October 25

Courtroom No. 6

12:15 PM

Lily Shield

To put it simply, the newest deduction sent the gallery into a whole new level of spiraling chatters. Judge Diaphan reached for her gavel and slammed it down sharply three times, and when that wasn't enough to calm the onlookers, she began to speak. "Order in the court!" she roared. "Defense, that is quite the theory you have there! I never would have imagined the assassins protecting someone among their worst enemies."

"But it makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?" Deirdre pointed out. "The people behind this case were already shown to have defended someone else involved with the case, and quite firmly at that. They moved one of the witnesses away from the crime scene to make sure she didn't remember what she had seen and obscured her presence in the room at all. If they were really part of the group planning on carrying out the assassination, then they would have just killed her on the night of the crime. Instead, our witness is alive and well, and the same likely applies to the one we assumed was a hostage all this time."

"Witness, what do you have to say to all of this?" Prosecutor Umber questioned as he slammed one fist against the prosecution bench. "Were you acting alongside your accomplices to try and help the other recipient of the letters?"

Balthazar was silent for a long time, staring down at the ground blankly but sternly. That was all the answer I needed to see, and I could tell everyone else in the courtroom agreed. He still looked up to all of us slowly with a frown on his face after a few seconds had passed though. "Yes," he admitted. "That is what happened."

"I don't understand why the hell you would go so far," Prosecutor Cruz remarked with a frown. "Your family has had a grudge against the Wood family for ages now. Hell, your father was responsible for the death of our supposed hostage's father. Why in the world would you want to keep her safe?"

"Because he was working with his other siblings to try and thwart what would have been a triple murder," I replied simply. "That was the reason for all of this. The victim died while she was in the act of trying to get rid of one of the three targets. One of them walked away, likely because the assassin sent to kill him was already planning on the treachery from the start. And something happened for them to want to take Prosecutor Wood with them rather than just letting her go."

"She's rather close with the chief prosecutor, isn't she?" Judge Diaphan asked, and I nodded. "In that case, I can only assume they were trying to keep the two of them apart. After all, this assassination seems to have been primarily planned and carried out for the children of the family. If two of the targets got away and were in the same place, then their father wouldn't have been able to resist the temptation of going after them."

"It was a protective measure," Victoria realized. "If Prosecutor Wood was in the same place as Chief Prosecutor Bespoke, then Augustus Emsthorpe would have gone after them both. But if Prosecutor Wood went missing, then he wouldn't have the chance to try and target either one of them."

"Prosecutor Wood is the more personal target here, and if she went missing, then he likely would have just waited until she appeared once again," Robbie murmured. "And the people who would know his behavioral patterns best would have been his children. They knew how to keep her out of the line of fire to ensure their father didn't try to go after her."

"And that's the truth behind all of this, isn't it?" Deirdre declared as she leaned over the defense bench. "We were wondering why there was no ransom for the hostage, but the fact of the matter is that this was never a hostage situation. It was a precautionary measure, and whatever happened that night was enough to get Prosecutor Wood to trust assassins for the sake of securing her own safety. She's still with your siblings right now, and one of them is the culprit responsible for this case. Is that correct?"

Balthazar took a long moment to think before he nodded. "Yes... That is all true," he admitted. "We did what we had to for the sake of helping the people out of this situation. It wouldn't have been good for anyone if they wound up hurt and suffering because of all this, so we decided to intervene. Raven was dead set on it, and we did what we could to try and deter her. As long as she didn't want anything to do with stopping though... This was the best we could do."

"Explain what happened from the beginning," Prosecutor Cruz told him. "Don't spare even a single detail. You know who the killer is, so start talking."

"I left the Emsthorpe family behind last year because I was tired of it all," Balthazar began. "My father had tried to raise me into a heartless killer, but his training started to slip the older I got. When I learned the truth behind what happened to my mother, I couldn't stay with him anymore. He had always claimed it was a sudden accident that killed our mother, but that wasn't the case. He had killed her himself and lied about it for the sake of protecting himself from everyone else's fury. I couldn't just sit back and stay with him as long as I knew that to be the case, so I left."

"It wasn't a sudden change of morality the way we thought then... It was you realizing your father was a monster and reacting accordingly," Yuri remarked. "That makes a lot more sense than you just suddenly deciding you didn't want anything to do with the business you had been raised in your entire life."

