No, I don't know when Chapter 46 is going to be finished. Yes, this fic is still on even though I hadn't updated since August 31, 2020. (547 days).

Chapter 45: Life's an Adventure.

. Standing in the elevator, Maizono looked around, she could see the worried expressions on most of the faces of her classmates. Togami had an expression of utmost confidence. It contrasted with Kirigiri's demeanor, somehow more icy than usual. Kuwata had his head pressed against the wall, while Fujisaki stood in a nearby corner. Celeste had her hands in the pockets of her jacket. Genocider was patiently watching the descend of the elevator. Ishimaru was, mentally, barely there. The air was heavy. Maizono thought it felt like collective survivor's guilt, as she gripped her hat. She was going to make a statement. She wanted to get her point across, come hell or high water.
The elevator finally descended and came to a creaky stop, the students took their positions. The trial room theme had once again shifted. The best way Togami could describe it was blue and velvet. He even recognized the song Monokuma had playing.
"Blue Money. Van Morrison." Togami reminisced.
. Togami looked around, at Celeste to his left, at Fujisaki to his right, both with new appearances from the first day. Fukawa was gone, replaced by Genocider. He wondered if he had changed as much as any of his classmates. The world was supposedly watching, so where would the scion of the Togami Conglomerate stand? His time of day-trading 4 billion yen was long over. Here was the moment of truth, but could he reach out and grab it?
. As the days had gone on, Fujisaki had begun to compute this School Life into a data structure. Sure, he couldn't see the entire implementation of code, but he and the other students could work within the rules and manipulate the framework to their advantage. A murder would call for a class trial. A class trial would call for finding a culprit. A trial meant an execution, with different executions depending on the outcomes.
. Fujisaki's mind immediately jumped to functional decomposition. He had no idea what design choices by Monokuma anymore. His father might have tabbed it more along the lines of a round-trip gestalt approach. Even as Kirigiri and Naegi independently arrived at the same method within this code, all Fujisaki could see, plain as a day, was the equivalent of a novice programming oversight, two independent while loops. By fulfilling the conditions of the first, and then fulfilling the conditions of the second, both loops would be broken, unable to function again without a code reset. Trial five had been the first while loop. Showing Naegi's innocence to prove a re-trial had been the second.
. Kirigiri stood silently, anticipating what was to come. This was it. This was a referendum on her father's school. This might even be a referendum on the entire concept of Hope's Peak. If they won and if they got out, Kirigiri was tempted by the idea by taking a flame to the school and letting it all burn down. All signs pointed to the mastermind presumably being a student, and if an institution could allow this type of student to flourish, presumably at the expense of so many others, maybe it should have never been created in the first place. Talent created insulation. There was insulation from the real world, insulation from other people, insulation from consequences. In a way, she envied Maizono, regardless of what happened today, regardless of Naegi's state, Maizono had found a way to leave the insulation to experience the real world, at least on some level. Her talent wasn't all that defined her. But what defined Kirigiri besides her own talent?
. Maizono stood next to Naegi's sign. She knew he didn't have the first clue of how much she owed him. Whenever it felt like her idol career was getting too hectic, too stressful, all she had to do was look at his picture, and she was ready to go again. The fame, the glory, she'd give it all to him if she could. More than anything, she had wanted to give him the ability to climb the world over. Going to Hope's Peak with the Idol Talent would have already been a privilege, but the sheer luck to have Naegi there, alongside her, who's to say Hope's Peak hadn't given them the wrong titles? In her mind, perhaps she was the lucky student, and he was the one to be idolized. Her attention focused on Monokuma. This was her moment of truth, but could she face it?
. "Alright, since this is the last trial." Monokuma started. "There's going to be a slightly different format. I'm going to be a participate in this trial."
. "Only makes sense." Togami said. "You're an integral part of this."
. "This is a messy trial." Genocider pointed out. "Where do we want to begin?"
. "We want to begin by pointing out that Monokuma thinks that Speed Highway's "Run Through Speed Highway" is the perfect backing track to this farce." Fujisaki pointed out as the guitars kicked in.
. "Up and down and all around."
. "Is this meant to be a distraction or what?" Ishimaru asked.
. "This is Monokuma being funny." Fujisaki replied. "And I suppose you'll play "At Dawn" when you get close to the truth?"
