A/N: I'm back! This posting took a good bit longer than normal, I know. Truth be told, things have been pretty busy and hectic for me these last couple of weeks, and so this story wasn't really on my mind. It hasn't helped that writing this section of the story has been quite a bit more difficult than I originally anticipated. I might be able to post the next chapter around Christmas, but we'll have to see how things turn out for me then.

"I'm disappointed in you, Ishi," Bankei said bitterly. "And that's saying something, because I expect very little from you."

"Wow, you're really mad now, huh?" Kimi commented. "At least this time we know it's probably genuine."

"It is genuine," Bankei snapped. "Because this was not what I was hoping for. I had hoped that we wouldn't get a confession so soon. Ishi had done a good enough job feigning innocence, I feel. She just needed to continue doing so long enough for everyone else to figure it out by themselves."

"I didn't 'need' to do that!" Ishi argued back. "That would just make things worse for everyone else, and for your benefit. And besides…holding back my true feelings totally sucks. I've already gotten kinda tired of acting, like, enthusiastic about helping you guys. I mean, obviously, I want to help you guys, but…I mean, by helping you guys out, I was also kinda, like, trying to get in good with you guys so you'd trust me."

"Really?" Naoko asked. "Is that why you'd volunteer to help us out with things? Like moving the ethanol from Eryu's room into the distillery, or helping figure out the name of the truth serum?"

"I mean, yeah," Ishi admitted. "I figured if you were trying to do something sneaky, helping out would be a great way to figure out just what that something was, y'know? I don't think you guys ever made it super clear to any of us just what you were trying to accomplish."

"Hm," Yori thought to herself. "I suppose we tried to keep a lot of sensitive information under wraps. If we had everyone speaking in code about what we were trying to accomplish, IMONO could've started to piece things together."

"Still, Ishi, you could've done more," Kimi pointed out. "I don't mean to seem like I'm criticizing you for not fucking us over as much as you could've, but last time I checked, you haven't really been participating in whatever dumb experiments they've been doing."

"I…" Ishi started to say something, but stopped and began to sigh. "I was kinda hoping I could work my way up to that sort of thing. Y'know? I couldn't do too much, or it'd be suspicious, right? Plus, I dunno if I'd actually be able to help much with that. That sort of thing is not my thing."

"See, this is the sort of honesty I was hoping we could save for later," Bankei muttered.

"Well, whatever, Bankei," Ishi replied, fed up and rolling her eyes. "It's not like you'd actually be, like, satisfied with it. You'd probably get disappointed about it being over, like, immediately afterwards. Because you're totally crazy, and totally confusing, and just…totally…I dunno what other word to use."

"Pathetic?" Mareo suggested.

"Yeah, sure," Ishi supposed.

"Oh, so now you're calling me pathetic," Bankei replied bitterly. "Quite the low blow from someone as lowly as yourself."

"Well, it's true," Mariko pointed out. "I mean, I didn't wanna say it, but you've been giving me some real Dahlia Hawthorne vibes for a while now. And she definitely didn't get what she wanted."

"I don't know who that is," Bankei said. "But no matter. You may have derailed things, Ishi, but don't think you can make this mystery suddenly disappear. There's still a lot of ambiguity that I doubt even you can provide answers for."

"Well, I can tell you guys a couple of things that I know," Ishi offered. "Anyone here wanna ask me anything?"

"Yeah, definitely," Kimi said. "Before we get any farther, I kinda wanna know what that thing with Hoshi's notebook was about."

"Oh?" Ishi responded. "I'm sorry, I guess giving it to you slipped my mind. It has, like, this secret code-talking guide that Hoshi made for us."

"Seriously?" Kimi replied. "Okay. So, alright, next question…what the hell is it with these cases recently? I swear, this is the third case in a row where someone ate or drank something that was spiked, or poisoned, or something. And this time, it was all of us, and not just Haru!"

"Kimi, neither of those questions really help us right now," Eryu pointed out.

"I'm asking them for me, okay?" Kimi replied defensively. "If you want a better question, then…Ishi, why did you wipe your own memory if we were the ones that were supposed to get questioned by you and IMONO?"

"I didn't really think I'd be able to fake having my memory wiped," Ishi admitted. "Besides, if I said 'cheers', and didn't drink afterwards, you all might not've. Right?"

"...Sure?" Kimi replied, not actually seeming convinced. "Alright, I'm out of question ideas. Someone else go."

"Sure. Ishi, do you know why we found the shovel in the common room?" Naoko asked.

