Chapter 33: Well, DR3 Episodes Continue to be Delayed: If you're looking for a show to watch while you wait, might I recommend Unbreakable Machine Doll? It's been dubbed as well. (Both versions are available on iTunes.) It's made by the same studio that animates Dangan Ronpa 3. And for the life of me I can not figure out why there were no issues with the Lerche-Funimation collaboration on that show while almost every episode of DR3 since Despair-6 has seen some sort of delay. But the despair side of DR3 has made me glad I opened with that double KO. I'd been second-guessing that decision.

"There wasn't supposed to be a corpse." Byakuya Togami thought. "Why was there a corpse?"
. "Judging by the general shape, it appears to be a teenage female." Celeste noted.
. "Hey guys, doesn't it seem a little quiet?" Genocider said.
. "You're right, there's no body announcement." Naegi said, catching on.
. "Well, who could it be?" Genocider asked.
. "It's either Kirigiri or our sixteenth student, Mukuro Ikusaba." Fujisaki said.
. "What?" Togami said.
. "It's something I found hidden in a batch of files. There was a sixteen student that was supposed to have joined us." Fujisaki said.
. "Well, let's find out." Genocider said, as she went to pull the mask off.
. "Hey, wait!" Togami called out, but it was too late. The body exploded, and the knife that had been sticking out of her body whizzed and caught Naegi on the cheek.
. "Aah." Naegi could feel the sting of the cut.
. "Oh, fuck this." Togami said. "Everybody help me put this corpse out." He began grabbing buckets of water to extinguish the corpse.
. A couple of minutes later, a wet corpse sat upon the floor of the garden.
. "I had some uneasiness about the body, but I didn't expect it to explode." Togami said, as he noticed something in the corpse's hand.
. "Find something, Togami?" Celeste asked.
. "Maybe?" Togami said. "I'm going to go check out what this key could be."
. It was at that moment that Naegi felt an intense bout of melancholy.
. "Wait..." Celeste said. "We have another dead body. You can't be alone. Not when the rest of us are together."
. "But Kirigiri isn't here." Togami pointed out.
. "She very well could be." Maizono said, shaking her head, pointing at the corpse.
. "We have to assume that Kirigiri is the one dead." Naegi said. "We've never seen Mukuro Ikusaba before. Don't know a thing about her. There's nothing to identify her."
. "Actually, there is." Togami said. "Monokuma made it very explicit before he went offline that Kirigiri had stolen a key."
. "And there you go making assumptions again." Fujisaki said. "Doesn't mean the key she stole and this key are one and the same."
. "Occam's Razor." Togami countered.
. "But Monokuma is well-aware of Occam's Razor."
. Leon was continuing to pace around the body in a slight shock.
. "Hey, what's this mark?" It was a wolf tattoo.
. "It looks like a military mark." Togami said.
. "As far as I know, Kirigiri had no military marks on her hands." Leon said..
. "That's because her hands were always covered with gloves." Maizono pointed out.
. "Of course, it could be the mastermind." Celeste said.
. "So it isn't Kyoko or Mukuro." Naegi pointed out.
. "Oh, I never said that being Kyoko or Mukuro was mutually exclusive to being the mastermind." Celeste said.
. "The mastermind getting offed? Something's not right." Maizono said.
. "Ordinarily, it's not a possibility." Togami said. "But in this case, I have reason to to be true. It would explain the matter of Monokuma being offline. If I had to choose a chess openingto describe, I'd choose the Queen's Gambit. Though whether we decline or accept remains to be seen."
. "Queen's Gambit?" Fujisaki asked.
. "It's a line that starts with 1. d4 d5. 2 c4. It's been confirmed to have been created before 1497, it was the most popular during the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1845 text, "Amusements in Chess" by Charles Tolminson, it was referred to as the Aleppo Gambit by a French composer named Phildor. In any case, the second name is honor of Philip Stamma, himself a native of the city, Allepo in the Syria part of the Ottoman Empire."
