Artsytoes decided to do some investigating once she finished her snack. Surely there would be some clues as to who had harmed Blinky. He was such a nice elf- Artsytoes couldnt imagine why anyone would have it in for him and now he was gone.

Making toys would never be the same again, now they would have to train someone new about how to work with the ladders. It could wait though, the important thing was that no one else gets hurt.

Artsytoes threw her trash away and called out, "I am going to look for clues in Stocking Stuffing, if anyone wants to join me, come on over."

Chimenycheer was in disbelief still. How could an elf harm another elf? They were all taught from an early to age to respect one another. He had to get to the bottom of this. He noticed others were going to go look for clues. He then heard Artsytoes asking for someone to join her on her search.

"Artsytoes, I will go with you to the Stocking Stuffing," He spoke up.

As everyone else was investigating, Merrybells thought she should check as well. She decided to visit the break room to see if anyone left stuff in there.

8 Elves went back to work; the other seven: Kittybell, Lights, Tinsel, Silverbells, Rosy, Nutcracker, and Noella, hung around in the hallway where they had congregated, probably thinking about what happened to Blinky and too distraught to return to work so readily. 


A chime was heard over the loudspeaker, announcing another break, and the 8 elves who had gone searching returned.

Kittybell jumped at the sound of the chime going off. Was it time for a break already? She looked around her and noticed some of the elves had wandered off. She had plans to go search for things that could explain Blinky's death as well, but must of gotten lost in her thoughts, as she often did.
She decided to stay where she was and wait for the others to return and see if they found anything in their searches!

Singsong returned with a disappointed scowl, pinching her brow with tiredness. She had gone to search in the clothing section and ran into Bows, yet despite their combined effort they had found nothing. "Hey!" she grumbled, "Did any of you slackers find anything? Don't tell me you came up empty handed too?"

Snowflake had returned to the Plastic Toys section to finish some more snowglobes, while also surreptitiously looking for clues that might tell her what really happened during Blinky's "accident". Unfortunately, while she managed to finish a lot more snowglobes, she discovered exactly zero clues. When the break time came again, she returned to the hallways in time to hear Singsong's remark. "There was nothing suspicious in the Plastic Toys section," she reported. "But I did get some more work done," she said, eyeing those who apparently had lingered there doing nothing. Really, just because one of them met with an unfortunate event, did not mean suddenly they should stop working, right?

Silverbells had been trying to decide where to loo for clues, she was so lost in thought that she didn't end up going anywhere. "Jingle bells!" Silverbells exclaimed, "I can't believe it's break again. I mean I was so lost in thought that I didn't even go and do work. I should really not have just stood around like that in thought. Next time I'll go look for clues, but for now I guess we shouldn't. Anybody want some hot chocolate?" Silverbells stood hoping someone would go with her to get some, because honestly she was scared to go anywhere alone.

Merrybells ran towards the clump of other elves when the bell rang. 

"DID YOU FIND ANYTHING?! DID ANYONE FIND ANYTHING?!" she yelled, hoping someone'd say yes.

Nutcracker's nut senses begin to tingle and she rushes from the room out to some unknown place to take care of nut related things.  She will be preoccupied for the rest of the meeting.

OOC:

Rosy simply couldn't bring herself to go back to work. There were still many ornaments to be hung on the workshop's many Christmas trees, but how could Rosy hang ornaments without Blinky? He brought so much joy...and now he would probably be out for the rest of the holiday season. Sniffling, Rosy wiped a tear from her cheek, looking down as her face began to turn red. She just couldn't help herself - she missed Blinky.

She looked up as some of the other elves returned for break. She couldn't help but feel a little hurt at Singsong's comment. How could she be so mean at a time like this? Elves were supposed to be kind to one another. 

She remained quiet as she examined each elf that was present, wondering if one of them was lying. There was no way eight elves came up empty-handed.

Tinsel was preoccupied with his wrapping that he didn't notice that some of the other elves had went to look for clues. So when the chime rang and the elves returned he went up to some of them and asked "did you find out anything useful?"