"Kinda," Ishi supposed. "Early today, IMONO gave me a message on my phone that said that a shovel had been placed in the ottoman on the fourth floor."

"The ottoman?" Naoko responded curiously.

"Yeah," Ishi confirmed. "I went down there quick before anyone else could, and I found it there. I didn't want to backtrack, and risk bumping into anyone, so I hid it in the distillery, behind some of the machinery. It seemed like as good a place as any."

"Really?" Naoko asked. "Well, if IMONO told you it was there, did that mean that Bankei was the one that put it there?"

"I figured as much, since IMONO was telling me stuff about Bankei," Ishi explained. "Still, it's not like I was told where the hell the shovel came from, or how Bankei would've gotten it."

"That shovel came from my room," Eryu weighed in. "I remember locking it this morning, so that nobody could get in."

"And yet we found it unlocked during our investigation," Naoko pointed out. "That means that somebody must've found a way to get inside, then took the shovel."

"You mean Bankei," Kimi pointed out. "She did it. She, I dunno, pickpocketed Eryu and took his key from him."

"I don't remember her ever getting close to me before our meetup at noon," Eryu insisted.

"Maybe she snuck up on you," Yori suggested. "I recall her having the ability to enter a scene unannounced and stay unnoticed for a decent period of time."

"If she did that, then that would have to have happened after we met up in the cafeteria that morning," Eryu argued. "If any time would be best for the purposes of taking a four foot long shovel from my room, and all the way to the fourth floor, then it would have been when we were all together in one place."

"An interesting observation," Bankei noted. "However, I feel as though there's something you're not considering."

"And that is?" Yori asked warily.

"How, pray tell, do you think I knew that there was a shovel in your room?" Bankei asked. "You've kept knowledge about it fairly under wraps, it seems."

"It was on a need-to-know basis, and you did not need to know," Eryu stated bluntly.

"And yet you seem to think that I broke into your room on the assumption that it had something useful to me inside of it," Bankei observed.

"Well, you probably knew that there was something in there," Ishi asserted. "Maybe Mine knew about that storage container in Haru's room being moved, and then told you."

"Why would she have told me?" Bankei asked. "It's not like what was in Eryu's room was important to our plan."

"It would probably have to be more recent than that," Yori reasoned. "The only time I can recall us even mentioning anything of interest in Eryu's room was during our conversation on the fourth floor."

"But Bankei wasn't there," Kimi pointed out. "Unless she was, what, inside the ottoman?"

"Could she have been out of sight, and listening in?" Naoko suggested. "I was able to hear a good deal of your conversation before I was even in the common room. Who's to say she couldn't also hear from the hallway, or even a little bit farther away?"

"Sure, that makes sense," Ishi supposed. "But she still, like, wouldn't know what was in the container, since we didn't say what was in it. Hell, I didn't know what was in it. I didn't look inside."

"AND YOU KNOW THAT THAT DISAPPOINTED ME. EVEN IF I HAD NOT EXPLICITLY TOLD YOU TO INVESTIGATE IT AT THAT POINT, THAT DOESN'T MEAN IT WAS WISE TO IGNORE THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY TO INVESTIGATE SOMETHING CLEARLY SUSPICIOUS."

"Well, why the hell didn't you tell me to look into it sooner?!" Ishi questioned frustratedly.

"I ASSUMED IT WOULD TAKE SOME TIME FOR YOU TO BE ABLE TO FIND YOURSELF IN ERYU'S ROOM. NORMALLY, I WOULD THINK IT WOULD TAKE SOME TIME BEFORE ONE WOULD BE INVITED INTO SUCH A SPACE. BARRING SOME VERY SPECIFIC EXCEPTIONS, OF COURSE."

"Excuse me?" Kimi asked. "The fuck does that mean? Does IMONO have sex on the brain, or what?"

"You're one to talk," Mariko muttered.

"Huh?" Kimi responded confusedly.

"Nothing," Mariko replied hastily.

"Okay, so," Naoko interjected, "if Bankei wouldn't have been able to know what was inside that storage container…I suppose she would just have to have made the assumption that it would be useful somehow."

"But why did she put it there in the first place?" Yori questioned. "What about it would make it useful?"

"Well, she would have known that the get-together was happening," Naoko reasoned. "Especially if she listened in on that specific conversation we had. So, I guess she probably would've wanted to find some way to…make things more interesting?"

"Make things more interesting?" Mareo inquired. "That makes it sound as though she would have somehow known that a murder would happen."

