Masaru ran through the decaying remains of Towa City. His lungs ached, his legs threatened to buckle at any moment. But he couldn't stop running. If he did, the Monokuma would surely get them. After losing to Komaru and her demon pet he had been dragged from his arena and thrown into the city at the mercy of the very robots Monaka commanded. Something had gone wrong. Maybe Komaru's special power was turning children into demons? Maybe he had shown too much fear during the battle and the Warriors of Hope wanted him gone. Everyone knew Nagisa was better suited to be leader, Masaru was just better at arguing. Either way, his head phones had been left in the battle field and now Masaru was assaulted from all angles by the sounds of the city.
He could no longer drown out the screams, the visceral crunch of bones, the children's silent laughter as person after person crumbled under Monaka's rule. If he was being perfectly honest with himself, he never actually saw himself kill a demon after the first time he and Jataro took down a stranger in the street. The robot allowed him to close his eyes, the music deafened their screams. Now he had neither and the world wanted to force him to see what he had truly done to the city. However, children are resilient, and Masaru knew better than anyone else how to get out of a violent situation. He kept running.
Eventually he came to the temple where Nagisa had hidden an escape hatch. It was only for in case something had gone wrong, and boy had things gone wrong. He didn't know how many hours he had been running for, but with safety so close in reach he couldn't stop just yet. He had just began to push against the statue when a familiar voice called out.
"You're leaving!?"
He turned, exhaustion finally hitting him with full force. There a boy with soft auburn hair stared at him with the wrath of 1,000 wasps. Masaru leaned into the statue for support.
"You're supposed to be our leader!" The boy continued. "You're the one who's supposed to save us from all the bad things. You promised to protect the paradise, and you're leaving!? My stomach acid could eat through my entire lower half until I'm unintelligible mush I'm so upset! I could be dragging myself across a field of fire ants and you wouldn't even turn around to look; just vanish like the Dodo or Blockbuster video!"
"...Jataro?" Masaru wheezed.
"Did you meet a doppleganger wearing my mask as a face or something? Of course it's me! How could you forget what I-" He paused, and traced his cheek with a trembling hand. "Laughing at me won't solve anything and neither will turning to the apparitions!"
"What are you doing here?" Masaru shook his head, he barely had the breath to talk let alone laugh.
"Monaka may have hated me, but I guess some shred of compassion lies in her meat locker of a heart. She let me believe I forced you to your death before casting me out into the woods." Jataro fiddled with the strap of his backpack. "Spiders silk can be the strongest rope sometimes, not something you can cut through easily. I always heard that steel was stronger so I came looking, but you've chosen to abandon us."
"I'm not abandoning anyone! If anything, you're the one who should be ashamed! You came looking for the exit too!" Masaru shot back.
"My arena is by the Riverside." Jataro stated dryly and pointed to Towa Tower which was within walking distance. "One of the most ferocious demons I've met brought my reign as a Cleric to an end. Time may be an illusion, but I am certain it was only a few minutes ago. You however, have missing for almost a day, and Monaka won't let anyone look for you. When you didn't come back we thought you were dead! You- you could have stopped this. You're supposed to be the hero aren't you?" Masaru sat down, his legs too weak to keep standing.
"We're just kids Jataro..." He muttered. "Monaka's the only reason any of this was possible and she... she doesn't need us anymore. We should just take the hint and just leave."
"What about Nagisa? He won't care I'm gone, but he's lost it since you disappeared. Monaka thought he was going to turn into a demon just to look for you!" Jataro raged. Masaru made eye contact with the boy, trying to find fallacy in his statement. "And what about Kotoko? More than demons, more than me, she hates being alone! We can't leave her there with Monaka! What if they're in danger? What if Monaka tries to get rid of them too? What if the demons get to them first?!" He pulled at his hair. "There's a million mice running around in my head and none of them are helping! You have to snap out of it and do something!"
"Jataro, if we stay here we could get killed or worse. I'd rather take my chances with the demons from the Future Foundation than stay here where a robot might eat me. A hero's supposed to live to fight another day."