. "Thanks for the history lesson?" Maizono was surprised. Togami knowing chess openings wasn't too far-fetched, but incorporating them into seeing a corpse was something else.
. "What's interesting is that Black has two options in the opening. The first is simply accepting it with 2 d5xc4, going temporarily up a pawn but losing a tempo and leaving a target for White's Kingside Bishop. However, there are a variety of ways to decline it. There's the regular way with 2 e6. At the same time, one could employ the Marshall Defense: 2. Nf6 to defend the d-pawn. 2 c6 which is the Slav Defense is also a possibility. And of course, there's the Baltic Defense where the Queenside Bishop is developed with 2. f5. And how could I forget the Symmetrical Defense developed in 1605 with 2. c5?" Togami continued.
. "Not a word of that made any sense to me, Togami. So... Well, it's definitely not the headmaster." Leon said. "I'm pretty sure the usual headmaster is not a teenage girl."
. "So whether it's Mukuro or Kyoko, the mastermind is definitely a teenage girl? I mean, that's the only way to play with the ambiguity." Maizono said.
. "It appears that way." Naegi said.
. "That bitch. If it's the other girl who's dead, I'll make her pay." Maizono grumbled. "Although I sincerely hope that I'm standing next to the mastermind's charboiled remains."
. "Huh." Fujisaki said.
. "What I mean, is if we're standing over Kyoko's corpse and Mukuro is the mastermind,...and vice-versa." Maizono said.
. "Would you like to teach me how to use my Genoscissors?" Genocider asked Maizono.
. "Please no." Naegi said. He had a bad feeling about Maizono learning from Genocider.
. "That... actually sounds pretty good. It'd be a neat skill to have." Maizono admitted.
. "Sweet." Genocider said.
. "Please don't go psychotic. Please don't go psychotic." Naegi whispered to himself.
."Hey, is anybody else disturbed by how calm we're being?" Leon said.
. "Well, let's see we've seen the corpses of Oogami, Enoshima, Ishimaru, Oowada, Hagakure, and Asahina and watched Yamada been executed." Celeste said. "I think it's safe to say we've gotten used to it."
. Naegi blinked. "Wait a minute, has Yamada been the only one executed?"
. "No, Fukawa. But Genocider Shou just came out instead. And Alter Ego, yeah, that's strange." Celeste said.
. "Guys, focus on the corpse in front of us." Togami said, attempting to get the group back on track.
. "Picking up the slack for Kirigiri?" Celeste asked.
. "You know, come to think of it, even the explosion was done perfectly." Leon admitted. "I know I shouldn't be admired that kind of skill, but still."
. As Togami knelt down to examine the body, he made a split-second decision. "Naegi, you're trustworthy enough. Take this key and figure out what it opens. It could open the biology lab, the headmaster's room, or even the second floor dorm rooms.
. "Careful, she's still a girl." Maizono said to Togami.
. "I don't plan on touching it. I'm not Kyoko." Togami replied.
. "What am I, his errand boy?" Naegi silently snarked.
. He decided to start by checking the biology lab. The key wasn't even close to fitting.
. "No dice."
. Hands in his pockets, Naegi was on the third floor before he even realized it.
. "Oh, wait, the headmaster's room is on the fourth floor. Nah. I'll get on the way back."
. He continued onwards, making a wrong turn towards the Physics lab, and resetting himself in the right direction.
. "Was this part of the third floor always illuminated with pale blue light?"
. He trudged along down the stairs to the second floor, and down to the first floor. Along the way, he checked some classes and other rooms to see if they had seen any changes, but there were none.
. "It feels like I'm being railroaded here." Naegi noted. "There's nothing...no change. No sign of Kyoko either."
. He finally reached the gate that blocked off the second floor dorms, and inserted the key. Unsurprisingly, it didn't work.
. "Ah, well, at least I established that the first three floors have nothing to do with this case."
. Naegi began the long walk back up to the fourth floor.
. "Yeah. For starters, why is this mastermind hiding behind a robotic teddy bear? Why not show its face directly? I mean, beyond the initial shock factor, it's not practical. What if it breaks down in front of us, and Fujisaki gets a chance to dissect it?"