"She definitely would've known something would happen," Ishi shrugged. "Like, I remember she seemed pretty suspicious early on, when we were trying to, y'know, seem nice and stuff. And if she listened in on us talking, I guess she could've, like, hid the shovel there, just to see if it'd do anything? Y'know? If it affected whatever happened?"

Well," Yori began, "regardless of whether or not she had any idea something unexpected would happen before it did, it seems quite likely that she, somehow, was the one that left the shovel there."

"Yeah, I think it's safe to say we can agree on that," Eryu replied. "Still, if she really was suspicious at any point, then I feel like there might be a bit of an issue there."

"What do you mean?" Naoko asked.

"Ishi put truth serum in the tea she drank, remember?" Eryu pointed out. "Bankei drank from the drink she was given, seemingly before anyone else, despite knowing she wouldn't like it. I feel like that'd be kind of weird if she thought something was wrong. Especially since she seems to be…weirdly passionate about how terrible instant tea is, for some reason."

"I wouldn't say I'm passionate, per say," Bankei interjected. "I do, however, think it's terrible, and solid evidence that the room it's stored in, as well as its contents, is practically worthless."

"I disagree completely, but okay," Eryu replied annoyedly.

"Hang on a second," Kimi interjected. "Right before I said that I felt weird, was anyone looking at Bankei?"

"I think most of us were," Naoko figured. "Why?"

"Didn't Ishi say something about seeing when Bankei gets affected by the serum?" Kimi pointed out. "Did nobody notice anything like that? Before I spoke up?"

"I don't remember seeing anything wrong with her," Mareo supposed.

"I don't remember either," Yori added.

"So, she drank, and then we all drank, and…I guess I was probably one of the first affected," Kimi supposed. "But what about Bankei? She'd've been the first, wouldn't she be? She had, what, a ten second head start, compared to the rest of us?"

"It might be that it affects everyone at different rates," Mariko surmised.

"Maybe? So what? It took ten seconds longer for it to affect her, just 'cause?" Kimi questioned. "That doesn't make sense."

Naoko realized what Kimi was trying to say. Bankei seemed fine when Kimi spoke up, as if the truth serum somehow hadn't set in yet. But why would that be? Did it have something to do with the truth serum itself? Had she somehow gained resistance to its effects, so they came slower? No, that didn't seem right. She had only been affected by it twice beforehand. Then, finally, Naoko considered something.

"Hang on," Naoko said aloud. "I think I have an idea."

"This should be interesting," Bankei mused.

"If Bankei wasn't affected before us, then…who's to say she was affected at all?" Naoko suggested.

"Ah, fuck," Kimi swore. "We're really going with that, huh?"

"Naoko, you're saying I wasn't affected by the truth serum?" Bankei inquired. "Why, pray tell, do you think this?"

"Well, it'd explain the discrepancy that Kimi brought up, wouldn't it?" Naoko reasoned.

"But I put plenty of truth serum in the tea, and she totally drank it!" Ishi argued. "We all saw it!"

"Well, what if she didn't?" Naoko suggested. "Maybe she just pretended to drink it."

"You mean when she brought it up to her lips, and tilted the cup, she wasn't actually drinking it?" Mareo asked skeptically. "She was just pretending to take a sip?"

"Something like that, yeah," Naoko replied.

"If she did that, then…" Ishi calmed down a bit as she began to trail off. "Then wouldn't she be injected with truth serum? I mean, she'd've been tricking us when she did that, right?"

"I don't know," Naoko reasoned. "IMONO has said that the device specifically activates when she lies."

"Well, yeah," Ishi agreed. "And pretending to do something, but not actually doing it…that'd be a lie, wouldn't it?"

"That would presumably depend on whether you define a lie as specifically being an intentionally false statement," Mareo weighed in. "That's generally what people consider to be lying. I suppose others might define a 'lie' as being anything communicative that is intended to deceive others."

"Well, I feel like she's said and done a few different things recently that are at least a little bit deceptive," Naoko reasoned.

"No shit she has," Kimi said. "So what? Now we have to figure out what definition of 'lie' we're working with here?"

"It would probably have to be IMONO's personal definition of a lie that's important, considering it's the one that put the device on Bankei's back in the first place," Eryu figured.

"IMONO did ask for Bankei to make a false statement when demonstrating the device," Naoko recalled. "Maybe that's just how the device works. It detects when whoever it's attached to makes an intentional, definitively false statement…somehow."

"So, by that logic, the device allows for half-truths, paltering, and lies by omission," Yori reasoned. "Possibly some other forms of deception, too."