"You want to live your life as a demon? Fine." Jataro spat. He turned and began to walk in the rough direction of the sky palace.
"Jataro wait, you can't go out there!" Masaru argued. "You'll get killed! I- I order you to come back here!" He shouted.
"You're not the leader anymore." Jataro argued. "Nagisa is. If you want to be able to tell me what to do, you'll have to go tell him you're not dead yet." He continued to walk further into the city. After a brief moment of weighing his options, Masaru chased after Jataro.
"I may not be the leader anymore, but you're still not allowed to be cooler than me!" Masaru called after him. "I'm going to be the one to save Nagisa, not you!"
~v~
Their travel time through the city had become greatly impeded with the loss of their robots. There was a shortcut through the junkyard that would take them back to the floating palace, but Masaru needed to take frequent rest breaks after pushing himself to the point of exhaustion during his escape. With all of the discarded junk laying around, Jataro struggled to stay focused on the objective. Whenever they stopped to rest he would take to finding hidden treasures among the junk. It was during one of these breaks that Masaru finally spoke what was on his mind.
"Do you think what we did was wrong?" Masaru murmured into his knees. He watched from his curled up position as the other boy pawed through the junk looking for god knows what.
"Of course not." Jataro snorted. "We did what it took to get what we wanted, and who knew Komaru still had that weird sonic gun of her's. Otherwise I'd totally have beaten her and made everyone super jealous. No one would get rid of me then. I mean, Monaka has been looking for an excuse to dispose of me for a while, but you guys kept breaking things so she never got a chance... Until now."
"But I mean, like the whole thing." Masaru clarified. "I know things were really scary for us back home, but when I came home after level grinding, he looked... relieved. And he hugged me! He never did that before." He could still see the look on his father's face when he came home. Pictured it clearer than anything in the junk yard, a strange mix of fear and something else. "Then he talked about how he had lost mom before, and what the hell was I thinking he could have lost me too. But I wasn't lost, I ran away." He closed his eyes, shaking his head with his next words. "I-I didn't know what to say and he started shaking me, then the gun went off..." He hugged his knees, careful to avoid the scrap metal. "I didn't mean to, it just happened. He... he didn't get mad at me then either. Just said 'oh' and died. It was creepy… Like he was a different person. I mean, it looked like him, but nothing else matched. What was I supposed to tell Monaka-chan; I didn't actually want to pull the trigger, it just happened? Ever since then, things have 'just happened' and I've tried to be cool with it, but the point of paradise was to make a place safe for all kids... Not this." He surveyed the city outside of the junkyard's boarder. Smoke billowed from some buildings and the screams had died down, but he knew there were still bodies in the streets.
"If this isn't what you wanted, then why didn't you stop it?" Jataro muttered as he dug deeper into the pile. His attitude toward Masaru had become surprisingly chilling, it wasn't often the boy would ask direct questions or avoid speaking. Masaru struggled to piece together conversations, but most of them lead back to why everything was his fault.
"I don't know, Monaka kept saying it was for the best and Nagisa agreed with her and referenced some dumb history thing and I just assumed they knew something I didn't." He rambled, silently begging for the other boy to turn around and look at him again. "I mean, Monaka just wanted me to be the leader because she knew more kids would put on the helmets if I asked them to. I just wanted to make them happy." He pulled at his hair, grasping for headphones that were no longer there."Things made more sense when I was the one with the robots." Jataro pulled out an old music box with some satisfaction and wound up the wheel. Music gently trickled out as a dismembered, porcelain ballerina danced. She still had a leg to stand on, and her skirt was only a little dirty. He secured the music box to his belt and dusted off his hands.
"See, that's why you shouldn't do thing just to make people like you. It gets you in trouble." He reprimanded. "Life would be a lot easier if you became one with the trash instead of trying to rise above it. People like us weren't meant to find peace in a demon society, or any society for that matter. That's why I cheated and changed the rules on them. People all over the nation will know who we are and hate us. You can either accept it and flourish, or sink into the shadows of everyone's minds. Not that, that will happen to us now." He grinned. "They may even teach other kids about what we did! Imagine it, written down in infamy, doesn't it just fill you with butterflies?"
