This takes place in the world of Inseparable. While it's not necessary to read that story before starting with this, it's probably a good idea.

This is a collection of self-contained who-dun-it mysteries. Odd-numbered chapters will pose the questions; even-numbered ones will have the answers. Everything you, the reader, need to determine who did it will be in the odd-numbered chapters, so you're strongly encouraged to guess for yourself! If the answer chapter hasn't come out yet, post your guess in the reviews.


Papyrus was sure his client was innocent.

This was rare for him. While the Dreemurrs were his most famous clients, they seldom needed his help; Frisk and Charles were effectively above the law and King Asgore enjoyed several flavors of diplomatic immunity. Therefore, he'd taken on a wide variety of clients, from personal-injury to corporate. His most popular practice, though, was criminal defense, and while he wasn't a public defender, he took it upon himself to champion the poor and downtrodden, often pro bone-o. Which, of course, usually meant that his clients were guilty, often of even more crimes than the ones they'd been caught for.

But Karl Hummel was none of those things, as Papyrus judged him; he was not guilty, he was not downtrodden, and he was certainly not poor. Not only had he gladly paid the skeleton a rather shocking per-hour sum, he'd recently bought a brand-new Lamborghini with all the latest features: street-legal self-drive, built-in wi-fi, a comprehensive theft protection system, and tinted windows that he'd had to get special permission just to have on the road. He could afford it on his generous salary as an industrial plant manager, a job that he was desperately trying to keep. For Mr. Hummel had been accused of a crime that was sure to get him possibly imprisoned and forever blackballed from the industry: breaking into his boss's home and rifling through every computer in it, searching for "test results" and "performance data", as the computers' logs showed. The motive was obvious. Karl's company took performance reviews seriously, even for management, and a bad review could get him fired almost as easily as a burglary conviction could.

There was very little physical evidence. There was no sign of forced entry, nothing was taken, and the Greenbriars had only known that they'd been burglarized from their computers' search history. There were bits of Mr. Hummel's hair and skin found on the premises, but that didn't mean anything; he and his family had been to Mr. and Mrs. Greenbriar's home before, and their kids had even played together. The state prosecutor, Phoebus Venge, had outright accused Karl of using those visits to examine the Greenbriars' security system, which was antiquated and unprotected against magic. Which Papyrus found interesting, as all the Greenbriars were mages; Mrs. Greenbriar was a teacher at Toriel's school, so all four of her children went there, so by necessity they'd all received the genetic modification that gave human beings access to the cheat codes of the universe, a power that was once reserved solely for monsters. The Hummels, on the other hand, did not have that power; Karl and his wife were somewhat wary of it, despite the protests of their three children.

It had completely ruined their relationship, Papyrus noted, watching Mr. Greenbriar glare daggers at Karl across the conference room. The suit-clad skeleton felt most sorry for the children, as both sides had decided to bring their families along. The Hummels' twin thirteen-year-old girls and ten-year-old boy looked nervous, while the Greenbriars' eight-year-old seemed particularly perturbed at being dragged into this, and Papyrus could tell that the kid just wanted to fling a fireball at the other side and be done with it. Papyrus was glad that the trial hadn't actually started yet; this was just a deposition, an informal session to which Karl, desperate to clear his name, had readily agreed, willingly answering questions that Papyrus, experienced in lawyerating, didn't particularly want him to answer. Karl had known that the Greenbriars would be out of town, and even where they were going; Mrs. Greenbriar had recently finished grading applicants' tests, and she'd taken her kids and husband on a weekend vacation.

Probably the least credible of Karl's claims was that he'd taken the bus to the airport on the day the crime was committed, attending his uncle's funeral in Boston. The way he told it, his wife had taken their other car to take the girls to soccer practice while his Lambo sat in the garage. Phoebus had asked a lot of questions about that bus ride, and Karl had stuttered out his answers as Phoebus grew increasingly more smug. He'd also asked a lot of questions about Karl's car; it wasn't the only one of its kind, but it was exceedingly rare in the United States, and the closest other one was in California. Once he'd gotten the answers he wanted, there was a knock on the door.

"Right on time," Phoebus said, a wide smile on his face, and he gladly got up to welcome his star witness.

Papyrus' eyes went googly in shock as he saw who it was. The court reporter gasped. The Greenbriar kids happily, eagerly greeted the witness, as they'd attended school with him. The Hummel kids looked scared, particularly the youngest; he had monster friends, but none of them were Prince Asriel Dreemurr, who strode into the room with a slightly bored expression on his face and his ever-present green-glowing bracelets on his wrists. Not everyone knew what the bracelets were for, but it was common knowledge that Asriel and Frisk went everywhere together, and by summoning His Highness to a deposition, the prosecutor was running the risk of annoying Frisk Dreemurr, whose daily LOADs saved many thousands of lives. (They were of no help in this case. The house had been burglarized on a Saturday; the burglary had been discovered on the following Monday.) Phoebus just hoped he wasn't annoying Charles, something that he and the defendant had in common; Karl had sworn blind that he couldn't possibly have burglarized the home of someone from Toriel's school, because he wasn't insane enough to earn Charles' ire.

"Thank you for coming, Your Highness, I'll make this very quick," Phoebus said, giving the goat a seat. "Your hearing is extremely sensitive, is that correct?"

"Yes," Asriel replied, smirking a bit, a smirk matched by the Greenbriar children. 'Extremely sensitive' was a modest way of putting it. Asriel's ears were legendary.

"How far were you from the Greenbriar residence when the burglary occurred?"

"Slightly over a mile," Asriel replied. It had been pure luck that he'd been near the Greenbriar home at the time, bicycling with his siblings. He'd later met the Greenbriar kids at the mall (the school year still hadn't started) and they'd brought up the burglary to him. He'd gone to the police with what he knew.

"Did you hear the engine of a prototype Lamborghini at the time?" Papyrus knew the question was coming but winced anyway, as did Karl's wife. Karl simply looked shocked and perturbed. Their girls looked about to cry; the boy stared at Asriel, unmoving.

"Yes," Asriel replied. "I heard the engine approach and turn off. Five minutes later, I heard it turn back on and drive away."

"Wait a minute!" Karl shouted, against all advice and common sense. "How did you know it's a prototype Lamborghini?"

Asriel was under no obligation to answer him but did so anyway. "That's like asking how you know somebody has an accent. Your car's got a telltale sound. That car, or one just like it, was definitely there." And that ended it, Papyrus realized. The skeleton couldn't possibly impugn the credibility of this witness. Karl had means, motive, and opportunity, and a car just like his was at the scene.

Papyrus' puzzle-solving sense worked furiously, and suddenly, he had his answer.


hey. didja follow the clues? or maybe you're just reading the story, waiting for my brother to do something funny.

SANS! QUIT INSINUATING THAT I'M COMIC RELIEF! I AM A VERY SERIOUS LAWYER NOW AND I DO VERY SERIOUS LAWYER THINGS! LIKE TRIALS! AND DEPOSITIONS! AND PUZZLE SOLVING! I EVEN HAVE A BRIEFCASE FULL OF THAT PAPER THAT'S LONGER THAN NORMAL PAPER BECAUSE LAWYERS USE IT!

heh. well, this is the first puzzle. it's pretty easy, i'm sure you can figure it out. good luck, kid.