Makoto Naegi was a high schooler that everyday folk had in mind if asked what the average high school boy was like. And in truth, he was all right with that; he was too busy with other things such as the latest video games and TV shows, and his family and friends were enough to make his life good. He lived life as it went by; it was a life that others would not see in the news, and if that was how things would play out for him, then he could live with that.
And yet, he now stood in front of Hope's Peak Academy, which towered over all the nearby buildings in its little part of the city, and which one would not call an ordinary school.
Makoto had been amazed when his younger sister, Komaru, had told him that a letter from Hope's Peak Academy had been sent him. Apparently, the academy had entered him in a lottery, and he had been chosen for becoming a student of its 78th class. If he were to accept, he would join the class as its Ultimate Lucky Student.
Of all the things that he thought himself, "lucky" was not the first that came to mind. He thought himself dependable and supportive of his friends as one of his top qualities, and whatever luck he had came and went.
There were only two requirements to attend Hope's Peak Academy: that one already be attending high school, and that one be the best at what one did.
Makoto had at first thought to decline; after all, he was unsure whether his school life would fare well if he were known as the "lucky student". All the other students were worthy for the next class, according to the forum that Makoto looked at. Even one example was enough to show that it was their names that flooded the headlines, not his. He certainly felt unworthy to become a student of the same school as the Ultimates.
But in the end, he had accepted. Graduation, he heard, guaranteed him success in life, and who would say no to that? And a lot of guys would kill to be in the same class as some of them, so he thought that he might have that to appreciate as part of his future school life. And there was a chance that there were other ordinary students as well, which made him feel better, since he thought himself to have a pathetic personality.
Makoto, having been looking up at the school for a long while, looked back down at his acceptance letter. According to it, all incoming students were to meet at the main hall at 8 a.m. He had come here early and had seen no other students yet.
"I should head in already." He took in a deep breath of air. "Yeah... Everything's going to be all right. Hope's Peak Academy, here I come!"
Full of pluck, he went into the building and was now in the main hall. It was rather plain in appearance, though its cleanness gave off the impression that this truly was a school for the best.
It doesn't look bad at all, he thought. It wouldn't hurt to look around before the meeting.
But not long after, he stopped when his sight turned warped and twisted. It was as if everything were being mixed together. Before he even tried to understand what was going on, everything went black, and he fell asleep.
Prologue: Welcome to Despair
"Ugh… Huh?"
Makoto woke up, finding himself sitting with his head down at a wooden desk. It seemed that he was in a classroom, but there were no others. For some reason, his body felt heavy; what had he done that made him feel that tired? He looked at his desk and found a cheap-looking pamphlet that said with shabby handwriting:
"Hey there, new kid! The next semester is about to start. Starting today, this school will be your entire world."
If this was an orientation guide, it looked nothing like the pamphlets that he would expect a high-ranking institution to have. This must be some kind of weird joke.
Makoto turned to his left and saw that the windows were covered with metal plates. Seeing that they were very thick and could not be removed, he wondered why they were there. And there was also the matter of the surveillance camera; he thought that it was to watch out for any suspicious activity, but still, its presence felt odd to him.
"8:20 a.m..." he said as he looked at the clock. "Drat. Have I truly slept that long? I've got to head to the main hall as soon as I can."
Once he had finished looking around the classroom he headed out the door and found himself in a hallway. The purple lighting only made things feel weirder and weirder, but for now, he had the main hall meeting to worry about. He made his way through the hall, passing by other doors that looked weird as well, and at last found the door to the main hall.
Hope I haven't missed that much, Makoto thought.
As soon as he headed in, he found himself in the same room as he had been before his weird blackout. There was, however, one great difference: the wall opposite to him was now covered by a great metal hatch. And he was not the only one in this room. There were a boy and a girl looking right at the hatch, neither of them appearing to have noticed him. The boy had black hair and wore a white uniform, and the girl had long dark blue hair and wore a light-colored school uniform.
"Uh, excuse me, but do you know what's going on?" Makoto asked.
Both turned around, surprise in the boy's red eyes and the girl's blue ones. Surprise grew in Makoto's eyes as well; the boy he did not know, but he had met the girl before, and now, she stood before him.