"Are butterflies the things that make you feel like throwing up, because if so, then yeah." He shook his head. Of course Jataro wouldn't understand. Heck, he probably signed up expecting for everything to explode in his face, but Masaru didn't feel the same way. Sure being on TV had been cool, and watching demons run in fear from him was borderline euphoric. Power was what he had wanted more than anything in the world, for as long as he could remember. But sitting in the garbage was neither powerful or heroic. It was just pathetic. "We're right back where we started. No Monaka, no Big Sis Junko, no nothing." He knew Jataro was about to make some insulting or self deprecating remark, but he noticed beast Monokuma sniffing around the entrance to the junk yard. "Hold that thought, we've got to go. They're onto us." It pained him to stand at this point, but they had to keep moving.
~v~
Night had fallen on Towa City and the two no long could justify wandering aimlessly toward the blimp. After collecting a small fire together, the two huddled for shelter under a large hunk of asphalt. Masaru shivered as the cold air nipped at his exposed skin. It may have been safer to sleep without the campfire signaling their location, but Masaru couldn't stand sleeping in the dark; especially in a dark alley. The whole thing spelled disaster in his mind.
"What happened to your arm?" Jarato asked. "It looks like a zombie." Masaru looked down at his arm. He hadn't had time to grab a jacket or something from the junkyard to cover up the self inflicted bruises. With some hesitation, he tried wiggling his fingers and cringed. Feeling was slowly returning back into his hand; it felt like needles were prickling at his finger tips. "Did Komaru do that?"
"N-no." He hid as much as he could with his good hand. Usually he was good about it, but the stress of the day had gotten the better of him. He hadn't planned on running into anyone who would care anyway. Now that Jataro had started looking at him, his gaze locked onto the embarrassing marks.
"Don't want to admit you got beat up by a girl?" Jataro snickered.
"I'm serious, I'm the one who did it! I just wasn't thinking!" He blushed. No way he was going to let Jataro give him a hard time over this. In hindsight it seemed simply irrational, but in the heat of the moment he had wanted to prove to Komaru that he was a fearless leader. Fearless leaders didn't tremble in their boots at the prospect of having to kill someone again or feel any pain. "It's not that bad, I've had worse..." He could feel the unblinking stare of his company.
"Just because you've had worse, doesn't mean you should have it at all." Jataro shook his head. "You're weird."
"I'm weird?" Masaru gestured widely at the collection of trinkets tied to Jataro's belt. "You're the one carrying around junk!"
"It's not junk!" Jataro clung protectively to his music box. "It still works perfectly fine, unlike you. Why did you even come here if you were just going to punish yourself? I thought the whole point of coming back here was to get away from people who would hurt us."
"I could say the same to you." Masaru glared. "For someone who was miserable living with a lady that hated him, you sure like trying to get people to snap at you." The heat from the fire echoed his frustration with his friend, his situation, himself. Jataro had always been annoying, but never this prickly before. He usually reserved this kind of antagonism for demons. "Seriously what's your problem?"
"I have a lot of problems." Jataro poked the embers with a stick. "You'll have to be more specific than that." He was starting to shut down again, and Masaru wasn't sure he could handle a whole night in the dark and quite.
"I mean what's your problem with me?" Masaru begged. "You've pretty much ignored me since we've tried to make it back. You've barely said anything to me, and you usually talk all the time! And I mean, all the time. You've gone beyond annoying; you're being just plain mean. What the hell did I ever do to you?"
"You abandoned us here!" Jataro threw the stick into the flames. "You abandoned me! If I hadn't caught you trying to leave you would have!"
"I came back didn't I?" The red head instinctively reached for his headphones once more, but they weren't there.
"Like a lost puppy." Jataro rolled his eyes. "I wonder… If I tell the others what you tried to do, would I get to take your title as Hero of the Warriors of Hope?" He was grinning like a madman, a plot slowly forming together.
"I thought we were just going back to get Nagisa and the others." Masaru frowned. "And what would make you think they would take you back instead of me?"