"I left behind the clues my siblings would have needed to leave as well, and I set out to try and make a better life for myself," Balthazar went on. "I wanted to make everything better, and even if I couldn't undo the harm I had done, I needed to try... And that was how I wound up being roped into this plan when someone else decided to contact me for the sake of changing the way the family behaved."

"Your siblings realized the harm they were doing, and they decided they had seen enough," I concluded. "But as long as they couldn't reach out to their father or older sister, they decided to try and contact you."

"Emmeline and Belladonna Emsthorpe... Both of them were involved with this case as accomplices, and one of them is the real murderer," Prosecutor Umber murmured.

"Emmeline was the first one who started to realize something was wrong. Raven was devoted to our father and the family business above all else, but the longer Emmeline watched her sister, the more she realized how wrong all of this was. She decided it was time to try and step away from all of this, and so, she contacted me with news about a triple killing that had come to be known as the Night of Calamity by those working within our family's business," Balthazar continued. "She wanted to stop it, and if that meant betraying the family, then she was willing to do it. That conviction only grew stronger when she heard the truth of what happened to our mother. She shared the truth with our youngest sister, Belladonna, and that was that. We started planning to try and counter Raven and our father's plans."

"I have to wonder if we can trust his words at face value," Robbie remarked, and everyone glanced over in his direction at that. "As much as I want to believe all of this is the truth, I'm not entirely sure if we can take all of this for what you claim without any pushback."

"You don't need to believe me if you don't want to. I will say though that I have no reason to lie about this in detail. I wanted to stop the plot, and I'm still working to do that. Why do you think I decided to appear here in the first place if I wasn't trying to accomplish something?" Balthazar challenged. "Me being here is the best thing I can do for all of us right now... For the family. My father betrayed that when he murdered our mother years ago, but I intend to make all of that different for the sake of my younger sisters."

"And that was that then," I murmured. "You decided it was better to betray your father and keep the targets of the killings safe, and here we are. You're still trying to keep Prosecutor Wood out of the line of fire by hiding her elsewhere."

"It isn't safe for her to return at the moment," Balthazar said with a shake of his head. "Perhaps it will be soon, but right now, this is the best we can do. You can believe me as much or as little as you want. It matters little to me. I've spent the last year or so trying to make up for everything I did when I was working with the assassins my family put together. I would be lying if I said any of it was easy. However, I know what has to be done, and even if this isn't easy, I'm willing to do what I must."

The courtroom fell silent with those words, and Judge Diaphan hit her gavel down one more time. "I believe that is a fine place for us to stop for the time being," she announced. "We have learned quite a bit about this case... But there is still one more fact we have yet to uncover."

"The one who killed the victim," Yuri finished with a shake of her head. She glanced up to Balthazar. "Are you going to tell us who was responsible for the death of the victim? Would you be willing to share the truth behind who killed your sister?"

Balthazar looked away, but no guilt clouded his eyes. "I have told you as much as I can right now. If you wish to learn the truth behind who killed Raven, then you'll have to keep searching for a little bit longer. However, I can say that the defendant on the stand is innocent. He had nothing to do with this," he declared. "He was summoned to the crime scene for the purpose of defending the previous witness, but by the time he had arrived, that was out of our hands. He wound up finding the crime scene, and the rest turned out to be history."

"We appreciate your testimony about the defendant's innocence, but we will still need to take you into custody so that we can question you in more detail and hear the details behind everything you have been responsible for over the years working in the Emsthorpe assassin group," Judge Diaphan told him.

Balthazar simply nodded. "I understand... And I am willing to do what I must to pay for my actions. I did what I could to prevent the assassinations on the Night of Calamity, and that purpose has been completed now. What happens next is out of my control as it has been from the day I took my first life. I did what I thought was best in this last case... And that is all you need to know. It was a risk to speak out against my father's actions, but I do not regret what has happened. Take that as you will. It matters little to me."

Bailiffs surged forward to arrest Balthazar, but he did nothing to object or fight back. Instead, he simply allowed himself to be dragged away, and I watched him go with a small frown on my face. I never would have expected to see such sincerity from an assassin, but life was full of surprises.