. Naegi passed the cafeteria, and the blood-red double doors that they had headed to for every class trial. Along the way, he put his hand on a bolted window. He wondered how his sister and his parents were doing. Surely, there were fine. Though that video had been attempting to imply otherwise.
. "Ten Centimeters. That's all we are away from freedom. Just ten centimeters. Just the width of a perimeter wall from getting out of here. Ten centimeters. Such a short distance, and long trek to get there. And now, two of our number are dead. And I was there. I witnessed it happen right in front of me, and yet ... when it's all said and done... could I have done more?"
. "Wait, why are they bolted from the inside?"
. He was about to go up the stairs. He saw the atrium and remembered about his encounter with the masked figure. He knew now that it was Mukuro Ikusaba and not Kyoko Kirigiri.
. Beyond the atrium was the gymnasium where Oogami and Enoshima had killed each other, and Junko Enoshima had given her life for him. Makoto Naegi. The average guy. The Luckster, and what had been Monokuma's motive? Despair.
. Are you serious? You want us to experience a single emotion?
. He climbed the staircase to the second floor.
. "We are NOT, under any circumstances, ADDING PEOPLE."
. Monokuma's statements made it seem like Mukuro Ikusaba had been there from the beginning. But how? Nobody had seen her since they first arrived. And now she turned up dead. If she hadn't been dead when they found her, she certainly was dead when she blew up.
. As he reached the fourth floor, he decided to check the headmaster's office. Makoto looked at the keyhole, but they didn't match up. It wasn't even worth it to try.
. That left the Data Center. Naegi trudged over. If the key didn't open the Data Center, then it would be a red herring.
. 'Click.' The key fit in perfectly.
. Naegi cautiously opened the door and was greeted with television screens, showing what seemed to be every room in this school. Since he figured there would be no cameras in here, he pressed the button on his silent receiver.
. "So that's how the mastermind was able to keep track of us. But wait a minute, if the corpse had the key, wouldn't that make her the mastermind?"
. Naegi glanced at the monitor showing the world.
. "There's really a ridiculous amount of monitors in here."
. There was a set of computers that appeared to be really high tech, they were better than what Alter Ego had been installed on. Naegi casually sat down in the armchair. He was no Fujisaki but he figured he might as well try on a few password attempts on the computer.
. Meanwhile...
. "What is taking him so long?" Togami was getting annoyed. "Where is he? Makoto Naegi should have been back by now."
. "He must have found something." Maizono said. "I'll go and find him."
. "No, I'll do it." Fujisaki said. "I'm not much use at guard duty or inspecting bodies."
. Fujisaki immediately ran down the fifth floor, no sign of Naegi. He checked the classrooms. There was no sign of Makoto. If the headmaster's study was unlocked, the door would have been open. He spotted that the door of the Data Center was open on the fourth floor like a program line written with a comma instead of a semicolon.
. "Naegi?"
. "Oh, Fujisaki... do you think you could try something on this?"
. "Maybe? But I haven't the faintest idea about the password. If I had Alter Ego, maybe this could go smoothly, but Alter Ego's deleted and gone."
. "I'll go and get the others." Naegi said, throwing the key and leaving Fujisaki and dashing up to the fifth floor.
. Fujisaki occupied the armchair. There was an immediate thought.
. "Wait, what if?"
. Fujisaki had guessed correctly.
. "Well, D-E-S-P-A-I-R isn't exactly a secure password."
."Oh, ho, Fujisaki. I underestimated your skill as the Ultimate High-School Level Programmer."
. Fujisaki swiveled the chair.
. "Oh, it's you." His words were not as surprised as he felt.
. A moment passed, and then...
. "Naegi!"
. "Listen, Fujisaki is in the data center! That key unlocked the data center." Naegi said, panting.
. "Everyone to the data center!" Togami commanded.
. The six individuals in the garden left. Maizono and Naegi took off in a sprint. Celeste and Leon jogged. Togami and Genocider took off in a stroll. Their speeds were an indicator of their concern.
