Xanatos Stones here with another story entry. (For any fans of my Kwami story who may be reading this, I plan to continue that in the beginning of January, so don't worry.) My friend, AwesomeFanFictionAuthor, and I have spent a lot of time discussing how things would have played out if it was revealed that Monokuma was pulling the wool over our eyes in the first Dangan Ronpa game and he wasn't actually Junko Enoshima, but rather an independent AI. This story is the result of that discussion.

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Prologue

The snow was falling gently outside on the day that the world changed forever. The effects would not be felt for many years, but this was the beginning of the end. This was the day that the avalanche that would soon crush the world first appeared. And it appeared in the least likely of places.

Chihiro Fujisaka sat in a fancy, top-of-the-line office chair, typing frantically on a keyboard he'd had custom made to allow for rapid typing. Three HD widescreen computer monitors stood on the desk in front of him, slanted inward so that he had the illusion of being surrounded by computer screens.

Two rectangular windows showed the snow outside, and gave Chihiro a sense of calm. Aside from his little computer corner, he had a telescope that he often used to look at the stars outside of his windows. He had taken some rather impressive pictures of the sky, moon, and stars through it.

Chihiro, the ultimate Programmer, was not a typical male. In fact, there was only one person in Hope's Peak who even knew that. One certainly wouldn't know it just by looking. He had a girly haircut, and wore both a feminine green jacket and a skirt. The shy way that he avoided the gaze of those around him, accompanied by his posture added to the deception, and it paid off.

The thought of questioning Chihiro's gender never even entered the realm of possibility in the minds of his fellow classmates. Were you to ask anybody at Hope's Peak Academy, they would have sworn on their graves that Chihiro was a girl. They would have been wrong. Of late, Chihiro's attempt to hide his gender had backfired on him, however. He'd found himself crushing hard on a female class, Junko Enoshima.

She was a strange one, the Ultimate Fashionista. She was beautiful, with sparkling blue eyes and long, flowing, blonde hair. Her favorite relaxation outfit was a black dress where the top half appeared more like a dress shirt than a dress, and the bottom was barely longer than the length of her arms when they rested at her sides.

She wore a tie that she hadn't bothered to tighten around her neck, and two bears, one black and one white, as hairpins. This served to separate her hair into two beautiful curly interwoven strands. The bears had also been a source of inspiration for Chihiro, and the project he was currently working on had directly sprung from said inspiration.

On the screens in front of Chihiro, a small bear wandered aimlessly around a small room Chihiro had designed. The wallpaper was pink with little light purple hearts scattered across it. There was a small window, a table with three flowers, a garbage can, and a dresser with a Pudgy Princess Pickles doll on it.

That little detail had been added due to the insistence of his best friend, Hifumi Yamada. Hifumi was considered the Ultimate Fanfiction Author, and Pudgy Princess Pickles was the anime he worshiped the strongest. The idea that there wouldn't be some form of cry out to that anime had flabbergasted the poor guy. And since Chihiro hadn't really had any reason not to put it there, he had.

A quick glance at the program would have caused anybody to assume it was nothing more than a simple virtual pet game. But simple was not a word that was used when referring to Chihiro Fujisaka. He was the Ultimate Programmer, after all. If he was writing a program as a present for the girl she liked, the program would have to be the kind it was impossible to get anywhere else. And that was why the world would carry a heavy burden long after its creator's untimely demise. This little addition was the beginning of the end.

Just like the program itself, this little addition seemed harmless. Over the last several months, Chihiro had been putting most of his effort into figuring out how to write an AI that could learn and grow to become as intelligent as a human being. As of yet, he'd been met with failure after failure. Try as he might, none of his programs had managed to get beyond the most basic level of intelligence. For this project, that was ideal.

Chihiro didn't want to create an intelligent being right now. He wanted to create a virtual pet that could actually learn and grow like an actual pet. You could teach it tricks, watch it learn routines, basically anything you'd do with a regular pet, this little bear would be able to learn to do. His failed program was incapable of doing anything more than that. Taking one last look at the half-white, half-black bear, Chihiro smiled a shy smile. He was pleased with his work.

Chihiro promptly shut the program down and moved it to a USB stick. He then pulled that out of his computer, and set to work wrapping it in a small box. As he did this, he checked the time on his computer a couple of times. He was finished at 8:58pm, and as the Class 78 Christmas Party was set to begin at 9:00, he quickly scampered out of the room, gift in hand.

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Hope you enjoyed reading that as much as I enjoyed writing it. Chapter 1 will hopefully be up shortly.

~ Xanatos Stones

(PS – Please send me reviews if you liked my story. I appreciate them greatly, even if all you have to say is that you liked it, or that you thought it was a good idea, things of that nature. That kind of support is very meaningful and significant. I can't even begin to explain how motivating it is for me.)