Final Chapter: The Murderers and their Sinister Motive

Pearl fell to the floor, backing up as far as he could into the wall. His best friend had been slain in front of him, and the rest of his friends were dead, scattered about the mansion. But he couldn't focus on that. He was staring in horror at Blue and Silver, his mind reeling many different things. How could they do this? Why did they do this? Did he really only have a few more minutes to live before they decided to kill him?

He thought about getting up and running, running as fast as he could. He knew he could outrun them—he was the fastest in their group, after all—but where would he run? The blizzard was still as horrendous as ever. Even if he found his way outside, he would probably end up freezing to death moments later.

Instead, his body was paralyzed. He couldn't move even if he wanted. He was the last one alive. Even if they killed him, he had to know why they did this.

"Come on, Pearl!" Blue chuckled, and Pearl's blood ran cold. "At least look a little more excited to see me!" She swung the knife in front of him, Diamond's blood splattering onto his cheeks. He gritted his teeth, but not in anger. He didn't even know which emotion to feel. Sadness? Agony? Fear? Maybe all of them.

Uncontrollable tears rolled down from Pearl's eyes, salty residue mixing in with blood. He couldn't bother to wipe them away; his arms were numb anyway.

He spotted Silver behind her, now smirking as Blue continued to giggle. Pearl had so many things he wanted to say—possibly scream if anything—but he could only manage to barely squeak out the first words that came to his mind.

"W-why… Why did…you do…this…?"

Blue smirked wider and Pearl wondered how that was even possible. She looked like a demented clown with that freaky smile. She was psychotic. "Would you really like to know? Why don't I tell you…" She put the knife to her lips coyly and Pearl almost had the urge to barf. When she made the decision to shove it into the wall next to her, her lips were coated in Diamond's blood.

"But let's first start with how we pulled all of this off. Killing off seventeen people took a lot more planning than we thought. We sure had to improvise some. Didn't we, Silver?" she looked over to her junior, who nodded and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed.

"Okay, so Sapphire was our first victim, right?" Blue turned to Silver and asked like she had no clue. Pearl lowered his eyebrows. He knew that she was aware of the exact order in how they killed them and he despised how much she was enjoying explaining how she did it.

"I took care of her," Blue said, putting her hands on her hips. "We were all heading back to our rooms, but she had lingered in her room for awhile. While walking with Yellow, she said she had to use the bathroom so I told her I would catch up with her later. I walked in Sapphire's room and she told me she was planning to visit Wally. But before she had a chance to leave, I slipped a knife out from under my jacket sleeve and slashed her in the back. Oh, the kill was thrilling!" She clenched her fists in front of her, looking overly excited. Pearl was extremely disgusted.

"But I wasn't expecting Gold to walk by and witness the whole thing," Blue then perked her lips in a pout. "I had to threaten him with the lives of Crystal and Lyra if he so much as thought of telling anybody. Which is why he didn't speak once we came back downstairs. Silver had join us along the way and I had to tell him what happened."

"S-so Gold knew the whole time that the two of you were the killers!" Pearl said, his voice returning to its normal loud self. "Then why didn't you just kill him then?"

"Because we were the only ones who still hadn't returned to the main room," Silver finally spoke up. "If you guys would have discovered both Sapphire and Gold bodies, with us being the last ones to show up, we would have both been instantly accused."

Pearl remembered Platinum trying to call Looker and the police. "W-wait, what about the police? Why couldn't Platinum get ahold of anyone? The phones rang, so it's not like the connection was cut off or busy. That meant that no one was answering!"

"Oh, that?" Blue waved her hand. "I redirected the phone numbers of the police station and Looker to my cell phone, which is in my bag on silent."

"What?" Pearl gasped in shock. "H-how?"

"I've spent a lot of time with Bill. Y'know, technology nerd. Aaand…I learned some things relating to electronics. It took some time, but I managed it," Blue smiled at her accomplishment. Pearl lowered his head as he continued crying. The tears just wouldn't stop.

"But very good question, Pearl!" Blue said. "It's just too bad you weren't able to play detective a little sooner. Maybe you coulda been the hero and saved some lives."