. Meanwhile, Fujisaki was paying attention to a door with Monokuma painted on it.
. "This door's kinda creepy. What could be inside?"
. Fujisaki rattled the door.
. "No luck. But maybe if I used that key that Naegi tossed me."
. Fujisaki tried the key. The key did not fit into the keyhole.
. As the six entered the Data Center, they were surprised to see Fujisaki in front of T.V. It was showing a picture. And Naegi immediately noticed that as they stepped so too did they appear on the screen of the television.
. "What's wrong with this television?" Fujisaki demanded. He alone appeared unfazed. "This feed is coming from the surveillenance cameras. It doesn't matter which camera I put on. It's just this feed."
. "That's strange." Togami said. "Quit fooling around, and fix it."
. "It is fixed!" Fujisaki shook his heads. "It's just that every channel except one is showing us!"
. "Well, what's the one that's NOT showing us?" Togami asked impatiently.
. "This."
. The television channel was most definitely not showing the students.
. "We're no strangers to love./ You know the rules and so do I."
. "A Rick'Roll Channel?" Naegi said, in disbelief.
. "I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling/Gotta make you understand."
. "Hello, guys!"
. Naegi could hear a pin drop.
. "Monokuma!"
. "How in the world are you still alive?" Leon said.
. "You're supposed to be dead." Maizono said, shaking her head. "This can't be happening. This can't be happening."
. "Well, score one for surprises." Celeste said, attempting a bored tone, but coming off fearful instead.
. "Gyaaaahaaahaha! Me, dead?! Don't be freakin' stupid." Monokuma replied, chortling.
. "You're different." Celeste said. "I don't know what it is."
. "Of course, I'm different! Evolution is perfectly natural."
. "You're robotic! You don't obey the rules of Darwin!" Fujisaki replied.
. "After all, I've been hibernating for two years."
. "Your timeline is a bit off." Naegi said.
. "Not even! It's been like half a day at MOST!" Leon complained.
. "Well, it's what I wanted to see –The moment you went from hope to despair..."
. Not really, you've just pissed me off." Naegi said.
. "Don't tell me you pretended to be dead, all for this moment...?"
. "Why would a bear pretend to be dead? You're the ones who should pretend to be dead when you see a bear? Well, anyway, it's almost time to cut off your past so full of hope, and begin the despair ahead at the future ahead of you! I want you to all have way more fun in this killing game."
. "We know the game and we're going to play it."
. "No way, we have to continue." Maizono asked, the blood draining from her face.
. "Shit, we were supposed to get out of here." Leon said.
. "Get out of here!" Monokuma laughed. "Even everything that's transpired, you're still holding onto that? How do you not understand yet? There is NO getting out of here. That never has been, and there never will be."
. "We'll see about that." Naegi muttered.
. "Although, I'll be honest, you guys really struck gold when you found that TV. Yes, indeed! That TV is an essential part of your school life here."
. "I knew it was hiding some secret of some kind." Togami started.
. "Well, it's time to be honest. I never expected so many of you to reach the fifth trial. But it's time I'm going to let you in on a blood-gushing secret and tell you all about it! That killing game is being broadcast live to the entire world! It's the most popular thing on TV!"
. "It can't be ... Have they taken over the airwaves somehow?" Togami was shocked.
. "All you need is one weird trick I found, and taking over the airwaves was easy."
. "Oh no..." Fujisaki thought to himself.
. "But to take control of all communications like that, you'd need an astronomical amount of resources." Togami countered.
. "The camera feed is being broadcast...? No way, that's impossible!" Leon said.
. "Of course, and you should see our ratings. The Naegami fangirls alone would have been enough to keep our show going strong for several seasons."
. "Oh, you have got be kidding me." Fujisaki said.
. "Naegami?" Togami and Naegi said in unison. Togami in confusion. Naegi in dread.
. "Oh yeah. And a surprising amount of people pair up Celeste x Leon right now. And Fujisaki x Dreamcast." Monokuma replied. "Celeste's popularity's only going up since the wardrobe change. That and character development. I couldn't have written a better script myself."
