Okay, so about a year and a half ago, I started watching a YouTube channel called the Let's Dub Project, and among their many great adaptations, I fell in love with their take on Danganronpa. So after getting my hands on a PS Vita for Hanukah, I decided to give the series a shot myself. As of this post, I have only three games for said handheld console. All of them are DR games, all of which I've reached 100% with regards to trophies.

…Said games are also the ONLY games I've currently unlocked platinum trophies in, so I may have gone a bit overboard. But anyway, enough rambling. Let's start up the prologue to what is sure to be quite an interesting adventure!

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Danganronpa.

Prologue: Graduates of Despair

The past 50 days had been an odd mix of fear, confusion, and fun for Makoto Naegi.

The scary and perplexing part stemmed mostly from the nature of the situation itself. Instead of being enrolled at Hope's Peak Academy, a school famous for how successful its phenomenal students became upon graduation, Makoto and 14 other students found themselves knocked out and trapped inside the world-renowned institution, with no clear explanation as to why or how they had been abducted. Having monitors and cameras in every part of the school, including their dorm rooms (with the welcome exception of the public bathhouse), did little to calm the nerves.

In addition, they were greeted by a talking black and white mechanical, remote controlled bear named Monokuma, who claimed to be their headmaster and told them that they had 50 days to build "back-up" Monokumas so that they could begin their actual school life. What this amounted to was being given vague instructions at different intervals on how to build a Monokuma, scrounge the five story school for parts, and attempt to build a functioning robot.

On the flipside of the coin, Monokuma only had them work in the mornings (or what he claimed were the mornings, since it was impossible to see outside), and gave them every afternoon as well as every seventh day off. During this time, they were allowed to go anywhere in the school save for a few rooms on the top two floors of the main building and the second floor of dorms and above. So over the course of seven weeks, Makoto and his new "classmates" spent their time getting to know one another, many of them becoming very close with one another, forming the sort of friendships that would last a lifetime. In addition, resources such as food, water, electricity, and clean clothes were surprisingly never an issue. All in all, those 7 weeks weren't anywhere near as bad as they could have been.

Unfortunately, it did not last. On the morning of the 51st day, Monokuma appeared before everyone and expressed his immense frustration with the students' various attempts to build the back-ups. Their latest attempt earned them special ire, due to it resembling a pink rabbit rather than a bear. In the students' defense, all Monokuma had told the students was what parts were needed as well as random themes, such as "Savant" and "Adult", but well-founded arguments meant nothing to their creepy headmaster. So having lost every last shred of patience, Monokuma decided to start providing "motives" in order to encourage more satisfactory results. Said motives amounted to picking a representative from the students and executing them on the spot every time they failed. And to set an example, he was going start then and there with the Ultimate Lucky (or Unlucky) Student, Makoto Naegi.

But not all hope was lost. Before Monokuma could begin Makoto's punishment, the most recent back-up attempt suddenly came to life and started talking all on its own, introducing itself as Usami. This made no sense to the students, for they had not installed anything into the pink rabbit that would allow for this kind of autonomous behavior, but since Usami immediately went on to save Makoto's life by beating Monokuma into submission, forcing him to hand over a device that would unlock the main entrance of Hope's Peak Academy, giving said device to the students, and encouraging them to hold onto hope and maintaining their bonds with one another, all before deactivating herself with just as little warning, it was admittedly somewhat difficult to argue with the outcome.

So it was with great optimism and enthusiasm that Makoto pressed the large red button that opened up the front doors.

The sight greeting him beyond the open doors was not at all what he was expecting. The front gate was gone, the walkway leading to the main door was covered with the rusted debris of some sort of vehicle, and the cityscape surrounding the school was…well, for lack of a better term, missing. No apartment complexes, no office buildings, no stores, nothing but the occasional dead tree. Everything that had been there when Makoto first entered Hope's Peak were nowhere to be seen, as though they had never existed. Instead, what could only be described as a desert wasteland presented itself to him and his friends. As for Hope's Peak itself, the walls of the school were covered in military-grade canons.

Makoto Naegi summed up his reaction to the strange world around him in three simple words.

"What the hell?!"

(To be continued)

Yeah, so I've been sitting on this idea for several months now. I've spent a great deal of that time brainstorming, something I'm much more confident in than in my writing abilities. I have no idea how long chapters for this story going to be, though probably longer than this one. Probably. Anywhoosal, I know there's not much here just yet, but rest assured, I've got a LOT more planned for later on down the road. Especially regarding the events of Ultra Despair Girls and the aftermath of Island Mode. But that's all I'll say on the matter for now. Until next time!