Post 128 of main thread.

Day breaks in the Frontroom. All is quiet. It was a tranquil Spring day, the first truly beautiful weather the villagers had witnessed since they had hunkered in for the long, dark, cold winter back in the fall, several months ago. Finally, there looked to be rebirth. Finally, the sun was coming out again.

My, how quickly this would change.

A white, unmarked van slowly pulled up to Crazed Rabbit's house. Outside stepped a man, sharply-dressed save for the fact that he was wearing stereotypical 1950s deliveryman clothing. When Crazed Rabbit went to answer the door, he too was bemused by this man's clothing choice, but never got the chance to mention it.

"Telegram," said the deliveryman, handing CR an envelope.

"Telegram?" CR asked, eying the deliveryman while at the same time taking the envelope. "Those things are still around?"

"Well," the deliveryman said, "like everyone else, we're tightening the belt a bit with this economy. But yeah, despite phones and the internet and everything, there's still a market for telegrams. Chalk it up to them being obsolete enough to be classified as 'retro' and thus cool I guess, I don't know. I suppose it's a moot point, since it's paying my bills. Anyway, you'll sign for it?"

"Uh... sure," CR said, still off-guard by the strangeness of the entire encounter. He accepted a pen from the deliveryman and signed the paper on his clipboard, returning both to the deliveryman. He then attempted to tear open the envelope, with little success.

"Say, this is sealed pretty tightly," CR said. "Do you by any chance have a letter opener on you?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," the deliveryman said, digging into his pockets for one. A second later, he came up with it, but instead of handing it to CR he instead moved quickly, slitting the unsuspecting homeowner's throat. CR fell to his knees, gasping for air that would not come.

"But... but why... not kill... me right a-... away?" he managed to choke out.

"All telegrams must be signed for," the deliveryman said with a flourish, and then walk out. He did not bother to see Crazed Rabbit expire in his own foyer.

Andres was out and enjoying the pleasant day along with the various flora and fauna of the Frontroom, taking in the sight of the golden sun dazzling its light on all the creatures of the earth. Yes, Andres was truly one with nature for the moment; he was mowing the lawn.

Mowing the lawn provided a nice bit of solitude for Andres. The ever-present sound of the motor conveniently tuned out any other annoying human and their annoying requests, allowing his thoughts to truly wander as he completed his task. In addition, it got him out of the house, and on a beautiful day such as this he jumped at the chance to get out and manicure the grass into uniform precision.

Andres didn't really have a set pattern for cutting the grass; he took whatever route fancied him that day. Today's route, as it would have it, had him cut a long stretch of grass while facing north. It was a very long stretch of grass, as a matter of fact. It often took Andres well over a minute to finish that stretch before turning the mower.

As he would have it, it only took well over a minute for someone to approach him from the south while (oddly) lugging a cooler, set the cooler down, take an icicle out of the cooler, and stab him with said icicle from said cooler. As Andres lay on his well-kept lawn, watching two puddles from his blood and the icicle form and then increase, the only thought that went through his head was that maybe the lawnmower's motor wasn't so pleasant after all. Maybe it was, as his wife had informed him on countless occasions, overly loud, obnoxious, and liable to make him miss something important.

In a certain office in the center of town...

"Hello?" the man said, picking up the phone. "Yes? What... oh... oh, no. O-okay. Yes." He hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair, sighing heavily. It seemed as if the weight of the word had just been dropped on him all at once. After about a minute of despair, the man rose from his chair and walked over to a section of wall. On it was a plaque, entitled "Esteemed Predecessors". Below the plaque was a picture of a man who, despite his cowl, looked very much like a lumberjack:



The man brushed aside the picture, for behind it was a hole in the wall. In that hole was a thick binder. He took it out of the wall and examined the cover. "In Case of Mafia Assault on Frontroom," it read.

"Right then," Chief of Police Lemur said to himself, "Let's do this."

Thirty minutes later, he had gathered everyone in the town square and prepared to make an announcement. "All right, folks," he began. "About thirty minutes ago, I received a report of there being two separate murders in the town. Unfortunately, Crazed Rabbit and Andres are both dead, CR courtesy of his throat being slit and Andres due to a stab wound. I have reliable information that these murders are mafia hits, meaning that they're trying to wipe out our town."

There was an audible gasp among the people in the town square. The Frontroom was the Kingdom of Peace and Love! Why would anyone want to assault it?

"However folks, remain calm. I do have a plan," Lemur said. "Now then..." he muttered to himself, thumbing through the binder. "Ah, yes, it says so right here. In cases like this, democracy is the best defense against annihilation. You all know each other, surely you'll be able to figure out who the two traitors are amongst yourselves better than honest police work can. Therefore, it will be up to you to smoke out the mafia and lynch them. Every day until the murders stop, you will vote for who you think is guilty. At the end of the day, whoever has the most votes is lynched. Got it?"

The villagers nodded. "Good, then the first day of voting begins. Let's hope it's the last day, too. Best of luck, everyone."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (32)
Yaseikhaan
Sasaki Kojiro
Secura
Csargo
johnhughthom
Askthepizzaguy
Beefy187
Methos
White_eyes:D
Sigurd
Kagemusha
Subotan
Beskar
Captain Blackadder
Joooray
pevergreen
Renata
atheotes
shlin28
Diamondeye
Winston Hughes
Double A
Centurion1
Chaotix
Thermal Mercury
Cultured Drizzt fan
Ibn-Khaldun
woad&fangs
Psychonaut
spL1tp3r50naL1ty
TinCow
Reenk Roink

Killed:
Crazed Rabbit
Andres

It is now Day 1! Voting will close in around 24 hours.