Pearl tried to not let that get to him. He wasn't as smart as Platinum or Cheren. And even if they were still alive, this revelation may have blown their minds as much as it did his.

"Okay, let's see, who's next…?" she put a finger to her forehead in a thoughtful pose. "Ah! Emerald! And that nurse… I forgot about her."

"I'm the one that murdered the two of them," Silver raised his hand. "I slipped in there and was planning to kill Wally since he was an easy target. But I wasn't expecting Emerald to be in there. So he became the target instead. A quick slash to the back. A quick stab to the nurse. And with leaving Wally alive, he would have been the obvious suspect."

"But Wally wouldn't have been suspected of killing Sapphire!" Pearl said. "He was with Ruby! Asleep!"

"We knew at some point the thought of two killers would have been brought up eventually," Blue said. "We had to continue trading off and trying to focus the blame on others before Silver and I could have been thought up as suspects. Which is why when Yellow wanted to check on Wally, I went off by myself and told her I would catch up. She could have easily been seen as a suspect as well."

Pearl couldn't believe they could let Yellow and Wally of all people become suspects. But he also was still trying to wrap his head around the thought of Blue and Silver killing people. He didn't think any of his friends were capable of something like this.

"Then the pigtail sisters were next," Blue smiled. "Oh, they were the most fun. Instead of using the bathroom like I told Yellow I was doing, I made my way back to the main room and found Gold, Crystal and Lyra being the only occupants. I rushed in and killed Crystal first, and Gold and Lyra begged me not to kill them. Lyra tried to stop Crystal from bleeding out, but she was already a goner. So while Lyra was vulnerable, I slaughtered her, too. Gold couldn't believe it. I had lied to him, after all," Blue started giggling and Pearl felt his stomach churn.

"B-but what about Gold?" Pearl asked. He still couldn't understand how Gold could have lasted as long as he did after witnessing three of four murders, not including the nurse.

"Easy," Blue said. "I killed him."

Pearl's eyes widened. How was that possible? Until about a half an hour ago, Gold was alive! Red, Green, Yellow, Bill and Silver had found him in the bathroom after they discovered that he and Blue were missing. Blue couldn't have killed him then!

"I know exactly what you're thinking, Pearl," Blue said. "And yes, I did kill Gold after murdering Crystal and Lyra. I had to; he had seen too much for him to keep it a secret anymore. But I thought up a plan to keep Gold 'alive' and get any possible thought of me being a suspect out of people's heads. I faked my death and posed as Gold."

Pearl couldn't believe how nobody had noticed. So after discovering that Crystal and Lyra were dead, any time they saw Gold…it was really Blue the whole time?!

"Silver was a good actor, but he hadn't been expecting me to pose as Gold. When he hugged me after finding 'Gold' in the bathroom, I quickly whispered that Gold was dead and he understood immediately that I had slaughtered him. We took it from there," Blue shrugged.

Pearl gritted his teeth. Blue was the perfect actress. There was no way anybody could have seen that coming.

"As for Gold's body, I'll explain that in a little bit," Blue continued. "Once we regrouped with everyone in the living room, Silver made it apparent that it was urgent that we find 'me'. So when Platinum came up with the idea to separate us with cards, we had to go along with it and hope that we could find a way to kill more people while grouped together."

"The groups ended up better than we thought," Silver said. "Not only were Blue and I separated, but most of the groups of best friends were separated as well, just in case anyone made the assumption that two close friends were working together."

"Which is how killing Black and Bianca worked out perfectly!" Blue cheered. "The power went off at just the right moment! It couldn't have gone any better."

"W-what?" Pearl was confused. "You mean, the power wasn't meant to go off at any particular point in time?"

"Nope!" Blue said. "We set that up in the beginning in the hopes that it would help us with something later on down the line, in case we were having time killing people off. But it ended up working to our best advantage! Silver killed Bianca while I killed Black. We basically just killed whoever we could get to, it didn't really matter who. And we were sure that a backup generator would eventually switch on, so we left the knives in their bodies just in case we couldn't hide them fast enough."