"Maybe the fact that I found a traitor that broke the children's commandments? Monaka would be so mad Kabuki lines would grow on her face. And you know what happens to traitors." He cackled. "Monaka would be so busy with you; Kotoko, Nagisa and I could leave and make paradise someplace else! That would make me a hero wouldn't it?"
"Since when did you want to be a hero?" Masaru growled, ready to pounce on the boy, but his whole body screamed of exhaustion. He'd have to come up with some other way to get back at him. Think, what would Nagisa say… "You're right, you make a way better hero than me. Everyone likes a hero," Masaru said with a wry smile, "and heroes are always handsome. And you're way less ugly without that stupid mask." Jataro's hands came up to cover his face with a hiss.
"Stop it, stop it, stop it you traitor!" Jataro shrieked. "You're just trying to get me to claw up my own face, but it won't work!"
"Yeah, now that you're totally adorable Kotoko might actually like you." Masaru edged closer into Jataro's personal space.
"I'm not hearing this!" Jataro covered his ears and buried his face in his knees. "You're a demon now, and demons always lie!"
"If you tell everyone I broke the rules, I'll tell them about the rule that you broke first!" He was completely bluffing. But whenever Jataro got this flustered, he'd slip up.
"B-but I didn't actually act on it, I just thought about it!" Jataro blushed all the way to his ears.
"So you did break the rules!" Masaru accused.
"Ah! Y-you tricked me!" Jataro stuttered. "Y-you're not getting any more out of me! I'll sew my mouth shut or eat hot coals or something. Anything to stop talking." He wrapped his hands around his mouth. "You can't make me say anything."
"But Nagisa could." Masaru grinned, knowing for a fact that Jataro couldn't stand up to him and Nagisa at the same time. "If you rat me out, I'll rat you out!"
"S-so," Jataro tried to seem aloof, "you could have fallen into my trap. After all, I'm supposed to be the most hated member of the Warriors of Hope. Everyone hates gossipy people. What would I possibly get out not telling?" Masaru crossed his arms and tilted his head as he thought. Surprisingly enough, it was really tricky to figure out what exactly Jataro wanted. Half the time, even the boy himself didn't know. Finally Masaru came to a conclusion.
"I could keep the others from seeing what you look like." Masaru suggested. "I'm sure Nagisa wouldn't really care, but Kotoko..." He left it up to the boy's imagination. It seemed to work.
"Fine, but she can never see what my face looks like, ever!" Jataro insisted. "She screams so loud I can't see. It's unbearable. I would fall apart at the seams." It seemed a truce had finally been reached. Masaru could only hope that the disheveled blond would keep his word. He really did not want to have to face what Nagisa's reaction would be if he found out that he tried to leave through the escape hatch. Who knew what kind of stress he was putting himself under already now that he had taken the position as leader.
~v~
Kotoko sat on the docks of the Riverside, surrounded by brightly colored buildings and store fronts. She had never been allowed in this part of town while Jataro was working on it, but now... She looked down at the water, her frozen smile melting into a frown. Curious was what she had called it, she said she was curious about what happened to her friends. That was the only word she had for it. Never before had she cared if someone walked out of her life. Her dad was never around, and left well before she was old enough to care he was gone. People had always been walking in and out of her spotlight, she was numb to it, and she never really wanted them to stay. It was easier to be ambivalent about the whole thing. Better to be sweet than angry all the time; easier to be angry than sad. Girls who cried were found especially adorable, and she was through with being the cute one. That was the whole reason she came, was to finally be the one who called the shots.
So when someone had the audacity to leave without a parting word, someone she never expected to fall out of her sphere of control, it perturbed her. Dead was how Monaka had preferred to think of it. It had a certain finality to it, but that somehow it wasn't enough. Masaru's disappearance was far too simple to explain, she knew him too well. If he had lost to a demon, he'd be far too busy hiding and licking his wounds for any dumb Monokuma Kid to find him. 'Status Unknown' just meant he had yet to face the others after he had lost, no way he was actually dead. Their little funeral alter would be especially funny once he returned, a resting place for his dignity and position as leader.
