(A/N: If you know me, you know that I like to give explanations as to why I came up with certain ideas and the reasons behind them, complain that I couldn't get this out of my head and just had to do it. But for once, I'm going to stay relatively silent and just give some warnings. SPOILERS: This story SHOULD NOT BE READ until AFTER the Danganronpa 3 anime has been watched IN FULL. I will say nothing else because for those of you that watched the anime, the narrative will do all of the talking for me. Enjoy!)

Disclaimer: I don't own Danganronpa


Tears. For Izuru Kamakura, such things were thought impossible to produce. The world was boring. He had a plethora of talents that could let him conquer the world if he so chose, but he knew how that would turn out: he'd have to give it back eventually out of sheer boredom. Putting down rebellions would be tedious and language barriers would still persist worldwide in spite of his best efforts.

But none of that was a concern for him right now. Instead, the tears flowing down his face, alarmed him. Even though his brain had been altered, his heart had not and the emotional turmoil of seeing this girl dead in front of him had brought another side of him out that he was told no longer existed.

No, not dead. Not yet. Izuru could tell it to be true. With his analytic and medical knowledge, he could tell that the Ultimate Gamer, Chiaki Nanami, hadn't yet passed on to the next world. She was hanging on by a tiny thread and no longer conscious. Her five senses were gone, but blood was still pouring out of her body. Her body was still warm and her skin hadn't paled, but in mere minutes this would not matter. For any professional in the world though, they would declare Chiaki already deceased. Unless she was already on an operating table right this second.

But Izuru Kamakura was not a professional. He was created by Hope's Peak Academy to be the Ultimate Hope and he had more in his brain than just the Ultimate Surgeon. If there was even a chance he could save Chiaki, he had to take it. Chance. That word rarely came into Izuru's brain. In fact, it was the first time he'd thought of that word since he'd been "born" when it wasn't related to gambling. Chance was an unknown, like good luck. Could he save Chiaki? Well, Izuru Kamakura welcomed this challenge. If nothing else, his failure would end in that unknown despair Junko loved to talk about. But if he succeeded, what would he feel? Yes, clearly this idea to save Chiaki was worth pursuing.

Hajime Hinata, whose consciousness still lay dormant inside Izuru was pleading with him to save Chiaki. For a moment, Hajime's will overpowered Izuru's, as a loud thought demanded that the only girl he'd ever cared for be spared a horrible fate. The boy who adored Hope's Peak Academy all his life could only pray and hope for a miracle, a miracle that was far beyond his capabilities. It was a miracle that Izuru intended to try and perform.

Izuru did not understand it himself. He was not even aware of Hajime's existence, only the driving force within him that was telling him "Please, save her! Save this girl! Save Chiaki Nanami!" This lack of understanding, whatever this feeling was, Izuru liked it. Izuru had thought that he knew and understood everything, but since meeting Junko, this was the second time he'd been faced with something he did not fully comprehend.

With that, Izuru set to work. With his brain calculating several times faster than even the topmost running PCs, his body moving with the speed of an Ultimate Olympic athlete, and the deftness of an Ultimate Seamstress, Izuru set to work. In less than a nanosecond, he had broken a piece of the tile floor and carved it into a makeshift blade. He used this to cut pieces of Chiaki's clothing and used it to dress her wounds, bounding them to slow the flow of blood. He could do nothing for her internal injuries, not now, but it was the best he could do for the moment. In a flash of an instant, Chiaki's body looked like a half-wrapped present, Izuru's actions unmindful of her modesty as such things were irrelevant in a crisis.

Next, Izuru carefully picked up Chiaki, careful not to disturb her heart muscles any further than they'd already been damaged. In fact, the spears seemed to have intentionally missed the heart entirely. It seemed Junko wanted Chiaki to die a slow, painful death of blood loss. Yes, thinking about it, Chiaki's final moments were meant to be in front of Izuru.

Meant to be, but weren't going to be, not if Izuru himself had anything to say about it. Junko had left the matter of Chiaki's body to Izuru when she came up with this inane idea of despair and Izuru would take advantage of her generosity as he saw fit. It was as she said, despair was an unknown. His tears were proof of despair he could not understand. But then…why had Chiaki smiled in the end? That was not the face of someone doomed to die. It seemed hope too was an unknown. Hope or despair, which was greater? Izuru had to know.

To that end, he continued his actions into the next step. Gingerly picking Chiaki off the ground, her body still bleeding in his arms, Izuru made for the secret exit out of the room he was in. Junko had completely remade the old building to her liking. It was all part of her ingenious next phase: the killing game between her classmates. Izuru cared nothing for it, but Junko's isolation of her own physical being would benefit what he had planned. Carrying Chiaki carefully, but swiftly, Izuru made it to the bio labs in what would seem like the blink of an eye to a normal human being.

