Haunted
By Dixxy Mouri
Chapter Six: A Dark Congregation
DING DANG DING DONG! EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY!
Hey guys, I know these usually wait until the end (and there will be notes on this chapter at the end), but before you guys get too excited I wanted to point out that previous chapters have been edited, some of them with LOTS of additions. The biggest changes of note are in the Prologue, Chapter 01, and Chapter 05. The other chapters had a few touch ups but were relatively minor.
6:00 am
"Ishida" stared at his watch impatiently. Wasn't it time to get the fuck out of that place? Dumbasses – they shouldn't be fucking LATE of all things, especially if it meant getting away from that ugly-ass teddy bear. He scoffed. Motherfuckers. Lateness wasn't going to be tolerated, not that it was the kind of thing he usually cared about. But the longer those lazy asshats took to get here, the longer they'd be stuck with Evil Bear McKillington and he'd had enough of that scene.
Yeah, there were things he had to DO now that he had a body again.
"Ishida" finally saw one of the other students – Yamada, who'd apparently been hiding in the corner or something. What had he been doing back there, anyways? They had important things to attend to, damn it! "Tch! About fucking time!" he yelled. "Do you have any idea how long I've had to wait here for you?" He pointed at his watch angrily, the fire in his eyes flaring. "Three minutes! EVERYONE is a whole three minutes late! Now go get the others so we can get the fuck out of this place!"
Yamada wasn't listening to him. He was too busy raising the hammer over his head.
6:03 am
It was the first moment of clarity Kiyotaka had had since Mondo's death – the sight of Yamada swinging for his head. The world froze as the other him, the other him that he'd convinced himself was his brother, began to fall apart. He was aware of everything – his heart beating, the clamminess of his palms, his short, rapid breaths. The fear of death had chased Ishida away, leaving just Kiyotaka Ishimaru behind.
It had been too easy to forget himself. Firstly, this hadn't been the first time he'd been kidnapped – the last time had been when he was little and he'd been snatched from a playground and held hostage for three days. He'd had nightmares about the incident for years, and was honestly shocked Monokuma didn't use that as his "dark secret" during his second motive. Perhaps their tormentor didn't know about it, or felt he wouldn't kill anyone to keep it buried.
When he'd awoken in this situation, he'd barely managed to keep a straight face for the other students as fear and panic set in, especially once he learned why they'd been kidnapped. At least when he was a child he knew he wouldn't be harmed as long as his parents paid the people holding him prisoner money. Here? That wasn't an option. His parents probably didn't know where he was, and even if they did, they had no money to give, not anymore, and even if they still did, he doubted Monokuma would want any.
The bear wanted blood.
And he'd gotten it. So far, five people had been killed; two of them murdered, one of them impaled for trying to fight back, and two of them executed for their crimes right before Kiyotaka's eyes. He was hurting. He was terrified, and exhausted from trying to hide that fear. And when the only real friend he had in this horrible place was taken away from him . . . he couldn't function. Somehow he'd been able to keep it together up until that trial, but watching the bike spin out of control and watching Monokuma . . . eat . . . his best friend's liquefied remains had been his breaking point. Watching the bear slobber him down, the butter dripping down his mechanical chin as bits of pancakes fell out of his mouth as he shoved more and more in . . . he hadn't been able to sleep with those images in his head.
At some point he'd lost himself – the real him, Kiyotaka Ishimaru, had succumbed to despair and allowed that alternate him, that Ishida character, to take him and use his body for whatever he felt like. And he'd been too broken to fight back. He couldn't handle being a kidnap victim again. He couldn't handle watching anyone else die.
But Yamada had broken the spell – Ishida was gone, but something else was holding him together now and Kiyotaka felt like himself again. He realized that not only was the other boy going to kill him, but ultimately he was going to get himself killed at the end of the next Class Trial. Kiyotaka had two lives to save: his own life as well as Yamada's life.
Kiyotaka dodged the first swing. "Yamada-kun, what are you doing!?" he yelled.
"Killing you, you monster! Before you kill me!"
"I'm not going to kill you!" he shouted back, blocking his head with his arms. Yamada had raised the hammer again – Kiyotaka dodged a second time, but the mallet connected with his wrist and for a moment all he could see was white, stumbling to the ground in pain. Get up, get up, get UP! He struggled to get up – he felt a shooting pain in his arm and realized his wrist was broken. No, no, no,
CONCENTRATE! Move, move, MOVE! He could hear his heart pounding in his ears and feel the throbbing in his wrist.