. "How? She tried to kill me!" Leon said, pointing on Celeste.
. "You think that matters to the fanbase? Maizono could try to kill Leon and there would be a bunch of people who would pair them up. Although it distress me that most of my viewers haven't fallen in despair yet."
. "How do you figure that?" Fujisaki said, relying on the comfort of the chair for support at this turn of events.
. "The fanart, fanfiction, channel threads, memes, abridged series, and tvtropes pages say otherwise." Monokuma said, downtroddenly. "I mean I did become the producer of a reality tv show of despair. But people are now saying that it's been such a deconstruction of actual 'reality tv', it's driven the rest of the genre to extinction. I mean, why bothered with all that editing when you can show raw footage of legitimately interesting people. The cost has gone down exponentially. I'm actually disappointed that I did that. Maybe I'll edit this down to a season of twelve or thirteen episodes."
. "Excuse me?" Maizono said.
. "No more crap reality tv shows. So how about it, Maizono? Looks like you never really left the spotlight after all."
. "Monokuma, shut up!" Maizono was livid.
. "Congratulations, Monokuma. You did some good in the world." Naegi snarked. "And thirteen episodes? Do you know how much content and character would be lost in condensation. How could the story be satsfying in the slightest?"
. "Oh, well, that wasn't my intention."
. "So we're broadcasting all over the world?" Naegi said.
. "Yes. And I've even stayed on top of things and gotten the subtitles for North America live as soon as footage airs over there. Who do you think I am? Funimation and Lerche? Though I am looking forward to seeing their potential 'Unbreakable Machine Doll' adaptation. Whoops. That wasn't supposed to be revealed to the public yet! Ah well, I have a gut feeling that for any potential quality, it's not going to attract enough viewers in order to get itself a second season produced regardless." Monokuma looked downtrodden.
. "You mean, all my references have reached a wide audience. Does this mean I get to lean on the fourth wall as much as I want?" Naegi said.
. Maizono shot Naegi a death glare. Naegi pretended not to notice.
. "What about the police? Nobody attempted to get us out?" Leon said.
. "Oh really, remember when you were swinging your baseball bat at the window coverings in fury? Didn't you hear gunshots and helicopters? But I guess the ability to scout talent doesn't translate to the ability to scout a battlefield or run a siege." Monokuma countered.
. "Oh...no..." Leon said, realization dawning upon not just him, but the rest of the cast as well.
. "Monokuma said. "I mean, I'm so proud. You're all so entertaining. You know, when I started this game. I thought 'Who would want to pay attention to a show about this?' But I went ahead with it. And it's because such the hit. I'm still working on getting foreign versions exported though."
. "Say what?" Leon said in disbelief.
. "Obviously, the memes aren't anything like 'Spinzaku', but I did find the online meme/theory 'JUNKOs' amusing.
. "'JUNKOs?" Naegi said.
. "Yeah, and YOU'RE THE ORIGIN! People were wondering how and why the model would swoop in to save the game's resident ahoge dork. The Luckster with no luck. The short, little, unimposing, Makoto Naegi. The resident theory is that there's a clone or something like that."
. "Enough." Maizono said. "You don't need to hear this, Naegi."
. "Oh, and another meme I found great. Byakuya's money fetish."
. "Excuse me?" Togami said. "I have no such thing."
. "Yeah." Monokuma said. "Doesn't stop it from producing many amusing online results. Do you want to see? No. Of course you don't."
. When Togami looked stunned, Monokuma said.
. "Listen when you guys introduced yourself to each other, I had a quick bio thrown up. It was cool too, with the circles and individual colors with your talents and everything. Should I play it?"
. "No thanks." Celeste declined on the behalf of the group.
. "There's also the theory of Kirigiri's talent." Monokuma said. "I'll tell you since she can't. Detective. I mean, anybody who has been paying attention could figure it out."
