Part 46: Nines High

_{content warning: eye trauma}

Sheep's route is a really interesting one because it's one of the earliest written routes in the game, to the point that it's connected to an earlier iteration of the Zodiac Trial that didn't make it into the final VN. I mentioned in the OP that this VN originates as a story that the creator Themis wrote, but one big part of that I haven't mentioned yet is that the original death game- what the Zodiac Trial was and how it worked- was completely different in the original story, and Sheep's route was written when that first death game concept was still being used.

I won't get into specifics about the original game (partly because I don't think Themis ever gives us a full breakdown of how it worked), but one of the big things was that it took place over a 24 hour period, requiring the whole group to spend the night in the school (which in turn had a 'who's on guard duty and in what shifts' dynamic that changed how some of the routes played out). In that version of Sheep's route, Horse's murder takes place at night, so the fact of 'who was supposed to be watching the group' was a much bigger part of the plot. There was also a plot thread where Bunny ends up murdering someone else during the night as well (the reasons why were not given by Themis, and to my understanding was written out completely, so don't take this as spoiling something we haven't gotten to), and while he's trying to cover that up Sheep has the opportunity to kill Pig, the third guard. (Also, the scene where Mouse is talking with Ox and Bunny in the art room was originally Bunny coming clean about the fact that he killed someone in that original draft of this route.)

Themis also talked about how the early iteration of the VN had a lot more pointless or multi-stage choices and as they got closer to the final product they eventually made the management decision to cut out a lot of the unnecessary choice stuff, as all it was accomplishing was making the routes messier than they needed to be. However, because this was an early route, we still have some remnants of that version of the game in Sheep's route. As you're about to see, one of those choices actually does have an impact on whether or not you get the first, early ending, in Sheep's route...

[Make a mistake during the investigation of Horse's body.]

So, this ending is actually interesting, because it all centers around if we can successfully investigate Horse's murder or not. It's not that hard to do, but there is one big thing that influences how you should investigate, and that's, in fact, if we bring Sheep along with us or not. Whether she's there or not in turn influences where to investigate- and in our case, we successfully investigated by looking at the books while she was there with us.

Let's take a look at some of the other successful investigation stuff, first. There was one other right answer if investigating while Sheep is there, and that's near the window blinds...

[BGM: Steadfast Gallop]


Now how on earth could the window blinds have anything to do with the body?

Just hear me out! Look, see how those windows have these metal ball chains to pull the blinds up and down, right?

Yeah, that;'s fairly common, what of it?

Now look at this one! It's missing the chain.



Huh, that is weird. I'm still not seeing the point.

Don't you think something like that could set up the body to look like this?

No, but I'm hoping you do.

I do. It's like, er, you know, I think it'd be best if I could just draw this out.

I walked over to the classroom's whiteboard, picked up a marker, and began to illustrate my point.



Yes, Themis themselves drew this.

So this is how the body and the door were initially, see?

You're a rubbish artist.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize we were at an Art Gala. You get what I'm drawing, right? Then it works.

I'm sorry, please, continue.

Thank you. Now, if you looped the metal chains around Horse's arms and put them over the door frame, you'd have something that looks like this. The killer then exits to the other side of the door and pulls.

The body then leans up against the door, all from the outside.



Okay, that kind of works, but look, the door isn't completely closed, there's still the metal chain. What do you do about that?

It's not perfect, I grant you, but if you pull on one end of each of the chains, you'll pull them through the crack. At that point, the weight of the body would push the door completely closed, and the movement of the door at that point is negligible.

I suppose that would accomplish this effect. Not bad. However, I fail to see the point of any of that.

I don't know, maybe it was meant to throw us off or something?

Seems like quite a bit of work, don't you think? I don't know, this whole situation is confusing.

Yeah, I don't really get any of this.

There is one other avenue for investigation left, and that's if we don't bring Sheep along, and then take a look...



Behind his back?

Why yes, to solve how this was done, simply look between Horse's back and the door. Or rather, try to look between Horse's back and the door.

Alright.

Ox moved to do just that. Little did he know that this would be a fruitless effort.

I believe that you'll find the task rather difficult. After all, our conniving killer used some glue and glued the back of Horse's shirt to the door. Thus, when they closed the door after leaving, so too did the body move, “blocking” the doorway impossibly.

Neat idea, not correct.

Huh? Really?



Yeah, doesn't seem to be any glue here.

Are you sure? You don't think there's maybe some sort of glue that goes away after a time or something?

I think you should just cut your losses on this one and admit you're as stumped as me.

Darn it. I really thought I had it there.

Well, don't be too upset over it. The specifics of how the body ended up like that probably don't actually matter much, the point is that someone shot Horse and now he's dead.