Noella jumped when she heard the others start talking. She had been so lost in her thoughts about what could have possibly happened that she hadn't even realized it had been time to go back to work let alone it was time for another break. "whoops need to start paying better attention." she said before looking at the others.

Artsytoes made her way back to the group, she was disappointed her search turned up empty handed. She looked at the elves and sensed the tension within the group, surely someone had found something she thought before sharing her results with her fellow elves.

"I just came back from the stocking stuffing room, but unfortunately all I saw were tables and tables covered in red and white stocking materials, I'm sorry my search wasn't helpful to us." Artsytoes said as she plopped down onto a stool in the workroom.

Cosy had dug through every drawer and looked under every carpet in the office. He looked behind the curtains and moved the desk, just in case a clue bounced under it. Cosy even looked in drawers that he had already looked through, just in case he missed something.

No luck.

He returned just as everyone else was, and was surprised by singsong's outburst. 

"Nobody said we were slackers, singsong." He retorted; pulling up a chair and sitting down at the table. He took note of many exhausted faces, and continued; "and sorry, merrybells, I didn't find a dang thing."

He opened his sewing kit, pulled out a patch of cloth and examined it for any loose threads.

"Not even a single candy-cane out of place." He mumbled, discouraged. He pulled out a needle, and began stitching up a loose thread. Without taking his eyes off of his work he spoke again.

"It doesn't look like the rest of ya ever left this room." Even though Cosy was watching his hands as to not to prick his finger, a look of bitter anger shone in his eyes. "You guys really don't care about Blinky that much, eh?"

Eggnog pulled out the chair next to Cosy and plopped down.  "How can nobody have found anything? Is that even possible?"  She peered across the room, lingering on the elves who stayed in the hallway.

"You know what's fishy?  While most of us were working or searching for clues, you guys just sat in the hallway.  How do we know that you weren't having some secret meeting to decide who to knock out next?"  Eggnog looked to Cosy, "It makes sense!  They don't care to help us look because they planned it or something!  I almost want to tie up one of you until you talk."

Silverbells took offense to Cosy's and Eggnog's comments! "I did care about Blinky! He was super nice to me! He always loved the cookies and candy canes I made. He even helped me put some candy canes on every tree each year." Silverbells said as she started to cry, "How could you be so mean? I was lost in thought trying to come up with ideas of where to search! It doesn't help to start looking just any old place. You need to have a strategy, an idea of where clues could be hiding or where you could find something that could help in your search. You should look at it like you're wrapping presents or making cookies or candy canes. Every little detail is important and if you start to look for something and come up with a bunch of random things you're not going to get any closer to the reality of what happened. It's like having a puzzle and not all the pieces you won't have a clear picture." Silverbells just nodded her head and hoped that the others agreed with the way she came at things. She wasvery good at wrapping presents and making cookies and candy. It was her job to be precise and so she looked at everything else in the same way.

Bows came back to the room, after looking in the Clothing section with no luck in finding clues, and saw the elves fighting against one another. Where was the Christmas Spirit? This Christmas was absolutely disastorous.

Quote :

Nutcracker has left the building.


Lights has left the building.


The number of Unionizers has decreased, but they are still determined to get their way!

Kittybell sighed. Why were they accusing them? They were all friends, at least she thought they were. I guess things change when someone gets hurt with no real explanation.

"Come on guys. We all want to know what happened to Blinky. We just got lost in thought and working. All of us standing here can't possibly have hurt Blinky." She said to the rest of the group. "We all were friends with him, why would we want to hurt him? Besides, how do we know that you guys weren't off having a secret meeting? No one found anything suspicious, so how do we know you guys actually looked?"

"You've got to be kidding me, Kittybell." Cosy groaned, but didn't take his eyes off of his work. 

"I said I looked, and I did. I even have Eggnog as backup. What? Do you want the two of us to waltz back in there, grab some papers out of the desk, and walk back in with 'em as proof?"