Pearl finally moved his hands in order to clench them tightly. At that moment, he could have been the one to die…

"And from then, you and Diamond began thinking of the possibility of your closest friend Platinum being the killer since she was the one that thought of grouping us by the deck of cards and because you thought she was the only one that knew about the backup generator. Oh, it was great. Everyone was losing their mind," Blue said with a huge smile.

Pearl felt disgusted with himself for accusing Platinum. The one person everyone should have been accusing faked her death from the beginning.

"When we made our way to the kitchen after Wally's hacking fit, Silver and I took that chance to swipe some more knives," Blue explained. "We also took that time to start a dispute over who could be the killer. With 'Gold' and Platinum seeming like the most likely to have murdered everyone, we were keeping the accusations off of Silver. Of course, someone would have possibly wondered about Silver's innocence after awhile, so we couldn't ignore accusing him at least for a little bit. If not everyone had been accused at some point, they could have ended up being the most likely suspect."

Which is why they had argued in the kitchen. Pearl began to realize that the only time Silver had been accused of being the killer was when 'Gold' said something about it. Blue had been suspected in her absence but was obviously off the hook once they found her 'body'.

"Then came time for some of the group to get some sleep," Blue raised her hand to examine her fingernails. "I figured that would happen at some point, and Silver and I knew that there was no way that everyone was gonna sleep at once. And since we were all had to stick together at this point, we were gonna have to get creative.

"Then when Platinum suggested going to her room, I knew we were doing good," Blue snapped her fingers.

Platinum's room… Pearl glanced over. That was where everyone discovered Blue's 'body'.

"I'm sure you're just dying to know how you guys managed to discover my body when I was right next to you the whole time, right?" Blue laughed hysterically. "Get it? Dying? Haha, I'm so funny!"

Pearl cringed. Blue was insane.

"Anyway, after I killed Gold, I dumped him in Platinum's room and spent some time altering his body to look like mine, with some help from my Ditto!" she winked. "Ditty did an awesome job, and nobody suspected a thing! The reason why you guys didn't find 'my' body the first time you searched Platinum's room is because hid Gold's body deep in the closet. When the search party left, Ditty dragged his body out into the middle of the floor and remained there until you guys came back around."

Pearl didn't even think about Pokémon. Everyone had left their Pokémon back at home, save for Green and his Charizard which he had used to get here earlier than everyone else to help with the party. It seems that Blue had her Ditto the whole time.

"Once we all went to Mr. Berlitz's room, we had to find a way to lure out more people to kill," Silver said. "As long as we remained in place in that room, there was no way that we could kill anyone else."

"So in the short moment that Silver was leaning over 'my' body in Platinum's room, he was giving instructions to Ditty," Blue explained.

"Huh?" Pearl raised an eyebrow. "Instructions? For what?"

"Don't you remember the crash that lead to Green, Bill and I to leave the room to check it out?" Blue asked. "That was Ditty. It was instructed to follow us after we left Platinum's room, then find a way to make some kind of noise to get some of us to leave the room."

"So it was Ditto that knocked over the vase…" Pearl said.

"Yep, and it got Green killed!" Blue said. "Silver wanted to tag along, but Green insisted he stay. As long as one of us was going, we could kill either Green or Bill."

"But…the lights switched off again," Pearl remembered freaking out while they were in still in Mr. Berlitz's room. But this time the generator hadn't switched back on. "How did that happen?"

Blue glanced at Silver, and he shrugged. "When I had first set up the Iron Ball gimmick, I didn't know where to find the generator. But when Silver was in there with me when you guys all discovered the setup, he found the switch to the generator and flipped it off," Blue smiled. "After that, the blizzard must have just been on our side!"

Pearl wasn't sure about that answer. What would be the point of turning off the generator if they hadn't planned on cutting the lights again? If Blue was admitting to everything, why not answer him truthfully about it?

"Bill had his stupid flashlight, but I was still able to slip a knife into Green's back," Blue mimicked the motion of stabbing him. "It was easy to convince Bill that someone else was in the hallway with us, so all we had to do was run back to Mr. Berlitz's room."

"Next…was the kitchen," Silver mentioned.

