So is THIS the chapter we find out who killed Lia? Ha ha ha... no, no it isn't.

I've also had this on my drive for a month and forgot to post it. Whoops.

[Soundtrack: Drittes Auge Nehmen - Ever17]

So, according to the clock on my phone (which was really only a glorified flashlight with a clock now that the submarine was underwater), it was 7:30AM when Malik, Rex, and I rushed back towards the meeting room where we had left Lia's corpse. The room was empty now, which made it all the more unsettling to find Lia still hanging on the wall. While her expression seemed terrified when she was first revealed, she looked more annoyed than anything, which, in all fairness, would be a valid emotion, I guess, if we were talking about a sentient being, but corpses had no feelings.

Malik let out a long sigh as he approached the girl slowly. "God, I can't imagine who would do this…"

"Well, it's gotta be from Alpha, right?" I said. "I mean, it's like Rex said, if the killer were from Beta, we'd have heard a warning."

Malik took a step away from Lia and began to slowly run his eyes over her body; searching her for clues or secret necrophilia fetish? You decide. "Okay, so that means our suspects are you, me, Bakura, Leon, Enzi, and Rafael, right?"

I nodded. "Pretty sure you and Bakura and I are innocent, so we can narrow down half of the suspects."

Malik raised his eyebrows. "Oh? You trust us now? We could be killers. I wouldn't count us out so soon."

"What are you saying?" I frowned. "Are you saying you killed her?"

He shrugged and leaned against the corner of the nearest table. "I'm saying that you don't know me. So I'm still a suspect. And as far as I'm concerned, you're still a suspect, too."

I glared at him. "Well, that's not very productive. If we don't decrease the number of suspects, we won't be able to come to any conclusions."

"Yeah, but we can't just cut people out of the suspect pool without any evidence. If we find out who the killer is, the proof needs to be airtight. We can't let a single thing slip," Malik remarked.

Rex, who had been quiet up until that point, shut his eyes and nodded. "Malik's right. Goin' by that, though. The only evidence we have so far is that either Lia or Sera opened the weapons crate, and that Pegasus didn't give a warning."

"And the method by which she was killed," Malik added. "Lia was impaled against a wall. Whoever killed her shoved that spear through Lia's mouth and then through the wall behind her. So whoever killed her wasn't just anyone. It had to be someone who is capable of thrusting a spear through that wall."

"Well, that depends on how easy it is to get a spear through a wall, doesn't it?" I inquired, stepping towards the wall and idly pressing against it with my fingers. "Wonder what this is made of…"

"Why don't we find out?" Malik suggested. "I think you should open the box and take another spear out."

I stood agape. We were in a room with a corpse, where someone took a weapon out of that box and used it to murder an innocent girl, and Mr Edgelord over here wanted me to take another murder spear out of the crate? "You're joking, right?"

"I'm being 100% serious," he replied, approaching the crate and kicking lightly it with the toe of his boot. "We need to find out how resilient that wall is."

I sighed and hugged my chest. "Can't we just… I don't know…. Use the one that's already out? I kinda don't wanna be responsible for putting another one of those things within reach of a murderer."

Malik sighed and glanced up at the ceiling as if asking some invisible deity why he had to put up with me, which was hypothetically rude and I couldn't believe that he was hypothetically saying those things about me. What a hypothetical asshole. "Look, if you wanna rip that spear out of her mouth, go for it. I, for one, however, don't want to mess with the crime scene or get blood on my clothes," he stated.

I huffed and crossed my arms over my chest, glaring at the floor. He had a point. I wasn't going to tell him that, but I wasn't going to refute him either. My lowered eyes did, however, spot something interesting on the floor. I uncrossed my arms and crouched down to inspect something small and black on the ground beside the crate.

"What did you find?" Rex asked.

I picked up what seemed to be a bobby pin and twirled it between my fingers. "Nothing," I mumbled back, inspecting my ponytail, only to find that what I had thought was a clue had simply just fallen from my head. "Just a shitty bobby pin that won't stay put."

"Yeah," Rex replied. "Not exactly a clue if everyone already knows you were standing there."

I hummed in agreement and was about to put the pin back in my hair when Malik cried out. "Wait! Sera!"

I held the pin in mid air, with my other hand still smoothing down my hair, getting it ready for pin penetration. "What?"

"Can I take a closer look at that?" he replied.

"This?" I held out the pin. "Uh sure," I said uncertainly.

He gingerly took the pin from my hand and held it in his palm. "This thing has blood on it," he noted, holding it out for me and Rex to inspect. Sure enough, Malik was right. It wasn't significantly bloodied, but it definitely looked like someone had picked it up with two bloody fingers as it was stained dark red. There was also a bit of red at the sharp tip where some of the plastic had broken off to show the metal underneath. There wasn't much contrast between the red and the black pin, which must have been why I missed it when I first noticed it. Ugh, gross; and I was gonna put that evidence in my hair.