Cosy suddenly yelped. While he was too busy talking, he wasn't paying attention to where his fingers were on the cloth. He jabbed his thumb, quite hard too, with one of the needles. With a wince, he put the cloth down and put his thumb in his mouth to suppress the bleeding.

Chimeycheer let out a heavy sigh when he return from his search. "I didn't mind anything as well." He then heard the others stating that they didn't find any clues either. How odd! There had to be some kind of clue...

Then Kittybell and Cosy broke out in a fight. He got in the middle of them. "Hey now! We shouldn't be fighting! We need to stay calm so we can sort things out!"

Cosy mumbled something not-kiddie-appropriate under his breath. He examined his cloth making sure he didn't accidentally ruin it when he poked his finger, nodded in satisfaction, and put it away in his basket. 

This was getting nowhere. 

Blinky was out of commission and nobody knew what happened.

Even worse still; those that split up didn't find a single clue as to the possible motive behind it. What added to the suspicion was that not everyone jumped to look for them. Everyone claimed to have liked Blinky and bared him no ill will, but if that were true, why wasn't everyone looking? Then again, those elves accusing him did have a point. Someone could have easily lied about evidence. He knew he and Eggnog weren't lying, but that was as far as he got. 

"You guys were talking something about a strategy. Got anything in mind? 'Cause I got nothing."

Silverbells heard Cosy ask about strategy and smiled. "I was hoping someone would ask." Silverbells said, "I think the best way to go about this is start from the beginning. We should start looking in the room where Blinky fell. Each person searching should be in a pair because it's safer that way. First time we search we can look in the three rooms surrounding it. Also it doesn't hurt to have people double checking rooms others looked in. That way if someone missed something or someone is lying about finding a clue. We will know. Then we can all come back here to the break room and talk about what we found or didn't find. Then we will branch out from there. The culprit or culprits could have dropped something or left a clue." Silverbells smiled at everyone, knowing that her plan was a pretty good one and left for little or no error. "Does that sound good to everyone?" Silverbells asked and looked around the room.

Snowflake listened to Silverbells outlining a plan. It sounded logical to her, and Snowflake was nothing if not logical. "This sounds like a plan that makes sense," she agreed. "I would be up for giving it a try."

"I'm sorry." Said Kittybell to Cosy. "This whole thing has just go me freaked out a bit. I don't want another person having an 'accident'. I'm worried and scared. I didn't mean to accuse you of anything." She smiled apologetically to the other elf.

"I think that plan sounds like our best bet, Silverbells. Though what if someone finds something in a room where someone already looked. How do we determine if the person that was there before just didn't see the clue or if they saw it and are just lying to us about not finding anything?"

Silverbells listened to the other elves talk. Kittybell had brought up a really good question. "That's a good question Kittybell." Silverbells said, "I think the best way to go about it is to not accuse each other of anything unless the clue is in a really obvious place. Or is that still us just accusing someone without proof? Hm... Let me think about that for a while. What do you guys think? Is there a good way to tell if someone lied to us instead of just missed a clue?"

Quote :

The next search phase will begin around 5ish PM CST (around 6 hours from now)

Artsytoes had been listening to everyones thoughts. She didn't like that Cosy and Eggnog were stirring up a ruckus. This was supposed to be Christmas time, people were supposed to have feelings of joy, although now that Blinky was gone, it was hard to feel joy about anything.

Artstytoes spoke up, "I agree that we should split up in pairs to go search for clues, two sets of eyes is always better than one, and if we find something that could be a clue, lets just say we found it. If someone else saw it and didn't say anything that was their choice, but we have to try and keep calm as we can in this situation. yelling at each other isn't going to solve anything."


She looked around once more before adding, "so how should we pair off?"

Silverbells listened to Artsytoes. "That makes sense to me Artsytoes." Silverbells said, "Let's not fight each other. I know there's at least one person who is responsible, but if we all start fighting it'll distract from the main problem. Maybe to pair off we could draw straws or something? Also which rooms should we search? I was thinking plastic toys room, the office, the bakery, stocking stuffing, and maybe even the break room. Does that sound like a good place to start everyone?"