Chapter 18: Smell 'Ya in Five
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. "Genocider Syo?" Togami said, astoundingly. "So that split personality wasn't just hypothetical. It actually happened."
. "Of course, Byakuya, love. Mrs. Morose was never able to stand the sight of blood. But I certainly can."
. "Well, this opens up a whole new set of problems." Naegi said.
. "I did anticipate that Genocider Syo and the culprit of trial two would be two different people." Celeste said. "But I never expected them to be alternate personalities of the same individual."
. "Anyway you look at it, isn't Genocider just 'Kawa, dude?" Hagakure said.
. "Not even close!" Genocider said. "I have many different experiences from Mrs. Toko Fukawa. We never shared memories, only skill sets, so I consider myself a separate person from her."
. "Truly, it's like Bruce Banner was killed by permanently being turned into the Hulk." Yamada said.
. "Say what?" Naegi said.
. "I don't get that reference." Leon said.
. "What, I paid attention to western comic books as well." Yamada replied.
. "Yamada, none of us know what you're talking about." Naegi said.
. "Genocider, why did you murder all those men?" Kirigiri asked.
. "Oh, little Ms. Detective wants to know, eh? Well, I'll tell you. I found them attractive, and they broke my heart. Every last one of them."
. "What?" Everybody gasped.
. "Anyway..." Togami said. "Genocider Syo, you're not the mastermind."
. "No, I'm not, White Knight."
. "Okay. So that gets rid of Togami's theory that Genocider Syo and the mastermind are one and the same." Celeste commented.
. "Stop it!" Togami stammered. "Son of bitch, STOP LICKING ME!"
. "Oh, master." Genocider said, a little too enthusiastically.
. "Well, this isn't uncomfortable." Naegi sarcastically said. "Hey, wait. There's a serial killer active here."
. "Yyyyyeeeeaaaahhhh. Let's just roll with it." Hagakure said.
. "Just roll with it. Just roll with it? How are we going to make sure we don't get trial number three because of Genocider?"
. "Well, if Genocider is the culprit for trial number three, it'll be painfully obvious. Another trial, and another floor."
. "Hey dumbass." Naegi interjected. "Who does Genocider kill?"
. "It makes my heart pound that trial number two has just wrapped up, and already you're talking about murder again." Monokuma cooed.
. "I would have thought that'd be obvious." Asahina said. "It'd be Togami."
. "Running bet for how long it takes Togami to get murdered by Genocider!" Hagakure said.
. "Hagakure, I'll friggin' kill you!" Togami said, shaking his fist, and stiff-arming Genocider Syo at the same time.
. "That takes balls of steel, dude." Leon said.
. "What?" Togami replied.
. "You're stiff-arming one of the most notorious serial killers since Jack the Ripper. That takes balls." Leon replied.
. "So I am. Well, as heir of the Togami conglomerate, it is expected that I do extraordinary feats with ease."
. "Yeah, well, don't get cocky." Hagakure said, as people started to gather onto the elevator.
. Since trial number two had wrapped up at much earlier point in the day, the group immediately decided to explore the third floor.
. "So this is how we finish Day 5?" Hagakure said. "With a whole new floor."
. "Five days, two trials. Four bodies. Five dead." Naegi thought to himself. "And how long until Trial number three?"
. "Naegi, what's wrong?" Maizono asked.
. "Nothing, I've just got future events on my mind."
. "Trial Number Three?"
. "Yeah."
. "What are you trying to do? Predict who's the most likely to die, and whose the most likely murderer?"
. "Something like that."
. "Don't worry about it. We'll cross that bridge if we get there."
. "Oh, Naegi cheer up."
. The third floor was slightly differently from the first two. Whereas the first two followed the same general layout, the third's geometry was different. The walls were illuminated with purple lights, and the checkboard floor had a purplish hue applied to it.
. "This appears to be a recreation room." Togami said, opening the wooden door with a circle cut in fourths of glass, and everybody gathered inside.
. The room was plaid black and blue on the walls with black and white checkboard tiles. There was a pool table, and a dart board, and a pair of chairs, and a magazine rack.
