Chapter 5: Dawning of the Dead Part 6 (Deadly Life)

Remaining Citizens: 7

Ai Mizuno (Zombie Land Saga): Ultimate (Zombie) Idol

Aoba Kuronuma (Durarara!): Ultimate Manipulator

Ryuji Sakamoto (Persona 5): Ultimate Track Star

Emma (The Promised Neverland): Ultimate Moral Compass

Gold (Pokémon Adventures/Pokémon Special): Ultimate Hatcher

Miles Morales (Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse): Ultimate Successor

Yu Ishigami (Kaguya-sama: Love Is War): Ultimate Pessimist

Ai's POV

"Hey Ai, before I forget!" Emma called me back over to Bernadetta's body, "You see this hole right here?"

Checking the small hood on her uniform reveals a rip in its fabric. It looks like there was some kind of struggle that could have caused it to get damaged. It couldn't have been ripped like this by sheer pulling, so maybe the hole was made by some sharp object or weapon…

"Hole in Hood" has been added to the Truth Bullet section of your handbook.

I look around, trying to find some way up the Statue of Zetsubou until I spot an elevator right on its left foot. How convenient.

Insert Song (before switching back to Ekoroshia): Dangan Ronpa! (Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc)

The elevator music was odd to be honest, Ishigami was bobbing his head to it though. Maybe he heard it somewhere before. We reached the top of the statue, right on its crown where we can see nearly all of the city from above. A good thing I'm not afraid of heights… although a drop from this height sounds frightening.

"Whoooooooaaaaaa!" Emma shouts out as she looks at the tremendous view. I forget that she's the youngest out of all of us.

"Careful now, or you might land on top of Bernie and Espio." Ishigami says as he leans on a guardrail… wait…

"Excuse me." I gestured to him so he could move away from what I found.

Aha, this section of the railing has some blood on it. So Bernie and/or Espio must have been up here around the time they were killed. For what reason though?

"Bloody Railing" has been added to the Truth Bullet section of your handbook.

"Hey! Over here, we got something." Emma called me as Ishigami picked up something very interesting.

"An e-Handbook?" I asked.

"Not just an e-Handbook. These things show us the name of the owner when you switch them on so…" Ishigami clicks it on and lo and behold…

"'Aoba Kuronuma, Ultimate Manipulator.' as I expected. Something must have happened to make him drop this." I deduced.

"Yeah, and whatever happened made him not want to go back and pick it up. Couldn't have gone back to his room without it either, so where could he be?" Emma scratched the back of her head.

I'm stuck thinking about that as well, it's got me paranoid.

"Aoba's e-Handbook" has been added to the Truth Bullet section of your handbook.

"Two more pieces of evidence over here. Any idiot would just dismiss these as trash, but one man's trash is another man's treasure. Or in this case, another man's proof for a murder." Ishigami held up a piece of fabric and a torn bottom half of a note.

"All of this evidence was left in one place… either these murders were not well executed, or they were left here on purpose. It can't be this easy." I say before observing them.

The white fabric looked familiar, and then that's when I remembered the wound in Espio's right hand. This must be from his glove! Whatever caused that stab wound would obviously have to have ripped through his glove.

"White Fabric" has been added to the Truth Bullet section of your handbook.

The torn page looks to be a result of Aoba trying to get rid of evidence, although he did not come back to this location. If he had, then surely he would have picked up his e-Handbook. He must have tried tearing it up as the murders took place.

Emma began to read through what was written on it.

"'the top of the Statue of Zetsubou at 11:45 pm. I've got the ****ter - Aoba' He must have lured one of them to the top of the statue around that time, but just what did he have?"

"Don't think we'll find out anytime soon. That paper's got a small hole through it, like when you're in a hurry to write something down on a test."

"It must be something very important for one of them to have gone in the first place. Or maybe one of them willingly went knowing that it was a trap…" Emma responded.

"Or it could be both, we can't rule out any possibilities. There has to be other pieces of this letter around somewhere, and perhaps the others have found them by now." I stashed the paper away in my blazer pocket.

"Ripped Page #3" has been added to the Truth Bullet section of your handbook.

*Ding dong, bing bong*

Time's up, but Monokuma's still not moving, isn't he? So who—

"Hello fellow citizens! It seems like the mayor isn't in this afternoon, so it looks like I have to play the part of his secretary."