Everything felt so real . . . so alive . . .
Kiyotaka was slammed into the floor by a foot on his back – Yamada had pinned him. He struggled to move, but the other student put all his weight on that foot. His attacker was no athlete, but he was heavy, and Kiyotaka was helpless to get away. "Yamada-kun, don't do this! You'll get yourself killed, too! You saw what happened to Leon and Mondo! Monokuma will kill you!"
"NEVER! The hammer of JUSTICE is on my side! You're worse than Black Diamond Shogun Muku Muku Dynamo from Pretty Samurai Shoujo Rose Blossom, and he's won the Most Evil Villain of All Time poll three years running! YOU MONSTER! I WILL NEVER LET YOU HURT MY GIRL OR MASTER CELES LUDENBERG EVER AGAIN! ARGHH!"
That was puzzling, but not his most immediate concern. Ludenberg-san? What in the world does Ludenberg-san have to do with this? In one last ditch effort to save them, Kiyotaka lifted his head to turn to his would-be murderer. With tears in his eyes, he screamed what he hoped and prayed wouldn't be his last words. "YAMADA, STOP!"
Kiyotaka saw the hammer rapidly approaching his head. His eyes widened.
The pain in his wrist abruptly stopped, as did the pressure from Yamada's foot. Did he . . . did he stop himself? Kiyotaka clenched his eyes shut, sat up and looked at the other student. "Yamada-kun . . ." No response. "Yamada-kun, aren't you going to say something?! We need to work this out before . . ." Kiyotaka looked up at where Yamada was standing over him. He was breathing heavily, looking down at him with an unreadable expression, the hammer lying on the floor . . . covered in blood.
Blood. . .
Kiyotaka looked down and froze.
6:15 am
Yamada didn't stay much longer – he took the note he'd been holding and stuffed it in his pants, left the hammer lying next to his body, and exited the physics prep room. Kiyotaka wasn't sure what to do with himself – he was afraid to leave, he was afraid to stay. He backed himself into a corner, his eyes locked on the horror before him.
His own dead body, the blood still pooling around his head.
Yamada had actually done it. He'd killed him. One of his friends had just . . .
. . . one of my friends? But we've only . . . wait . . .
Kiyotaka paused. That . . . that was right. He'd already been a student at Hope's Peak Academy for two whole years. The first year had been wonderful – he'd had friends for the first time in his life, though the ones most important to him had been Mondo and Chihiro (which made the circumstances of her murder all the more sickening). Because, really, friends hadn't been something he'd been terribly good at making during his first several years of schooling.
At best, Kiyotaka eventually realized, he was someone that his classmates would use for help with homework, which he always obliged with an enthusiastic smile. Math, history, literature, biology, physics, chemistry, it didn't matter – he knew how to study all of them. He'd worked hard at it, and ensured all of his classmates they could do well, too, if they only applied themselves a little more. Hard work was the key to everything, after all.
But overtime he noticed that no one wanted to spend time with him if it didn't have anything to do with school. Everyone else seemed to be building little families with their fellow classmates, but not him. He tried to tell himself that friends would just distract him from his goal – he needed to become the Prime Minister, he had to, and that meant studying hard now. He would erase as much of his grandfather's mark from their family name as he could by leaving a bigger, brighter one in its place.
It still made him miserable.
Getting accepted to Hope's Peak Academy almost made it worse. He'd been thrilled about it at first, but where the other students used to just ignore him or seek him out for help with homework, now they looked at him with contempt. He heard them talking about him behind his back. Why had he been chosen to attend the most prestigious high school in the country, maybe even the world, when he was just a kissass? Brown noser? Was that his "Super High School Level" talent?
It was the first time he'd ever really gotten upset by the whole thing, and for the two weeks after classes stopped at his old high school and before he was set to begin at Hope's Peak, he holed himself up in his room, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. His mother made sure he ate and his father told him that things would be better once he was at the new school, but Kiyotaka wasn't so sure about that. What if he was just used again? What if these students talked about him behind his back, too?
Things had actually started out pretty poorly, with most of the students regarding him with looks of annoyance. There were two exceptions – Chihiro always ran from him like she was afraid, and Mondo regularly picked fights with him. Then that one gym class happened, and suddenly the two of them were not only his best friends, but they were his first friends. They made small talk at first, but over time they really started to open up to each other – the incident that killed Mondo's beloved older brother, more stories about Chihiro dealing with her gender identity, and Kiyotaka had even shared the story of his first kidnapping.