This entire case felt like one massive surprise, as a matter of fact. I never would have expected that the supposed kidnapping hanging over our heads this entire time wasn't a hostage situation at all. Instead, it was a way of keeping Prosecutor Wood safe. If her location was unknown, then nobody would have had a reason to go after her, and that included Augustus Emsthorpe. Balthazar had taken a risk in sharing the truth with all of us, and nobody could deny that. If his father found out about what he was up to, then he could have ended up seriously hurt or worse, but here he was anyway. I still wasn't sure about how I felt about him or the rest of this case, but I would have time to figure that out later. For the time being, we had done what we had to, and that was all that mattered.

Once Balthazar had been dragged out of the courtroom by the bailiffs, Judge Diaphan took in a careful breath before pushing it out. "I stand by what I said earlier about this being a fine place for us to leave off the case for the day," she declared. "The hostage is still out there, and even if she isn't a hostage the way we originally anticipated, we have to approach this subject with as much caution as possible. If what we heard from the witness is to be believed, then we need to be careful when moving to rescue her."

"We have a team moving to bring her back as soon as possible... Though I doubt any of them anticipated something like this happening," Robbie sighed with a shake of his head. "During this final investigation, we'll speak with them and try to come up with a plan for what to do next."

"I expect nothing less. I would also like both sides of the case to do everything they can to either confirm or discredit the story of Balthazar Emsthorpe. We have little solid evidence behind what he did, and all of it is based on his testimony. If we can get our hands on some information that shows whether he acted in such a way or not, then we can move forward with this case tomorrow," Judge Diaphan continued. "If there are no objections from the defense or prosecution, we will now move into the final investigation of this case before the third and last day of the trial tomorrow morning."

"The prosecution has no objections," Prosecutor Umber announced.

"The defense has no objections," Victoria declared before even sharing a glance with the rest of us. She didn't need to; we all agreed with the sentiment of needing some time to look around right now anyway.

Judge Diaphan nodded. "In that case, both sides of the court are expected to investigate as much as possible before we come back together tomorrow. This will be our last chance to uncover the truth behind the case, and it should be treated as such. Tread carefully and proceed with caution. Court is adjourned!" She brought the gavel down, and the sound echoed throughout the room.

Somehow, it felt like a gong announcing everyone's deaths in less than twenty-four hours, and I desperately wished I could shake the feeling.

October 25

Defendant Lobby No. 6

12:45 PM

Lily Shield

When we all arrived back out in the defendant lobby, Pieter was already there. He was no longer pacing as I would have expected, instead just sitting on the couch and staring at the ground with a blank gaze. The truth of our earlier words was finally hitting him, and all he could do was push through it no matter how numb it made him feel.

I wished there was something I could say to make all of this easier, but I knew the thing he needed most was just time. This case had brought a healthy dose of surprises for all of us, and we had to deal with those shocks on our own terms whether we wanted to or not. In Pieter's case, it meant realizing that his greatest enemy and worst fear had actually done something to help a person he cared about deeply. He may not have been originally tortured by the Emsthorpe assassins, but he had been hurt by others who shared the title of assassin, and no one could blame him for being upset about everything he had heard.

Victoria approached him slowly and placed a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she whispered even though she was already fully aware that this consolation would not be enough. "We didn't want it to turn out this way, but..."

"I know," Pieter replied with a shake of his head. "Though I guess there's no changing it now. The reason I was called there to the crime scene in the first place... I was part of their plans whether I realized it or not."

"They did their research about us in order to make sure the plan to thwart the Night of Calamity went off without a hitch," Deirdre remarked. "It's as impressive as it is terrifying... Though I suppose this is the better alternative when compared to what could have happened if their plans had succeeded."

"I'm willing to take this as the outcome given what we know now... Though I don't like it either."

Chrysalis approached us a moment later, her hands pressed against her chest as she rubbed at her Magatama anxiously. She still looked as exhausted as ever, but she was doing her best to push it aside for the sake of helping her brother. Mr. Morix wasn't looking much better unfortunately, and he had one hand on her shoulder to try and ease her worries. It wasn't working out the way he would have hoped, but as long as it was his only option, he was more than happy to continue.