"So, earlier, when Bankei said she had a gap in her memory," Mariko began, "was it only technically true?"

"Oh yeah, she did say that," Naoko remembered. "I guess she could've been referring to one of the earlier times she got injected with truth serum…or maybe she got herself injected some time after the rest of us were affected."

"Well, if Bankei has her memories of what happened between us intact," Ishi said with a frown, "I guess she would be able to explain it to us, y'know, if she wanted to. She probably even knows who the killer is."

"Yeah, and she would definitely want to hide that sort of info," Kimi pointed out. "Either 'cause she really doesn't give a shit about her own safety, or because she doesn't want us to find out."

"I would only really want to keep you from learning the truth if I knew I was the killer, wouldn't I?" Bankei replied, somewhat frustrated.

"Well, I don't remember anything thus far that would prove whether or not you know who the killer is," Eryu weighed in. "And like Ishi said, you'd probably know whether or not you are if you avoided being drugged with the truth serum along with the rest of us."

"Unless she was injected with truth serum at some point before Takeshi's death," Naoko pointed out. "Then it'd probably be impossible for her to be sure about whether or not she killed him."

"Can we prove that she got injected, then?" Ishi asked.

"Maybe," Yori figured. "Is there anything that would prove whether or not she was injected?"

Naoko thought for a moment. "That'd probably have to be the device on her back. We haven't really seen it before, and we don't actually know much about it, but I feel like it'd have some sort of indicator of whether or not it was used."

"Hang on. None of us have seen it?" Mariko asked confusedly.

"I guess so," Kimi shrugged. "Probably 'cause of Bankei's 'modesty' bullshit."

"I prefer to keep my figure concealed in public settings," Bankei stated firmly. "Is that so wrong?"

"Not inherently, no," Mareo supposed. "However, even during my physical examination of you during our investigation, you seemed apprehensive of letting me perform a full examination, even in private."

"You learned of all of my injuries," Bankei pointed out, seeming troubled by the subject matter. "I did my best to make that clear."

"But you never said anything about the device on your back," Mareo argued. "If you really hesitated to let me get a full view of your body, then I'd think it's a reasonable assumption that you currently have something to hide."

"Like that you were injected with truth serum," Yori continued off of him. "And that by letting any of us see the device itself, we'd be able to deduce that fairly quickly."

Bankei looked at them, her expression hard to read. It seemed like their deductions were correct, however, as when she began to speak, her tone seemed like she was conceding once again.

"Well, then," she said. "I suppose that's an accurate conclusion. At the very least, this revelation didn't involve any sort of deception on Ishi's part. I must say though, I still don't like the order in which you're piecing all this together."

"What, were you hoping we'd save this for later on?" Eryu asked dismissively.

"Yes," Bankei answered, seeming annoyed at having to do so. "I was hoping a lot of what has come to light would come to light later on. Especially Ishi's confession."

"Screw you!" Ishi replied. "You already know I don't care about you being disappointed in how this trial is going!"

"Well maybe you should care," Bankei replied spitefully. "Do you know what happened the last time I was disappointed in how a trial panned out? I instigated a better one! And don't think I'm afraid of doing so again, you disgraceful tomboy!"

"Well, doing so would be rather difficult for you at this point in time," Mareo pointed out. "You have no one here that even remotely trusts you, your dominant hand is still healing, and so long as IMONO keeps that device on your back, your potential for deceptiveness is limited."

"Yeah!" Ishi agreed. "You got nothing on us! You're, like, totally pathetic."

"You calling me pathetic is, in itself, quite pathetic," Bankei growled. "And furthermore, I'd have to say that you dismissing me as a threat is a rather stupid thing to do. Have you all not even considered the full implications of what you've just learned?"

"We know you injected yourself with truth serum at some point today," Naoko deduced. "Probably during the period of time where we have no memory, and if so…since the device is triggered by you lying, you wouldn't've been able to trigger it while under the effects of the truth serum. Thus, you didn't drink the tea we gave you."

"That means she wasn't hampered by its effects," Yori pointed out. "That would logically give her a lot of leverage over us, by virtue of us being…especially candid."

"IMONO once said that Bankei, under the effects of the truth serum, was quite suggestible," Mareo recalled. "We would likely be much the same under its effects."

"See?" Bankei asked in a condescending tone. "This is exactly what I'm talking about. Now, I don't precisely know how much thought you've all put into what happened between all of us, but suffice it to say that you should be finding out soon enough…and to be entirely frank, you will not be liking what you hear. I can practically guarantee it."

INTERMISSION