. "What? No." Monokuma's denial was implausible. Monokuma went ahead with the denial anyway.
. Fujisaki sighed, as he shifted into programming mode. There was nothing to do at this point except wade through the muck of events. There were theories about the mastermind's identity, but no conclusive evidence. First, however, an elephant in the room needed to be addressed. Or rather it was more like a seagull.
. "Maizono? Are you wearing a replica of the seagull hat from Goldfinger?" Monokuma asked, not in the vein of the usual antics, but of near-genuine concern.
. "Yes." Maizono replied.
. "Why?" Monokuma asked.
. "Why not?" Maizono replied.
. Monokuma didn't really have an answer to this, and so the bear had no choice but to move on, and with that, the trial continued.
"Trial five was obviously suspicious. Monokuma built a trial using a special character as the identifier. He relied on undefined behavior to execute. He then attempted to dereference all pointers to prior actions mid-trial." Reverting to programming terms for personal ease, Fujisaki's delivery was stilted but accurate as the words struggled to come out.
. "Big shock that this program's class malfunctioned. It's really idiot programming at its finest." If the world were truly watching, it would be beneficial to explain exactly what Monokuma did and the implications of it.
. "It truly is a good thing you're still here, Fujisaki." Monokuma sarcastically said. "I don't know how the people at home would follow anything if you didn't lead them through it. I can't imagine what would have happened if you were one of the first victims. All this technical know-how would go unexplained"
. "Fuck you. Monokuma. Fuck you. Why would you assume I would have been one of the first victims."
. "I mean, can you really blame me? Look at you. You're not exactly a safe bet for self-defense. One bash to the head and it's all over."
. "What's that supposed to mean?"
. "It means exactly what I say it means."
. "Oh, that's rich. Considering you just threw in Mukuro Ikusaba because Kirigiri pissed you off. I don't care what class it is, you can't start an identifier with a special character, let alone dereference the trial pointers." Fujisaki leaned into calling out Monokuma out on the past trial.
. "Even after all this time, Fujisaki, seems like it was only yesterday we all entered this school."
. "Spare me your syntax." Fujisaki's patience was held together only by the fact this was an opportunity to probe Monokuma for clues.
. "Look, this last trial is a pack method in a Java Action Listener image object. The method needs to come last or else the picture won't appear."
"Wait a minute," Leon thought about it. "This school is awfully hard to set up. Wouldn't it make more sense for whoever was in charge originally to be calling the shots?"
. "What are you implying?" Togami asked.
. "It could be the headmaster." Leon suggested.
. "Not possible." Kirigiri said. "I'm his daughter, and Monokuma just said the only sixteen people in here alive were the students."
. A silence fell upon the room, as each student processed the knowledge.
. "Well, daughter or not. I still say it's a possibility." Celeste agreed with Leon.
. "The headmaster would have been able to rig this school in such a manner." Fujisaki admitted. "He could employ people to put up the iron grates and seal off the school under the guise of protecting the students from an incident."
. "And what incident could that be?" Kirigiri argued.
. "That 'Most Despair-Inducing Incident in all of Humankind' Monokuma repeatedly brought up would be a good guess for starters." Maizono said. "And then in process of securing the school, the headmaster went off the deep-end."
. "Hold up. That doesn't square what we've been told about him." Fujisaki said.
. "How so?" Togami asked.
. "In Monokuma's own words, we were repeatedly told that the headmaster protected talent. To the detriment of fairness. That Komaeda incident." Fujisaki pointed out. "The headmaster had a plan for us and then the student operating Monokuma hijacked it."
. "Agreed." Ishimaru said. "The methodology does not match for the headmaster"
. "So we agree it's a student." Leon said.
. "We could try and profile the student based off their actions." Celeste suggested.
. "Well, I must say. As your headmaster, it is my duty to monitor the developments of any and all students."
. "Shouldn't you be headmistress?"
. "What?"
. "Everybody knows that it's most likely that your operator is a female."
. "What? How?" Monokuma was taken aback.
. "The fifteen students at the gate and the open slot of the mysterious sixteenth student. You've said that only the sixteen students have ever stepped foot in here since the game began."
. "I did say that.."
. "And with eight guys at the starting gate, that means that the open slot is probably a girl."
. "You would have made such a cute girl." Monokuma responded to Fujisaki.
