Togami didn't know what nightmare had descended on the trial room in the moments after the voting results had been revealed. He'd hoped with all the will in his heart for the garish casino lights to stop on Kirigiri's face… he'd feared they would end with his own… but it had never occurred to him that he'd see the face of his sweet, soft-hearted boyfriend when the slots stopped spinning. Naegi should have been the one person safe from the others' stupidity, the one person no one in their right mind would vote for — and no one would tell him why they had.

Ogami's eyes had gone blank and empty as she stared up at the lights, and he doubted she could even hear his demands for an explanation. Jill had traipsed merrily off into whatever mad mental landscape lurked inside her head, tapping her scissors against each of her fingers as her lips flew through gibberish too fast for him to read. And between them, in her place at the opposite end of the circle, Kirigiri stood locked in some self-serving chit-chat with Monokuma instead of answering his questions.

She'd done this. Somehow, she'd twisted the voting, used some trick of the mastermind's to alter the results. This couldn't be right, it was absurd, it was impossible. No one would vote for Naegi, not even one person here — let alone the three votes it would take for a majority. All three girls would have had to vote for Naegi to make it true, and that couldn't be the case. Jill and Ogami had seen him broken and unconscious, they knew he couldn't have run all the way up to the fifth floor to plant poison and set bombs. They'd have to be idiots to vote for him, worse than idiots, no more than animals whose brains had never evolved to handle higher thought processes! They couldn't have voted for him —

But then why weren't they saying so? Togami glared from one girl to the other. "Say something! Tell them it isn't right!"

They didn't even look his way. Instead they turned as one, attention snared by something to the left of the circle — the place where Naegi lay unmoving on the floor.

Togami spun in that direction — just in time to see the iron collar snap around Naegi's neck.

"No!"

He'd never moved so fast — but even so, the mastermind's chains outstripped him. He flew across the circle, bursting past Naegi's podium, to the place where the boy had been, but he'd never had a chance. The chains hauled Naegi's limp body through the wall, mirrors snapping shut over the opening as if it had never been there.

Togami slammed into the mirror, fingers scraping across the bumps and cracks in its surface as he searched desperately for the seams to the door. This couldn't be happening, it couldn't, it wasn't right — Naegi couldn't be taken away with the chains the mastermind used for the culprits. He flung himself at the mirror again, clawing at the twisted glass until bloody smears distorted his reflection.

But no matter how he tried, it did no good. The mirrors wouldn't budge — not for him, anyway.

He whirled back towards the circle, glaring at Ogami where she still stood frozen at her podium. "Don't just stand there — get over here!"

She heard him, he saw her eyes flicker in his direction — but she didn't move.

"Come on, we don't have time for you to waste like this!" he snarled, bloody fingers spasming as he tried to clench them into fists. "You know this is a lie — he's innocent, he'd never hurt anyone, he couldn't! You know that!"

She just stared at him with the same stricken eyes he'd seen when he'd found her hunched on the floor of her darkened room. The eyes of a girl who'd watched her friend die…

"We can still get to him!" He felt the crack in his voice as the words tumbled desperately out of his mouth. "There's still time, we can still stop this!"

Ogami opened her mouth as if to speak — but her lips didn't form any words.

"Why aren't you helping?" Togami spun to look at Jill, but for the first time he could remember, she wouldn't meet his eyes. He ground his teeth together — the one time he could have used a maniac on his side and this was what she did?

There was only one person left — and with no other options, with the seconds slipping away through his bloody fingers, Togami turned to Kirigiri. "You can still stop this — you have to! Tell the mastermind it's gone far enough, tell them they don't have to go through with it, whatever they need to hear! They'll listen to you, you know they will!"

She flinched visibly, a mere flicker of motion — but for the stoic girl, any reaction at all was dramatic. He stepped towards her, pressing whatever small advantage it might be.

"Whatever reason they're doing this — if they want us to stop fighting, if they want us to stop searching — whatever they want, it doesn't matter. Tell them I'll do it. I'll stay, I'll stop accusing you, I'll — I'll do whatever it takes." He searched her face for some hint of kindness, some trace of the good person Naegi had so firmly believed she was. "Please. He thinks you're his friend, he trusts you. Do something — please!"