"I'm happy you're okay," Pieter murmured, the words coming out strangled and soft. "I didn't think that you would have ended up saved by assassins of all people though... I never would have expected something like that."

"You wouldn't be the only one," Yuri sighed. "We didn't know what to do when we first put together that this was what had happened at the time of the crime. I don't know how anyone is supposed to respond to something like this. It just... Doesn't feel real when you look at it from any perspective. We've spent ages thinking about how dangerous people like that are, and now, here we are, having to listen to the testimony of one since it's our only option."

"Do we know for a fact that what Balthazar was saying was true?" Pieter questioned. "I'm inclined to believe it given the circumstances, but..."

"It's true," Chrysalis cut in before he had the chance to finish his thought. She shook her head a moment later. "You're just going to have to trust me when I say that I know he was telling the truth about everything he said in there. He wouldn't have lied to us, not right now."

"Then I suppose all we can do right now is try to figure out how to find Niamh again," Yuri declared. "I don't know how we're going to do that, but we're playing a dangerous game here. If what Balthazar said was right, then she's in hiding right now for her own protection. I wouldn't want to drag her out of hiding only for it to be a decision we shouldn't have made in the first place..."

"We won't know if it's the right choice or not until after we can bring her out of hiding," Deirdre sighed. "And right now, I'm choosing to put my faith in the people who are searching for her in the first place. It might be a daunting task to figure out what to do from here, but I have faith in Buddy, Neptune, and Clarith. If anyone can bring her back to us safely and then come up with a plan for what to do after this, then it would be them."

"We should go and try to talk to them then," I interjected. "We don't have much time left before the final trial. Even if there's not much we can do when it comes to this case, we should try to talk to them about what they've uncovered so far."

"I understand," Pieter nodded. "I want you to stay safe no matter what you end up doing from here, okay? I refuse to see anyone else hurt because of the Emsthorpe family. This entire case has done more than enough damage, and we can't... We can't take any other risks." He tripped over the words a few times, reaching instinctively for the place where his katana would have been if it hadn't been taken away from him after he was arrested.

"We'll be ready for the trial tomorrow when the time comes," Victoria assured him. "In the meantime, I want you to try and rest. I know that's a daunting task, but... You deserve to try and decompress before the end of all of this."

"Given what we've uncovered in this case, I don't know if I'll ever be able to rest again," Pieter admitted. "But I'll still do what I can. I'm counting on you to do the same."

Victoria took a step toward him and pulled him into a hug, pressing a kiss against his cheek. "I'll see you again soon, okay?" she told him. He nodded, and they shared a small smile before he left to return to the detention center again.

"It's unfortunate that he has to go back at all," Yuri remarked once Pieter had rounded the corner and vanished from sight. "We heard during the trial that he wasn't the culprit. That was one thing Balthazar was very firm about even if he didn't say who was actually responsible for the crime."

"As long as there's still a reason to call his testimony into question, there's still a reason to find Pieter suspicious, I'm afraid," Mr. Morix sighed with a shake of his head. "But we're going to fix all of that when tomorrow's trial comes. For the time being, I think we should go back to the agency."

"I agree," Chrysalis nodded. "There's something I need to tell you, and I don't want to do it here in public. Besides, we should probably catch up Felicity and Sky on everything we've uncovered over the course of our investigation. I bet they're going to want to hear about it."

"They will... And then they're going to immediately regret hearing about it," I sighed. "But we should get back there. Afterward, we need to go and find the team looking for Prosecutor Wood. There's no time to lose." We had less than a day left before this case would be sealed away once and for all, and we had to solve it when the time came. We were on the right path, but we just needed a little bit more of a push... And a bit more time. It was a shame we probably weren't going to get either one.

October 25

Morix Law Offices

2:00 PM

Yuri Rinko

When we got back to the agency, the building was mostly empty as was to be expected. Our investigative team made its way up the stairs to the main lobby where everyone hung out when not working on a case. Sure enough, Felicity and Sky were waiting there, and the difference in their behavior now compared to the last few days was beyond noticeable. It was magical, if I was being honest. They were like completely different people. Felicity was back to her old bubbly self, and even if she was a bit more restrained than she had been before her memories started returning, it was nice to see her smiling again.

Sky was the first one to notice that we had returned, and he looked much better too, like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders over the course of the last few days. "I didn't think you would be back," he admitted. "How is the investigation going?"