Up until the World's Most Despair Inducing Incident happened, it had been, bar none, the worst thing that had ever happened to him. He supposed that, up until that day he'd been a normal child. He'd been playing with a ball that happened to bounce and roll to the edge of the playground, and when he'd chased after it he encountered the scruffy looking men who would be his jailers for the next three days. They grabbed him and shoved him into a car – he'd started crying immediately, only to be yelled at to stay quiet while the car sped away, tires squealing on the road. The basement he'd been kept in was dank and moldly to the point where he could taste it, and he'd spent most of his captivity in tears. He didn't understand what was going on or where his parents were and why they weren't coming to get him. The only "good" thing was that they really hadn't hurt him – they kept him fed, though not necessarily well, and made sure he had regular visits to the bathroom and plenty of water to drink. They'd provided a dusty old mattress for him to sleep on, which wasn't ideal but it was better than the floor.
On the third day one of the men harshly picked him up and brought him back to the car, where he was roughly shoved out about a block from his grandfather's house. He'd run there, but no one would let him see his grandfather or his parents until after he'd been taken to a hospital and looked over by a doctor. His mother had been furious when she was finally allowed to see him, holding him tightly while she yelled at all the other adults in the room – how dare they keep her away from her child after everything they'd been through!?
Mom . . . Dad . . .
That was right. The World's Most Despair Inducing Incident had taken his parents from him. Hope's Peak Academy's real headmaster, Jin Kirigiri, had sat him down in his office and told him what had happened. Someone had waited until most of the residents in his apartment building were home and blocked off all the exits. They proceeded to throw moltov cocktails through windows until the building was properly burning. It was one of several fires that day, and there was no one on hand to do anything for the people trapped inside.
Both of his parents had been home for the incident.
Earlier that year, when the world still made sense, Mondo had found out that Kiyotaka didn't have any hobbies, and convinced him to pick one. "You gotta do more than just be a hall monitor or student council or whatever. You gotta be well-rounded or something, right Chihiro?" (Chihiro hadn't been paying attention – she'd had her nose stuck in her 3DS, but she grunted a "yeah, sure".) "I mean, what's something that you've always wanted to try but never found the time to go after?"
"I . . . always thought kendo looked interesting-"
"-perfect, we'll get you signed up for some kendo lessons."
And . . . well, he enjoyed it quite a bit. Years of keeping himself in good physical condition made picking up on the technique a little easier, which he didn't quite like, but mastery was still a challenge. Holding a practice sword correctly was one thing, but being able to actually win a match? Ah, that took the kind of hard work and dedication he craved. And even though he'd never been able to beat the best in their school (which wasn't a surprise considering she got into the school for being a swordsman in the first place) he found himself placing in journeyman level competitions towards the end of their first year at Hope's Peak.
When he went home during a school break, he'd been nervous about what his parents would think – it wasn't like any of the other things he'd done in school before, and he wondered if they'd be disappointed in him. But he'd kept his grades up as always and did everything else he'd been doing before, he'd just managed to find time for friends and kendo as well.
He'd nearly cried when his parents gave him a beautiful wooden bokken.
Kiyotaka looked to them for an explanation, not understanding. But they were smiling at him, telling him that they'd never seen him so happy before – he had friends, he'd found something he enjoyed doing, and they hadn't seen that from him since he was little. They told him that, if they could find the time to get away from work, they wanted to meet his friends and see what his life at school was like . . . and that they'd never been more proud of him.
It was the last time he'd seen them.
That was why he'd clung to that bokken so closely after the headmaster told him about the fire. It was the last gift they'd given him (well . . . that and some new socks), his last happy memory of them. The afternoon he found out about what had happened was the only day he'd ever used it – before it had been to keep it safe from getting damaged, but now . . . he wasn't sure what to do. He felt guilty for not using it. He'd feel worse if it really did get wrecked. It wasn't until Mondo and Chihiro found him that he'd actually broken down, the larger of the two wordlessly carrying him back to his dorm as he sobbed into his shoulder, sneering at anyone who looked at the three of them strangely.
It was a wonder any of them got through that second year.
. . . this . . . this is a nightmare! Wake up, wake up, wake up!
