For Levy's notepad, I'm thinking of either the large yellow pads or the smaller ones that fit into a pocket, with the spiral rings at the very top.
Sorry for any mistakes! I'm a bit tired but I wanted to finish this before Monday.
Everyone glanced to Jet in confusion, morbid excitement, and shock, still dazed from the latest murder. Below, at everyone's feet, Droy laid on the ground with his stomach to the floor and back to the ceiling. A knife was stuck in his back and it was obvious from the paling skin and lack of life and breath that he was almost if not already dead.
"I...I..." Jet huffed. "Cana must have done this..."
"Wait - so you didn't actually see Cana, but you think it's her?" Lucy asked.
"It has to be! Who else... why else would Droy be dead in front of us? Who else could have killed him?" Jet said.
Erza shot Jet a critical look. "You're assuming that Cana somehow broke through Freed's enchantments, of which Levy had already made sure no one living could pass through, ran downstairs after us, turned off the lights, stabbed Droy, and managed to slip away without any of us knowing? Somehow, I doubt that... do any of you see Cana in the room? Did any of you see her in this room around the time Droy was killed?"
There were murmurs of "no"'s and "I don't think so..." from the crowd, as well as the shaking of heads. After about five seconds, it was evident that Cana had not been sighed in the room.
"It's a bit unbelievable..." Max said.
"I just thought that she would, since she's the murderer," Jet said.
"No, she isn't!" Mirajane replied. "Cana is not the murderer!"
"Well, she was fighting with Laxus earlier! And after Droy said that he had never trusted a drunk, or her... well, that may be incentive enough to kill him, isn't it?" Jet questioned.
"So based off of a few instances, you assume that Cana, who you have known for years, is the killer and the creator of all of this madness," Freed stated, not a tad of emotion present in his voice.
Jet blinked, his voice growing louder and louder as he said, "I... my best friend just died! I don't know how to handle this!"
"We can solve this very easily by going up to where we caught Cana in runes," Levy suggested. "If she's still there, then unless she's somehow tricking us, it should be enough evidence to prove that Cana is not guilty, but in fact innocent."
"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go!" Wendy exclaimed. Erza led the way again, eerily similar to last time when they had found Laxus' body. In the back of their minds, however, the guild mates were hoping for a different outcome.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Silence reigned, the breathing of the Fairy Tail members being the only sound.
The only sound.
And, as the dread pooled in everyone's stomachs, the wizards gathered around the box of runes that held a dead Cana, eyes still wide open in shock.
"I... I don't believe it," Freed whispered hoarsely. "Nothing was supposed to get past the runes..."
"And yet someone slipped past?! Nothing alive was supposed to be able to pass - " As Levy broke off mid-sentence, those close to her heard one of her rare cursing. "We didn't make sure that non living things could come through, Freed! Any magic or nonliving objects could have passed through the runes and killed her!"
"I doubt that's the problem," Pantherlily meowed, flying above them as he put a paw to the runes. "I don't see any injuries or weapons on or around or near her."
Mirajane started to break down into tears again. Meanwhile, Freed scrambled to take down the runes as he swiped his sword across the purple-lettered box once.
"I guess she wasn't the murderer," Lissana pointed out as she patted her sister on the back.
Freed's mind flashed back to earlier, when Laxus had still been alive, right after letting the stranger into the guild and locking him in the waiting room.
"I am not going to just run around the guild achieving nothin' and getting more of us killed. I want to pound this killer to a pulp!"
Is that not what has happened so far? Freed wondered as he watched the runes slowly disappear. So far, all we have achieved is narrowing down the list of suspects with each death that has occurred. We even managed to get an unlucky, innocent traveler killed.
As soon as the runes were abolished, Lissana ran over to Cana and held the card mage up in her arms, inspecting for wounds or damage. After a few seconds, her head raised up to face the waiting crowd.
"There's no external injuries, as far as I can see, and she had no pulse," she reported. "In order for the murderer to murder Cana, however, they would hardly have any time - if any time at all - to kill both Droy and Cana, meaning that the killing itself would be quick, brutal, and sloppy."
Levy nodded, agreeing. "There should be blood everywhere, but there isn't even a weapon that we can use to identify the mode of killing."
"How would someone manage to kill both Droy and Cana, anyway?" Bickslow asked. "'Cause only Jet's fast, but even he wouldn' be able to kill both within... what, seven seconds? How long were the lights off? And he was standin' right near Droy, too."
Would that make Jet the murderer of Droy? Freed thought. Probably not - they were best friends, as Jet pointed out, and the murderer would want to be seen in the back of the crowd, not right next to the dead body. Placement matters not; it means nothing in that situation.
Lucy then spoke up from the back of the crowd. "What if Cana was poisoned? She was the only one drinking anything after Master was killed." The Celstial Spirit Mage was correct on her statement - everyone else had been too nervous, too jittery to eat or drink much.
"We should sniff - I dunno, get near her and see if we smell poison," Gray said. "Someone who knows that sort of smell."
Mirajane stepped forward, wiping tears away. Leaning down next to her sister and fixing her dress, the demon did as Gray suggested. It made complete sense Mirajane would be the one - she had inhaled and consumed poison plenty of times before.
A second later, she fell back, eyes wide with horror. "It's... exactly what Lucy said. Someone poisoned Cana!"
"Then someone snuck poison into the ale Cana was drinking - wait, wasn't she and Elfman having a drinking contest before we found out Master was killed?" Max asked.
"Elfman would be feeling the effects about now, too, then," Evergreen said, eyes wide with worry.
