This took longer than I would've liked…but my life has, as my mom put it, turned into a soap opera. Plus I had senior finals. And I've been playing through school mode. A lot.
Another week passes. Masaru gives Sayaka a hat to cover her bald spots. Chihiro initially needs a walker to get around, but after a few days, he's walking on his own. Taka doesn't have another seizure, but he does get a cold.
Other than that…not much else changes.
Masaru watches as Celeste effortlessly swings her legs as she walks on her crutches. Leon happens to be next to him, and he's also watching her.
Masaru happens to glance at Leon as Celeste leaves and he can't help but smile a bit. He's jealous of her, ain't he?
Once she's out of earshot, he says, "Are you jealous, Leon?"
Leon looks up at him as though to say, "Jealous? Me?" It's much cuter than Masaru thought it would be.
"Don't worry," Masaru says. "We're starting your physical rehab so that you'll be able to walk again later today. Er, that is, you have your first therapy session…today… Does that make sense?"
Leon seems to think for a bit before nodding.
"Good." The sooner he starts therapy, the sooner he gets back to normal.
The sound of someone sneezing suddenly brings him out of his thoughts. He quickly turns to see that it's, unsurprisingly, Taka, rubbing his nose.
"Shouldn't you be in your room?" Masaru notes. "Or are you just hungry?"
At the insistence of Dr. Sasaki, Taka had isolated himself in his room to keep his cold from spreading to the others. Taka had seemed surprisingly okay with it, though he did have a tendency to leave his room when he got hungry and Masaru had forgotten to bring him food.
Which was a bit more often than it should've been.
"Look," Masaru continues, "I'll get you some food later. Just please go back to your room."
Taka shakes his head.
Masaru shakes his head and sighs. "Okay, fine. I'll take you to the cafeteria."
After letting Taka pick a few things from the cafeteria, Masaru takes him back to his room.
Almost immediately afterwards, Masaru sees Dr. Sasaki enter the hallway.
"Ah, Masaru! I've been looking for you!" he exclaims.
"You have?" Masaru asks, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes! We're having a meeting about what we're going to be doing from here on out."
"And you want me to attend."
"Yep!"
Masaru sighs. "All right."
0~*~0
"As some of you already know," Heizo announces to the crowd in the conference room, "I have called this meeting to discuss what we're going to be doing from here on out. Now that the students' conditions have more or less stabilized, I think it's time we resume our previous plans. For those of you who don't know…we're taking back the city."
Masaru absentmindedly nods. They had been planning on taking back the city for months, but they were forced to put those plans on hold when the School Life of Mutual Killing happened.
But should we really be thinkin' about that now? I mean, Leon ain't even walkin' again…
"…Yes, I'm quite certain we can pull this off. As far as we can tell, there are no Monokuma in the city…"
Masaru zones out of what Heizo is saying, focusing on his own thoughts. He's not very interested in helping them reclaim the city; he prefers spending time with the former students.
"…Absolutely certain we have the resources…"
It keeps his mind focused… Keeps it from wandering to what he did before he came to the hospital…
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Masaru nearly jumps out of his chair at the sound of the beeping. Heizo immediately stops talking and dashes over to Masaru (who happens to be in the front row).
Masaru holds up the device on his arm. Leon's button is red and flashing.
"What does it say!?" says a panicked Heizo.
"I'm bringing it up!" exclaims an equally panicked Masaru.
When he finally gets the display up, Masaru immediately look at the status.
"Four broken ribs…and a punctured lung!?" reads Masaru.
Heizo looks at the other meeting attendants and says, "Uh… Sorry but we-we're going to have to adjourn this meeting…"
Heizo then grabs Masaru by the arm and they rush out of the room.
0~*~0
They find Leon at the bottom of a staircase, lying on his side and clearly having trouble breathing. His toppled wheelchair is on the ground not too far from him. What they don't expect to see is Miko kneeling on the ground next to Leon, visibly panicked.
"Miko?" wonders Masaru. "What are you doing here?"
"I…I heard something crash…"
Leon coughs a bit. Masaru can see some fresh blood on his lips.
