meant a lot to me. Ah’d never hurt her on purpose.”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” I admitted, sighing. Maybe he was right, and I’d been wrong after all. I was about to let it go.
And then I heard Vignette snort a brief burst of laughter, quietly, barely above her breath. I glanced over at her, and she winked, mouthing silently the words, “on purpose.”
On purpose? What did she… she… of course!
I snapped my fingers and pointed at Big Macintosh again. “That’s right,” I said. “You never would’ve hurt her on purpose. But what if it was an accident?”
The whole room went quiet when I said that, all save Big Macintosh. Even the lighting seemed to dim, as if only he and I were in focus now, and everyone else fell away. “What’re ya sayin’, Wallflower?” he growled. “You sayin’ Ah killed Derpy on accident? Huh? How could that happen?”
“Simple, really,” I answered. “Derpy was worried sick about something. We know that much from how desperately she wanted to talk to me. But she never did. So if you went missing during the night, I’ll bet she would panic even more. She’d knock on your door, get no answer, then go looking for you. And in the process she stumbled upon you in the museum, setting up traps, and you stabbed her out of sheer surprise.”
He was quiet for a long while, long enough I almost spoke up again.
And then, to my surprise, he smiled at me. It was a soft smile, an understanding one, one that said everything would be okay. “Wallflower,” he said, his tone matching the smile. “Ah get it. Ah do. Ah know you’ve been tryin’ ta figure this all out, and Ah know you want to feel like you’re good at solvin’ mysteries, since ya figured out Sunset. But you’re just plain barkin’ up the wrong tree this time. There ain’t nothing you got that could ever prove Ah killed Derpy. It’s as simple as that.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Big Macintosh. I really, really am, but… that’s where you’re wrong.”
Fact #9: Museum Tripwires: “Two tripwires formed the key components to the museum trap, one tied to a simple mechanism to turn off the light switch, the other at ankle height to trip someone onto a slippery section of floor.”
“Something’s been bothering me ever since we first studied the traps. Something that never added up. The traps in the truck, and the convenience store, those were complex traps, with complicated mechanisms. But not the trap at the museum. It was just a pair of tripwires. One which turned off the light and the other which would trip someone. Why was this trap so minimalist next to the other two traps?”
Big Macintosh regarded me coolly. “Ah ain’t hearing no evidence,” he declared.
“It’s because,” I pressed, “you were in a hurry. You needed to come up with a trap to fake us all out, to make it look like you were targeted too. You probably had something more complicated planned at first, but Derpy showing up ruined everything. After having to clean up and take her body to the truck to disguise her method of death, you didn’t have time for anything more complicated.”
“Nope,” he said, and that was it.
“Uh. I don’t really get it either?” Juniper offered. “So the museum trap was simpler than the other two. So what?”
“It’s because of something Big Mac said during the investigation,” I clarified, and I noticed he got a little paler. “Here’s how he described running into his trap.”
~*~
“Ah came in and saw a piece of paper on a table. But when Ah started moving toward it, Ah tripped. Everything went dark, and Ah stumbled forward, where Ah tripped again. There was some sorta thunk, but the floor had soap all over it and Ah fell forward.”
~*~
“It’s mostly just him stumbling around in the dark. He didn’t actually see most of the trap.”
“Oh,” Vignette exclaimed, and it sounded like a baby chicken peeping. She had realized it, too. Glancing around, Fluttershy was halfway there, too.
I continued. “We had all just seen Derpy, who for all the world looked like she had a big piece of metal catapulted into her chest. And we’d just heard Sour Sweet describe her trap, which was this complex lever system. Why should Big Mac assume his own trap was any different?”
“He…” Fluttershy murmured, looking almost as pale as Rarity. “He said…”
~*~
“We saw the whole trap, the knife and everything.”
“Knife.” He glared down at the floor for a moment in silence. “Ah ain’t been in there, but Ah thought it was something like that.”
“Big poisoned knife,” Vignette clarified with far too much cheerfulness.