"No one drink or eat anything," Erza swiftly commanded. Although, a few rolled their eyes a the absurd statement - as if they would be consuming anything out of fear that it too would cause their deaths!
"Let's take Cana's body downstairs and check on Elfman quickly," Lissana said, Max quickly coming forward to help her carry the card mage down the steps. Everyone rushed into the kitchen to see Elfman's condition.
Once the doors to the guild's kitchen were flung open again, Lissana left Max to support Cana's body by himself while she and Mirajane ran to check on their brother, Evergreen and a few other extremely concerned friends of Elfman following behind more slowly.
"He seems... fine," Mirajane said. "The murderer poisoned the alcohol after their drinking competition, it seems."
"So that means that someone specifically targeted Cana," Levy said as she wrote in her notepad. "Someone did this on purpose, to kill only Cana."
"Too many of our nakama are being murdered," Erza said. "The bodies are stacking up very quickly... it seems that the count is rising faster than before!"
"True," Carla agreed as she floated down, wings folding away, to sit down on top of Wendy's blue hair. "First it was Master, and then a while afterwards Juvia... but after the stranger, Laxus, Droy, and Cana were all killed at a much faster rate than the first couple of murders."
Levy leaned on the counter with her notepad and pen, looking down at her notes. "I wonder if there is a resemblance to the murders? Or a connection - or anything to help solve the mystery and catch the killer. Let's see..."
She scribbled the dead's names on a fresh sheet - Master Makarov, Juvia, Stranger, Laxus, Droy, and Cana. She then drew a line from Master Makarov to Laxus and, next to the line, wrote Close Relation.
"Hmm..." Then, she circled Master Makarov, Juvia, Laxus, and Cana, writing Tenrou Island around the circles. She also connected everyone but Juvia and Stranger to one another by lines. To this, she explained on her notepad, they all joined Fairy Tail before age 15. Or so she was assuming - she had no idea what Juvia's and Master's age was, or when Master Makarov had joined Fairy Tail. Frowning, Levy cross out her first phrase and instead wrote joined Fairy Tail before Lucy instead.
Not much known to guild was written in a connecting line to Juvia and Stranger - although Juvia was no longer considered a new addition, she was still very secretive. In fact, all Levy really knew about Juvia was that she was a water mage, lived in Fairy Hills, used to be in the guild Phantom Lord, and really, really, really liked Gray.
The stranger was an easy addition to the latest category - he was a stranger for a reason. Levy hadn't even gotten his name, or who he worked for, or really any personal information from the traveler.
It was sad, Levy reflected, to mourn for the death of a man she had known for less than three hours and a man who she never knew anything about. And yet he'd still trusted Fairy Tail... which had resulted in his death.
More, small connections were made throughout the six people, although Levy started to grow more and more frustrated as time went on. Behind her, she could hear talking and discussing about the murders - who would want to kill Juvia, how Cana had discovered the secret passage, and so on.
Levy glanced back down on her paper. Not a single fact, connection, or anything connected the six dead people except for three things: they were all dead, they were all killed on the same night, and they were all murdered in the formerly safe Fairy Tail guild.
The Solid Script mage then decided to flip to a new page after realizing she would go nowhere with her current notes. Going to a fresh sheet of paper, Levy then wrote down everyone dead's name on a separate sheet in the order that they were killed - Makarov, Juvia, Stranger, Laxus, Droy, Cana.
Hmm...
A second later, Levy had gone to yet another new page. This time, she drew a table very similar to the one she had done way back when, when Master Makarov had been the only death. However, in the first row she wrote the dead people's names in each of the boxes save for the first. Then, in the first column she wrote the names of everyone present in the guild after Bisca, Alzack, and Asuka had left at eleven PM. The column included everyone's names, such as the stranger, Makarov, and Juvia, even though the three were all dead.
Master Makarov had his own row completely inked out - a thick black line, because he had been the first one dead and thus could not have killed anyone including Cana's poison, since the poisoning had occurred after his death because of Elfman was still alive. The same was with the stranger.
Juvia's row was similarly inked out at her death and beyond so. This also happened to Laxus' row after his death, and Droy and Cana's after their own killings. Then, being very careful and very precise, Levy wrote completely innocent for some of the deaths - Lucy, Natsu, Gray, and Erza were completely clean for Juvia's death, for example, and Elfman was completely innocent for everything.
And with that, Levy's personal table of who was innocent and who was guilty was finished. She had not a single idea of what to put for anyone else, and she didn't feel like interrogating everyone again... she doubted it would help, anyway. Most spaces were left blank, such as just about everyone for Makarov's death except for the stranger and Master Makarov himself.
Levy faced the rest of her alive and dead guild mates, who hadn't changed their actions from when she had started her lists and notes ten minutes before. Her attention was caught by Mirajane, who had looked to the kitchen clock for the time.
"It's 2:17," Mirajane said. "This has been going on... for quite a while now."
Then Lucy pointed out something very similar, echoing what Freed had realized earlier.
"In the last couple of hours," Lucy said, "They only things that we have accomplished are killing each other, running around in dark hallways, and making lists. We're hopeless."
No one disagreed with her.
One last thing: I'm not sure if I can update with a new chapter this week, as I run Cross Country and a major race is coming up so longer practices are to be expected. Right after that, I leave on vacation and won't get back until two Wednesdays from now. When I can, I'll try to get write a new chapter (and finish the outline, not much to go) but where we're going on vacation, there isn't very good internet.
Thanks for reading and please review.