"Rise and shine, sweetie! We've got a busy day ahead of us!"

Naegi recoiled from the blinding smile Junko sent his way, as sharply as if she'd woken him at knife point. Her cheery enthusiasm for continuing her killing game sent nausea roiling through him, pushing him back in an attempt to put as much distance between them as he could —

And it turned out to be more than he thought. His head moved, actually moved several inches away from her, to the point where he came precariously close to hitting the wall beside him. Naegi blinked, looking down at the span of inches he'd moved in disbelief.

"Looks like you're doing better!" Junko bounced forward to peer more closely at his face, the ends of her pigtails skittering over Naegi's neck like spider legs. Pressed against the wall already, he had nowhere left to retreat, so he did his best to ignore the goosebumps shivering down his spine from the barely perceptible touch. "I bet it won't even hurt much when we get you sitting up for the big finish!"

"When — what?" Naegi couldn't quite follow her train of thought, the remnants of drug-induced sleep still clouding his mind.

"The trial, duh!" Junko rolled her eyes like he was the one who wasn't making any sense. "Keeping track of everyone is enough of a pain from the screens — no way you'd be able to do it lying down all the way over there. You'll have to be up and at 'em in the next few minutes if you want to be ready when we get started!"

"The trial — is going to get started? In a few minutes?" Naegi's eyes shot towards the monitors, scouring the row that depicted the first floor. And sure enough, he could see Byakuya, Sakura, and Jill passing through the bright red door that led down to the trial rooms. "But — are they done investigating? Did they have enough time?"

"Sweetie, they've had hours." She heaved a put-upon sigh. "We've all been toiling our hardest, working ourselves right down to the bone while you snoozed away! You can't possibly expect us to wait around even longer just so you can catch up after your nap!"

"Well…" There was something wrong with what Junko was saying, but Naegi couldn't quite put his finger on what. "Well, I guess not, but —"

"Great! Then let's get you moving before our loyal viewers get bored!" Junko clapped her hands as she bounced back to her feet.

Before Naegi could process what she'd just said, she swooped forward and forced her arm beneath his shoulders. It thrust along the width of his body, and every nerve in his back screamed with alertness at her unwanted touch. If a snake had wrapped itself around his upper body, he would have felt less terror than he did now, finding himself encircled by Junko's arm. She could do anything, anything with her bare arm against his shoulders, her hand curling its blood-tinged nails around his upper arm —

And then she yanked — and pain blazed across his consciousness with all the fury of an explosion, drowning out any other awareness of the world. Blades of white scorched through him, tearing screams from a throat too weak to endure them. He couldn't bear this, couldn't maintain his newfound consciousness in the onslaught of agony —

And then he didn't have to. The pain receded, slowly but surely, until he could regain enough control of his mind to string coherent thoughts together again. The white static of pain cleared from his vision, bringing the room around him back into focus — and as he blinked at the data center, Naegi realized that he was viewing it from a different angle than a few moments ago. He was… sitting up?

Yes, that did seem to be right… the wall pressing against his back confirmed it. Junko had forced him to sit up, just as she'd threatened… and now, when Naegi looked at her sitting beside the mattress, he could look her directly in the eye.

She grinned. "See? Now that wasn't so bad, was it?"

Naegi grimaced. He was certain she'd done it knowing exactly how painful it would be — anything she did to suggest otherwise was just another attempt to confuse him.

"So I'm sure the next step will be even better!"

Naegi shrank back against the wall when her red-tipped hand snaked out towards him again. "Don't touch me!"

"Huh?" Junko tilted her head in confusion, sending her pigtails swishing in perfectly-timed unison. "Are you saying you're going to skip out on watching the trial, after all that?"

Even the thought of his friends enduring the horrors of a trial while he couldn't watch them turned his blood to ice. "No! Of course I'm going to watch!"

"From aaaaaall the way over here, though?" Junko turned to look from the monitors to the mattress, head twisting back and forth multiple times with exaggerated concern.

She didn't have to say anything else — the distance to the screens where the trial would be shown made her point for her. Naegi could see the monitors from the corner where he sat… but with so many rows of them together, no individual screen could be too large. He would be able to follow the course of the trial, yes… but not the small details. Changes of expression, small movements, posture and attitude — all of it would be hard to catch from where he was sitting.

He needed to be closer.

"It's a simple instance of deductive reasoning." Her voice shifted, leaping to the cadence of a lecture. "To fulfill the desire to observe will require the means to do so. Any attempt at denying such an obvious truth is simply a pointless delay of the inevitable."

Looking back at her, Naegi wasn't surprised at all to see that a pair of prim steel-rimmed glasses perched on Junko's nose as she looked down at him. She'd changed her behavior again, that was all — and he couldn't let himself be distracted by something as simple as altered mannerisms. No matter what else she pretended to be, she was still the mastermind behind the game that had taken so many of their friends.

"All right," he said slowly, praying that he wouldn't regret the words. "If that's what it'll take to watch… you can help me move."

She unfolded herself to her full height, one hand planted on her hip as she looked down her nose at him. "Of course I can, and you should be well aware that I would whether you wished it or not. But even the least observant of us should realize that there's a key component missing before I can do so."

Spinning neatly on one heel, she strode over to the data center door and opened it, stepping out into the hall. Naegi's eyes shot wide, drinking in the sliver of light trickling in from the hallway outside. The barrier keeping him from the rest of the school had vanished, just like that — and if he could only find a way across the vast expanse of floor, then maybe —

Shadows fell across the doorway, drowning the scrap of light from the hall as reality swept back over him. There was no chance of escape through that door, open or not. Even if by some miracle he found the strength to drag his injured body across the floor, Junko would never let him any further.

She stepped back into view just outside the door, looming larger than before in the dim light. Or… no, it wasn't that she herself was larger… she was pushing something ahead of her, something so large it took her some delicate maneuvering to get it through the door frame.

"What is that?" The question escaped from his lips before Naegi realized that he probably didn't want to know.

Junko looked back at him, the eerily pleasant smile on her lips making Naegi's mouth go dry with fear. "I decided that you've earned a present, sweetie! Originally meant it for someone else, but I think you need it a little more than she does."

As she angled her way through the door, Naegi could finally see that she'd brought a large metal wheelchair with her, a gleaming creation of black and white decorations. And at the back of the chair, attached to the edge of the seat where they'd be just visible above a particularly short occupant, sat two bear's ears in black and white, with a red lightning bolt blazing between them.