. "Forget it. Don't gaslight me. Those secrets. You knew I was male from the onset." Fujisaki smirked. "If I had known how much of a hint it would have been for me to explain that I'm a male from the onset, I would have done so. Sorry guys."
. "Don't apologize." Kuwata noted. "You couldn't have known about this at the beginning. Monokuma, herself, wasn't willing to explain the class trial rules until after the first pair of deaths."
. "A female student. A male student would have been considerably more blunt." Celeste said.
. "You said it, not me." Leon commented.
. Togami pressed. "Which reminds me, if the mastermind really is a student that's been participating since the beginning of the game, wouldn't it be a conflict of interest?"
. "Excuse me?" Celeste was taken aback. Kirigiri said nothing.
. "Think about it." Fujisaki said. "A participant being the mastermind allows for internal inference. All of our best laid plans can get immediately torpedoed."
. "But if the mastermind is one of us students, why would they need a mole like Oogami?" Ludenberg pointed out.
. "The Mastermind can't be everywhere at once." Kirigiri countered. "An active mole allows for alibis to be established, for example."
. "In any case, the culprit is one of us." Fujisaki said.
. "Of course it has to be." Genocider said.
."Wasn't me." Genocider quickly expressed.
. "There is one other suggestion, Mukuro Ikusaba." Kirigiri pointed out.
. "Excuse me?" Leon said. "We saw her corpse!"
. "And what if it wasn't her corpse?." Kirigiri asked.
. "At Trial 5, we said it was Ikusaba's corpse." Genocider said.
. "Yeah, uh, about that..." Maizono said. "As part of the setup for Trial 6 with the double bodies, I helped Kirigiri with the blood test. The blood test doesn't match up with Ikusaba's. It's the wrong type. The "Mukuro" body had a blood type of A. The Reserve Course Student had a blood type of 'AB'. Of course, she also had a name tag of Kuzuryu, but according to her file, Ikusaba had B blood."
. "I went with the blood test because flesh on ice for a long enough period of time would change size of body measurements."
. "But I checked her file myself." Togami said. "It said she had 'A' blood."
. Kirigiri looked at Monokuma. "You wouldn't have altered the file after I got a look at it, would you? I know she had B. I even wrote it down because I thought you might change it, and it looks like I was right."
. Monokuma looked guilty.
. "For being a robot, that's an awfully shifty look you've got there." Leon pointed out.
. "You know who did have 'A' blood?" Maizono continued. "Asahina."
. "While everybody else was focused on Ishimaru, I double-checked around the morgue, and found her jacket stuffed into an empty slot." Kirigiri explained, producing the jacket herself as key evidence.
."Oh, you have got to be kidding me." Togami said. "You mean, the Mukuro Ikusaba 'corpse' was Asahina's!"
. "Looks like it . And judging by the fact that the mastermind went out of her way to preserve Ishimaru as a distraction, it looks like it was a long time planning."
. "But how could I have known it was Asahina who would die? I had no way of knowing who would murder who, let alone how. There are nearly an infinite possibilities. There could have been a class trial where Kuwata murdered Maizono. Or Oowada murdered Fujisaki. Assuming a one victim scenario, there were 225 possible combinations for the first trial alone." Monokuma argued. "How could I possibly predict who would kill who, when, and how?"
. Maizono's head began to hurt again, the pain she felt in her gut had come back briefly. She dismissed it as feelings of anxious guilt finally being released.
. "You didn't." Kirigiri countered. "But your plan just needed a female student to die. It could have been me. It could have been Maizono. It could have been Celeste. It could have been Enoshima. It could have been Fukawa. As long as the corpse had the tattoo and you had time to manipulate the body, we would come to the reasonable conclusion that Trial 5's corpse was Mukuro Ikusaba."
. "Two hundred and twenty-five?" Fujisaki asked. "Not two hundred and ten then?"
. "Is suicide not a valid option within this school? You guys showed it yourself. It's possible for any dead student to be a culprit." Monokuma argued.
. "It's not suicide. The mastermind is the one instigating Trial five and they're still alive because they're speaking through Monokuma right now." Kirigiri shot that down.
. "So much for Monokuma's brush back." Leon commented.
. "Huh?"
