Tatsuya Yamazaki - SHSL Street Fighter
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Tatsuya had done a fair bit to keep himself distracted in the time before the dreaded video night. He'd spent time with Rin and Ken exploring the storeroom and such, which was arguably a more or less productive way of spending one's time in consideration of the discoveries made. After their last meeting in the meeting hall, however, Tatsuya felt a certain agitation creep in. It wasn't attributed solely to Monokuma's shitty motive, but thoughts of the futility of the situation were rendering the street fighter on edge; as such, he took to his lonesome for the rest of that day. Being forced to watch that stupid pixelated animation no matter where he was or in which room he was in was frustrating, however; it just served to remind him of his own entrapment, of how
stupidly annoying this entire thing was and of how he really didn't deserve this. Tatsuya was frustrated, and yet mulling over his frustration provided no answers, it resolved nothing. Again, the street fighter would be forced to bide his time, for what other choice was he given except murder?
The day had passed and so did the night; Tatsuya had slept, but his being restless was an understatement. He'd awoken rather early, before the morning announcement had sounded, to find the animation portrayed by the monitor had survived the night, and had progressed in indication of how little time there was left before the live airing of Monokuma's private snuff collection. Thinking about it just made Tatsuya angry again, but as usual he was forced to suppress his emotions, or else, find a better way to deal with them. Fighting had always helped with that, but unless he went around picking fights with the others, which is probably something Monokuma would endorse anyway, Tatsuya wasn't granted much of an opportunity to safely (
safely- how ironic) practice what he loved. There still existed the option of training on his own, however, so perhaps that would help...
After a long period of idle contemplation spent seated on his bed, the street fight found himself breathing a long sigh and flattening his palms against his ears, willing himself to drown out any and all sounds, the muffled patter of footsteps in the hallway, the whir of the ceiling fan, even the unsettling
silence as that pixelated Monokuma crawled ominously across the screen towards her. Tatsuya wordlessly sat himself on the ground before his bed and took to a variety of brisk abdominal exercises- sit-ups, crunches, cross-crunches- he needed to feel blood pounding in his head, the pleasurable burn of his muscles, wanted to hear nothing aside from his rushing pulse and measured breathing. Training his eyes on the expanse of the blank wall beneath that god-damned monitor (could he rip it down? he wanted so fucking badly to rip it down), he willed upon himself productivity or calmness or just
something, something to draw his mind away from this hellish situation. He wouldn't take action, there was no need, no real promise of something better to come. She had been caught, but that was her fault. He had been caught, and that was his fault. For her losses, he could not be blamed, and since he was the one being forced to endure this shitty killing game now, why should he need to worry? It was a waste of his energy, energy that he alone needed to overcome this,
this...
When the screen overhead suddenly lit up in colors unfamiliar to the corners of his narrowed eyes, Tatsuya ungritted his teeth and came to a slow stop, his lower back resting upon the ground. He listened to the announcement in silence, his chest heaving slightly as Monokuma excitedly bore upon them the latest news-
...Someone is dead. Someone had died, near to the storage room. An investigation was starting. Someone had been killed.
As the pixelated Monokuma dropped away and the monitor blinked off, Tatsuya did not move for a few seconds, before stiffly forcing himself up onto his elbows and into a sitting position. He found himself laughing beneath his breath, but it was tired and wry; Tatsuya felt no relief, no vigour, no apprehension. A murder had just taken place. Someone among them had died. And most unfortunate of all, it didn't even seem that much of a surprise.
Getting to his feet with a brusque sigh, Tatsuya spent a moment stretching before grabbing his e-book and heading for the storage room situated at the end of the corridor. He'd been there before, had spent a fair bit of time investigating its contents along with Rin and Ken. Monokuma had mentioned the 'Room of Joy', and Tatsuya had to consider that if the Room of Joy was what he thought it was, then how had it become the site of the first murder...
