A chill shot down my spine. "You must kill if you want to leave. ". As soon as I heard those words, my blood went cold.
"Upupu." Monokuma laughed. "I bet THAT got your brain juices flowing! Beats the heck out of a human catching a salmon, huh? Like I said before, you guys are the hope of the world. But you know… Taking that hope and seeing it get murdered creates a darkened shadow of despair. And I just find that so… Darn… Exciting!"
"What the hell are you talking about!?" Leon exclaimed. "To kill each other is… It's…!"
"To kill each other is to kill each other." Monokuma explained. "I'm sure there's a dictionary here somewhere if you need it."
"We know what it means, that's not the problem!" Asahina exclaimed angrily. "Why do we have to kill each other?!"
'Yeah!" Added Yamada. "Stop blabbering on with all this nonsense! Just let us go home already!"
"… Blabbering?" Monokuma asked before getting angry. "Blabbering, blabbering, what do you mean blabbering!? Stop blabbering on about blabbering on! You guys don't get it, do you? "Let us go, let us go!"! You keep on saying the same thing over and over and over and over… Listen. From this moment on, this school is your home, your life, your world. Got it? And you can kill as much as you wanna kill! So go ahead, go on a kill-kill-killing spree!"
"Alright, come on…" Came a fed-up Hagakure. "How long you gonna keep this up?"
"Eh?" Asked Monokuma while cocking his head to the side.
"You got us, okay?" Hagakure continued. "You scared the hell out of us. So you can go ahead and reveal the trick now."
"Reveal the trick…?"
"Yeah, cuz I mean… Y'know, this is all some kinda trick and all, right? So uh, like…"
"Dude, shut the hell up and get outta my way!"
After Mondo said that, he shoved Hagakure aside and placed himself in front of Monokuma, his voice rumbling like thunder.
"Listen up, asshole!" He growled. "This shit's gone way too far! What the hell kinda joke is this?!"
"Joke?" Monokuma asked. "Wat, you mean like your hair?"
Having enough, Mondo roared out, and then he suddenly grabbed Monokuma and picked him up by the neck.
"Gotcha, you little piece of shit!" He roared. "I dunno if you're a toy or stuffed animal or whatever the hell! Either way, I'm gonna rip you to fuckin' shreds!"
"Waah!" Monokuma yelled in terror. "Violence against the headmaster is in violation of school regulations!"
"Shut the fuck up!" Mondo yelled. "Let me outta here, or I swear to Christ…"
Just then, Monokuma went silent as a loud beeping sound was heard from somewhere.
"What, do smartass comeback this time!?" Mondo said before getting angry at the beeping. "Stop that goddamn beeping and SAY SOMETHING!"
The beeping kept on getting faster and faster. Eventually, Kirigiri spoke up. "Watch out!" She warned. "Get rid of it!"
"Huh…" Mondo questioned as the beeping got even faster.
"Hurry up and throw it!" Yelled Kirigiri.
I didn't know if her ferocity stunned into silence or what, but without a word, he did what he was told and tossed Monokuma up into the air. And as soon as he did…
KA-BOOM!
"The hell?" Mondo gasped in shock. "Th-That sure as shit wasn't a joke. It blew the hell up…"
There was a painful ringing in my ears and I could smell gunpowder. Explosions might happen all the time in movies or whatever, but when it's in real life… I'd never seen anything like it.
"But you know…" Chihiro said. "This means that the teddy bear's been destroyed, right?"
"I told you, I'm not a teddy bear!" Came a very familiar voice. "I am Monokuma!"
Just then, a second Monokuma appeared from behind the podium.
"Uwah!" Leon gasped. "There's another one…?"
"You son of a bitch!" Yelled Mondo. "You seriously tried to kill me just now!"
"Well, yes." Began Monokuma. "I was serious about trying to kill you. You did violate one of the school regulations, after all. I'll let you off with a warning this time, but you'd better be careful from now on. Any naughty boy or girl who violates my rules won't get off with just a little swat on the butt."
"H-Hey…" Began a nervous Junko. "So does this mean there's like, a bunch more of you around somewhere?"
"Monokumas have been placed all throughout the school, yes." He explained. "Plus, don't forget the surveillance cameras installed everywhere. And if you're caught breaking any rules, well… You all just saw what happened, right? Upupu… And I won't be so forgiving with my punishment next time. So don't let it happen again!"
"Th-That's not even a punishment." Stammered Asahina. "That's just… Wrong…"
"Now then, lastly…" Monokuma began. "To commemorate your joyous entry into our school, I have a little something for you…"
He then pulled out a blue, rectangular object with the Hope's Peak logo on it.
"This is our official student handbook! Pretty cool, huh?" Monokuma continued." "As you can see, it's fully digital. So naturally, we call it the e-Handbook!"
After he got down and finished handing them out, he got back up onto the podium.
"Ahem. Yes, well, moving on…" He began. "This handbook is absolutely vital to a healthy school life, so don't lose it! When you start it up, it will display your name. Always make sure you have the right one! Now, this is not your everyday notebook. It has so many more uses than that! Also, it's completely waterproof. Splash it, wash it, drown it, it'll keep on ticking! And thanks to its space-age design, it can withstand an impact force of up to ten tons. Very resistant! It contains all of our school regulations, so make sure you review them thoroughly! You'll hear me say this a lot, but any violation of school regulations will not be tolerated. Rules restrict, yes, but they also protect. Society, for example, would be utter chaos without laws. The same thing applies here! Which is why it's crucial we have strict punishments in place for violators. Okay, well… That brings our entrance ceremony to a close! Please enjoy your abundantly dreary school life! And… Se ya!"
And with that, he ducked back behind the podium and disappeared. Leaving us all in a state of shock.
"So, guys…" Ishimaru said after a moment of silence. "How would you define what we just experienced?"
"How…? Why…?" Leon questioned under his breath. "I don't understand any of this…"
"We have to l-live here forever…? Or k-kill?" Fukawa worried. "Wh-What…? What just happened?!"
"Everyone, we need to just calm down." Kirigiri stated. "First, let's take a second to summarize everything we just heard. Based on what Monokuma just said, we essentially have two choices. Choice number one is tat we each stay here, living a "communal life" together until the day we die. And the other choice is…"
Celeste then cut Kirigiri off. "If we want to get out of here alive, we have to kill someone. Right?"
"But…" Chihiro began while tearing up. "Killing someone… That's…"
"We were abducted out of nowhere and stuffed into this place meant to look like a school." Said Yamada. "And now we're supposed to start killing each other? This is… This is… This is just…! What IS this!?"
"A lie, is what it is." Ishimaru said. But I wasn't sure if was trying to reassure the others or himself. "All these ridiculous things we've heard… This all has to be fake!"
"Right now it doesn't matter if it's real or fake." Began Togami. "What matters is…"
None of us were prepared for what Togami was about to say.
"Is there anyone here who's seriously considering all this…?"
To that, nobody had a response… Keeping myself quiet, I looked around at the others. They all stared at one another, trying to gauge each other's thoughts. I could almost taste the hostility.
And that's when it hit me. I realized the true horror hidden within the rules Monokuma had laid out.
"You must kill someone if you want to leave". Those words had planted vicious thoughts deep within each of us. Each of us became suspicious of everyone else. We were forced to wonder, "I somebody going to betray us?".
And that was how my new school life began. This school, which had come out of nowhere to raise my hopes so high, is NOT a school of hope.
It's a school of despair.
My name is Naegi Makoto, and I'm forced to kill to get out of what appeared to be a personalized hell.