This is, somehow, still a correct way to navigate the investigation, even though you don't learn anything by doing so. As for how to get the bad ending, well, one way to get it is to check Horse's back while Sheep is with us- we get the same scene as above, but after doing so, Sheep has a suggestion...

[BGM: Dog Days]


Wh-what about the closet?

What about the closet?

What if there was someone hiding in there?

Sheep, you're a genius!

I walked over to the closet across the room. Just looking at it, you'd think it would be used to house nothing more than textbooks. But this time, it could be housing a murderer. I opened the doors to reveal someone inside!

I was right! ...Well, half right. It was true that someone was hidden inside. However, I was under the impression that they'd be alive.

This is...

AAAGH!

N-no...

[BGM: That Pesky Rodent]


Before us lay the body of Dog. I thought it was suspicious that we hadn't found him, but I didn't think he'd end up like this. Two. Two people had their lives stolen away in this hellhole. I had a feeling I wouldn't be able to enter a school again after this.

Well hey, now we know exactly where Dog was for this whole route!

This is horrible.

Terrible. But you might be right in your theory.

But Dog is dead!

Yes, but look at that.

Ox gestured to the pistol stuffed in Dog's pocket.

So Dog had the pistol that shot Horse.



We can't say that for sure, but most likely, yes.

But then, who killed him?

I think I have an answer to that as well.

You do?

Check out Dog's cause of death.

That's...

A golden knife, yes. Stabbed right through the neck.



It would kill quickly, sure, but it's not through the throat.

Dog would still have a bit of life left in him. And the knife is a rather distinct looking one, wouldn't you say?

You don't think?

This closet is right across from the door. Judging by the state of the body, I think this is the only answer that makes sense.

Um... what are you guys talking about?

Horse stabbed Dog, who had been hiding in the closet, with the Butcher's Knife. Horse then put some distance between his victim, since Dog wasn't dying right away. However, Horse didn't know that Dog had gotten his hands on a pistol.

With his dying energy, Dog used his pistol to shoot Horse in the chest, killing him.

This game is really good about information you learn in other routes re-contextualizing stuff you encounter- for example, we know the deal with this knife (specifically, that it's something Dog had on him before he was abducted, and it wasn't confiscated) because we got Dog's route immediately, but if we hadn't, then this explanation would make perfect sense, since we hadn't seen the knife before!



It's a bit of a convenient scene, sure, but the evidence adds up.

So I guess Horse was the traitor, then.

I guess.

And Dog was our hero, huh?

I guess he was.

B-But he ended up dying right here. How tragic.

He paid for our lives with his... We'll make sure he's honored outside.

Indeed. For now, we should report back to the group.

[BGM: Silence]


The trek back to the cafeteria was grim. How could it not be, having already faced down death? When we got back, we explained the situation to the group.

That's horrible!

Damn it... we couldn't save everyone.

We never were going to be able to. At least with this, things can come to a peaceful end.

That's really your big fuckin' takeaway from this? What a freak!

Hey, hey, everyone, calm down. I think the news has just put us on edge.



More importantly, this round is almost over. We should all input our moves again, right?

Oh shoot, you're completely right! We should get on that, pronto!

Bunny was right, we needed to operate our tablets. So we decided to split up and use our tablets in different rooms. I entered a nearby classroom. I took out my tablet. I turned it on.

However, before I pressed anything, I hit the floor.

Because I had been killed.

That's pretty vague, huh? Well, I couldn't be more specific- I died too fast. Maybe my neck was slit, maybe I was shot, maybe I was poisoned. Doesn't really matter now, does it?



[Ending – 9 of Clubs]

If Mouse doesn't discover the true nature of Horse's fate, then the larger group will fall under a false sense of security. If the group thinks everything is fine, the killer will be emboldened to speed up the schedule.

In this case, discovering a half-truth is worse than both discovering everything and discovering nothing.

So yeah, interacting with the closet in any capacity- whether Sheep is there or not- puts you on this end, because you discover Dog's body and this completely changes how Mouse and Ox perceive the crime scene. If you either discover more hard evidence with either the books or the missing chain, or you discover nothing at all with checking behind his body (and don't have Sheep there to misdirect you out of fear that they might notice Horse was shot from behind), you make it through the investigation “successfully”.

The next ending we missed is if Mouse picks the wrong person when determining who she think the killer is...

[Label the wrong person as the Butcher.]

We're going to pick someone we obviously know is not the Butcher here- namely, Dog, as he is currently dead and stuffed in a closet somewhere. At the end of this section, I'll also touch on Mouse's thought process for each of the other wrong choices, just for those curious.

[BGM: Silence]


Dog?

He's unaccounted for at all the crime scenes. This is especially important in the cases of Pig's death, which shouldn't have been possible for anyone we had an alibi for.