"But who had bloody hands after the murder?" I asked. "I wasn't really paying attention, but I haven't washed my hands since she died," I admitted, slowly realizing how disgusting that probably was, especially since I was one of the lucky few that actually touched Lia's body after she died.

"Lia did," Rex offered. "There's blood on her hands even now."

I bit my lip; that kinda fucked with our timeline of events though. "Didn't her hands get bloody while she was being killed though? When did she have the time to even hold my bobby pin? Besides, even if she was holding my pin while she was being killed, there are a lot of things wrong with that. First of all, if she's being held to a wall against her will, the last thing she would be holding would be a bobby pin."

"She could have just grabbed it to defend herself," he replied with a shrug. "It's small and kinda dangerous if you know where to hit people with it."

I sighed and shook my head. "That doesn't work though. Since it still would have had a lot more blood on it if she were holding it as she was being killed, especially since her hands are pretty bloody right now. Plus, I found this thing in the middle of the room, right next to the weapons crate. How could she have tossed it all the way over here after being impaled by a spear?"

"She's got a point," Malik agreed. "The pin is pretty interesting, though. It forces us to think about things differently. We can't deny that the pin exists, and though we don't know how it factors into everything, we can change our theories to fit the pin's existence. Any theory that doesn't mention it is now a wrong one."

"Right," I nodded and watched as Malik put the pin on the table.

"Unfortunately, Sera, this makes you a suspect again," he added with a half-regretful tone. At least you could tell that part of him didn't want me to the be the killer, despite the half of him that begrudgingly admitted that it was a great possibility.

"For what it's worth," Rex told him, "I've been with Sera the entire morning and didn't leave her side once. Though I didn't see her during the five minutes when the lights were out, I can definitely say that once they came on, I could see her the entire time. She never did wash her hands. If there were traces of blood on her hands, I would have seen them."

"She could have wiped it against her jeans, though," Malik pointed out. "Sorry, but I can't rule you out."

I nodded stiffly then told him, "Then I can't rule you out either. You're also a member of Team Alpha, which makes you just as much of a suspect as I am."

He smiled wryly. "That's fair enough then. I say we leave the pin for now and get to another very important part of the investigation."

"And that is?" Rex asked.

"Investigating the dead body," Malik answered bluntly. "Arguably the shittiest part of any murder investigation."

I looked at the body of Lia still decorating the wall and felt a bit of bile rise into my throat. "You can say that again…"

"Wait," Rex interjected. "Weren't we gonna get a spear out of the weapons crate and see how strong the wall is?"

Malik grunted. "I guess, but I think we can multitask. Rex, you're on Team Beta, so I think you should be the one to examine the body while Sera and I test the wall."

Rex's shoulders fell upon hearing that, and his face drooped significantly. "Oh? So I get to do 'arguably the shittiest part of any murder investigation'? Why do I have to be the one to do it? She's a girl; it wouldn't feel right!"

I couldn't help but snigger at my friend's distress, because I was such a good person. "Aw, c'mon, Rex. Weren't you always the one complaining that you never got any action with girls?"

I watched Rex shudder and then shoot a sharp glare at me. "I was talkn' about living girls and you know it!"

Malik seemed less inclined to making dumb necrophilia jokes and interrupted us. "Rex, you're the only person here who we can be certain is not a suspect in this murder. So we can know that anything you say is an unbiased and reliable observation. If Sera or I investigated her, there would be the chance that one of us or both of us are murderers, which makes anything we say completely unreliable."

Rex glowered at him silently for a moment before hesitantly turning towards the corpse, grumbling something about me and Malik taking this whole investigation way too seriously. This meant it was time for me to open up that crate.

The combination was still [4, 5, 9], a fact which hadn't changed since the last time I opened it. I entered it with a hand covering the lock to prevent Malik from figuring out the passcode for himself. The box opened easily enough and we were able to find a spear very similar to the one inside of Lia. Once Malik had the spear in his hands, I made sure to shut the crate.

I watched Malik twirl the spear in his hands, getting a feel for the thing and examining it. "So," he began, "would you like to do the honors? Or should I try it out first?"

I shrugged. "I mean you're probably physically stronger than me, so maybe I should try it first, and if I can pierce through the wall, then you definitely can."

Malik held out the spear with a smirk. "I have no objections. Just don't hold back, okay?"

I scoffed, taking the spear and walking over to the wall. "I've never held back in my entire life." I held the weapon in both of my hands and rocked it back and forth, rehearsing my next action. For split second, my eyes landed on Lia and I felt my grip weaken.