Kiyotaka clenched his eyes shut – why couldn't he just go back to that first year at the school, before the world ended? Of course, of course, he was going to wake up in his bed any moment – the sun would be out shortly, he'd be able to hear the early morning joggers outside, and he'd go get himself some green tea to calm down before the others joined him for breakfast and then everything would be fine – his parents wouldn't be dead, his classmates wouldn't be trying to kill each other (or him), and everything would be normal again. Maizono and Kuwata would be hanging all over each other like they did, Enoshima would be touching up her makeup with a little compact mirror she always carried around, Chihiro would be her sweet self as always, Mondo would sense he was upset and say something stupid to try and make him laugh . . .
Kiyotaka looked at the body again . . . his body. He was lying motionless on the floor, blood pooling around his head and congealing in his hair. He tried to touch his head, but his hand passed through – he didn't even get any of the blood on his fingers. He looked at his hand and realized it was transparent – he could see the rest of the room through it, so he must have been a spirit or a ghost of some sort.
"I'm . . . I'm really dead, aren't I?"
It was . . . real.
Kiyotaka wasn't sure why he'd bothered saying it out loud. There was no one else in the room to hear it alive or dead. He was all by himself here, and that thought made him horrified. Dying . . . being murdered . . . was bad enough. But did he have to be alone, too? All alone, never able to talk to his friends again or . . .
He paused. Then again, maybe he wasn't alone. He hadn't been the first to die – Maizono and Kuwata and Enoshima, and of course Chihiro and Mondo. They'd all died before him. For a moment, he had hope. Even if he was dead, even if Chihiro and Mondo were going to be upset to see he'd been killed, too, he might not have to be alone. Clinging to that thought, that one hope that he might not have to spent an eternity by himself, he got to his feet and headed for the physics lab.
He didn't want to be alone.
Kiyotaka looked at his watch, only to discover it was broken. Probably from Yamada, he thought miserably. He took the watch off, wondering if he could fix it – he frowned, decided it didn't matter, and stuffed it into his pocket for the moment. Why bother wearing a broken watch? It wasn't a particularly meaningful watch anyways – something he'd picked up cheaply after his old one broke.
He took one last look at his body. It wasn't going to stop being unsettling.
Hugging himself and getting the distinct feeling that his new form was just as cold as his body was, he headed towards the door. He reached for the doorknob, but it wouldn't budge. "No, no, no!" Kiyotaka slammed his fist at the door, only to go tumbling forward through the door and landing in a heap outside of the lab. Startled, it took him a moment to figure out what had happened.
Well, of course it made sense that he couldn't use the doorknob – he was a ghost or something. But didn't ghosts usually have the ability to use items in the real world to mess with the people they were haunting? Kiyotaka frowned – he didn't really want to scare the other students . . . except for maybe Yamada. He'd probably freak out getting a detention slip from beyond the grave. But even then he just didn't feel that vengeful against Yamada. Especially since Yamada was convinced he was going to kill him and that he'd done something to Celes . . .
Which . . . what exactly had he done to Celes? He didn't interact with her all that much outside of knocking on her door to get her up for their morning meetings every so often, and when he was taken over by that "Ishida" personality he mostly kept to himself and told everyone else to go away – it wasn't exactly nice but hardly the kind of thing Yamada should have felt he needed to attack him over. So had Yamada just gone crazy from being trapped in the school for so long with Monokuma and the killing game and going through not one but two murders in less than a week (and now a third just outside of two)?
Something still wasn't adding up. He looked at the door, which the bottom half of his body was still on the other side of. He scrambled back to his feet, wondering if he was going to need to do an investigation of his own, or if he'd be stuck waiting to see if Naegi and Kirigiri came up with something. He sighed (or at least something that sort of felt like sighing – as a ghost he wasn't exactly "breathing", per se) – they would be investigating his death soon enough.
The physics lab was deserted, which didn't surprise him. There hadn't been any actual classes in the school for . . . maybe about a year, now, so there weren't any active experiments or teachers preparing for classes or anything of the sort. Everything felt stagnant in there, and he couldn't hear anything but the quiet hum of the air purifier.
Kiyotaka swallowed – Monokuma had used it to tease him over Mondo's death. He'd been so broken up about the whole thing that he'd easily bought the lie that it was a time machine and he could use it to go back in time and stop Mondo from killing Chihiro. He frowned – even if something had happened to his memories, part of him had known just how much those two meant to him. In that moment maybe he was more concerned about Mondo, but part of his must have wanted Chihiro back, too.