"Aoba!" Emma shouted in anger.

I scowled as I saw him sitting down on Monokuma's throne, running his hand through his dark blue hair, "I COULD have just left, but I tried turning in my card earlier and the bear didn't take it. The damn thing must be malfunctioning, why? The hell if I know, sooooo… it looks like I have to endure another trial anyways."

That makes sense, considering the state of Monokuma right now. Although it got me thinking about his "Get Out of Trial Free" Card once more… maybe we could get a closer look at the card during the trial to see why it wasn't taken. It was also then that I noticed something on his wrist, I've never seen him with that watch before...

"Get Out of Trial Free Card" has been added to the Truth Bullet section of your handbook.

"Aoba's Watch" has been added to the Truth Bullet section of your handbook.

"I'm fine with that though, I just want to see if I really will win after all that effort. You've seen the bodies, gathered the clues, and now you have your weapons against me. Miles, Gold, Ryuji, Emma, Ishigami…. And you especially, Ai. I can't wait to see what kind of execution Monokuma has lined up for you, this time making sure you stay dead. Ha ha…"

"..." I didn't say a word when he switched off the message in my handbook.

"Ai?" Emma stepped forward towards me.

"Let's finish this." I told the two of them as I walked towards the elevator.

"Right! Yu—I mean Ishigami, are you coming?" Emma asked him as he let out a heavy sigh.

"If we have to. And uh… don't call me by my first name please." He joins us in the elevator.

"Ehehehe~, sorry!" She smiles awkwardly.

I grin at their little back and forth, it seems like he's opened up to her at least a bit. We made it back to the ground and right away we spotted the others. Gold and Ryuji struggle not to throw up when Miles puts them down.

"Yo! We've got our evidence!" Miles waves at us.

"So do we!" Emma greets him.

"I assume you two managed to get some work done?" I walked forward towards Gold.

"Of course! Who do you take us for, idiots?" Gold tried whipping out his e-Handbook to show his evidence, but it slipped out of his hands and onto the ground.

"I do, but I appreciate that you helped. Thank you." I laughed a bit before giving him a genuine smile.

"U-um, no problem Flower Gal! Now let's head to the courtroom!"

Gold awkwardly laughed as I went over to Ryuji, "How's the wound been treating you?"

"Huh? Oh, it's been good, just need to not get anymore injuries like that or I could be done for!" Ryuji reassures me.

"Don't jinx it, don't want to lose another person." I told him seriously.

"Yeah, yeah…" He replied.

Miles then showed us the evidence all three of them gathered: The weapons, the other torn pages, and Monokuma's catatonic state. I thanked them for their work before all of us went to the subway towards Enoshima Park, well, after taking the boat first. It takes forever to traverse this city now.

We finally made it to the elevator, before we felt uneasy due to not knowing who it could possibly be. The last time we were here however, it was just sadness and confusion. All of us did not want what happened to be reality, yet we had to accept it. Today we know who it is once more, but we refuse to go down without a fight.

Bernadetta von Varley, Espio The Chameleon…. For their sake, we descended to the trial grounds.

The doors open, and there he sits like a traitor who just seized a throne for himself. He's clearly annoyed at not being able to just leave without being sure. He steps forward to take his place with the rest of us.

Aoba Kuronuma, you will lose!

TRIAL

ALL RISE!

"Okay, you lot, shoot your shots and try not to miss." Aoba scoffed at us.

"Don't worry about us pal, we've got plenty of bullets in our… whatever you keep bullets in!" Ryuji tried to talk back, but failed.

"Yeah you tell him, Sakamoto…" Ishigami snarked.

"To make this fair, I'll answer any questions you may have with complete honesty." Aoba raises a finger while making his point.

"How do we know THAT'S not a lie?" Miles stares with distrusting eyes.

Aoba turned to him, "I don't really have anything to hide, I just want to see if you can just piece it all together before I get bored and call the bear to take me home. Although I'll only give you all only one single hint, and it's all you from here: I only killed one of them."

I could hear a couple of gasps as our first debate began.

Non-Stop Debate

Insert Song: Discussion -HEAT UP- [3rd Mix] (Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony)

"For real?! Only one of them?" Ryuji let out that phrase he keeps using.

Emma pondered, "He did say he wasn't going to lie, but..."