"Stop for a minute," Malik interrupted.

"What?" I snapped, inadvertently aiming the weapon at him.

He rolled his eyes. "First, put that thing down." I obeyed without question. "Second, I think you should try doing it with one hand. Whoever killed Lia had to have been holding her down with one hand. How often does someone just stand up against a wall and let you impale them?"

I sighed and nodded. "Yeah, you're right. Though it's still weird that nobody other than Lia has blood on them -or at least that we can see. I mean, if I used my arm to hold Lia down like this -" I walked over to the wall and put my forearm and elbow against it as though I were pinning someone down. "I would definitely have blood all over my shirt and my arm. Too much blood to just wipe away on my jeans." I then repositioned myself so that my hand was pushing against the wall rather than my whole arm. "And if I do it like this, I'd still get blood on me. There's no way I'd be able to achieve enough distance to both kill her and come out without any blood on me."

Rex, who had stopped searching Lia's body to pay attention to us, nodded in agreement. "Yeah, plus the hand that's holding the spear would have blood on it no matter what." He gestured towards us, ushering us over to him. "Like come check this out. I didn't see this at first, but it's pretty obvious what this is."

I laid the spear in my hand against the wall before walking towards him. He was indicating the other spear, the actual murder weapon in this case. Lia was pinned rather low against the wall -her toes were brushing against the ground -so it wasn't too hard to get a good look at the spear inside of her. The parts closest to her mouth were naturally coated so thickly with blood that it was impossible to see the silver underneath. It was the rest of the spear that was interesting. It seemed like the coat of blood thinned as is approached the third quarter of the shaft, but that wasn't the interesting part; what really caught my interest was the fact that there were two prints in the center of the shaft, with a distance of about four inches between them. It looked a lot like two fists had been tightly grasping the shaft.

"Did the murderer make these marks?" I asked, glancing at Malik, who was deep in thought.

"They're pretty small handprints," he noted, stroking his chin. "But the strange part is that there are two of them."

I gasped. "Oh yeah! Didn't we just say that whoever murdered her would have to hold the spear with only one hand so they could hold Lia down while they killed her?"

Rex nodded. "But don't tell me you didn't notice the weirdest part." He gestured again to the handprints. "The prints are bloody. You'd think if someone held a spear and then got it all bloody, the place covered by their hand would be clean, right?"

I bit my lip and examined the marks further. "You're right! The handprints are a bit cleaner than the rest of the spear, but it still looks bloody underneath. But what could that mean?"

He shrugged. "Beats me, but this murder isn't as straightforward as it looks." He then crouched down a bit. "I also noticed something else. It's kinda hard to see if you're not looking for it, but come check it out." Malik and I crouched and watched Rex expectantly. "Look closely at the skin under her left knee."

I scrutinized her knee with a bemused look. I guess Rex really did take his job examining the body seriously -or at least more seriously than I expected. I was a bit impressed at how thorough he actually was. It took me a minute, but I noticed that there was a thin red line just under her knee, and it looked like there was a bit of dried blood around it, smudged as though someone had hastily tried to wipe it off.

"That's weird," Malik mumbled. "Did that happen during the struggle with her murderer?"

"I mean, we can assume so," I replied. "Maybe she wiped her knee on the killer, trying to knee him in the groin or something."

"Let's just make a note of it and move on then," Malik said. "Sera, can you hold the test spear from the same places as the killer held them?"

I sighed and slumped my shoulders and I turned to retrieve the test spear; I then placed my fists in the middle, separated why what I estimated was about four inches. "Like this?" I asked.

Malik nodded. "Perfect. Now ram it into the wall."

"Aye aye, captain," I grumbled, taking the spear and moving it back and forth, testing the movement of my arms before letting out a loud grunt and thrusting it forward with all the strength I could. I heard a loud bang as the spear punctured the wall and leaned against the wall, holding the spear to keep me steady and panting in exertion. My arms felt like jelly after putting all my weight into that thrust, and my muscles felt like they were vibrating.

Malik made an inquisitive noise as he walked towards me and the spear now jutting out from the wall. "So it is possible for a small girl like you to push the spear in."

I glared, still holding on to the spear, but slouching against the wall inelegantly. "You know, if I were the killer, I wouldn't be allowing you to subject me to these tests. I probably would have failed this one on purpose."

Rex laughed at me. "I'm just surprised you haven't made a dick joke throughout this entire spear penetration experiment."

I almost felt like punching both myself and Rex in the face. He was right. I missed a golden opportunity just then. "I was just biding my time for the best moment to spring one on you. But now you've gone and ruined it," I lied.

"I bet you were," he said with a smirk.

I ignored him and shook the spear in my hands. "It looks like the walls are pretty thin," I noted. "This thing is definitely stuck, but I didn't feel a lot of resistance after the first push. It went in pretty easily after I broke through the wall."