"Ah, yes! The poisonings!" Blue clapped her hands. "I wasn't expecting to use the poison; it's not as fun as stabbing people."

Pearl cringed again. How could Blue have been able to hide all these years that she was a psychopath? Her excitement at killing people was beyond disturbing.

"But when your best friend got hungry, we figured we needed to start dwindling the numbers. There were still ten people left to kill and it was taking just a little more time than we had thought…"

"Blue, you have to admit that you did want to take your time," Silver pointed out.

"Yeah," Blue said. "But it would have been morning soon and I wasn't sure if Mr. Berlitz would be home early for Christmas or not.

"But moving on," she waved her hand as she continued. "Silver mentioned checking for silverware, which 'Gold' said something about a strip search. If anyone actually went with it, we could have easily slipped them somewhere inconspicuously so that we couldn't have been suspected. And Silver could have just pretended to search me so that no one could tell it was really me. But with the boys being embarrassed about the girls being searched, no one went with it anyway."

"We had poison ready in case we absolutely needed to use it," Silver pulled a small bottle containing a purple liquid out of his pocket. "It didn't matter who took the poison as long as we had killed a few people."

"Wait…" Pearl thought for a second. "The poison wasn't in the food… You were the one that handled the silverware!"

"That's right!" Blue chuckled. "Silver poisoned three of the forks and set those poisoned forks in three random places. We just made sure not to sit in those spots and let the poison do its job."

"In which Platinum got one of the forks…" Pearl recalled seeing the girl he protected die right in front of him. She had gone so fast…

"Yep! Along with Cheren and Red," Blue pointed out. "And with three people handling the food and another three handling the utensils, it was difficult to tell where the poison came from."

Pearl sat for a moment, trying to remember what came next. His eyes widened. "Ruby…"

"Oh, skipping ahead aren't we?" Blue wriggled her finger. "Someone wants to die quickly, huh?"

"No…" Pearl said. "But I just now realized that when we left the kitchen to go to White's room, Ruby fell down the stairs and bashed his head. But he didn't fall at all, did he?" He glared at Silver. "You pushed him, didn't you?"

Silver smirked. "Sure. Neither him nor Yellow saw it coming. The material the stairs were made of were smooth, but hard. I waited until we were at the top of the stairs then threw his hand back, causing him to slip. If he didn't die, then he would have hit his head long enough to keep him unconscious so that we could easily kill him when we needed."

"Silver did that one all by himself!" Blue perked up. "I hadn't even thought that!"

"But that shriek we heard…" Pearl mentioned. "We were all distracted by that noise and that's when Ruby tumbled. What was that noise?"

"Oh," Blue rolled her eyes. "You pay too much attention to things. It's not important."

Pearl couldn't understand why she wouldn't answer. She was so enthused about bragging to him about the murders. But she wouldn't answer the question about the lights being cut the second time and now she wouldn't say anything about the shrill noise. What was she hiding?

Wait…she mentioned the blizzard when he asked about the lights. And he was sure that noise had come from outside. Pearl glanced down the hallway, where he could barely see the giant window along the same wall that he was sitting against.

There was something outside that she was avoiding mentioning. Why?

"Silver got to murder four people in a row, so it was my turn to get someone!" Blue threw her fist in the air. "So when we got to White's room, who poisoned the bar of soap that killed Bill?" She pointed to herself, as if Pearl seriously had no clue who had done it. "Everyone had been nervous, so I figured if I poisoned the soap someone would eventually bite their nails or something. I hadn't expected Bill to wash his face and ingest some of it immediately, so that was a plus. But then it quickly became a minus because 'Gold' had went to the bathroom right before he did, so that had thrown things off. My only saving grace was that White had went in there as well, plus it was her room."

Pearl knew he was right to accuse 'Gold' of poisoning the soap. But he didn't have a guess of who the other killer was so if he had spoken up, he wouldn't have been able to back up his point. Everyone had been accusing everyone else, so his words would have just sounded like speculation.

"After moving to Black's room for Blue and White to wash their hands, we had to get creative again," Silver said. "So I acted like I heard something in the hallway."