He nodded. He wasn’t calming down, exactly, but he was getting quieter, and I figured that was a good sign. “And,” he said brusquely, “y’all saw it. How close did Ah probably come to touchin’ it?”
“Probably very, very close,” Vignette answered.
He nodded again. “Yup,” he said. “Really almost died.” His eyes were dark.
~*~
“How close did I come to touching it,” I emphasized. “Not how close did it come to hitting me. That is how his trap worked; it was set up to have him fall onto the knife. But he shouldn’t know that, and he has reason to assume it worked differently. But he knew. And the only explanation is, he made the trap himself.”
Silence reigned for long, tense moments as Big Macintosh stared back at me, his jaw flopping like a fish, opening and closing to say things only to fail to make any sound.
And then, finally, he made a sound alright.
Sobbing.
He broke into tears, his face falling into his hands. “Derpy… Miss Derpy… Ah… Ah didn’t mean to do it, Ah swear… Ah…”
“Oh my god,” Sour Sweet uttered, staring back and forth between us in shock. “Did… did he seriously do it? He’s guilty?”
“It certainly seems that way,” Shining replied, his mouth twisting into a frown.
“Wait, you lost me there, Wallflower,” Juniper admitted as she took her glasses off to rub her forehead. “If he wasn’t trying to kill Derpy, who was he actually trying to kill?”
“No one!” he bellowed, almost choking on his words. “Ah was just makin’ one fake trap for mahself! The poison was for that, it wasn’t for killin’ anyone!”
“Not for killing anyone?!” Juniper yelled. “That makes no sense! What…”
“Oh.” Rarity’s voice wasn’t particularly loud, but some ripple in it shocked Juniper into silence. “He was trying to frame me.” Rarity sounded miserable, heartbroken even. “Oh, Big Mac. You didn’t need to.”
“What?!” Cheese Sandwich shrieked. “Why?!”
Rarity did not look like she wanted to answer, but Trixie spoke up. “No. Forget about the whys for now. We can talk about the whys later. Trixie is still confused about the whats. Could someone lay everything out so we can vote?”
“Of course,” I said, closing my eyes for a moment. Then I opened them again. “That last piece of information really does tie everything together. This is the truth of the case!”
“Derpy… I can’t imagine anyone would set out to murder someone as sweet and wonderful as Derpy. Instead, our culprit had a vendetta against Rarity. They originally intended to frame her for attempted murder by creating a trap and setting it off themselves, only surviving by sheer luck.
“Their plan began just before dinner: they had to make sure Rarity had no alibi during the night, and they had to connect her to the trap they planned. First, they recruited Derpy and told her to spread around that she overheard Rarity saying she would use poison in a murder attempt. They had already secretly kept some of the rattlesnake toxin, which they had hidden in their dorm room refrigerator. Second, they drugged Rarity’s dinner with sleeping medicine obtained from the pharmacy, enough to send her to bed early and keep her there all night.
“Once nighttime began, they planted a note in their own room asking them to come to the Touriste Trappe early the next morning. Then, they snuck over and got to work. As part of their trap, they coated the blade of a knife with poisonous materials they found in the garage. Tragically, this was when Derpy sought out the culprit to ask about the lie they had her tell. Caught and probably panicking, they stabbed her with the knife, and she died from the poison right there, bleeding and vomiting on the floor.
“The culprit was now in a terrible bind, because not only were they now a murderer, Derpy had died in the Tourist Trappe and by poison, which contradicted clues they had already planted that Rarity intended to kill them that way.
“That was when they had their brilliant, terrible idea: they would add on to their original plan by making it look as if Rarity had set multiple traps, intending to kill multiple people. This not only hid their role by making them appear as just one of several potential victims, it hampered our investigation by making us all afraid of finding new traps.
“They placed Derpy’s body in a tarp and dragged her out to the red semi. There, they stabbed a piece of metalinto her chest, right where her stab wound had been, disguising her method of death. Then they quickly made a fake trap in the cab, so it seemed as if Derpy was killed by a catapult there. They placed a note in her hand that looked as if it tricked her into going there.