Once inside, Izuru took a look around. He knew Junko later planned to redesign the place into a morgue, but for now most of the equipment was still available and Izuru needed the room for what he had in mind.

Laying Chiaki flat on an exam table, he left her there for a moment under a hot lamp. It would have to do as a heat source for the moment. Izuru then spared a moment's glance at Chiaki. If not for the blood all over her, she would appear to be sleeping, she seemed so peaceful. Izuru then ran out of the room and ransacked the old building for numerous objects, soon outfitting the bio labs with more accessories than the room was usually accustomed to.

Izuru ran the numbers in his head. Two minutes and twenty-four seconds should have passed in the time it took him to get to this moment. He was cutting things close. He began by turning on a bunch of heating pads and a tower heater in order to warm up Chiaki's body. He had to keep her from going cold at any cost. To that end, he even placed her body on a warm, fuzzy blanket. He couldn't cover her, not right now. He used an instant thermometer. Her body temperature was within acceptable parameters for the moment.

It appeared that, for the time being, Junko's sadism would prove to be Chiaki's salvation. By deliberately missing the heart, lungs and head from direct puncturing—they'd only been scraped in certain areas—Junko had made Chiaki feel unbearable pain while prolonging her intended, inevitable death. As expected of the woman decreed the Ultimate Despair. Even the spinal cord was strangely intact, every wound missing it by mere millimeters.

But Izuru was no longer transfixed on Chiaki's body. He was currently standing over another work station next to a pile of blood packets, type O, same as Chiaki's. He had every intention to create a solution that would revert any cells it was injected into back into stem cells that were encouraged to produce cells of the same type to those around it. Many would call this line of work "not an exact science", but for someone like Izuru, this was child's play. He had no time to test the solution. He simply had to make it, using the knowledge rolling around his brain, and apply it. Chiaki was dead anyway if he failed and time was not on his side.

Every so often, for a fraction of a second, he'd get distracted, and look at the slab where Chiaki was lying, worried for her. The part of him that was Hajime Hinata still burned strongly and, even know, was pushing its own agenda of feelings and emotions that a normal human being would feel in a crisis like this.

It didn't take Izuru long to finish his solution and then he put on a pair of surgical gloves and grabbed a pair of forceps. One by one he began poking and prodding at each of Chiaki's open wounds, holding them open with his hand and forceps before applying his solution to the affected area. Unsurprisingly the solution worked like something out of a science fiction movie, the wounds in Chiaki's body closing up at a rapid rate. At a rapid rate…but not instantaneous. It would be a while before the body could completely repair itself.

To prevent more foreign bacteria from getting into Chiaki's open wounds, Izuru sewed them shut with dexterity and precision. The damage to her intestines and stomach was the most severe, as that was where most of the spears had struck her. A normal person would have been mortified when they saw the flaps of Chiaki's small intestine sticking out of her body, but Izuru knew the human anatomy to a T and was able to get Chiaki anatomically correct, in spite of what Junko had done to her. How she had managed anything after getting stabbed was nothing short of a miracle.

Although he didn't show it, Izuru felt sympathy towards the girl he was standing over. He wouldn't wish this type of death on anyone. No, not death, not yet. The moment he said she was dead, was the moment that this was all over. And that could not happen. Izuru refused to let it happen.

After much sweating under the hot lights and the heater, Izuru finally came to the wounds in Chiaki's chest. Without skipping a beat, he applied an injection to the affected area. As with all the others, the wound began to close up just the same. Chiaki's body, it seemed, would repair itself.

Izuru was relieved. From a near death state, Chiaki's body was now out of harm's way. She'd gone from hanging on by a thread to now hugging a very unstable cliff. And Izuru was going to pull her back onto a stable surface no matter what.

With Chiaki's body the way it was now, her body's skin cells were at work, but the rest of her body was not in sync. Her heart would likely not beat, nor would Izuru get a pulse from feeling her wrist. She would still be flatlined, but still not dead, well…not in the strictest sense. As long as part of the body was alive, life could be given to the rest of it. At least, that was what Izuru believed. But, none of that could be done now. If Izuru wasted any more time here, Junko would find out and something told him he'd best keep this a secret from her, lest she do something to finish what she started.

Taking Chiaki's mostly dead body, Izuru wrapped her in a warm blanket and clutched her to his body. There was plenty of blood over it, some of it fresh. If Junko saw him with it, she wouldn't bat an eyelash.

You will open your eyes again, Izuru thought as he walked with Chiaki in his arms, I will make sure of it…because you smiled with hope in the face of despair.

End of Chapter 1


(A/N: Yeah, these are gonna be shorter than my usual chapters, but I want each "scene" as it were to be its own chapter. Click the Next button and continue enjoying this story. I think you already know what I'm up to, but, well, maybe you'll be surprised).