Maybe that was why that Ishida presence was able to take him over so easily. His usual composure was non-existent in the wake of the second trial, leaving him the most vulnerable he'd been in years. Of course something like that could have happened – he was fragile, he hadn't been eating or sleeping properly, and he just felt . . . lost. Ishida was able to solve some of those problems – he'd been able to get some sleep the night before, or perhaps more accurately reached a point of such extreme exhaustion that he had no other choice but to pass out, and he'd eaten something for dinner, too. Hagekure had tried to join him, happy that he was at least eating, but that Ishida character had yelled at him to "fuck off".
That's so strange . . . Mondo wouldn't do something like that . . .
Come to think of it, a lot of that Ishida character's behavior was nothing like what Mondo would do, and yet that was the pretense of what happened, right? Had it been a result of him being confused or his missing memories constructing a false idea of him? No, no that didn't seem right. He looked at his hands again and was soberly reminded that it probably didn't matter anymore. Ishida, whatever he was, was gone – he was dead and at the moment he was completely alone.
Kiyotaka headed towards the door to the hallway. There wasn't much else for him to do at this point here, and he wasn't sure he wanted to be around his body anymore. Besides, if the others were haunting the school, he needed to find them. He just had to hope he could pass through this door as well. Maybe he could even go outside, although he wondered what was out there for him. Maybe his parents' ghosts if he could manage to find them?
The good news was that Kiyotaka was able to successfully pass through the physics lab door.
The bad news was that he walked into someone else, who wrestled him to the ground.
Kiyotaka clenched his eyes shut – his wrists were pinned and his assailant was straddling him. He opened one eye to see who it was, and was stunned at who he saw. He'd know that freckled face and short black hair anywhere . . . only he'd forgotten she had existed along with the rest of his memories of the last two years. "I, Ikusaba-san?!"
No one had realized it but, but one of their classmates had been missing this entire time. Enoshima-san had an older twin sister – the Super High School Level Soldier, Mukuro Ikusaba. She hadn't been around at all – everyone else from his class was there but her . . . and he'd forgotten she'd ever existed.
But, how could he have forgotten her?
Something about her had always made him feel a little light headed and it was hard to pay attention in class if she was anywhere in his line of sight. He fumbled his words more often when he had to talk to her, and even though she followed school rules almost as well as he did he dreaded the very idea of giving her a detention slip. Mondo had been the one to point out he had a crush on her, which had flabbergasted him. He was supposed to focus on schoolwork, not girls!
Kiyotaka realized that wasn't exactly his choice one day. He'd been looking for a particular book in the library and hadn't been paying attention when he and Ikusaba went for it at the same time. Their hands touched, and the sensation of her skin against his made him feel dizzy, and even though he'd needed the book for a report he was working on, he'd let her take it. She'd thanked him, smiled politely, and walked away, and he found himself watching her walk away, too dumbfounded to do anything.
Mondo had been right – he was in love.
Of course, he wasn't stupid – he'd paid attention in health class, he understood sexual desire, he just did his best to not act on it right now. Yet, for some reason his base instincts had decided Ikusaba was his ideal mate and they fought against all of the logic and reason in his brain about why this was a bad idea, but nothing worked. He'd never been sexually frustrated before and he didn't like it. He was supposed to be a moral compass for the rest of the student body – he was the president of the morals committee. He wasn't supposed to be pining after a girl! He wasn't supposed to have dreams about long walks in the park or Ikusaba wearing a wedding dress or . . . indecent behavior.
Mondo had teased him about it, but ultimately gave him what was he assumed was sound advice. If he managed to secure a girlfriend – Ikusaba or anyone else really – then they just needed to go at a pace they were both comfortable with, and if that comfortable pace included . . . indecent behavior . . . they just needed to be smart about it and use protection. Kiyotaka reminded him he was the president of the morals committee, and Mondo reminded him in turn that one of his best friends was renowned for being the leader of a gang of rowdy bikers.
"Falling in love doesn't affect your morals, dumbass – doing good deeds does."
Not that Kiyotaka was planning on seducing Ikusaba into engaging in indecent behavior right away, of course, but there was a school dance coming up, so maybe if he could just find the courage to do so he could ask her if maybe she might possibly consider going to the dance with him if she wanted ("Kyoudai . . . don't use that line when you ask her out . . ."). But after several days of trying . . . and failing . . . to keep his nerve, he got a brilliant idea.
Her twin sister went to this school as well – perhaps she would have some good advice for him?
Enoshima had stared at him almost angrily at first before laughing at him, saying that her sister wasn't interested in dating someone like him and in fact wasn't really interested in dating anyone at all, so he should just quit while he was ahead and go give someone a detention slip or something. He'd thanked her for her honesty and sulked off, disappointed that it looked like things wouldn't work out. At least he had his friends and a world of other things to keep him occupied in the meantime.