“Next, because they knew Sour Sweet always came to the convenience store early in the morning, they decided to reuse their original trap on her… but either out of carelessness or tender-heartedness, it was rigged to miss inflicting a fatal injury.
“The only thing left to do was to make a new trap for themselves in the Touriste Trappe. But because they didn’t have time to build something new, they just used a tripwire, a slippery floor, and the knife, which they glued down to a shelf. It was clever of them to find another use for the soapy water, to disguise how they had to clean up Derpy’s blood and vomit. But the conspicuously unusual nature of their own trap was what helped us determine their identity.
“Derpy’s killer is someone we all respected, someone who’s already suffered terrible things here, in this town. But it’s also someone she cared about and trusted… right up to the point he pushed that knife into her body. It could only have been you… Big Macintosh, the Ultimate Homebody!”
The only answer from Big Macintosh was more tears.
“Well now!” Monohuman cried as he hopped off his throne. “Unless I miss my guess, we’ve reached certainty once again.”
“That’s right, we have,” I replied. “I think we’re ready to vote now, right everyone?”
Nods and affirmations met me all around, though many of them came reluctantly, especially Fluttershy and Autumn Blaze, who favored Big Macintosh with sympathetic looks.
“Puhuhu, wonderful. Then please, cast your votes using your pads. Don’t forget, you’ll have only thirty seconds to vote, and a failure to vote means you’ll be executed along with the culprit!” He spun his baton in the air. “Who will be chosen as the blackened, hmm? Will you make the right choice, or the dreadfully wrong one?”
Once more our screens lit up with the four by four grid of faces. Like Pear Butter’s had been, Sunset and Derpy’s faces were greyed out, crossed over with red Xs. The timer in the corner counted down from thirty.
I looked up at Big Macintosh, my heart sinking for him. I could hear it in his sobs… he truly never meant to hurt Derpy. It tore at me, knowing what pressing this button would do to him… knowing we were condemning him to the same kind of horrible, awful death that…
…that Sunset…
I closed my eyes and pressed the button with his face on it, whispering a quiet, “I’m sorry.”
Thirty seconds after they’d lit up, our pads switched off again, and the central display popped up with a feature of all our faces and a tally of votes.
Thirteen votes, all for Big Macintosh. Not a single bit of dissent.
“Well! Someone had the courage to vote for themselves for once. Admirable! Stupid, but admirable. I applaud you, man. Now… “ he spun his baton and the tally was replaced by the spinning roulette.
Around and around it spun until it slowed and landed on Big Macintosh’s face. Bells rang, fireworks shot off and that annoyingly cheery victory jingle rang once more.
And as before, a word spelled out in huge block letters.
GUILTY.
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I figured out who it was but didn't say anything due to partially getting it through meta reasons.
It was mainly the fridge and realizing that Sour Sweet's trap was a decoy made to make her look guilty and how only Big Mac would really be able to make the various traps. But the meta reason that I knew it was Big Mac was: I didn't think you'd kill off four girls before at least one guy and the only other suspicious characters were Sour Sweet and Rarity.
Do what needs doing at your pace. *hugs close*
You come first. I can wait.
Ooooh... Big Mac killed off his own waifu!
Man, I was off.
Offing big mac already? There goes my investment.
Called it!
From the beginning of Chapter 2, I knew food would somehow be relevant this chapter’s murder. It wasn’t used in the way I expected, but my statement still stands.
Also, no. Big Mac, why?
Gottem. I mean, I suspected Rarity too but whatever! I also technically thought that the culprit didn't mean to kill Derpy but it was a hunch and I had zero reasoning to back that up so I won't pat myself on the back too much. Great stuff as always and of course take your time!! Health comes first always.
When the culprit you've picked out starts being discussed halfway through the chapter, you know you dun goofed.
Still, I got a few things right (and everything else wrong). I guessed correctly that Derpy wasn't the intended victim. Also that Rarity was a red herring, though I didn't realize she was being groomed to become one.