"Ah! You've awakened at last!" the boy said. Now that he had a closer look at him, Makoto found the boy's white military-style uniform remarkable, to say the least. It made him look as if he were a commander of some kind, keen to see obedience in his underlings.
"Huh?" Makoto said. "How do you know I was sleeping?"
"Well, all the others who came here for the meeting said they had fallen asleep for some reason," he explained. "I simply assumed your explanation was the same as theirs."
"And if I remember correctly, some of the others said they'd found you asleep," the girl added, her light skin looking fully clean and flawless. "You didn't wake up, so they just left you alone."
So there were others here besides him and the white-suited boy here, and a meeting had been meant to be held here. It was good to know that he was at the right place. But that all of them had happened to fall asleep after coming here confused Makoto even more.
"Anyway, you're late!" the boy screamed. "It's way past 8 o'clock already!"
His screaming caught Makoto off-guard, and the boy tapped repeatedly at the watch on his left wrist, peeved.
"S-Sorry about that," he said. "Are you students here as well?"
"That's right!" the girl answered, beaming. "I'm Sayaka Maizono, the Ultimate Pop Sensation!"
"And I am Kiyotaka Ishimaru, the Ultimate Moral Compass!" the boy said. "You can call me Taka, if you so like!"
So this was what Ultimates were like. Makoto remembered having read about Taka on the forums; apparently, he was a top honors student from a famous private school and had been part of the school's disciplinary committee. He seemed all right, though a bit annoying.
It was less surprising to see Sayaka, however. He had read about her online, and he had been more surprised to hear that she was now the lead singer of an idol group famous throughout the land. He had known that sooner or later he would see her again, but now that that time had come, nothing came into mind. Should he say that it had been so long since they had last met? Or should he ask her what she had been up to? It had seemed much simpler in his head.
"It's hard, I know," Sayaka said. "You've been waiting for this moment, and you feel bad that nothing's going the way you want it."
"H-Huh? Have you just read my mind?" Makoto asked.
"I'm psychic," she answered. For a moment, she looked as if she had meant that in earnest, but a few seconds later, she beamed at him. "Just kidding! I only have very good intuition, that's all."
Even so, that's pretty sharp, he thought, wondering whether she had read that as well.
"Well, we two have introduced ourselves," Taka interrupted. "Now it's your turn to tell us who you are! Go on, don't be shy!"
Makoto introduced himself, after which Taka let out a hearty chuckle.
"Makoto Naegi! What a great name you have!" Taka said. "But remember! You must work as hard as you can every day to keep your name's worth! Even if you are the Ultimate Lucky Student, your life henceforth cannot be supported by luck alone! Do you understand?"
Not wanting to hear more screaming, Makoto nodded. He certainly seemed like someone who was always concerned about others' business, if that helped keep things in order.
But this was enough chatting for now. It was time to find out what was going on.
"So what's up with the hatch?" Makoto asked.
Taka sighed. "I don't know. But it definitely wasn't here when I came here earlier!"
"Same for me!" Sayaka said. "I can't think of any reason why something like this is here!"
There were also cameras above them, strange machinery that looked like guns hanging below them. Looking at them gave Makoto the impression that they were living in some kind of oppressive regime, but this was only a school. Even the most elite schools, he was sure, would not have this as a defense.
"Earlier, you said that there were others here as well," Makoto continued. "Have they gone home or something?"
"Goodness, no!" Taka answered, showing a look of horror upon thinking of such a possibility. "They left to look around the school a bit more, when no one came to greet us!"
"And how many are there?"
"Thirteen, I think," Sayaka said, glancing a bit upwards. "All of us but you came here earlier."
"I told them to stay here, since that is what we're supposed to do!" Taka said, now appearing a bit more upset. "But they were all insistent on not standing around here! And surely you won't go against the instructions!"
Unluckily, for Taka, Makoto had become curious as to who his other classmates were and what the rest of the school was like. To stand here idly as part of instructions seemed silly and unproductive now.
"Uh, sorry, but I think I'll go ahead and take a look around," Makoto said. "Don't worry, though. I'll be back!"
While Sayaka simply nodded and let out a small smile, Taka looked back at him with a mix of dejection and anger, his red eyes shedding a few tears, his teeth and fists clenched. Nonetheless, he did not protest as Makoto left the main hall.