. "Oh, woop-de-doo." Naegi said. "Big shocker there, the girl who is always inspecting corpses as a natural instinct is the DETECTIVE. Gee, who would have thought."
. "You just have to take the wind out of my sails, Naegi."
. Naegi grimaced. The whole ordeal had been broadcast live to who knows how many people throughout the country and maybe throughout the world. They had watched Enoshima lay down her life for him. A model beloved by hoards of fans had sacrificed herself for an average guy with no special talent.
. "But I've been blattering on long enough."
. "Ding Dang Dong. We got the corpse here. After a certain amount of time, we'll be holding a class trial."
. "Huh?" Naegi was shocked..
. "C-class trial? Do you mean?" Maizono said.
. "Of course I mean that. I'll leave the next Monokuma file right here. Everyone, give it all you've got, okay!? Things are gonna get pretty crazy from here on out! You're in for a heck of a ride. I really can't wait."
. After standing in silence for who knows how long, the seven of them finally left the Data Center.
. "I don't understand any of this. What's 'despair entertainment'?" Leon asked.
. "I thought that finally...finally we could get out of here."
. "And plus... what did he s-say about a class trial?" Genocider said.
. "Well, that part's obvious." Togami said, regaining composure. "The class trial is the class trial. What it means is that at this point, we have to figure out who the culprit is. Who killed Kyoko Kirigiri?"
. "I thought it was Mukuro." Fujisaki said, as they walked back to the garden.
. Togami shook his head. "The victim is female. Kirigiri certainly matches up. And if Monokuma is alive, that means his mastermind, Mukuro Ikusaba, isn't dead."
. "That's certainly convincing." Maizono said.
. "How do we know the mastermind is Mukuro Ikusaba?" Fujisaki said.
. "Oogami. Enoshima. Ishimaru. Oowada. Hagakure. Yamada. Asahina. All have been corpses in front of us."
. "That's insane. Something doesn't feel right." Leon said.
. "Whether you believe it or not doesn't matter. The truth is the truth! If you refuse to believe, it's your responsibility to uncover the truth for yourself." Togami replied as they reached the garden.
. "But if there's a class trial, that's mean there's a killer." Maizono pointed out.
. "Correct, it must be someone participating in our school life. Mukuro Ikusaba fulfills that condition as well."
. "Seriously?" Genocider asked.
. "I can't explain any further. There is a veritable mountain of issues I need to confirm. So I'm going to begin my search. If any of you value your lives, you'll put everything you have into this."
. Naegi checked the file.
. "Due to the explosion, the victim's identity is unknown. They were, however, dead before the blast."
. "So that gets rid of my theory that the blast was the murder."
. "The victim had been stabbed a single time with a single knife, which went completely through the body. They had also been struck in the head with an object about as thick as a metal pipe. There is another wound, and several cuts and bruises, but those are several days old."
. "The Monokuma file doesn't even tell us who the victim was." Naegi said. "Why? He'd tell us who the victim was...unless..." His eyes widened. "it meant something otherwise."

Author's Note: I wanted to wait until DR3 with its prequel and sequel stories came out (or most of it) in order to solidify this story. But with the remainder of both sides indefinitely delayed, I figured now was the time to release Chapter 33. Dangan Ronpa 1 was written as a one off. (Remember, it didn't get an official translation for NA until a Vita release 4 years after its debut in Japan.) It wasn't until Dangan Ronpa 2 that Spike Chunsoft realized that they discovered that they had had a franchise (and started writing accordingly.) So, besides being frustrated with the DR3 delays how did you spend this hiatus? Feel free to mention it in reviews.

The moment where they discovered the television in this story was something that I had been working towards since the very first chapter. The only question was the pace.(A lot of the early chapters [especially 5 & 6] were things I wrote to either give me fodder for later chapters (via changed character dynamics) or for me to get the hang of writing the characters.)

Yes, I do plan on continuing the story after the end of 'DR1' so to speak. What do I have in mind? You'll see.

EDIT: 10-23-16: So apparently, in the abridged versions by Faulerro, Chiaki is a Sonic fan. That's amazing.