"It's just that it's been a whole week!" Monokuma complained as the group of students fell silent around him. His body seemed to hunch over in dismay as he said those words, "A week! Can you believe it? At this rate, you guys are never going to start killing each other, and I can't have that. But, honestly, this has got to be the slowest start I've ever seen!"

The way he said it, the implication that there had been others before them, Shio felt a chill run up her spine.

No one said anything, no one was able to speak as they just stared at him in fear, waiting to see what it was he had in store for them, what kind of twisted, fucked up thing he planned to throw their way to make them betray and hurt each other, shatter the fragile bond they had been nurturing.

As a fear began to settle among the group, Shio felt disgust bubbling deep in her stomach. Her friends were growing restless, anxious, scared and she was doing nothing to calm them, unable to find her own voice.

What kind of leader was she to be struck silent by her own fear at a moment like this?

"And what kind of motive are you planning?" the first one to speak, his voice was even, no hint of tremor or fear. Shio moved to look at Taiyou Adachi, sitting with his arms crossed and looking for all the world like he was the king of this place. He stared Monokuma down, grinning as cheerfully as ever. "Come on, I'm just dying from suspense, and I don't think that's the kind of death that you want for the first murder."

A few others looked his way, some hands shook, but no one really said anything as Monokuma let the fear continue to sink it.

It felt like a century before he responded to Taiyou, bringing his mismatched paws to his face as though to hide his smile. "It's a big one, I'll tell you that," the bear responded just as cheerily as Taiyou had. "Why, the motive is just a simple choice, and it's an important one too!"

He was dragging it out, trying to get them worked up, Shio could tell, and she could tell that it was working, too.

"Just spit it out, already!" Hikaru snarled, her shaking hand hidden behind balled fists, "If you're not going to tell us what you're going to force us to do this time, I'll beat it out of you," it didn't feel like a hollow threat as she moved to Monokuma. But, before she could even get close, Kasumi latched onto her arm, face pale, and Takahiko grabbed her tightly from behind.

"Calm down, Yoshii-san," Takahiko said, his voice a low rumble as he kept her firmly held back despite her struggles and squirming.

Kasumi nodded rapidly, "You can't hurt him, if you violate a regulation you'll be the one getting killed," she reminded the racer. "Take deep breaths, Hikaru-chan, you're letting him get to you."

"Puhuhuhu," Monokuma snickered, adding more fuel to the already raging fire that was Hikaru Yoshii. "And here I thought I'd finally get to see some action; I've been so bored that even just punishing a rule violator would have been as satisfying as a class trial. Ah well~ Always next time."

He was fanning the flames, spreading more anxiety and anger through the group. That was the point, that was what he wanted to do. Get the students scared, angry and on edge, make it so they'd be just a little more willing to kill someone before even revealing the motive. The longer he dragged this on, the worse the group was going to get. She understood that and it made her sick to her stomach.

Swallowing the iron lump in her throat, Shio clawed to find her voice and fought to keep it steady. She couldn't show weakness, not in front of her classmates, not in front of her friends who looked to her for leadership.

"Spit it out already, Monokuma," Shio demanded, crossing her arms over her chest and trying to appear strong, imposing, as though she wasn't afraid of what he was about to say. "Tell us what this motive of yours is now, or we'll just leave right now."

It was a hollow threat, she had a feeling that if the group dispersed and Monokuma told them all one-on-one, it'd make things worse.

The bear laughed again, that incessant, annoying, horrible laugh that filled her with dread. His eyes were locked onto her and it took all of Shio's willpower to not back down or flinch. A few of her classmates murmured around her, Daichi reached out and tried to take her hand but hesitated and drew his hand back to his chest, gripping the red neckerchief scarf of his instead.

"Like I said," Monokuma began slowly, "Your motive is a choice. Either one of you kills another, or~" he drew out the or for a long bit, his voice a singsong tone as he began waddling around them, waving a hand and doing a few turns as though this was all just a fun, childish game. He didn't stop until he was directly in front of Shio, only a foot of space between them and staring up at her.

"Or, I kill all of you."

Chaos broke out at those words. Everyone speaking over the other, demanding answers, explanations, a few tried to lunge at Monokuma but were stopped by a thin layer of self-control. Their words were just meshing with one another that they didn't even sound like words anymore. The fear had spread like a wildfire.

Monokuma was in a full blown laughter at that, a loud, raucous laughter at the terror in the group. "You have three days. If no's been killed by the time the nighttime announcement goes off on the third day, then I blow this entire campus to smithereens! You all included, of course. Kill someone or everyone dies, why it's such a good motive I should use it again sometime."

With that, he was gone, leaving the group in distress.