This is all too weird… Makoto thought. This isn't what I had in mind for my first day.
He headed to the left and saw a pair of pink doors nearby. According to the sign, it was the nurse's office, and he could hear someone shuffling through something from inside. Curious, he headed in.
The room looked like something out of a hospital. There were three beds put at one side, medical equipment strewn throughout the room. There were a few cabinets at the wall opposite to him, containing what he guessed to be medicine. There were two others in the room as well. One was a girl with strawberry-blond pigtails, and she wore a black jacket along with a white tie and a red skirt. She and another girl were standing by the cabinets, the former standing by while the latter searched through one cabinet.
"Oh, what have we here?" the strawberry-blonde girl said upon noticing Makoto. She walked toward him, grinning. "Aren't you, like, that guy that was found sleeping?"
"Yes, I believe so." The other was a black-haired girl who had a few freckles on her face and wore only a brown suit, which gave her an appearance as plain as Makoto's. Compared to the girl by her, she looked much less outgoing and cheerful, but Makoto could not help but think her alluring for some reason. "Brown hair, green hoodie… He fits the description."
"So then you're, like, one of my new classmates, aren't you?" the first girl said, speaking with a playful tone. "You don't seem too bad a guy, though your fashion sense is, like, totally plain and boring."
Though her comment stung him a bit, he nevertheless tried not to be bothered by it, and so introduced himself, hoping to make a good impression on this girl.
"I'm, like, totally glad to meet you!" she said. "My name's Junko Enoshima, and I'm the Ultimate Fashionista!"
Makoto had recognized her not long after he had seen her. She looked just as she did in her magazine covers, so at least he was now sure that those photographs did not lie about her prettiness. She admittedly looked cute, what with her bunny hairpin and her big red-and-white bow, though her rather squeaky voice would take some time to get used to.
"I'm Mukuro Ikusaba," the other girl said. "I'm the Ultimate Soldier."
"U-Ultimate Soldier?" Makoto said.
"She once worked with some mercenary group," Junko said, which surprised him with how casual her tone was. "But that's all in the past. Right now, she's just like the rest of us! Believe it or not, she's my older twin sis!"
"R-Really, now…" Makoto had many more questions that he would like to ask Mukuro, but he sensed that now was not the time.
"So what are you two doing here?" Makoto asked.
"Well, we've been looking around the place," Junko answered, "and it's, like, all right, I guess. I'm not sure this is even Hope's Peak Academy, though."
"All the windows are boarded up for some reason, after all," Mukuro added. "And not to mention the hatch in the main hall."
"And now, I'm stuck here waiting for Mukuro to be done with looking through the stuff here," Junko said, sounding somewhat like a whiner. "It's so boring, I tell you."
"You shouldn't speak like that," Mukuro chided. "In this kind of situation, we should see what we can use as supplies."
Come to think of it, it had never occurred to Makoto that this place might not even be the school that he was supposed to attend. He had assumed that it was, since everything looked like a school, but there was a possibility that this was another place wholly, and if that was possible, then there was no telling what kind of dangers awaited him.
"Well, maybe everything will be explained sooner or later," Makoto said, hoping that Mukuro's carefulness would turn out to be unneeded. "Maybe we're only overthinking things."
"I sure hope so," Junko said. "If you're right, then let's, like, go out later and find clothes that'll make you look dazzling, all right?"
Though thinking that there was nothing wrong with his fashion sense, Makoto did like the thought of hanging out with the Ultimate Fashionista. Since she knew her stuff about fashion, maybe she could give him a few helpful pointers.
Hello, everyone, and thank you for reading this! I've been wanting to write a fanfic that is a different version of DR1. Admittedly, this is also a way to keep me busy writing while I'm waiting for submissions for my SYOC to come (it'd be nice if you could check it out and see whether you're interested in it; I'd appreciate getting more submissions).
Anyway, the main difference is that in this story, there is a different mastermind; Junko Enoshima isn't the crazy girl that we all know her to be, so she has a somewhat different personality, one that matches more of how Mukuro depicts her. Also, the introduction is a bit different from the one in the game; it's more in line of the introductions in the later games, where all the characters are spread out throughout the area, which has the advantage of introducing us to the setting as well. Right now, it's only introductions of the main cast, but things will get a bit more exciting later.
