The day dawned bright and cheerful. Menacing Miscellaneous was already bustling with activity. The admin sat on his high throne and surveyed his dominion with pleasure. “
,” said Happedy contentedly.
Suddenly, the mood was shattered by a piercing scream from the direction of Burdensome Books. The 667ers sprinted towards the board, arriving to find Sophie standing in Wretchedly Wrong Questions with horror in her eyes and a tremor in her lip. She was pointing at a large, suspiciously-dead-looking lump. Everyone gathered around the lump. It was, as they feared, a dead body – but not just any dead body. A collective gasp drifted up to the pinstriped ceiling.
Dante was dead.
“It’s foul play!” yelled Songbird, pointing to the stab wound in Dante’s back. Immediately exclamations and accusations erupted from the assembled 667ers.
“
!” exclaimed Gaspedy.
“Salsa! Potato!” exclaimed Terry Craig.
“I think it was Willis!” accused BSam.
“What? I think it was BSam!” accused Willis.
“
!” accused Sassedy.
“
?
!” accused Angredy.
“Whoa, whoa, everyone just calm down!” said Lemona. “We are Snicket Fans! We do not succumb to mindless mob psychology! We reason from facts and arrive at logical theories!” Everyone paused to consider this, then started screaming again. Bee chose this moment to arrive.
“What’s going on?” she asked, beeing too short to see over the horde.
“Tragedy has struck,” said Hermes mournfully, polishing his monocle.
LSWannaBe looked confused.
“Wait, why would Tragedy want to murder his prime minister?” she asked.
BSam and Willis overheard her. “I think it was Tragedy!” they accused in unison, a word which here means, “exactly at the same time, and extremely loudly”.
“
!” protested Rolledy.
“Calm down!” said Lemona. “Okay, who might have had a motive?”
Lucas posted a K-pop gif about chickens.
“Well…nobody would have had a motive, as far as I can tell,” said Sherry Ann. “Unless somebody wanted to steal his envelope collection.”
The 667ers thought about this, casting suspicious glances at each other. Hermes took a large knife from his coat pocket and started cleaning the blood stains from it with his monogrammed pocket handkerchief. Off to one side, Sixteen suddenly turned into a sheep. Nobody noticed.
Lucas posted a K-pop gif about avocadoes.
“Maybe we should all compare alibis,” said Lemona. “Where was everyone last night between the hours of 7 pm and 5 am, GMT?” Everybody took paper and pencil from their pockets and started calculating what this would be in their own time zone, except for Antenora, who did it in her head.
“
,” said Secredy.
“Probably drunk,” said BSam.
“Tu pinf in myy cvo mpitttrr a t jopm e,” said either MisterM or Isaac.
“What?” said everybody else.
“Cooking,” said Lady Grantham. “Not shepherds’ pie,” she added hastily.
“Homework,” said Pen.
Everybody quickly stepped back from him.
“What?” he asked, puzzled.
“You made a comment unrelated to your musical taste in a 667 fic!” Charlie gasped.
“Maybe he’s the murderer,” muttered Pandora.
The 667ers erupted once more into exclamations and accusations. Rellim and Anka, the designated nice ones, refrained from accusing anybody, and Terry Craig refrained from accusing Pen, thus fulfilling this fic’s shipper quota. Hermes finished cleaning his knife and pulled a tattered and well-thumbed copy of
How to Commit the Perfect Assassination off his bookshelf. He dropped it into a trashcan and threw a lit match in after it. Off to one side, Bryan suddenly expired from unknown causes. Nobody noticed.
Lucas posted a K-pop gif about rainbows.
The tumult only quieted with the reappearance of Sherry Ann, who had been stuck in a plot hole for the previous fourteen paragraphs. She looked exhausted and every one of her 4.54 billion years.
“The situation is not good in the rest of Burdensome Books,” she reported grimly. “Octuple postings are popping up like wildfire. The other moderators and I are doing our best, but with Dante gone, we’re only human.”
Sherry Ann’s grim report left the 667ers in a very grim mood. Lucas grimly posted a K-pop gif about light bulbs. Hermes grimly finished burning his book and grimly began sorting through Dante’s envelope collection.
“We can’t keep accusing one another like this,” said Lemona. “We have to pull together to solve this murder.”
Shelly nodded in agreement, and Cooledy posted an emoticon in agreement. “
,” said Cooledy.
Suddenly Linda jumped up. “I’ve figured it out! It was ADR, trying to reclaim power by murdering our president and instilling dissention among us!
Everyone gasped in horror, then sighed in relief that the case was solved.
“Well, we can at least give our fallen leader a proper funeral,” said Lemona.
“
,” said Sadedy.
All the 667ers left for Awfully Ancient Archives. Hermes trailed behind, stuffing Dante’s envelope collection in his briefcase. He polished his monocle one last time before following the others.
Lucas posted a K-pop gif about toothpicks.
THE END