"…Don't worry. We'll take care of him," assures Masaru.
Strange, though… Leon knows he can't use stairs… So how'd he end up fallin' down a flight?
0~*~0
Leon is immediately taken for emergency surgery. Masaru and Miko wait outside in the hall.
"So Masaru…" Miko says, "You and Dr. Sasaki found Leon pretty quickly…"
"Yes, thanks to this," he replies, tapping the device on his arm.
Miko tilts her head.
"…Let me show you."
Masaru brings up the display and, through complex manipulation of the menus, turns the rectangular 2D hologram into a 3D sphere. In the very center is a white dot, and scattered throughout the sphere are dots of various colors (though most of them are blue).
Miko stares for a few moments before asking, "…What is that?"
"It's basically like a 3D radar; the white dot is me and the colored dots are the students."
"…Oh. How does it work?"
"…Something about the sensors in their bodies transmitting that information to the device…"
She gives him a blank stare.
"Well that's what Dr. Sasaki told me."
0~*~0
How Natsuki was able to talk me into watching a horror movie with her at nine in the morning, I'll never know.
Mukuro glances uneasily around the room. They're not alone, of course; there are several other people in what was once a conference room, now a movie theater (due to having a projector that's hooked up to a computer that can play DVDs).
The movie is about a group of government agents who have to fight off an invasion of ridiculously human-like robots being controlled by unseen aliens. Mukuro thought it would be cheesy, but it's actually quite scary. It doesn't really faze her, though Natsuki clings to her more than once.
Right now, they're at the part where the agents are infiltrating an abandoned factory that they suspect are where the robots are being manufactured. They split into two groups of four and remind each other to stay within sight of someone at all times (Mukuro, for some reason, can't help but feel a twinge of relief).
The main character's group soon came across a large conveyor belt carrying people, bound but very much awake, into a machine that, as it was revealed not much later, turned out…the robots… The machine was…turning people…into robots…
At that point, she stops paying attention to the movie as she's pulled into her own mind.
0~*~0
"No! No, let me go! Please! Don't do this!"
She's surrounded by hideous demons, all of them dragging her towards a huge machine. She tries to rip herself out of their hands, but their grips are surprisingly strong and their claws cut into her limbs when she moves; all she's able to do is slow them down a little.
She looks at a silhouette watching them from close by. Any details are shrouded in darkness, but she somehow knows that the silhouette is the reason she's being dragged off.
"Please! Don't do this!" she begs. The silhouette doesn't even move.
She's not entirely sure what's going to happen, but she knows that by the end of it, she'll have absolutely no will of her own; her only thoughts will be of following the silhouette's orders.
She's spent her whole life obeying others. But she has no desire to obey the silhouette. And now she's going to lose her free will because of it. And somehow, that thought absolutely terrifies her.
"Please! Don't!" she begs.
"PLEASE!"
0~*~0
Natsuki's not sure why she asked Mukuro to watch a movie with her; she didn't even know what the movie was gonna be.
And of course, it turned out to be a horror movie. And while it was legitimately scary (they either used CGI or had people dress up as androids; either way, it was deeply unsettling), she didn't expect it to bother Mukuro too much.
So she's immensely concerned when she hears hyperventilating right next to her.
She glances over and sees Mukuro, trembling, eyes unfocused, skin white as a sheet, and looking utterly terrified.
She immediately grabs Mukuro's shoulders, being careful not to grab them too hard, and gently shakes her.
"Mukuro! Look at me!" she fiercely whispers.
Mukuro's eyes look in her direction. But instead of looking at her, they look right through her.
"You wanna leave?" Natsuki asks. She's fine with leaving, she's seen the movie before; and even if she hadn't, Mukuro is far more important.
Mukuro gives a slight indication of a nod, and Natsuki, still holding onto Mukuro's shoulders, leads her out of the room. The girls were in the very back row and the only light in the room is from the projector, so only a few people notice them leave.
Once in the (thankfully empty) hallway, Natsuki looks at Mukuro and asks, "You wanna go back to your room?"