At least he did, until the World's Most Despair Inducing Incident happened.
Ikusaba looked at him with wide, panic-stricken eyes. Kiyotaka realized they were in a somewhat, well, "compromising" position. "I, um, would you let me up, please?" he asked. Ikusaba continued to stare at him in horror and surprise. "Please?" he asked again. Normally he was so good at being assertive with the other students (he had to be as hall monitor) but sometimes he had trouble keeping it together around her, and considering he had died less than an hour ago, he was not in a position to keep it together around her.
"You . . . remember my name?" she asked quietly.
"I . . . of course I do!" he said. He closed his eyes. "Though . . . I forgot for a while."
Ikusaba lowered her eyes. "You must hate me then."
"Why would I hate you?" Was it because she died and couldn't do anything to prevent the current situation? But, then again, when did she die? She hadn't been with everyone else on that phony first day, so maybe she'd been killed elsewhere? She'd probably been the subject of Enoshima's "motivational" DVD or something . . .
Actually, that was strange. Why hadn't Enoshima been concerned about her twin sister? Shouldn't she had known that she was also a student at Hope's Peak, so why wasn't she asking around for her? The more Kiyotaka thought about it the more questions he had. Why would he hate Ikusaba-san? Why hadn't her sister said anything about her missing twin? Why was Ikusaba-san dead?
Ikusaba san clenched her eyes shut and looked away, and that's when he noticed it.
The outfit Ikusaba was wearing was not at all like her usual attire, school uniform or otherwise. But it was very much the kind of clothing that her sister favored, and in fact, looked exactly like the one Enoshima had been wearing when she'd been killed in the gymnasium. And then he remembered someone mentioning that Enoshima hadn't looked like her pictures from the magazines. And now that Ikusaba was here, dead, in those clothes . . .
"You're . . . you're the one who died in the gym that day," he said slowly.
Ikusaba still wasn't looking at him. "Yeah. That was me."
"But . . . why?" he asked. Why was Ikusaba dressed like and pretending to be her sister in the game? She turned to look at him in confusion, like she didn't understand what he was asking. Of course, considering everyone's memories had been tampered with, one idea popped into his head. "Why would you pretend to be Enoshima? Is, is that what happened to your memories? Were you convinced you were your sister?"
"You remember who I am . . . but you don't remember what happened, do you?"
Kiyotaka swallowed. He was positive he'd recovered about two years of memories, but he was just as positive there was still a fuzzy period he couldn't quite make out in detail. "I remember when we really became students here and the following year. Then I remember the World's Most Despair Inducing Incident happening, and everyone living inside of the school for about another year. But . . . I still feel like I'm missing memories." He shifted under her. "Also, Ikusaba-san . . . please get off me."
Ikusaba looked at him briefly before rolling off of him. He was able to confirm that she was, indeed, wearing something more like what he'd expect of her sister. Short skirt, knee-high boots with heels, classic Enoshima. But whereas Enoshima always looked cocky and confident whenever he'd handed her detention slips for violating the dress code, Ikusaba just looked uncomfortable, like she'd been forced to wear some sort of awkward animal costume like the ones in amusement parks. He supposed that the long flowing locks of pink hair had been a wig of some sort, and she'd probably used makeup to cover the tattoo on the back of her hand.
None of this answered the question of why she was doing this, though. Was she apologizing for deceiving everyone and making them think she was her sister? That couldn't have been the only part of it. Then he remembered they were both dead, and he wondered . . . Ikusaba couldn't have had anything to do with what was going on in the school, could she? No, no, she couldn't . . . she couldn't possibly know . . . someone must have forced her to dress as her sister for . . . for . . .
"Ishimaru-san . . . I can't . . . I can't face the others. Please just, just go without me. The others who have died are all here, too – you can see Oowada-san and Fujisaki-san again. Just . . . please don't tell them you saw me. Please. I know that isn't in your nature . . . I know it isn't . . . but just this once . . . please don't let the others know. Please. They think Junko-chan just . . . didn't show up after she died and I need it to stay that way for now. I can't . . . I can't do it . . ."
Kiyotaka studied her and swallowed. "Ikusaba-san . . . you know something, don't you?"
"I . . . I'm so . . . I can't! I can't!" Ikusaba turned on her heels and bolted. Kiyotaka was stunned into silence for several moments. There was no question now that Ikusaba knew something about what was going on, but didn't want to talk about it. He took a few seconds to collect his thoughts and ran after her.