He must have choked her out in a separate room, then brought her body back and stabbed it while we were all distracted by the race on the television. We don't know where he is because he's hiding, but he's picking us off one by one.

Is that realistic though?

What do you mean?



Pig's death, he would just have to drag the body in at a time where he hoped no one would be looking in that direction. And if he's the killer, why bother dragging the body into the open like that at all?

If he wanted to pick us off 'one by one', it'd probably be better if we didn't find the body.

That's...

And the fact we haven't seen him at all is also suspicious. Ever since Pig's death, we've been all over the place. Surely someone should have run into him at this point, right?

Maybe that's explained if he's been hiding out this whole time, but no, he's apparently prowling around to try and find people to kill? I don't know, I just think the pieces don't fit with this one.

Maybe you're right...



I'm going to try and gather everyone once again in the cafeteria. It might be a fruitless effort, but I've got to at least try. Care to join me?

I think I want to sit down and think about things for a bit. Go on ahead without me.

Suit yourself.

[BGM: Rat's Awakening]


I sat down to mull over all the evidence. It just wasn't adding up in my head. Over and over again, I kept going back to one piece of evidence that stood out to me. The water on top of the door. What possible use could that have? I couldn't answer that.

Then I heard footsteps approaching. I tensed up. But then I relaxed. It wasn't anyone to be scared of.

Oh, it's you. You know, you shouldn't be wandering around the school alone at this point. It's become really dangerous.

It was as I said this when I saw the knife be pulled out.

Oh.

It suddenly clicked with me. I realized what had happened. I realized how dumb I had been. I could've tried to run away, to resist, but I was so frozen by the stunning realization of the butcher's true identity that I just let my throat be slashed across, blood flying everywhere. Blood flying onto the killer's face. Blood onto the floor.

Blood was all I could see. Then, I couldn't.

[BGM: Silence]


[Ending – 9 of Diamonds]

After the one who inherited the Butcher's Knife kills enough secretly, Mouse will be compelled to solve the murders. However, if she's not able to identify who the culprit is in time, the butcher is likely to make her a target sooner rather than later.

This level of reasoning may be beyond Mouse's capabilities, but let's try to see what lies beyond here, shall we?

Like I said at the top, Mouse has a reasoning for every wrong choice, so I'll just run through the list quickly before we get to the final ending for this route that we haven't seen.

-Tiger



Tiger? You know she already confessed to have the Selfless personality type, right? Why would she kill people?

Confessing like that was just a devious trick to throw us off!

...Really?

I've got evidence! When everyone left to input their actions, Tiger claimed to have gone to the nearby restroom. She might've done that after stabbing Pig to death. She hid Pig's body in the kitchen where people couldn't find her, and quickly wiped away the blood. She washed herself off in the restroom.

Then, when everyone went looking for her, she dragged Pig's body back over behind that column. It all fits!

Mouse, none of that fits.

Why not?



The simple fact of the matter is, if Tiger wanted to kill us all, she could just grab that assault rifle she's guarding and start firing. No one would be able to stand up to her!

Well..

Plus, Horse was shot with a separate pistol than any of the ones in the weapon pile, right? When would Tiger have had time to find a different pistol when she's been guarding the weapon pile?

It's not like she could abandon that duty and risk someone spotting her.

Maybe you're right...

-Snake



Snake?

Think about it. He's been acting creepily and suspicious this whole time. He's exactly the profile of an intellectual who oddly knows quite a bit about guns and is polite but bloodthirsty. If anyone was to be a secret killer, it'd be him.

...He also doesn't have an alibi for when Dragon was attacked. He also claimed he didn't see Pig's body behind that pillar, but that whole mystery would be solved if he was lying about it. He input his move in a bathroom, so he could have washed off any blood after stabbing Pig there.

But think about Horse's death, when could he have done that?

That...

He was the first one into the cafeteria, and he didn't leave iut until long after we had found Horse's body. A lot of other people have missing spots in their abili for when they could've killed Horse, but not Snake. That's an impossibility.

I guess you're right. I was a little trigger happy with my accusation there.

-Rooster



That moron?

He's clearly a devilish mastermind.

I think this is just because you don't like him.

Hold on a minute, hear me out. We don't know where he was during Dragon's murder. Sheep was with us when the gun rang out, I ran into Monkey on the third floor shortly afterwards, and we saw Snake on the first floor not long before that.

Rooster's location was completely unknown. And he was the first to recuse himself from the group.

Okay, but that's not enough to say for sure that he's the killer. We don't know anything about Dog's alibi, right? And as for Monkey and Snake, they could've just run fast to try and fool you, the fact that you saw them in a different place at a different time doesn't mean anything.

That's...

Plus, when could he have killed Horse? He was with your group when you went back to the cafeteria, right? And even though he advocated to go searching for Horse, he never left the 'safe zone' until far after we found Horse's body.