"Which urged me to peek my head out, " Blue said, holding her hand over her eyes as if searching for something.

Pearl's eyes widened. "How did we hear Red's voice? He's obviously still dead!"

"That was me!" Blue said, her voice changing to match Red's. "I'm not only a master of disguise in terms of appearance, I'm also awesome at changing my voice!"

Pearl was shocked. If she was able to imitate Gold and Red's voice, then she could have imitated anyone's. This girl was the perfect criminal.

"So that surely lead Yellow out the door," Blue put her hands back on her hips. "When I chased after her I took that moment to blindside her and kill her, claiming that it had been Red that had really murdered her. And in order to take 'revenge', I chased after our ghostly killer."

"And while you and Diamond were chasing them, White suggested we follow them," Silver explained. "The second she left the room, I quickly lunged at Wally and killed him off. At that point, there were very few people left. If anyone accused me, Blue and I could just quickly kill the rest of you guys off.

"But we got lucky when you guys fell for the Red-is-the-killer ploy," the Exchanger uncrossed his arms, holding out his hands and shrugging. "I mentioned that maybe Red backtracked and killed him. And since 'Gold' took off, you guys figured we should follow him before Red got to him."

"But in truth, I was just pulling out Gold's body from Platinum's room and planting it in the hallway for you guys to discover, although all along it would have been the second time you had seen it," Blue said. "And at this point, I'm sure you know the rest."

Pearl waited a moment before piecing together the rest. "White dashed down the hallway and when Silver caught up to her, he killed her. And then when we reached Platinum's room and noticed that Blue's body wasn't there…" he closed his eyes tightly, trying to forget that moment when Diamond's sentence was cut off by a knife in his back. He couldn't believe he was still crying; he figured his tears would have finally dried up by now.

"And that's that!" Blue raised her hand. "Pretty amazing, huh?"

"…Outside…" Pearl muttered.

"Huh?"

"Outside… The lights going out the second time and the shriek…they came from outside, did they not?"

Blue tapped a finger to her chin before putting her arms behind her head. "You're pretty sharp. I honestly wouldn't have put you up there with Cheren and Green."

"What is it?" Pearl said through gritted teeth. "I want to know!"

"Hmm, okay!" Blue smiled. "Do you remember when we were all sitting in Mr. Berlitz's room and you mentioned the blizzard? Do you remember what you said?"

Pearl blinked. "I-I said something about an Articuno hating us…"

"Bingo!" Blue winked. "Did you know that I used to own all of the Legendary birds at one point in time?"

Pearl didn't answer, but he knew where this was going…

"Well, let's just say they're friends of mine! I may have released them, but I could call on them for whatever I need whenever I need them!" Blue pulled something out of her ear, something that Pearl didn't even notice since it was so small. "Articuno followed me to the Sinnoh region and whipped up this blizzard for me so that no one could escape! And this thing right here," Blue held out the earpiece. "This allowed me to send messages to Articuno from outside! So I instructed it to screw up the power lines and shriek out at that particular moment. Are all of your questions answered yet?"

Pearl sat for a minute before speaking up. They still hadn't answered the most obvious question.

"…Why…? Why would you…do this… What did everyone do to you to deserve this…? Red? Diamond? Wally? Yellow? I don't understand… I DON'T GET IT!" he smashed his hand into the ground as hard as he could, not caring how badly it hurt. It would never feel as bad as all of his friends felt as they were being murdered.

Blue smirked as she stepped forward and knelt in front of Pearl, who tried to scoot back but the wall was preventing him from doing so. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small item.

It was a disturbing-looking mask.

"Silver and I used to be children of the Mask of Ice," Blue said. "We were kidnapped and taken away from our homes to do his bidding.

"The two of us only had each other. There was no depending on anyone else to help save us. We were brutally abused for years until we finally found a way to escape.

"And from then on we promised ourselves three things: never to grow apart, find a way to defeat the Mask of Ice and never to trust anyone."

Pearl didn't know much about Blue's backstory, but he didn't care. There was no excuse for killing anybody.