It was an uncontrollable mess. People yelling to be heard, yelling at each other, screaming. An unbridled panic knowing the point of the motive. Sacrifice two people, a killer and a victim, or all sixteen die.

Shio stared at her shaking hands. His words sinking in.

"That's messed up! There's no way he's really going to do that, right?" Ren asked, looking around at the others with a pale face. "Kill us all? That's, that's insane!"

"How's it insane?" Mitsuru challenged, "he wants us to kill each other, what better motivator is there than the threat of being killed if you don't?"

Goro drew a hand to his face, brushing aside some of his long locks, "God damn that bear is fucked up," he growled, "this whole situation is fucked up beyond fucked up! How's he even going to do that? Blow us up? With what bombs?"

Eisuke frowned as she thought it over, "is it really impossible?" she asked, leaning forward in her seat. "He's a highly advanced bear that appears out of seemingly nowhere. Obviously he's not just teleporting, the likeliest possibility is that there are a number of copies stored away in some hidden hatch in various parts of the campus. What's to say he doesn't have high powered explosives in those hatches, or that the bear himself doesn't possess a powerful bomb in him? Just because we can't see the bombs doesn't mean he doesn't have them hidden around this prison."

Izumi shook her head, twiddling with her fingers a bit, "But, come on, there's no way he'd do that, right?"

Finally overcoming her own fear of the situation, Shio turned to face the group, still standing before them all and putting on as brave a face as she could. "He's bluffing," she said certainly, crossing her arms over her chest. "Monokuma is just bluffing to scare us into starting the killing game, we can't fall for it."

Taiyou leaned back, looking up at her unimpressed. "Bluffing? And what makes you think that?"

"Because it'd be pointless," she answered and glanced to one of the cameras situated to monitor them. "Monokuma wants a game, the people controlling him brought us here for a twisted game of life and death, they want us to kill each other over and over again. If we all died at once, it wouldn't be fun for him. It'd take away the excitement of the game; it'd end it too soon. All the effort they put into kidnapping us, into making this prison and setting this whole situation up would go to waste if they bomb the campus."

"She has a point," Kousuke said slowly, "this would have taken an insane amount of finances and time to prepare and structure. Obviously it would have taken a small fortune just to construct this campus, but the creation on Monokuma would have required extensive funds and research. Then the work into choosing who to abduct and the abduction itself… you wouldn't want to throw it all away like that."

"That's assuming that the ones behind this are sane at all," Taiyou pointed out. "For all we know the ones running this show are insane enough to be okay with destroying something that took so much effort."

Taiyou had a good point. It was highly likely that the person keeping them here was beyond insane, and if they were what Shio feared they were, then the idea of destroying this all, destroying all this hard work that could have taken months or years to prepare… they would love the feeling it'd bring them.

She hoped that wasn't the case. She hoped all her fears were for naught, that this wasn't the kind of killing game that she dreaded. That the ones behind it weren't trying for what she feared.

"I think," Shio began, bringing her hands together, "that we just need some time to think. It'll do us no time to just freak out, we're just letting our fears and paranoia get the best of us like this. Let's just take some time to relax, clear our heads so we don't do anything reckless that we'll regret. We can talk more about this during dinner. Does that sound like a plan?"

"Yeah," Kasumi mumbled, her voice a tremble, "I think we all need some space right now."

A few others voiced their agreement and Shio saw mistrust in their eyes as they looked at each other, as though expecting the other to try and kill someone before they had a chance to sort all of this out. Slowly the others started getting up and walking away from the bench, dispersing through the campus.

Before long all that was left at the benches was Izumi, Daichi and Shio herself.

With most of the others gone, Shio let herself let out the long breath she'd been holding, taking a seat at the stone bench as her body sank, hunching over like a deflated balloon as she supported her head in her hands, feeling her body tremble, shaking like she was at the epicenter of an earthquake.

Daichi reached out, placing his hand on her shoulder and giving it a comforting squeeze.

"I think you held your own really well, Uehara-san," he offered with a small smile. "You stood against Monokuma like that and held your own, that was really amazing."

Izumi crawled over the bench and then latched onto Shio as well. "You were like, super cool, Shio-chan," she agreed, resting her chin on Shio's shoulder. "I swear, when you stood up and stared down that stupid bear like you did, I just started swooning; like take me here and now, Shio-chan, our dear knight in shining armor!"

Daichi's face went red and he let out an awkward cough when Izumi said that, and though Shio felt a blush on her own face from embarrassment, she gave a small smile towards her friend. "Thank you, Hayasha-san, and you too, Akemi-kun. I'm glad that I seemed more confident than I felt."