Jataro was an entirely different matter.
While she couldn't consider herself as much as an expert on him, she knew that he hated leaving things unfinished. He was far too theatric to simply disappear, but all that remained in his arena was his mask. A mask he had never taken off in his life. It was, ironically, one of the only things he had been terribly open about other than his desire for other's malice. No, he wouldn't be caught dead without it, so obviously he had to be somewhere. There was no way some frivolous demons would kill him and then take the mask off and leave it at the scene of the crime.
She looked up at the blindingly pink buildings. The whole place felt like a giant doll house. Very cute, very bright, very much unlike anything she'd expect him to make of his own volition. The fairytale models she and Monaka had begged for were one thing, but this was something she couldn't have imagined to be possible, let alone ask for it. It looked much more like what she had expected paradise to be like. Quiet, cute, and free of demons; this is what they had been fighting for. So why keep it a huge secret from the others, especially her? She loved adorable stuff like this. Were things not as direr, she would have loved to prance around and laughed at him for conceiving it in the first place.
Maybe those endless days of building sets for the school plays had ingrained into his subconscious. Ripped away from their 'normal' lives he fell back into the same pattern he always have, that must have been the answer. Though, if she were to be honest with herself, she never questioned why he started building them to begin with. He could have joined the art club, or something more suited toward his talents. The painted walls that surrounded her felt far more unnatural then they truly were. Why on earth was this all here? Why pink instead of green or gold? Why had he been so insistent on following her around after Masaru disappeared, only to vanish himself? There were too many whys.
He eyes roamed to the leaning towers of paint brushes and cans. Several walls had been base coated, and sketched on, but very little progress had been made after that. Jataro would never leave things unfinished like this. If he was still out there, this is the first place he would come. So she sat on the silent boardwalk and waited.
Alone.
~ v ~
There were not enough words in all the languages to describe how amazing Big Sis Junko was. Granted, Monaka had tried a number of times, but Jataro knew that the best way to describe someone was through art. For the last year, he had finally understood what it meant to have a muse. Someone that inspired him to do art that he enjoyed, rather than as a tool to eat up his life. Paradise meant the end of mindless commissions, and a chance to pursue whatever he wanted. It was a freedom unlike any he had known.
Granted, he was used to being able to wander around town, wherever he wanted whenever he wanted. His mother didn't particularly care where he was as long as he wore his mask and she was at work. And she worked all the time. So while his friends dreaded coming home to their tormentors once the school bell rang, he dreaded the darkness and emptiness of his own home. In a brief moment of courage, he had once suggested his friends come over to his house after school instead of parting ways; but Monaka had laughed it off as a joke and dismissed the idea entirely. So night after night he would set down his pencils and wander the streets like a prisoner, hoping that when he eventually came home, his mother would scream at him for being out. Making her worry was the only way she'd look him in the eyes.
But Big Sis Junko had changed that. She would be the one who waited for him to return from his work. And in turn, he would paint her into every classic piece he could think of. Even though she was the queen of despair, she still had a talent for modeling. One he took advantage of over and over again until Monaka was brimming with jealousy. Junko may have loved talking about despair, and death, and evil schemes, but painting took time. Jataro had quickly become an expert on taking as much time from Junko as he possibly could, and it had rewarded him tenfold. She had even once called him her favorite.
Him! The most disgusting, despicable thing on the planet. He had once been someone's favorite human being on the planet! Only someone as twisted and disturbed as he was could find value in the tortuously despaired. He had even let her see his face, since he was sure that the source of his mother's despair would bring Junko joy. And it had! Yes Big Sis Junko was the single most greatest person in his whole life.
And then she was just gone.
His pictures took on a lifeless aura that he couldn't fix after that. Granted he would continue to draw her, day after day, just so he could see her face again. But the lines progressively lost their sharpness, the colors bleeding together. He knew what she looked like, yet gradually lost the ability to replicate it without creating an empty vacuum within his chest. His renaissance had ended. Now he sat in the darkness, clinging to a few scraps of garbage and a discarded music box, waiting for dawn to come.