This may be discussed more in the next chapter, but I have to wonder what Big Macintosh's endgame was. Did he plan on Rarity almost killing him and that would force a trial? Why did he target her in the first place? Was it due to the notes from Monohuman and he put together that Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle knew each other? Hopefully these things will be addressed.
I had a theory rattling (heh) around in my head that the murderer was going to deny the killing all the way to the end, like what Sunset did. But now that's been put to pasture. If anything, it makes the first murder all the more suspicious, and I'm willing to bet Monohuman is the first true blackend.
I suppose we'll find out at some point. First, there's an execution to witness...
Edit: I really dig how Cranky stood his ground with Monohuman. Cranky ain't got no shits left to give!
Also, is it me or did Wallflower actually deploy a little strategy to get to the culprit? Clever girl.
Man oh man, I DID NOT see that coming, we losing Big Mac already just when he lost his mother to
I'm sorry, but this was probably the worst-written case across both stories so far in terms of how the trial played out, given the presence of a frankly enormous oversight. Wallflower's entire argument for accusing Big Mac hinged on the fact that the other suspects couldn't have lifted the cinderblock. However, it had already been established that the culprit had mechanical engineering skills and a bunch of time to work with. Therefore, it would have been easy for them to rig up a pulley system to hoist the block. Pulleys are some of the simplest machines that exist, and with just two and some rope, you can cut the effective weight of an object in half! While I wouldn't expect the average person to think of this immediately, Cranky Doodle is an educator with years of experience, and should have pointed this out to counter Wallflower the second she started using the cinderblock's weight to justify anything. At that point Rarity gets voted the culprit instead and it's game over.
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This is a good point! Big Mac's strength is definitely not proof he's guilty, and neither is Rarity's supposed lack of engineering skills, (Rarity does make things for a living, after all; she certainly isn't as blind to practical physics as Wallflower seems to think), and neither is Rarity's lack of makeup. These are all meant as circumstantial evidence working together to make Rarity less likely and Big Mac more likely as the killer.
The best pure evidence exonerating Rarity is meant to be the very sketchy "the best way to kill Big Mac is with poison" thing, which is such a weird and stupid thing for her to have said, especially when whoever she was talking to never coming forward, that it was almost surely fake. Which puts the spotlight away from her and onto three people: Sour Sweet, who could be lying about what Derpy said, Derpy herself, or the person Derpy would most likely lie for, Big Mac.
It's Big Mac's slip of the tongue that's meant to truly do him in. Despite pretending to be so ignorant of his own trap that he didn't even know a knife was involved, he somehow knew it was rigged up so he would fall into a poisoned blade. He even trips over a second tripwire, which actually set off no mechanism, but it's only reasonable for him to think it would, based on the other complicated traps. How convincing any given reader finds this may vary, but the intention was so show he knew more about the trap in the museum than he was letting on.
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I'd say the reason was revenge. I know it's not fair to blame Rarity for the fact that Rarity's sister killed his sister, but the trauma of losing his mother, and then of finding out that his sister was dead too, probably pushed him over the edge.
Oh no. I knew this was a possibility but I had hoped this wouldn't be the case! Big Mac was the one who murdered Derpy! What makes it sadder is that he didn't want to actually kill her, it was an accident. Though he did try to use her as his unwitting accomplice when trying to frame Rarity. I know I said before that whoever the Blackened was will pay, but now I am more sad than satisfied over their fate. I just hope Big Mac will be at peace being reunited with his family, and hopefully Derpy.
There did also seem to be some important information for the future discussed though. Such as Monohuman confirmed that in the case of a multiple victims if even one of the them is a human then they still go to trial, and how he is willing to consult any future murders. Something tells me that first detail might be important next chapter, since that is normally when a double-murder takes place
Hey I got one right on this (thou to be honest I had 50/50)
Oh, Lord. This is like if Kiyotaka Ishimaru became a Blackened after losing Mondo in DR1. Poor Big Mac...
Clearly I cooked too long here.