Naegi stared at Asahina in blank horror, hardly able to comprehend what he was seeing. She hadn't been named in a trial or dragged off to an elaborate execution chamber – she'd been standing among them all when she was cut down. It was just like the mastermind's brutal murder of Junko Enoshima, when she'd broken the rule about attacking Monokuma – only somehow even more painful. They'd hardly had a chance to get to know Enoshima when she'd died, but Asahina had been their friend.

Maybe – Naegi bit his lip – maybe it was a trick? Monokuma had stopped short of two executions today already. It was just barely possible that this third one might be false as well. He tried to take a step in Asahina's direction.

Togami held him back, hardly needing to exert any strength to prevent Naegi from moving. "Don't," he said shortly, giving the machine gun a pointed glance.

"But – she might still be alive," Naegi protested.

Togami looked down at him for a moment, expression tightly controlled, then looked over Naegi's shoulder towards Kirigiri. "You're fond of examining bodies. Be useful for once."

Kirigiri looked over at them, her face showing so little reaction that Naegi almost thought she must not have heard. But after a long moment, she stepped over to Asahina and knelt just beyond the pool of blood. Naegi couldn't see exactly what Kirigiri did in the moments that she examined the other girl, but maybe that was for the best. If he couldn't see for certain what had happened, then at least he could still believe it might be okay a little longer.

But Kirigiri only took a few seconds at Asahina's side before she stood, shaking her head. "With that many bullets, it would have been instant," she said, her voice low and tense.

Monokuma's loud laughter shattered the moment, obscene in its wild glee. "Of course it was! It wouldn't be much of a punishment if they missed!" He sighed and shook his head. "But you know, that's the trouble with our world's fixation on instant gratification. We want everything right away, but it's never quite as satisfying – like instant coffee never has the same kick as the real stuff!"

"What – what are you saying?" Naegi couldn't believe the bear's flippant words in the face of so much destruction. It wasn't really different from Monokuma's usual inappropriate chatter – except that this time, it was.

He remembered Asahina sitting with him in the laundry room, the first one of his friends to relent in her suspicion of him. He'd seen the tears in her eyes when she'd told him she wished she knew how to be brave. And it wasn't just her – Alter Ego's smiling face flashed before his eyes, so determined to help even at the risk of his own life. They'd both been stronger than they'd known themselves to be – and they'd deserved better than what Monokuma had just done to them.

All at once, the shock and pain that had been hammering at Naegi ever since Fukawa had been dragged away all boiled into a single explosion of rage. "How dare you? They were my friends! How dare you kill them!"

"Huh? They?" Monokuma tilted his head, puzzled. "Do you mean you thought about that computer the same way as a person? That's pretty pathetic. Are you going to replace them with a pair of basketballs?"

"Shut the hell up!" Naegi's sheer fury, beyond anything he'd ever felt before, had temporarily burned away his dizziness, and he barely noticed that he was still swaying on his feet. "Alter Ego was just as much of a person as the rest of us, and he and Asahina were both our friends. And you killed them!"

"Call them whatever you want," Monokuma said, shrugging. "It doesn't change the fact that in the end, they were both nothing more than a pair of rule-breakers. I couldn't let them hang around setting a bad example for the rest of you, could I?"

"But that isn't right." Kirigiri still stood at Asahina's side, heedless of the blood spreading to lap at the heels of her boots. Her gaze was fixed so unwaveringly on Monokuma that she didn't look like she would have noticed an explosion elsewhere in the room. "You keep calling her a rule-breaker, but Asahina didn't break a rule."

"Have you been sleeping in class or something?" Monokuma asked. "We already covered this! The culprit who planned to break down a locked door was the one at fault for breaking the rule."

"And opening Ogami's locked door with that screwdriver was originally Asahina's plan," Togami said, calculations plain behind his eyes as he frowned. "So you're saying that unscrewing the hinges really does count as breaking the door? That's a very arbitrary ruling on your part."

"Oh, really? It's arbitrary?" Monokuma said, sounding puzzled. "So you think the door wasn't broken, is that it? You think it was exactly the same as it was before Sakura Ogami decided to play handyman with it?"

And as Monokuma said that, Naegi remembered how Ogami's door had wobbled when he'd tried to close it. All the other doors moved smoothly and easily, but Ogami's hadn't – the strange clue that had made him think of the hinges in the first place.

Kirigiri clearly realized it at the same time he did, her lips going tight in an emotionless mask. "So the door was broken after all."

"Of course it was," Monokuma said brightly. "Your favorite headmaster had to put in plenty of safety precautions to make sure you could all feel snug and secure in your own rooms! It's not so easy to unscrew those hinges – one tiny mistake, and the door will never open right again. Or in other words," he grinned out at them, "it's broken."

"Which you failed to explain to us beforehand," Kirigiri retorted. "You punished Asahina for breaking a rule without knowing she was doing it."

"Did I? I don't think so!" Monokuma raised his paws in anger. "I'll have you know that I take my rules beary seriously! Asahina knew she was breaking a rule when she left that screwdriver for Ogami. If she'd really thought the better of it, she could have let Ogami know the plan was off – but she decided to let it proceed. She used Sakura Ogami to break down a locked door – and your loving headmaster can't let that kind of behavior stand."

"And yet in Ogami's case, you did," Togami pointed out, glaring over to where Ogami still knelt in the ruined execution chamber, tears staining her face. "She broke a rule even more blatantly than Asahina, but you seem content to let her escape punishment."

"Oh, that? Well, I guess I did," Monokuma said. "My heart was so moved by her touching little goodbye speech that I just couldn't bear to finish her off. And after all, it's not a very good punishment to give someone what they want anyway!" He laughed. "And this way, she even got to live long enough to see a pair of meaningless deaths!"

Naegi looked around at the aftermath of the executions – Ogami's broken sobs, Asahina's bloody corpse, and Alter Ego's shattered circuitry – and said, "No. You're wrong. These deaths weren't meaningless."

They all turned to look at him at those words. Even Ogami lifted her head a fraction to stare from red, streaming eyes.

"Everybody who's died so far," Naegi went on, the words pouring out directly from his heart before he had a chance to think them through, "the deaths of each and every one of our friends – they all make us stronger! And I swear to God, someday you will pay for this!"

"Holy moly!" Monokuma drew back in a mockery of fear. "You're super mad – like unreasonably upset!" He shrugged. "Well, if that's the case, I guess it's time for me to bring things to a close. I'm outta here! You guys should get some rest – and think long and hard about the lessons I've given you today. I think we've all learned something important!"

And with that, he disappeared.