Chapter Two:

It Can't Get Worse, Right?

Now I'm not a big fan of school -much the opposite-, but murdering someone in order to graduate was a little ridiculous. I was relieved to see everyone else in the room was at least mildly surprised or shocked to hear the news. Fear rippled through the crowd like waves, quickly spreading and growing.

"A-are you kidding me?!" Chie shrieked, alarmed by the announcement. "N-no one's crazy enough to do something stupid like that!"

"...I wouldn't want to hurt anyone either..." Yukiko looked away, her hair obscuring her fair face from my view. She sounded pretty upset... No, almost hurt?

"And here I thought he was some cute mascot... He's just some freakish toy!" Kanji didn't seem to be taking it well. As I glanced around, pretty much everyone was reacting the same way... Well, almost everyone. I noticed that Yu looked completely unruffled. Did anything faze that guy? He stared up at Teddie, his gray eyes unblinking. I was almost impressed with how well he was getting along with this idea...

And then there was me.

Surely, this was all just some terrible dream? It certainly would teach me not too eat too many sweets before bed time. Or whatever I had been eating. I slowly moved my hand over to my other arm and pinched it tightly. I clenched my teeth; perhaps a little harder than necessary, but it confirmed my fears - this was not a dream. Or night mare.

"Ku-ku-kuma! I'm not kidding!" Teddie chuckled, his belly jiggling in an unnatural way. "Check your Bearcadamy devices! It's in the rules, kuma!"

Academy devices...? I reached into my pocket. My fingers hit something cold and metallic, and I pulled out the strange object. It was shaped almost like a mobile video game console of sorts. I clicked through the menu screen to the option labelled 'RULES'.

As I looked through the pages, dread began to fill my chest... So you did have to kill someone in order to 'graduate', or leave the school. But that wasn't the only thing; you had to do it without getting caught. There was a class trial after every murder, and if the culprit was caught, only they were 'executed'. If the culprit wasn't found, then everyone else would get 'executed', and the real murderer would get to 'graduate'.

I looked over at everyone else as they finished reading. Some appeared ready to throw their devices on the ground, while others were downright tense.

"So, what do you bears think about our bear-new rules? They're not actually that new, but they're new to me, ku-ku-kuma!" Teddie laughed again. "Although I miiiight have to change them for this class.. In the past they didn't work so well."

There was another class? What happened to them?!

"I'll have you bears settle down bearfore we have any of the fun stuff happen! We oughta have the tensions rise and the emotions to flare to make it even more bear-citing!" Teddie added before disappearing, just as suddenly as he had appeared, leaving us in a stunned silence.

Eventually I decided to speak up.

"T-that's never gonna happen... No one here's gonna be crazy enough to do that." At least, I hoped. "We can't let this get to us. We need to stick together somehow and get through this." It was absolutely cheesy, yet I saw some people nodding vaguely.

"I'm sure I could probably kick that stupid bear to oblivion." Chie thought aloud, before practicing some air kicks. "I mean, if we get rid of him, he can't tell us what to do, right? We just gotta find him!" Although her determination was admirable, there was something about her words that made me unsure. Kanji had called Teddie a 'toy'. Indeed, although his movements were quite fluid, I highly doubted he was real. And if he wasn't real, there could be a slight chance he could either repair himself, or make more copies. It was a sickening idea, but not impossible.

"I think we need to gather more information before we take action." Yu stepped into the middle of the group suddenly, his cool voice interrupting the chittering of the others. "Hanamura is correct - we must think and act together. If we split up and get tense, that will only give Teddie what he wants."

"Not all of us want to work with other people." Mitsuo retorted, not even raising his head from his game.

"This isn't some happy little family, you know. You can't expect us to suddenly become friends and help each other out." Naoki added with a glare. "I, for one, prefer to act independently."

So much for sticking together...

"I don't know about you, but I want to get outta here!" Kanji shouted at the thin boy, picking him up by his collar. Naoki didn't even bat an eye.

"You see, this can't work out." Naoki sighed heavily.

"Look..." I stepped in, "If you want to stay here forever and not figure out anything, then do what you want. But those who wish to find a way out, we should group together." There were a couple murmurs here and there before most of the students disbanded, leaving the gymnasium.

"...so you're a salesperson, huh?" Yu raised an eyebrow as he stopped beside me.

"Yeah, not a leader." I bit my lip. "This wasn't how I wanted my school life to go..."

"Only time will tell..." Yu silently left the gymnasium with the others.

• Author's Notes •

JudgementTH ~ Thanks for taking the time to review! To answer you, the main direction of this fic is to immerse the characters of Persona 4 into Danganronpa, yet keeping the idea of the latter more intact. So it won't follow the plot of either one, but instead have the ideas from Danganronpa (executions, motives, etc.) I will try my best to keep the characters as close to IC, while still having some, yes, murders. While there are still going to be murders and investigations, it won't have anything to do with televisions, Adachi or people with abnormally long noses who appear in your dreams. I've seen some P4 and DR crossovers before, but haven't quite been satisfied with the portrayals.

As for my choice of Yosuke, there's a couple (or so) reasonings. He's my favourite character, and I've role-played him quite a bit, so I'm quite comfortable with writing him. Also, his personality works with my writing style, with quips and sarcasm here and there. I'm not so huge on his flirty personality (shown more so in the anime than the game), so that part will be less predominant. Hope that answers your questions!

The Lonesome Bear ~ Glad you like it so far! I'll try my best to update as much as I can. It'll depend on my motivation, as I'm a bit of a lazy person. SHSL Lazy right here ;D

I was going to use the "pupupupu" laugh that Monokuma uses, but decided instead to use "ku-ku-kuma", kinda a ref to how Teddie says "kuma" after almost all his sentences in the Japanese version of Persona 4. As for any clever Japanese puns... I don't have any, apologies~ I know next to nothing when it comes to the language... I'll have to change that some time..

Thanks for reading and reviewing, everyone! :)

~ Magic Toad