. "Hey Asahina. Hey Asahina." Leon nudged her.
. "What?"
. "You're the swimmer. You should be excited about this room."
. "Why?"
. Leon pointed towards the table. "Pool."
. "Ugh. That pun was bad."
. "Hmmm, what's wrong, Fujisaki?" Kirigiri asked.
. "I just thought that all the floors of Hope's Peak would be the same shape. It makes me wonder."
. "Wonder what?"
. "Wonder about the relation of each room in between floors, I wonder if there's some way to figure it out."
. "We'll see."
. "I took a quick look around the corner of the staircase's right before coming in. There's only two classrooms on this floor." Celeste said.
. "I wonder why?" Yamada said. "I mean there has to be more than two per floor, even with all of the facilities that also could hold class, but still."
. "Makes me wonder about the logistics of each Hope's Peak class." Togami said.
. "What do you mean?" Kirigiri asked.
. "I mean, do they take fifteen or sixteen students at a time from all different times of high school, or do they have cascading classes?"
. "Cascading classes?" Celeste replied. "What do you mean?"
. "I mean, are there usually two groups of students in at a time? Were we supposed to rotate our bedrooms with other students?"
. "Huh. That's a good question." Fujisaki said. "Hope's Peak looks like it's only been built for only a class of say twenty-four students at a time."
. "Or is there more that Monokuma locking off from us?" Yamada asked.
. "Perhaps we'll find other dorms on the fourth floor or above." Maizono said.
. "Assuming there's a fourth floor." Celeste pointed out. "We still don't know if this is the last floor or not, having only just arrived."
. "Either way, Hope's Peak has some logistical problems that don't quite work out." Fujisaki said. "Nobody in charge was ever a computer programmer. The designs are pretty inefficient."
. "Maybe the curriculum is tailored to each individual student?" Maizono suggested. "Like for instance, Fujisaki is going to be stronger in STEM areas so they would have focused on the humanities a bit more."
. "Well, obviously, whatever they've been doing has worked. It is said that if you graduate from Hope's Peak, you'd be guaranteed success in life." Asahina said.
. Naegi's eyes widened. Guaranteed success in life. It all made more sense.
. "That's it!"
. "What is?" Celeste asked.
. "I understand why Hope's Peak Academy students are guaranteed success in life."
. "Why's that?"
. "Think about. We're all supposed to be 'pillars of the future', or something like that. And we're all going to know each other by the time we leave here. By spending day after day with each other, we're forming connections, creating one of those elite closed-circles that average individuals are jealous of. An heir, a famous pop idol, a pro baseball player, and an Olympic swimmer go to school together, and that's just four of us. From the outside looking in, who's to say that they don't become friends, and do each other favors after they all graduate? Hope's Peak graduates love to hire other Hope's Peak graduates because they know the standards of Hope's Peak, having gone through it themselves."
. "Oh. Oh. Oh." Maizono said.
. "But what happens if you get kicked out of Hope's Peak?" Celeste said.
. "I don't know." Naegi said. "I really don't know. I don't think it's possible anybody here knows."
. "Nobody HERE knows." Togami said, picking up on Naegi's choice of words.
. "What do you do with your life if you get kicked out of a normal operating Hope's Peak?" Yamada asked.
. "I don't think any of us want to find out." Leon said, kicking back on the leather couch.
. "Oh, Hope's Peak Academy wouldn't have accepted you, if they didn't think you could make it." Togami said.
. "That may be true, but..." Celeste started.
. "But nothing." Togami cut her off. "And, anyway, how one gets themselves kicked out of Hope's Peak isn't important anymore."
. "True, we have the opposite problem now." Hagakure said. "All of us want to leave."
. "Perhaps, so. " Leon said. " I think this is where we split up."
. "On the contrary, perhaps we should explore as a group." Maizono said, as everybody left the recreation room.
. "Why?" Hagakure asked.
. "Oh you know, it might be a nice change of pace."
. "Count me out." Togami said.
. "And I'll follow him!" Genocider said.
. "Yes, but if you annoy me, we're coming right back to this room, and I'm shoving you into that locker." Togami replied.