. "It's a type of pitch thrown to get the batter to move away from the plate. Requires pretty good command or else you just hit them and hand them the base." Leon explained. "In all my days of playing baseball, I can count the number I've thrown on one hand. Usually if you intentionally spiked one of my teammates while base running."
. "That must be terrifying for that batter." Monokuma said. "Didn't I hear something about your pitches being about 160 kilometers per hour?"
. " What? No!" Leon replied. "How fast do you think Major League Baseball pitches throw?"
. "180 kilometers per hour?"
. "Seriously? That's over 110 miles per hour!"
. "So?"
. "Nolan Ryan's MLB speed record for a single pitch in 1974 clocked in at 108 miles per hour."
. "No way."
" If I could consistently throw 160 kilometers per hour, I'd be playing in major league baseball right now instead of even attending Hope's Peak in the first place. Most MLB pitchers throw about 90 miles an hour throughout the course of a game, 100 miles per hour equals about 160 kilometers per hour."
. "Oh wow."
. "Yeah, my pitches are closer to 135 kilometers per hour. As for the number creeping up to 160, well, I'm pretty sure that's my cousin hyping me up in excitement by inflating my pitch speed. She always does that."
. "Did you ever look at your video, Kuwata?" Monokuma asked. "I know Maizono did."
. Leon had a distasteful look on his face, clearly remembering something unpleasant. He still had no idea how Monokuma had managed to pull off the contents of his video. He didn't care at this point. A world sitting by and watching this was a world worth staring back in defiance.
. "Pardon my French, but you're an asshole." Maizono said to Monokuma.
. "Oh, please, Monokuma makes so many comments you might as well start every one of them with a double backslash." Fujisaki said.
. "Video?" Celeste asked.
. "Enough." Leon said, cutting Monokuma off. "That's- Wait, are you really playing this song? The Hangover!"
."Joker & The Thief!" Maizono interjected. "I could recognize this song anywhere!"
. "You've seen 'The Hangover'?" Kuwata said.
. "Of course, it's one of my favorite movies!"
. "Wait, seriously." Monokuma said. "I can't believe your taste in movies."
. "You are literally too stupid to insult." Maizono replied.
. "Thank you." Leon said.
. "Not you!"
. "Don't blame me. I took one for the team and finished the quote."
. "Hey, we've all changed since starting this roller coaster of a School Life." Fujisaki commented.
. "Except this is deadly!" Celeste pointed out. "Roller coasters are literally designed to be as thrilling as possible by making you subconsciously fear for your life, while in fact, being perfectly safe to ride and operate!"
. "I didn't know you were such a roller coaster enthusiast." Kirigiri was taken aback.
. "You're all so different now!" Monokuma started. "Do you even know who you are?"
. "Maizono. Sayaka Maizono." The idol responded.
. Kirigiri looked annoyed at Maizono's response, and she was about to get more annoyed.
. "The 'Numa Numa' song?" Fujisaki asked.
. "Technically, it's Dragostea Din Tei." Monokuma replied.
. "You're really not taking this seriously, are you?" Fujisaki asked.
. "Of course I am!" Monokuma replied. "Are you guys taking this seriously yourselves? Maizono thinks she can wear a seagull hat. Kirigiri thinks she can bring a present box. You guys are all nuts."
. All of a sudden, the whirl of a kazoo cut through the trial room. The dissonance of the sound sharply contrasted with the thick emotional tension of the situation.
. "Huh?" Celeste was confused.
. The noise came again. Everybody looked around. They soon figured out it was coming from Maizono.
. "Maizono, please tell me you didn't hook up a kazoo to that hat?" Kirigiri asked.
. Maizono tooted affirmatively.
. "No!" Togami said in useless frustration. "Take that hat off, Maizono."
. Maizono gave a low toot of disapproval. Anything that could keep her mind off her stomach discomfort was preferable. Anything that would allow her keep going was preferable. Anything that could be used instead of anguish was preferable.
. "Well, it's official, she's gone off the deep end." Celeste took stock of the situation.
. "What do you mean 'gone off'? She was already off it since first contact." Fujisaki countered, as Maizono gave her kazoo another whirl.
. "Monokuma, when you said you wanted us to despair, you wanted us to despair, right? Not turn us into loonies." Genocider asked.
. "Yes! This was not what I wanted." Monokuma could see Maizono grinning in amusement behind the kazoo.