"Ikusaba-san, wait! Please! Tell me what's going on!" But by the time he'd rounded the corner leading to the art room, she had disappeared, and he was once again alone. Kiyotaka groaned – years of chasing after delinquents had made him one of the fastest students in their class but Ikusaba was a soldier with a lengthy resume of various mercenary work – if she didn't want to be found, she wasn't going to be found.
Realizing he wasn't going to find her anytime soon but recalling that she'd told him that the other dead students were also haunting the school, he decided to try and find them instead. That made him feel a little better, although he wondered how everyone was getting along considering what had happened. Ikusaba hadn't said anything about them getting along or not. Regardless of the extenuating circumstances, terrible things had happened to all of them – as it was he was going to need to figure out how he felt about Yamada sooner rather than later, possibly Celes as well, since it appeared she had something to do with his death as well.
Kiyotaka was beside himself as he dragged his form towards the stairs. This was really all he could do now – go find the others and figure out what to do from there. Did they try to pass on to the afterlife? Continue to haunt the school? He really had no idea. What was someone supposed to do in his situation?
The second floor hallway was empty. He looked around. "Chihiro? Kyoudai?" he called tentatively. No answer. Even though Mukuro was acting strangely, he had no reason to believe she was lying to him, so they must have been on the first floor or something. "Kuwata? Maizono?" He shook his head – Maizono and Kuwata would have probably responded to his calls for Mondo and Chihiro.
Okay, rooms next. He tried everything on the second floor, save the girl's changing room (in the event one of the remaining girls was in there and indisposed – dead or not, it wouldn't be proper for him to see them in a state of undress). Nothing, although for some reason someone had stored a large, person-sized robot in the pool supply closet. That was weird, but he had other things to worry about.
Upon reaching the stairwell leading to the first floor, Kiyotaka encountered . . . something.
Whatever it was, it was humanoid in shape . . . but only the basic shape of a human. Otherwise it was largely formless, with mitten-like hands and feet that resembled half melons. It had almost no face to speak of, save for a pair of mismatched eyes and a vacant smile against a red mouth. That alone was unsettling, but it wasn't the most unsettling part alone.
It was colored just like Monokuma.
Worse, it spotted him, and began to lumber towards him.
Kiyotaka was too scared to scream but not too stunned to bolt in the other direction. It gave chase as he scrambled back towards the third floor. Despite being dead, he still had good traction to work with and was able to keep a healthy pace ahead of that . . . thing, whatever it was. But it also occurred to him that running wasn't going to be enough; he was going to have to lose it.
Okay, think, think, where can you go to lose this thing? He was too panicked to think straight.
He reached the stairwell leading back to the third floor, but was greeted by a second creature just like the first one. Kiyotaka skidded to a stop and looked over his shoulder – the other one was still coming. He looked around him, trying to find an escape route, but there was none.
The creatures lunged at him, one aiming low and the other aiming high. He wanted to scream, but a rough, slimey hand slapped over his mouth while the creatures hoisted him off the ground – one had his ankles, while the other kept one arm around her torso and the other over his mouth. It was revolting – he was positive it SHOULD have smelled, but it felt like someone had mixed pond scum with a bucket of sand and then coated their hand with the mixture.
Kiyotaka struggled to break free, but they were unmoved by his attempts – he wasn't going to get out. He whimpered in the slimy hand, trying to pull it off his mouth so he could scream for help. Mukuro had been around recently, hadn't she? And maybe Mondo and the others were nearby. But then he wondered if it mattered, considering they were all dead anyways.
He felt himself start to cry again. He'd forgotten he was dead.
Then Kiyotaka got an idea – he couldn't get away, but maybe there was something he could do.
8:10 am
The wolf creature was nowhere to be found – at least as far as Chihiro could tell.
That didn't mean they weren't all on edge anyways. Being dead was bad enough. Being hunted? Worse. Way, way worse. They'd been on edge since leaving the gymnasium – would it show up again? What if it actually caught one of them? Could they be hurt anymore than they already were? And what was that thing anyways?
They'd been torn on what to do – did they look for it so they knew where it was, or did they hide someplace it would be unlikely to find them? For the moment they'd chosen the latter and hid themselves in the bathhouse. If nothing else it gave them a chance to check on Alter Ego – she was still hidden away in that locker.