"You always look confident; you don't need to worry!" Daichi quickly said, looking at her firmly, "I'm sure everyone's going to take your words to heart. Like you said, this has to be a bluff, there's no way Monokuma is going to blow up the campus and everything on it. The others just need some time to sort their thoughts, but I'm confident that they won't cave and kill someone."

Shio hoped he was right. The thought of losing one of her friends wasn't one she could stand.

"Well if the lovely Shio-chan says its so, then there's no room for doubt, right Daichi-kun?" Izumi added with a smile before disengaging herself from Shio. "But just to be safe, I'm going to try and see if I can find any of these explosives. If there are any hidden around; if we can find and deactivate them then we'd be safe, right?"

Shio turned to look at the girl, Izumi's green eyes were sparkling with determination as she stared at her, "That's a good idea, Hayasha-san. And I doubt there's anyone among us better at finding things than you," she was a professional thief, after all. If there was someone who could locate an item and take it without Monokuma noticing, Shio would bet all her chips on it being Izumi.

And if there were bombs, if they deactivated them before the time limit went off, then they wouldn't have to worry.

"I'll leave that task to you, Hayasha-san. If you need any help with it, just let me know and I'll be happy to help," Shio said. They had some plan now, something to do to solve this problem, it was more than Shio could have asked.

Izumi smiled and leaned in close again, puckering her lips, "Well~ If you're offering then I could really use a good-luck kiss to help me find all those bombs, what do you say?" she asked in a sweet voice.

From beside her, she could feel Daichi trying to subtly tug her away from Izumi, his hands hot to the touch and his face no doubt red at the idea that Izumi was not-so-subtly saying. But Shio couldn't help but laugh at Izumi's antics. Honestly, all the girls in their group had dealt with this at least a few times from Izumi in the week they've been here.

"Well, this is as much as I can give you," Shio said warmly as she leaned over to kiss Izumi on the forehead. "Can't give you a kiss on the lips, though, I'd like to save that for someone I love."

But the thief reeled back when the kiss was over, a hand to her forehead and stars in her eyes. "This is even more than I had hoped! Now I'm all pumped up!" she said, shooting to her feet and throwing a fist into the air. "You can count on me, Shio-chan, if Monokuma has any kind of explosive hidden around, then you can bet I'll find it."

"Do you even know how to deactivate them?" Daichi asked meekly from beside Shio, still hanging onto her arm like he was afraid to let go, "I know I don't really know much about your skillset, but, disarming bombs isn't really a skill for a thief, right?"

But Izumi reached over and poked him on the nose. "Oh, Daichi-kun, ye of little faith. You'd be surprised at how long a list of skills I have. Maybe dealing with bombs is one of them, maybe it isn't," she sang with a smile, "we'll just have to wait and see, now won't we?"

Daichi looked like he wanted to say more, but was silenced by Izumi moving to give him a kiss on the head followed by a long hug for Shio. "Well, I'm off. Wish me luck, my dearest two! I'll catch up with you during dinner with a report of my progress."

They watched as she took off jogging and when she was out of earshot, Daichi let out a long sigh.

"She is… a handful," he mumbled, finally letting go of Shio to pick at his red scarf, using it to cover the red tint of his cheeks. "I mean, she's a good person, but she has so much energy and… how can you girls handle her antics so often and easily when I'm a mess with just a little kiss?"

Shio had no answer for that and just patted him on the shoulder with a smile. "Hayasha-san is just being herself, I'm honestly glad she's able to stay the same even with what's going on," she admitted and looked up at the sky, deciding to change the subject. "I think I'm going to let the others have some space, and then check up on each of them in a little bit. Do you want to join me or would you like some space for yourself, too?"

He didn't even waste a moment to answer, "Of course I'm going with you. If something happened to you because you went off on your own, I don't know if I," he cut himself off and shook his head. "I'd just feel better if I was with you and knew you'd be okay. Everyone's on edge, someone might try something because of Monokuma."

Shio smiled, her friend really did have a good heart. "Thank you, Akemi-kun. I'm sure with you by my side, I'll be perfectly safe."

Honestly, Daichi Akemi was a good and pure soul, so honest and earnest. How did someone as sweet and kind as him get dragged into something as dark and twisted as this? He deserved better, he truly did.

But what people got wasn't up to Shio, she didn't have any say in it. All she could do was do what she could to keep him and the others safe and hope for the best.

And pray. Pray that no one fell for Monokumas motive.


Authors Note

Izumi is the SHSL Steals Your Girl.

Anyways; this and the previous chapter are more of a build-up. With the next chapter, we'll be going in depth with the other characters, getting to know who they are while they react to this motive. But, moving on. Thank you to everyone who's read this so far.