Mukuro gives a more noticeable nod.
"…Okay. Let's go."
0~*~0
Masaru and Miko are still waiting in the hall when Dr. Sasaki comes out.
"Well?" Masaru inquires.
"It'll be a while before the anesthetics wear off," he replies, "but he should make a full recovery."
"'Kay."
Heizo looks around the hallway.
Before he can say anything, Masaru says, "I wanted to wait to tell the others until Leon was out of surgery."
"That… That's probably a good idea."
"Will he contract pneumonia?" interrupts Miko.
"What?"
"I heard that you can get pneumonia if your ribs are broken."
"…If you don't breathe deeply enough, then sure. But we'll do our best to make sure that doesn't happen," assures Heizo.
Miko, not entirely convinced, simply nods and hums, "Hmm."
"I'll, uh, go tell the others what happened," Masaru states as he stands up.
0~*~0
According to the device's radar, the closest person was Mukuro, in her room. So that's where he went first. When he opens her door, however…out of all the things he would've expected to see, a trembling Mukuro crying into Natsuki's shoulder as the latter hugs and strokes the former's back is NOT one of them.
He can't help but stare for a few moments before asking, "What the heck happened?"
Natsuki looks up at him. "…Apparently, the thought of people unwillingly being turned into androids absolutely terrifies her."
Masaru just stares incomprehensibly. "…It's just one thing after another, isn't it?" he moans.
"One thing after another?" Natsuki repeats.
"Uh…" Should I just say it or…? Might as well. "Leon…fell down a flight of stairs a-and broke three ribs and punctured his lung. He just got out of surgery."
Mukuro looks up from Natsuki's shoulder as the latter yells, "What!?"
"I came here to tell you that," Masaru explains.
"I see…" Natsuki says, hanging her head slightly. She thinks for a bit before looking at Mukuro and asking, "You wanna go see Leon?"
Mukuro nods after a bit, wiping her tears on the sleeve of her hospital gown.
Natsuki looks at Masaru. "You don't have to wait for us; go and tell everyone else."
"I…I was going to do that next…"
Taka is, as Masaru expected, in his room. He doesn't initially react to the news of what happened to Leon, but after a few moments he suddenly jerks upright in bed, his eyes wide.
Sayaka is, slightly surprisingly, in her room too, adjusting her hat. When Masaru tells her what happened to Leon, she rushes up to him, grabs his shirt, and mouths, "Where is he?"
After hurriedly telling her, he continues on. The next person he finds is Hifumi helping Chihiro reach something on a high shelf in a storage room by having the latter sit on the former's shoulders (Celeste is sitting on a box, watching them with a bemused smile on her face).
When he tells them what happened to Leon, Hifumi immediately runs out of the room, Chihiro still clinging to his shoulders with a terrified expression on his face. Celeste awkwardly gets up and leaves the room as fast as she can on her crutches.
Once they're gone, Masaru mumbles to himself, "I still can't get over how skinny Hifumi is now…"
The next person he finds is Mondo, who is, to Masaru's surprise, organizing the books in the "library." He seems oddly fidgety, though; he's going at a rather hurried pace and he keeps fumbling with the books.
"Mondo?" Masaru calls out.
Mondo freezes, but doesn't turn to face him.
"Leon…fell down a flight of stairs and broke three ribs and punctured his lung. He got out of surgery…pretty recently…"
Mondo hangs his head, but otherwise has no visible reaction.
After about ten seconds of stillness, Masaru suddenly feels very awkward and leaves without another word.
0~*~0
Masaru eventually finds Sakura training in the gym.
Instead of telling her about Leon, he, panting heavily, says, "I don't think…you should…be exerting…yourself…so soon after…your surgery…"
Sakura pauses for a bit and glances back at him before resuming.
"Actually…I'm pretty sure…Dr. Sasaki…explicitly said…for you…not to, uh…"
Sakura's looking back at him again, and the look she's giving him makes Masaru quietly back out the door.
Author's note: …I thought I'd get farther than this. Oh well. At least things are starting to pick up a little…