"We've still got a little bit to find out before we can consider the case over," I told him. "We're going to a third day, and hopefully, we'll be able to hear testimony from the culprit when we go back into the courtroom."

"For right now, Chrysalis says that she has something to tell us, and we decided to come back here to talk about it so you guys could get caught up on the case too," Lily explained. "I hope you weren't up to anything that we would be interrupting."

Sky shook his head. "We're fine. Come on and tell us all about it."

Everything came out in a long tangent from there. We told the twins everything they needed to know about Balthazar and his part in this case from arranging the phone calls to removing Chrysalis from the scene of the crime. He wasn't the killer though, and the fact that he had allowed himself to be arrested was proof of that. He was protecting somebody, and we had a pretty good idea of who it was. At this point, we just needed to figure out which one of the Emsthorpe sisters had stabbed the victim in the back, but that was impossible as things currently stood.

"Are you sure you can trust him?" Sky asked once we had finished explaining everything. "I never would have thought... I don't know. The idea of trusting an assassin with important testimony like this doesn't sit well with me. Even if he hasn't been working with the family business in a long time, it strikes me as strange... And dangerous."

"He was telling the truth," Chrysalis assured him. "That was what I wanted to say here, as a matter of fact. When he started to explain everything that happened on the night of the crime... Everything started coming back to me. My memories returned slowly but surely, and I remember it. I saw Raven Emsthorpe get stabbed in the back, and now, I remember it."

"Are you sure?" Felicity questioned, leaning forward a little bit.

"I'm confident. There are some details he didn't mention at all in his testimony that just came to me. We already had a theory that I was there, and now, I know I was," Chrysalis nodded. "I was in the corner of the room after the victim had cornered me. I think she kicked me so I was on the ground. I raised my hands when she went to strike, but... Nothing happened. When I looked up, there was a sword sticking out of her back. I didn't get any blood on my clothes because the culprit didn't stab through her chest fully until after she had moved away from me by a little bit."

"And in the shuffle, your Magatama fell off," I finished for her. "So Balthazar shoved it in the dirt of the nearby plant and moved you away from the crime scene. After that, we all know how it went. You were there on your own, and when the police showed up, you helped to point them in the right direction."

"Exactly," Chrysalis nodded. "I would be lying if I said that this was a good experience, but I can corroborate for his story. There were other people there in the room aside from just the victim and the killer. I don't think I could pick out any details about them because of how dazed I was at the time, but there were a few others there when the victim died."

"And that would presumably be Balthazar and the innocent Emsthorpe sibling... As innocent as one of them can be, that is," Lily concluded. "We need to hear testimony from the remaining siblings, though that probably won't happen until we can get incredibly lucky... Something that needs to happen in the span of the next twenty-four hours."

"At the very least, Pieter was said to be innocent, and now, we have testimony to back that up," Victoria pointed out. "As for what we do with that, only time will be able to tell. At the moment, I think we should go and try to find the investigation team working on tracking down Prosecutor Wood. They must have something to share with us."

"And from there, we can go to the detention center and try to talk to Balthazar again. I can't say for certain that he'll be willing to talk to us, but there's no harm in trying to convince him to open up," Deirdre finished for her. "We don't have a moment to lose. We should get to it."

"We're going to stay here for the time being," Mr. Morix announced. "I think it's high time Chrysalis got some much needed sleep, and now that we know the truth behind everything she got up to at the time of the crime, she should be able to take a break from hanging out around the scene of the murder."

"If you need anything, you can just come back here and wake me up," Chrysalis said next. "But for right now, I agree that you should go and try to find the investigation team. You can come back and talk to me if you wind up needing to do that."

"We'll figure out the truth behind this case soon enough. I promise," I assured the twins, Chrysalis, and Mr. Morix. "Just give us a bit of time, and everything will come together. I swear."

With that, Deirdre, Lily, Victoria, and I started for the door, and we left the agency behind for the sake of our search. We were getting closer than ever to uncovering the truth, and I was going to make sure it all came together. We just had to keep pushing. We were finally on the right path, and at the end of it, Niamh was waiting for us to save her.

And we were going to. We just had to.

i am so tired guys wow

-Digital