. "Yes, master!"
. "I thought shoving people in lockers was something jocks did to nerds in middle school." Yamada said.
. "Really?" Leon asked. "Were you ever shoved into a locker?"
. "No!" Yamada proudly said.
. "Was it because you're fat?" Togami said.
. Yamada glared at Togami.
. "Ooew. Togami doesn't mince words." Maizono said.
. "We've been trapped with him for five days. You're just now figuring that out?" Naegi snarked.
. Togami left the recreation room and turned to his left. There wasn't much to explore except a pair of classrooms. 3-B was closer while 3-A lay in the corner. Nothing in either classroom. He did find a chemistry textbook in one of the desks, but more importantly a secondary purpose to the numbering scheme was starting to dawn on Togami.
. "3-A. 3-B. If I got it right, Hope's Peak Academy had a limit of accepting forty or so students per school year." Togami thought to himself. That would be about twenty students per class. Togami was starting to get an idea.
. "If I recall correctly, when the Hope's Peak Representative met me to see if I was interesting in attending, he mentioned that five years at Hope's Peak would be the most important five years of my life."
. Togami's eyes widened. "Five years! That's how many floors, there are. Five! First year students start in either 1-A or 1-B. The next year they move up to 2-A and 2-B, and so forth. So there's that answer to the class logistics that us survivors have been pondering. I wonder which track the other fourteen would have been sorted into. And all this time, I thought the numbering scheme was due to what floor the classrooms were on."
. "What is it, master?" Genocider asked.
. "Nothing."
. "So my idea that one of the classrooms on the second floor was a language classroom was wrong. It's all purpose." Togami thought.
. Meanwhile, the art room was being thoroughly explored by the rest of the students. It looked visually cluttered between the easels, statues, and a mock Venus de Milo.
. "Well, well, well... what a fine establishment this is. My artsy tense is tingling."
. "I thought you were the otaku type, Yamada." Maizono said.
. "Well, not only is there a bounty of painting supplies, there's quite the selection of sculpting tools."
. "Sculpting tools? I hope you don't mean next round's murder weapon." Naegi snarked.
. "Sculptures are different. Generally, speaking I partake not of the 3-D world. But, ah, figures are different. They're practically 2D."
. "Define practically."
. "Hey, Yamada. That's rich coming from you. The guy who is the most 3-D out of all us." Celeste said.
. "Not you too, Celeste Ludenberg."
. "Wait a minute, guys, why is there a Monokuma statue?" Leon asked.
. "Well, Monokuma sure has an ego." Asahina said.
. The other three members of the group were in the art storage room. It was rather plain and brown. There was a wheelie cart. Kirigiri was staring around the room intently, but didn't seem to be making a bunch of progress finding whatever she was looking for.
. "10 sculpting hammers." Fujisaki said. "I have no idea how to make a sculpture."
. "It's easy, you get a hammer and chisel." Hagakure said.
. "I don't think it's that simple. I'm sure there's some sort of technique."
. "Whatever. We got all the time in the world. I'm sure we can learn from trial and error."
. "Yeah..."
. They moved onto the Physics Lab.
. "What's this montrosity?" Naegi asked.
. "Careful, you wanna leap through time!" Monokuma said, suddenly popping out.
. "What?"
. Almost everybody gasped. "So does that mean, we can go back and stop the other deaths from happening!" Asahina asked.
. "Bullshit." Maizono said.
. "What?" Monokuma said. "I don't think I've ever heard you curse like that before, Maizono."
. "Yeah, right, you're not going to leave something that resolves all loose ends so effortlessly laying about."
. "Besides." Naegi added. "You're forgetting all the rules about time travel. If you go back and change something that prevents you from going back in the first place, all hell breaks loose. Not to mention even if it was possible, we would be locked on the third floor. There are those metallic things that blocked off the third floor before last trial, and even the second floor was blocked off before that."
. "Aww, way to take all the winds out of my sails. I had this one minute gag prepared and everything."
. "What?" Kirigiri said.