As he walked to the storage room, briskly enough, a distinct electronic sound was emitted by his e-book and Tatsuya accessed it only to be graced with a simple report of the murder. After a moment's hesitation, he soon enough opened the file and was provided with the identity of the victim and cause of death. Tatsuya wasn't exactly curious beforehand as to who had died, but it was a matter of importance regardless. Arsen... he didn't know the bloke, had seen him around by no doubt, but would've failed to distinguish him by name. His talent was an interesting premise, however... firefighters were characterized as a sturdy, daring sort of professional, the kind that would best a ferocious blaze if it meant saving another person's life. To have been made the victim of the first murder, would the Ultimate Firefighter have been caught off-guard, fooled so as to be placed in a situation where he had not expected to have the tables turned on him? The cause of death indicated otherwise, however; it was a very forward approach, to have ended someone's life by stabbing them in the chest and gut. Unless he was knocked out prior, thus having sustained other injuries? That was a possibility. The vague indication of a 'sharp object' being the murder weapon did not help form any obvious conclusions however, and the location of the murder was a baffling enough aspect. Interestingly enough, no time of death had been stipulated either, which didn't help too much in determining just how things might've gone down...
Tatsuya's stride gradually slowed as he approached the entrance of the storage room, setting his tablet aside as his stoic gaze flitted to the obvious blood trail that marred the ground. Wordlessly eyeing the general direction of the trail, Tatsuya entered the ruined storage room and, otherwise ignoring the mess littering the floor, headed immediately for the back, where the door to the secret room had already been leveraged open. How promising.
The street fighter stepped inside the room, and was affronted with the sight of the sprawled corpse and the muttered commentary of those who had already arrived to witness the disaster that had taken place. Tatsuya was silent at first, simply assessing the scene for what it was, although the fact that there was a
dead person laying before him, the victim of someone's tenacity and desperation, became more than a little apparent and the street fighter felt his fists ball up in response to the vexatious thoughts that soon clouded his mind. Tatsuya strode closer to the body, cocking his head as he gazed down at Arsen's desecrated form, his expression without sympathy though wrought with annoyance.
"So. Some fucker bit back."
His callous gaze, borderline accusatory and much unforgiving, lingered for a moment before flitting across those that had so far crowded around.
"Too afraid to watch that special someone suffer? Hope the relief was worth taking a fucking life."
Tatsuya was caustic; while his tone remained even, the venom and derision in his voice was undisguised. He was annoyed, annoyed because he'd been struggling to keep his impulses in check too, but some bastard had exhibited such weak will that they'd thought it easiest to give in to the robot bear's empty promises. Someone had actually thought
this to be the solution, and gone ahead with it. Someone had chosen betrayal over self-restraint.
"Spineless bitch."
Scowling, Tatsuya tore his eyes away from the corpse and moved from the center of the torture room, towards the table, knowing for himself that there was need for composure. There was no point lingering on what had happened; there would be plenty of time to chew out the perpetrator later, if he so felt like wasting his breath on the culprit. For now, evidence would need to be collected so they could resolve the case and bring the murderer to justice or whatever the fuck. Someone had already started investigating the body so Tatsuya figured he might as well put himself to use as well. There certainly seemed plenty of things to examine.
"...I'm going to check the storage room," he announced to no-one in particular, stalking from the dismal 'Room of joy' and back into the adjacent room. The torture chamber was only going to get more crowded so Tatsuya knew he'd prefer investigating where there was less people in general. As to the significance of the storage room however, the man was not entirely sure. Aside from providing access to the murder scene, the only other prima facie clue was the state of utter disorganisation the storage room was in, and Tatsuya knew for a fact it was
not like this before. Had there been a fight?, he considered as his eyes skimmed the scattered boxes and their strewn contents. It seemed likely. Perhaps a closer look at the state of the room would yield further information, and so Tatsuya set about examining the mess.
@Neobullseye