"He's probably lying about not lying, we know his schtick by now guys." Gold held his pool cue over his shoulders, barely missing Ishigami.

"Watch where you point that thing, will you?"

Ryuji stared holes at Aoba, "Yeah, I don't buy it… for all we know he could have been targeting both of them!"

Incorrect.

"No, that's wrong!"

COUNTER

BREAK!

Truth Bullet Used: Ripped Page #2

"We've collected three pieces of this note addressed to one of our victims. Written in this section of the ripped page, it says to 'come alone', if he was after both of them he wouldn't have written that down." I explained.

"Yeah, it's like the saying goes, three's a crowd." Miles nodded.

"Only one target… so it had to have been Bernadetta, right?" Ishigami guesses.

"That's exactly what I'm thinking…" I agreed.

"I ain't buying it!"

ARGUE

"Nah, I'm not convinced he didn't lure both of 'em there. If Aoba was just going for one, then how did the other victim get there too?" Gold questioned.

I think I've already got what I need to shut his mouth.

Rebuttal Showdown

"Both Espio and Bernadetta were together back there, right? Aoba probably made another note somewhere and we just didn't find it yet! Two notes to lure them over there, done and done!" He cockily rubbed the spot under his nose and above his mouth.

"How can you be so sure that BOTH of them would have been fooled by it?" I rolled my eyes at him.

"How can YOU be so sure that they WOULDN'T?! You never know, like what if they just believed it? Heh heh, I've already got it all worked out in my head! And if it was only one note, then this one could have easily been reused for both of them!

"Cutting-into the contradictions!"

COUNTER

BREAK!

Truth Blade Used: Ripped Page #1

You really need to work on your arguments, Gold…

"Well Gold, in case you forgot, there's two other pages here besides the one I already showed you."

"Yeah? What about them?" He replied, not knowing what I was getting at.

I sighed, "You saw Miles receive one of them from diving by the boat, sorry about that by the way."

"Eh, it was for the trial, no biggie." Miles shrugged it off.

"So on that part of the page, it may be hard to decipher due to the water but… from what I can tell, you could barely make out a single name near the top of it."

"Huh?! That's it? That could be anyone, or it could be nothing at al—"

Emma spoke up next, "Even taking that page out of account, there's still one more that could help determine it once and for all. The third page!"

Truth Bullet Selected: Ripped Page #3

"Right, that one has Aoba claiming that he has taken something from his target. Whatever it is could lead us to who he had in mind." I looked at Aoba as I finished.

I see Gold attempting to say something again, but then Aoba raises a finger, "Before you embarrass yourself again, I'll just say that yes, there is only that one note. It's a lot harder if you try to go for two murders in one go, even if you have a card like mine. I would not do the same thing with Alice either, since you'd already figure out it was me. There. Aren't. Two. Notes."

He looked really annoyed at Gold for even speaking his mind, I was too somewhat but still… Aoba looks to be losing his patience with us.

The feeling couldn't be any more mutual.

I begin to recollect what either of them had access to in order to figure out the one he lured to the top of the Statue of Zetsubou.

Hangman's Gambit

_ _ _ _ T E R

If we're right about this, then it had to have been Bernadetta. I can also assume that Aoba must have chosen an item that not only affects her, but also affects us as well. A simple lost item is troublesome, but if it causes discourse among the rest of us…

The one thing that Bernadetta had access to… that could have been beneficial to us. One thing came to mind, and that's when I gasped.

H A M S T E R

"It was Maga Z… the hamster that was delivering messages to Gundham!" I accused Aoba.

"WHAT?!" I hear multiple people exclaim.

"..." Aoba didn't answer.

"Dude, that could have been another chance of getting the hell outta here! But you just had to take the coward's way out, huh? Finding another way to keep us trapped here so you could take advantage of that freaking card!" Ryuji was livid.

"Alright pal, where is it? I'm gonna get Pibu to shock ya 'til you're extra crispy, if you don't tell us!" Gold pointed his pool cue right at him but he was unphased by his threat.

I can feel the tension getting higher and higher, at this rate those two will start attacking him before we can get the entire truth out. I'm actually the most angry at him out of all of us, but this needs to be done the right way.

Just keep pressing forward until we find the truth.

CITY TRIAL SUSPENDED

So close to the end of this chapter… are you guys ready? I sure as hell am. I wonder what's up with Monokuma though? We'll probably find out soon.