Welcome to Gaia! ::

As four more people packed their bags and exited the hotel, most of the remaining decided to go to bed. It was awfully late; dinner had been postponed due to difficulties in the kitchen, and no one wanted to miss it. Toothbrushes and other amenities were thrown across hallways at each other, people switched from room to room due to paranoia, and all in all, no one really got to sleep until about three in the morning. Someone took advantage of the free calling to dial every other room in the hotel and pester the residents.

Shortly after midnight, InternalHardDrive held up a key and entered into the hotel lobby. She and a few others had worked tirelessly over the last few days to rebuild the jailhouse, and they had just finished. The ballroom could be used for something else now, and they’d be rid of that cow, too! For some reason, though, no one was around. “…Oh.” IHD mumbled to herself, looking up at a clock in the center of the lobby. “Everyone’s in bed. I guess they’ll find out in the morning.”

Dinner had been cleaned up already, so IHD decided to go to bed. She’d gotten a room on the first floor, so instead of taking any of the elevators, she continued on through the hallway. Perhaps because it was on the ground and thus easiest to decorate, this floor was in general more exquisite, with paintings and glass statues every few feet or so. The combination of the night sky from the windows and the lights on the ceilings gave the statues an eerie ambivalence, and she quickened her pacing, just wanting to reach her hotel room.

Suddenly, two things happened simultaneously: Silently, on a balcony above her, a rifle was loaded and aimed at her, and out of nowhere, a voice yelled “GET DOWN!” and tackled IHD to the ground, behind a glass statue of a black swan. A bullet shot through the floor where she was standing a second before.

The G-Teamer now on top of IHD breathed heavily. “Listen,” they whispered, “You need to stay down. There are no other balconies here for the Sniper to fire at you from here, and If it tries to fire at you back here, the glass will shatter. Someone will wake up, and the Sniper will have turned itself in.”

Nodding anxiously, IHD stayed down there for the rest of the night, eventually drifting off to sleep. She woke up later, having only hazy memories of what happened the night before.
---
DeGei was unwillingly dragged to the hotel’s casino by Takazawa and Jeff Jarrett, the two of them claiming “Hey, it’ll be fun, and you’ll probably win something!”

The two had promptly deserted him once they had gotten to the casino, which was the one place in the hotel where people were still active. So now he was here with nothing to do. Sighing, he decided that he’d go play slots. They were easy and mind-numbing.

He bought himself a drink, sat down at an empty slot machine near the back, and spent the next half an hour and 300 gold. He ended up with about 100 tickets. “Apparently, I’m not very good at this…” he said to himself, then handed the tickets to the first person he saw passing by. “I’m just going to go use the restroom, then go back up to bed. Takazawa and Jeff won’t care.”

The restroom was nearby, and strangely clean for such a place. It was also deserted, as far as DeGei could tell. At the very least, it was until someone stepped out of the stall and knocked him down to the tile.

“What do you think you’re doing?” DeGei screamed, trying to get someone’s attention. His voice echoed around the room, but was drowned out by the noise of the casino outside. The figure above him withdrew a switchblade and brought it down onto DeGei’s neck. He could feel it slowly slicing open as it was pulled across and then removed.

He didn’t know much about injuries, but DeGei knew he only had a very short while before he’d die of blood loss. He mustered up the last of his strength and tried to crawl away, but was stopped by the killer’s foot. About this time, DeGei thankfully lost the last strands of life he still had.

The killer picked up his body and dropped it into the stall, then reached into the slit and grabbed onto his tongue, pulling it back out through the slit. He then promptly left, leaving the body for some unwilling gambler to discover.
---
Once again, the voting was run using a hat, this time that of Desdemona Winchcobe. “It’s a top hat! It works better for this sort of thing!” The jailhouse had been built, but the locks were apparently not working, so the ballroom would have to do for now.

After the votes were tallied and Lyzz the Dark Beast was announced to be the winner (or loser, depending on your perspective), she was allowed to say one final statement before being carried off to the ballroom. She stood up in the middle of the lobby and promptly questioned, “Why do I have to be thrown into that room with the cow?” She never received an answer. No one was sure.
---
Hirun and Kori had taken to an eight-hour Rock Paper Scissors tournament, and ‘Aine was still being harassed by Steven. When Lyzz was thrown in, the cow promptly shifted his attention to her. ‘Aine smiled. “Finally!”

A voice then called out, “By the way, you guys, since you’re all obviously not the killer, we’re going to let you vote, too. Tell us your pick later, alright?”

Steven mooed, and a gasp came from Hirun. “STEVEN THINKS ZAE DID IT!”