. "I was going to say that it only worked on going back in time for one minute, and how it was perfect for when you leave your instant ramen in for a minute too long. But you ruined it.
. "You know the easier thing to do is not to leave the ramen in for too long in the first place. Besides, what's stopping you from meeting yourself. And that's where it gets complicated."
. "Well this is new." Celeste said. "I don't think anybody expected one of Monokuma's routines to be deconstructed like this."
. "Enough! It's actually an air purifier. 'Tis a fine piece of tech that can produce oxygen in any number of conditions. You could even live on Mars with it. Well, there's still the problem of temperature and gravity, so you actually probably couldn't."
. "DUDES! Are we in space right now!?" Hagakure said.
. "That's some artifical gravity we got there." Fujisaki snarked.
. "NO! We're not in space. But you guys have this gizmo to thank for clean air."
. "Are you implying that the air outside is polluted?" Togami said, suddenly appearing.
. "May-bear. I mean, maybe."
. "The air outside is polluted." Naegi said. "That's not very likely, considering when I came in on my first day, it was still clear out. Did some smog blow in the wrong direction due to the wind?"
. "I won't say."
. "Of course, you won't."
. "Is the air outside permanantly polluted?" Maizono asked.
. "Murder someone and find out for yourself."
. The topic of conversation suddenly shifted.
. "Hey, it's a camera I used to own." Yamada said, suddenly shouting.
. "Take it. Nobody else wants it." Asahina said.
. "Hey, wait a minute. Where's Genocider?" Leon asked.
. "She's off exploring the first and the second floor. And she said that she needed to take a shower, since Fukawa never did." Togami replied.
. "Seriously?" Celeste asked.
. "Stress does shut off the ability to smell." Fujisaki said.
. "Well, she does claim not to share memories with Fukawa." Togami said. "So it's natural that she would go explore the other floors."
. "Hey guys, do you think Fukawa and Genocider smell different?" Hagakure said.
. "It's no use. Hagakure doesn't live in an ordinary world. He lives somewhere weird." Asahina said.
. "Duran Duran." Leon said.
. "What?"
. "Duran Duran released a track in 1993 called ' Ordinary World' from an album nicknamed the 'Wedding Album.'"
. "And this is relevant, how?" Togami said.
. "The conversation that Genocider and Fukawa could smell different because they're technically seperate characters?" Fujisaki commented. "It sounds like some weird science."
. "Oingo Boingo."
. "Ugh. Enough." Togami said, getting more and more peeved.
. "Hey note this, how many people get to say they had a serial killer as friendly comic relief?" Monokuma said, waving his paws.
. "Not many." Leon admitted.
. "Yeah, she's could be a problem." Naegi said. "Should we deal with her or something?"
. "She's loyal to Togami, for some reason." Asahina said. "I don't think there's going to be a problem."
. "You say that, but again Genocider still raises up some questions.
. The physics preparation room was the same shade of gray as the art storage room. There were tarps, and boxes piled high.
. "It smells like chemicals." Asahina said. "Is there a possibility of a chemistry lab somewhere nearby?"
. "Togami. What were the other classrooms like?" Naegi asked.
. "Well, there's still only two on this floor." Togami said, smirking.
. "Is that so?"
. "Yes, you can check them out yourself, there's nothing special about either of them."
. "Find anything even remotely notable in either classroom."
. "I found a chemistry textbook with instructions for a lab."
. "A chemistry textbook with instructions for chemistry labs. But the only science lab on this floor is the Physics Lab."
. "One other thing, I noticed there was a staircase leading to what I presume a fourth floor."
. "Togami... you've got something figured out here. What is it?"
. "Stop and think about it. Give it some thought and get back to me."
. Kirigiri's brain whirled as she overheard the conversation.
. Meanwhile, Fujisaki was going to around to everybody's ears and whispering. "Meet me in the bathhouse in five minutes."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The whole A, B classroom thing and different tracks mostly came from binge-watching the first twenty-two episodes of Assassination Classroom late July 2015 (where it's important that the students are in 3-E.) where the school is presently as mostly normal-functioning (aside from Koro-Sensei and the unfair shit E students deal with.)