You're right. Sorry. I guess I didn't think that one through.

And, finally...

-Monkey



You're accusing her?

I hate to do it, but it's the only thing that makes sense.

And why exactly is that?

She doesn't have an alibi for Horse's death. She doesn't have an alibi for Dragon's death. And really, that's more than you can say about most people.

Okay, but that still doesn't explain the situation around Pig. When do you propose she killed her? When could she have washed the blood off herself?

That's...

Plus, something about her being the culprit just... doesn't sit right with me. I don't know. I'm not usually one to be swayed by gut instincts, but it feels like we're missing something with that explanation.

Yeah, you're right. Honestly, what was I thinking, accusing her? Of course she wouldn't do this.

And that's that. Finally, the last ending, which (like Snake's third ending) requires you to get something wrong during the deduction breakdown.

[Fail to deduce the truth behind the Butcher's killings.]

Okay, so, like Snake's, there's multiple deduction points where you have to get the right answer, so we'll quickly run down all of them. Since we know how these things work by now (and because this is a LONG bonus update already), I'll summarize rather than transcribe the breakdown of these deductions going forward.



The correct answer for the first one is pretty obvious, it's when Sheep returned to the cafeteria. The other two answers here result in Mouse very badly trying to get Sheep to say something she shouldn't have known (or to get her to accidentally admit it on her own), and obviously fail immediately.



The second one is, again, a very cut and dry 'did you figure out when Pig was killed' question. The correct answer is, of course, when everyone was off inputting their actions. Pig couldn't have been killed while everyone was in the cafeteria, even if they were distracted by the fourth round results, because it's impossible to kill someone that silently unless there's some way to mask the sound- which there wasn't. Pig also couldn't have been killed while everyone was looking for her, because Tiger was in the cafeteria the whole time and would've literally seen it happen.



The third one is also pretty straightforward. The gun was obviously made to fire on its own, and the string and melted ice are proof that some kind of setup occurred. Dragon did not commit suicide, the knife would still be on the crime scene if that happened, and she wasn't killed remotely, the murder weapon was a knife and it would require a much more elaborate setup to kill someone remotely with one of those, especially with how little time there actually was to pull this murder off.



This last one is the only one that actually requires you to think about things rather than just an examination of the evidence- the real question is 'which of these two deaths has some detail that only makes sense if examined in a specific way', and the answer to that is obviously Horse's death, as he was killed with a gun and nobody heard it happen. While Pig's murder was obviously risky, once you know the specifics everything checks out on its own.

If you do manage to get one of these questions wrong, however...

[BGM: Silence]


Mouse... you don't really think it's me, right? Th-that's why you're struggling to think clearly. Because in your heart, you recognize I would never do something so h-h-horrible as murder.

She slowly started to approach me. I should've been worried, but she was so pitiful, so desperate, so sad that I wasn't thinking straight. Could she really be the culprit? Sure, it made sense to me, but I was just an amateur. Was I wrong?

Mouse, please, think things through. I thought we were... well, we could be friends. We can still be friends, right?

That's-



Just as I started to respond, Sheep lunged forwards at me. She hugged me. She hugged me with one hand, stabbed something through my chest with the other. I couldn't see it, but I could guess. Before I even knew what was happening, the hand that had stabbed me went to her pocket, and Sheep pulled out a gun. Using me as a cover, she shot at Ox and Monkey in quick succession.

*bang, bang!*

I heard two shouts, two bodies hit the floor. I couldn't tell what had happened, but it couldn't have been pretty. With a weak shove, I lost balance and fell onto the floor. The pain from the stabbing was severe, but peanuts to the pain I felt when Sheep pulled the knife out of my chest.

Gotta make sure...

She walked over behind my line of sight.



My muddled and pain-racked brain couldn't tell for what purpose at first, but then I heard Ox's howl and the sound of metal entering flesh. I then heard Sheep walking over to the other side of the room.

You b-

Whatever Monkey was doing to fight back wasn't enough. The sound alone put the image of a clean, brutal slash in my mind. Then Sheep walked back into my field of vision.

Sorry, sorry, sorry...

You...

DON'T BLAME ME!

In an instant, Sheep bent down and slashed at me. But this horizontal swipe wasn't aimed at my throat. This one was aimed at my eyes. I died blind, but able to see things how they truly were for the first time.



[Ending – 9 of Hearts]

If Mouse confronts Sheep with her sins, Sheep will try and appeal to Mouse, to say it couldn't be her.

Mouse will need to be ironclad in her will, backed up with solid reasoning, for if she falters for but a moment, Sheep will use that hesitation as an opportunity to strike.

That is the mark of the Butcher.

Next update, we start on a different path towards a different route!