"You think Red, Green and Yellow were my friends?" Blue snorted. "What a joke. I used Yellow to find Red because he was a powerful trainer who could help me take the Mask of Ice down. I didn't think Silver and I needed help, but we couldn't fight against the Mask of Ice alone.

"Then Gold and Crystal ended up tagging along, and we finally took Pryce down for good. He fell into the Ilex Forest Shrine and was lost forever in time.

"But Silver and I began to worry about our 'friendships' to Red, Green, Yellow, Gold and Crystal. We were able to keep two of our promises, but we couldn't let ourselves lose the last promise.

"We had gotten too close to them. And then more people showed up…Ruby, Sapphire, Diamond, White, Cheren… It was becoming too much."

"No, no!" Pearl yelled. "Why? Why couldn't you just let the promise go? We were your friends. You could trust us!"

"You were never our friends," Blue's face contorted to extreme anger as she threw her hand to Pearl's throat. "And we had to eliminate you all before you poisoned us with your wretched friendships. In this world, you can trust no one, and we were bound to kill you before you could break us!"

Pearl struggled to breathe. Blue's grip was surprisingly strong and Pearl couldn't intake any air. He couldn't believe that the Mask of Ice had hurt them so much that they were completely convinced that if they even tried to make friends that they would just destroy the Ice duo in the end.

"Here," the Evolver spun around to find Silver handing her the knife that she had stuck in the wall. She threw her mask onto the ground and snatched the knife from him, turning back around to face Pearl, who she was still choking with her other hand.

"Thanks," Blue smiled wickedly, probably the most demented Pearl had ever seen her. "Are you ready to die?"

Pearl didn't want to die. But when he actually thought about it, even if he had a way out of this mess, would he really want to live? All of his friends were dead. No more manzai with Diamond. No more attempting to make Platinum smile. No more shouting contests with Black. No more drawing Pokémon with Yellow. No more trying to interpret Bill's silly accent. No more yelling at Emerald to stop pissing everywhere.

No more. Ever.

And if he were to make it out of this alive, could he ever trust anybody again?

He couldn't let the poison of the Mask of Ice transfer onto him.

"K-kill…me…" Pearl gasped for air. Blue blinked in confusion, her smirk dropping.

"What?"

"J-just…JUST KILL ME ALREADY!" Pearl shouted.

"Just kill him, Blue!" Silver shouted. "Shut him up!"

"Fine!" Blue used her iron grip on Pearl's throat to throw him to the ground face first. He was on his stomach, his head turned to face the dead Diamond next to him. Blue was sitting on his lower back, holding his head still with her hand.

"Time to end this!" she shouted as she gripped the knife tightly in her other hand. "Die, Pearl!"

Time seemed to move in slow motion as Pearl stared at Diamond, his friendship with him flashing through his mind. His friendship with Platinum. Red. Green. Yellow. Bill. Gold. Crystal. Lyra. Ruby. Sapphire. Wally. Emerald. Black. White. Cheren. Bianca.

Even good times he had had with Blue and Silver. He smiled to Diamond.

I'll see you, Arceus and all of our friends in a minute, buddy… he thought. And let's just hope that Blue and Silver don't get too close to anyone else so that this doesn't ever happen again.

And that maybe they fall into the same depths as the Mask of Ice.

Aaaaaaaaand…it's done! Man. I honestly think that writing the motive was the hardest thing to do. Did it seem reasonable enough? I don't know. I think the story developed pretty well.

I was originally planning on waiting until Silver's birthday to post the last chapter, but that was too far away. Oh well.

So…thank you guys so much for the reviews! You guys had some really good guesses and I did my best to make sure that Yellow, White, Wally, Gold and whoever else seemed like good enough suspects so as not to seriously make it obvious who the killers were. A lot of you suspected Silver and Blue, but many were awfully confused as to how it could work. I was honestly surprised. I was also surprised by how popular this story was. So thanks again for all of the support!

As for doing another horror story like this…eh, I have so many other story ideas I want to explore with, but who knows? Maybe someday I'll do something like this again.

So I can't believe this is really over! It's been fun (definitely not killing everyone off, but you get the point!)! Thanks a lot and hope to see you again!

~Midori