. "I suppose. It could be worse." Genocider noted. "She could have hooked up a slide whistle instead."
. "Don't give her ideas." Kirigiri said.
. "Golden Gun? More like Smoking Gun. Because I would have figured out a way to shoot you." Celeste had a negative reaction to the slide whistle idea. She detested slide whistles.
. "Where would you have gotten a firearm?" Togami asked.
. "I don't know. I don't care. I would have found one." Celeste replied, as Maizono gave another toot of her kazoo.
. "She's fucking with us." Leon Kuwata said.
. "She's fucking with Monokuma." Kirigiri said. "We're just caught in the middle."
. "Where's Naegi when you need him?"
. "Guys, I think we've broken Ishimaru." Fujisaki said, taking note at their returned classmate.
. "It's just... I wasn't prepared for this." Ishimaru looked highly concerned.
. "Just let the insanity roll over you." Maizono said. "You will understand."
. "I highly doubt that." Ishimaru replied. "I don't really know what happened while I was essentially on ice, but I can see now that it is not conductive."
. "You don't know, do you?" Monokuma asked. "Or have you forgotten? This whole killing game is being broadcast worldwide. They've seen everything!" Monokuma would have continued, but he was cut off by another whirl of Maizono's kazoo.
. "On what channel?" Maizono asked, suddenly realizing there was a thread to be pulled. She was legitimately curious about what channels would agree to broadcast this."StarScandalz? Nobody watches that anyway."
. "That's not important." Monokuma replied.
. "Isn't it? If were being broadcast to the whole world, we should at least know what channels we're on."
. "It's probably not getting ratings anyway." Leon said. "Bummer. We're going through traumatic event after traumatic event and we're probably not even on prime time."
. "Quit taking the piss out of this! It's getting ratings!" Monokuma replied, clearly put out. "Okay, so we had to adjust our time slot to avoid dealing with other shows like Featherman V, but I promise! It's getting ratings. That's what you're concerned about?"
. "Well, I mean. You're trying to box us into a corner. We've got to do something." Maizono pointed out.
. "I am not trying to box you into a corner!"
. "Then reveal yourself and save us on this trouble."
. "Fine... Wait...NO! That's not how this works."
. "Uh. Guys." Fukawa asked. "If Ikusaba's body in Trial 5 was actually Asahina's body, then are there fewer bodies in the morgue than there should be?"
. Kirigiri's eyes went wide. "Of course, there are sixteen students. The following students should be dead. Enoshima, Oogami, Hagakure, Oowada, Asahina, and Yamada. Six corpses. Three male. Three female."
. "So?"
. "Then why were there only two female corpses? And one of them was definitely Oogami." Kirigiri said.
. "Wait, are you serious?" Leon asked. "Only two? That means either Asahina or Enoshima is missing."
. "Well, it's definitely Asahina. That corpse has A blood." Kirigiri said. "So what the hell happened to Enoshima's corpse? Her file said she had AB blood."
. "What? Enoshima's corpse is missing!" Togami said. "Are you serious? Another thread to unravel?"
. "We're going backwards." Ishimaru said. "Instead of getting closer, we're making it more complex."
. "What can I say?" Monokuma said. "You think it would be that easy to solve everything?"
. "This is by design, isn't it?" Fujisaki pointed out. "Two steps forward, one step back. Is that why Ishimaru was kept sedated? To throw us off in regards to the number of corpses in the morgue?"
. Monokuma chuckled, but the bear would not say whether or not Fujisaki was on the right track. Specifying either way would give the students a clue and Monokuma was intent on holding cards close to his chest.
. "Monokuma thought ahead." Kirigiri said. "The fact that Ishimaru is alive is proof enough."
. "What do you mean?" Maizono asked.
. "It means Monokuma looked at the status quo after the first trial and figured he needed to remove Ishimaru from play only to re-introduce him later. So the next question is figuring out what changed before and after Trial 1?"

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Apologizes for the hiatus, I had hoped to finish this up, finale and all by end of March 2020, but real life kept getting in the way. If you want to know what I sound like, search "AnotherStatsGuy Dangan Ronpa" on Youtube. I've started playthroughs of Dangan Ronpa 1 and Persona 4: Golden. Trying to keep on a schedule with those. You can also follow me on Twitter if you're so inclined.