I caught Rex trying to stifle his laughter from the corner of my eye. Okay, so there was a lot of unintentional innuendo in there, but it wasn't like I was actively trying to make it sound sexual. Besides, knowing Rex, it didn't take a lot for him to turn things into a giant innuendo-filled joke. I was actually kinda proud of him for not making a "That's what your mom said" joke; he was definitely showing a lot of restraint.

Just then, a loud growling noise interrupted our investigation and I released the shaft of the spear to grab my stomach. "Sorry," I squeaked. "I haven't eaten in hours."

Rex grinned in amusement. "Didn't you have sandwiches in your backpack?"

I shook my head and groaned. "The sandwiches were in Weevil's backpack."

At that, his eyes widened. "God dammit! Why would you let him carry them in his bag? You know Bug-brain's just gonna eat them himself, right?"

[Soundtrack: Minute Darkness - Umineko No Naku Koro Ni]

I couldn't reply to him as static noise filled the room and we heard Pegasus's voice. "Oh, it's so nice to see you all so vigilant in your pursuit of Lia's murderer! I knew this tragedy would bring you all together." It didn't seem like he was talking to the people in the meeting room specifically, so I could only assume that there were other loudspeakers installed around the submarine. "I know you must all be famished after everything that's happened this morning, so I'd like to happily inform you that the mess hall is now open for breakfast and will be open until 11AM. We've got an open buffet of the most mouth-watering meals made by my own personal chef and his team. So please help yourselves, and don't forget that our next meeting will be at 6PM. Make sure you've got your stories straight by then; I'm looking forward to hearing what you discover. And to make it a bit more interesting, I've come up with a fun new rule." I was pretty much already on my way to the mess hall when he said that and stopped dead in my tracks to listen. "Whosoever correctly discovers the identity of the murderer as well as the method they used will be granted immunity and be sent out of the game zone and into the guest zone for the remainder of the game. So happy theorizing!"

When the static died, Malik, Rex, and I simply stared at each other. It felt like all the air had been completely sucked out of the room. Immunity was a big deal, and only one of us got to have it. Pegasus had officially made this an 'every man for himself' deal with that rule. We were so happy to be coming up with logical theories with Malik, but now there was no way he'd cooperate with us if it was a competition.

"God, what an asshole," Rex groaned.

Malik let out a sigh that sounded like he had been holding it in for a while, and rubbed his temples with a strained expression on his face. "You can definitely say that again."

"God! What an asshole!" I wailed, clawing at the sides of my face melodramatically before leaning against the door and sighing. "I'm still hungry," I concluded in a small voice. "I need to go raid the buffet."

Malik shrugged and said, "I could use a good meal, too. I'm gonna go find Bakura and Serenity first, though, and see if they wanna come with us."

I nodded, having no qualms with that. Besides, I needed to get Rex alone for a bit anyway. We needed to talk about this new rule that Pegasus added. Rex and I were friends, so we could definitely figure out this issue. One of us would have to stand down and help the other get the answer.

Once Malik was gone, I stepped out of the meeting room and into the hall with Rex. After making sure Malik was really gone and out of earshot, I remarked, "Well, Pegasus sure likes to fuck us in the ass, doesn't he?"

Rex snorted. "He sure isn't making this easy. A murder investigation is better when everyone cooperates with you and you can get all the clues, but now, you can bet nobody's gonna help us out with anything. With some kind of murder game going on, I think everyone wants that ticket out of the game; no way are they gonna give us a chance to do that."

I bit my lip. "Yeah, I thought so, too. I was also thinking about what the two of us are gonna do. Only one of us gets to leave if we figure out who the culprit is. I think it should be you."

Rex was taken aback by my words and widened his eyes. "But you could be killed. I can take care of myself, so you should probably be the one to leave the game."

Shaking my head vigorously, I retorted, "But I'm already dead. If I die again, it's no big deal. You're the one who got roped into it against your will! You're not the only one who can take care of himself. I'm strong, too. I won't go down without a fight!"

He growled when he heard that. "No big deal? Don't say shit like that! You're my best friend and I'm not letting you pass up on that immunity!"

"Well, that's not your choice, is it?" I argued. "I can only get out if I tell Pegasus whodunit and howdunit, and I'm not saying anything, because I want you to go back to Weevil and stay safe!"

Rex seemed to be at a loss for words, with tense shoulders and a stern look on his face. "Well," he finally said, "none of this matters if we never figure out who killed Lia. So let's focus on that first, and we'll argue about this later."

"Fine," I said in a smug tone, placing my hands on my hips and tilting my nose upwards.

He let out a very long breath and shook his head. "You're really stubborn, y'know?"