"I…" The color had drained from Kirigiri's face, leaving it the sickly shade of old milk. "I… I'm sorry."

Togami stared at her, a leaden weight filling his stomach. Naegi had fought so hard for this girl, believed in her so much — and this was how she repaid him?

But before he could find the words to damn her, a flash of movement whirled its way across the mirrors, twisting across the twists and lumps in the glass. That was all the warning they had before harsh, brilliant light burst through the dim room. The mirrors reflected it back onto itself, over and over, and Togami's eyes snapped closed against the laser-sharp beams that burned into his retinas. The light hurt after so long in shadows, writhing across the insides of his eyelids too brightly to bear.

As soon as he could stand the pain, he forced his eyes open again, trying to brace himself for whatever new attack the mastermind was launching. It had to be an attack, it couldn't be anything else. They'd been wrong, their vote was wrong, and that meant they were all slated for death. That was what was coming, it had to be —

Except that wasn't what he found when his vision finally cleared. The trial room was unchanged, with its circle of podiums — but one section of the mirrors lining the wall had slid aside, revealing a large picture window that opened on another world.

None of them had seen the sun in weeks, but behind the window it shone like a perfect summer morning. Fluffy white clouds dotted the brilliant blue sky, and fresh green grass stretched across the ground. Birds swooped merrily across the sky, and colorful butterflies floated above a rainbow of wildflowers. And in the center of this peaceful scene, an idealized model of Hope's Peak Academy stretched to the heavens.

Togami stared at the out of place school, icy dread coiling through his veins. The outside of the academy had been one of the last things he could remember seeing before the start of the mastermind's game, and the model captured the essence of the building all too well, down to the same huge brick walls and glittering glass windows. The sight sent a visceral shudder through him, for all that it was objectively quite pretty. It didn't matter how lovely the scene seemed to look… there was a nightmare lurking there, he knew it.

Because as peaceful as that scene looked, it was no idyll. A bright yellow school bus rolled up to the front gates, and despite its cartoonish appearance, the grinning face of a Monokuma robot peered out through the driver's window. The jarring horror of the bear's presence set alarm bells ringing in Togami's head, warning signs that even the rushing emptiness filling his ears couldn't silence. He didn't want to watch this, didn't want to see it, to have the images in his head to haunt him every time he closed his eyes…

But he couldn't look away. If the worst was true, if Naegi really was on the other side of that window, if he'd managed to stay conscious while dragged away in chains… then he deserved to know that his boyfriend was watching. If there was the chance it might offer the sweet, undeserving, innocent boy a drop of comfort, Togami couldn't deny him. He took a slow, stumbling step towards the window, then another.

He reached the window just as the school bus pulled away again, leaving a long line of black silhouettes behind. Fifteen dark figures were outlined against the sunny sky, hands joined together to link them in a chain — fifteen figures that he recognized. Hagakure's mess of an afro, Ogami's muscular build, Celeste's corkscrew pigtails… every one of the students who'd begun the game stood there all in black.

No — not every one of them. When he searched the line for a small figure with one strand of distinctively disobedient hair, he couldn't find anything — but he did see the outline of a slim girl he didn't recognize. Was that supposed to be Ikusaba? But if she was there… then where was…

And then the line began to move — and Togami realized that the figures hadn't been the only things Monokuma's school bus had disgorged. He hadn't been able to see past the black figures, but now, as they slid away from their starting positions, they parted to reveal Naegi's crumpled body on the front steps. He would have been entirely sprawled on the ground if it hadn't been for two large, heavy handcuffs on each wrist, binding his hands into their places in the line. His right hand linked him to a girl with one thin braid in her otherwise loose hair — and his left hand — oh god, injured left hand had been torn from its sling to dangle uselessly from the cuff chaining him to a tall boy with glasses.

The silhouettes had moved from a line to a loose circle, wrapping around the model of the school in a strange echo of the circles of the trial room. Togami strained to see through them, pressing against the cold glass of the window as he searched for some clue about Naegi's condition. Was he still conscious? Still breathing?

But before he could tell for certain, the last two figures joined hands to connect the final links of the circle — and the silhouettes began to spin.