"I don't know if Kirigiri was behind this," said Mondo, scratching his head after seeing for himself where the laptop was hidden. "Sure she's been kind of secretive and all, but this doesn't seem like her style, you know? Sure if she's on an investigation she can be secretive and dodgy with what she knows but I don't think we saw her poker face last night – I think she legitimately doesn't know where Alter Ego is."
Chihiro's eyes widened as a light bulb went off over her head. "What did you say?"
"I don't think she knows where the laptop is?"
"No, no, before that!"
". . . Kyouko's secretive if she's up to something?"
Chihrio sighed. "After that."
". . . that wasn't her poker face?"
Leon sighed. "Chihiro this is no time to be quoting Lady Gaga."
"No! That's it!" said Chihiro. "Poker face! That's it!"
"Eh?" asked Mondo.
Chihiro sighed in exasperation.
"Wait, I think I get what she's saying – everyone looked like they didn't know where Alter Ego was hidden, and if Monokuma found her he'd have destroyed her or taken her someplace else," said Sayaka, tapping the side of her face. "No one looked guilty. No one looked like they were hiding anything. No fidgeting, no sweating, no nothing."
"And?" asked Leon. "What's your point?"
"With one exception, whoever took Alter Ego should have been exhibiting some level of guilt or something, but no one did, which means only one person could have done it," said Chihiro. She put a hand on her hip. "The Super High School Level Gambler herself – Taeko Yasuhiro, also known as Celes Ludenberg."
"Yeah, but Celes already has a ton of winnings from her gambling," said Leon. "She doesn't need that pot . . ." His eyes widened as realization dawned on him and slowly began to dawn on Mondo as well. "That's it. That's the key. The money. It's a pot. It's the winnings the next killer gets if they get away with murder."
Mondo's jaw dropped. "Monokuma likes to refer to this as a 'game'. It's all a giant gamble. Stake your life for the chance to win big. And he just gave everyone a motive that would be impossible for a gambler of her caliber to resist – a giant pot and freedom, winner take all. All she'd need to do is take a life and get away with it." His eyes widened. "It's been a gamble the whole time – how Celes has held out this long is astonishing. The bear put up this motive to push her over the edge."
"But that doesn't explain why she'd-"
The ghost paused – someone was screaming.
". . . what the hell was that?" asked Mondo.
". . . oh no," Sayaka said, horrified.
None of them wanted to say it out load, but they all knew the most likely explanation.
Another murder.
"What . . . what now?" asked Mondo.
Sayaka composed herself and headed for the door. "Easy – we find the body."
"Uh, Sayaka, I don't think we can trigger the corpse discovery announcement," said Mondo.
"No, she means we should be there for whoever died . . . if that's even what happened," said Chihiro. She forced a smile. "Maybe it was just an accident in the kitchen . . . or, or maybe someone just startled someone really badly. I've screamed when people accidentally snuck up on me before." Mondo frowned, putting his hands on her shoulders.
"Chihiro, you know what that scream probably was."
"We know what it probably was, not what it definitely was!" said Chihiro. She had tears in her eyes. "It . . . it might be nothing! It doesn't . . . it doesn't have to be someone else dying on us! I don't want anyone else to be dead! I want to see everyone live! They're gonna grow up and get married and have jobs and kids and dogs and it's not . . . it's not . . ."
Ding dang ding dong!
"Looks like we've got a corpse here! After a brief investigation, the Class Trial will begin!"
DING DANG DING DONG! Author's Announcements!
The timestamp thing is probably going to end next chapter.
So . . . Junko's hair (and Mukuro's wig), just because I think it's going to get brought up , has always looked pink to me? Like I kind of get where people get blonde from (I've seen it called as such in official sources) but . . . guys, guys, that's totally pink hair. And I'm now curious to see if anyone is going to fight me on this in the comments not because I'm looking for one, but WAAAAYYYY back in the day I was TOTALLY having an argument with someone over the color of Glenn from Chrono Cross' hair in the reviews for their fic and it went on for EVER.
Okay, so there MIGHT be a short hiatus after this chapter. Reason? I've got a LOT of stuff going on right now and I don't know how much writing I'll be getting done. Good news is that Chapter 07 is started – I've got maybe, like, a third of it done? So you might see that one before the end of July but I wouldn't put money on it.
Song Choice: "A Dark Congregation" by the Hush Sound. I'm trying to avoid using the same artist in the same story, but this was a tough one and the was the first song in iTunes that really felt like it fit at all. It's like, there are some songs I have plans for later on or that I want to otherwise save, but yeah I struggled with this one.
Dixxy
