[Written for Twelve Shots of Summer: Another D8.]

Izuru did not know a lot about the person that he used to be. The researchers never talked about his past self. He was not all that surprised, since they likely did not see the point in wasting time talking about a worthless and talentless boy who no longer existed. Instead, they were always focused on their creation and what he was capable of. Izuru could easily discover information about his past self, but he did not see the point. Why waste energy on something that would ultimately bore him? It was easy enough to guess what kind of person he had been: unremarkable and envious, to the point where he had willingly let researchers play around with his brain. Too bad for him that the end result was this: a person with all the talents, but no ability to actually care about any of it.

In the rare moments that he did think about his former self, Izuru felt something that might be compared to irritation. After all, it was thanks to that unremarkable boy that he was now stuck in such a terribly boring existence. A lesser person in this situation might try to end their own life to escape the monotony, but doing something so predictable was too dull to seriously consider. Besides, he did not even care enough to bother with something like that. There was always the off chance that there was something or someone of interest in this world, so it would be a foolish waste to leave it before he could find something to capture his attention.

Junko Enoshima was ridiculous and loud, but she did behave in rather unexpected ways. Izuru couldn't really say that she had completely captured his attention, but she was a change of pace from the monotony of the researchers. He did not have any moral standpoints that would cause him to be bothered by any of her actions. He was, of course, aware of the things that society deemed as "good" or "bad", but none of it meant anything to him. She could destroy the entire world and he would not feel particularly bothered. If anything, he was somewhat curious to see if she actually was capable of such a thing.

Everything had so far gone according to Enoshima's plans, which wasn't at all surprising. She had excellent analytical skills, so it was not at all difficult for her to manipulate people and situations to achieve her desired results. It seemed as though despair was more likely to win than hope. Of course, something unexpected happened in the form of two of Enoshima's senpai.

"Komaeda-kun, what are we doing here?"

"We're putting a stop to despair, of course! And there's someone that I want to meet, and I think you will too."

The two students came across Mitarai, the animator, who kept insisting to them that he hadn't done anything wrong. Izuru hadn't interacted much with the boy, since he was as boring as most people. He had let himself get wrapped up in Enoshima's schemes, and yet he lacked the courage to own up to it. Of course, it did not take long for Enoshima to show up.

"Komaeda-senpai, you're really not trying to accuse me, your lovable and innocent kōhai, of doing anything bad, are you?"

"There's really no point in pretending, Enoshima-san. I know what you are."

"Komaeda-kun, what do you mean? Why is Enoshima-san here?"

"I did tell you before that I thought you should stay away from her, Nanami-chan. Not that her despair could ever come close to threatening your hope, of course! That's why I brought you with me. You're the greatest hope of our class, so I knew I'd need you by my side."

"This is all so gross and lame! What do you think you're gonna do to stop me, huh?"

"Well, that's simple."

Izuru listened in on the conversation, and he noted that one of those two apparently knew enough to send someone to distract Enoshima's sister. Whoever was fighting Ikusaba must be rather formidable to hold their own against the Super High School Level Soldier. While Ikusaba had nothing on Izuru, he was aware that against almost anyone else she would likely be unbeatable. He briefly wondered how Enoshima would react if her sister died. Knowing her, it would be in a way that was unusual compared to most people.

When one of the 77th class was going to shoot Enoshima, Izuru decided that it was time for him to step in. She was the only interesting thing that had happened in his life so far, so it would be rather inconvenient for her to die before she could show him all that she was capable of. The person, a pale looking boy with white hair, switched from aiming at Enoshima to aiming at Izuru, and fired on instinct. The gun jammed, much to the boy's surprise, and Izuru informed him that he also had the talent of luck while taking the gun from him and moving closer to Enoshima. The boy turned around, and he looked shocked as he looked at Izuru.

The emotions in the boy's eyes were enough to make Izuru pause for a moment before shooting him. He hadn't expected such intense and varying looks from this stranger: excitement, longing, sadness, confusion, and other emotions that Izuru was not entirely sure of, as emotions were not exactly his forte.

"Kamukura-kun, right?" the boy, Komaeda, asked, putting a pleasant smile on his face. Izuru studied him, and was a little unimpressed. He didn't look like much, with that frail body and sickly-pale skin. The only thing that stood out about him was that wild white hair. "Nanami-chan, you wanted to know what happened to Hinata-kun. Here's your answer."

"Hinata-kun? What happened to you?" The girl, Nanami, was staring at him with wide pink eyes. She was a short girl, with light pink hair and a disarming demeanor. She didn't exactly look like much either, though at least she didn't look sickly like her friend.

Izuru stared blankly at the two of them. Had they known his old self, then? How strange for two main course students to have mingled with a meaningless reserve course student. He was slightly interested that Komaeda's luck was good enough to allow him to find out about the Kamukura Project. Of course, luck by itself wouldn't necessarily get a person very far. Komaeda had to have at least some amount of intelligence to have made it here and know what was going on.

"Ah, for what it's worth, I am sorry. I know you don't remember me, but I know it's my fault that this happened to you. I did try to warn you that bad things happen to people to get close to me," Komaeda said to Izuru when it became clear that he wasn't planning to answer Nanami's question.

"Your apology is meaningless. I don't remember my old life, so I don't care what happened in the past," Izuru informed him.

Nanami let out a small gasp at his words, but Komaeda just nodded. "I see. I thought that might be the case, but I wanted to apologize anyway! I owe that much at least to Hinata-kun."

"Hey, I'm starting to feel a little left out now!" Enoshima complained. "I think there's been enough standing around and talking. Who cares about some boring reserve course student anyway? Kamukura-senpai is so much more fun!"

Izuru saw that she was planning to take the gun from him, and he decided to allow it to happen. He was curious which student she would decide to shoot. There was always the chance she might even try to shoot him, just for fun. If she decided to shoot Nanami, it might be interesting to see how Komaeda would react, since he seemed a little erratic. He thought that he would prefer her to shoot Komaeda, though, just so he could witness the other boy's luck in action.

It seemed as though Enoshima was curious about Komaeda's luck as well, because she suddenly aimed at him and shot. Kamukura watched as the boy crumpled to the ground, and Nanami rushed to him. His luck did not disappoint, as he pulled out his metallic student ID, which had stopped the bullet from piercing through his flesh. The impact was still enough to leave the weak boy on the ground, and he was sure that Komaeda would have a nasty bruise later. The purple-blues of the bruise would likely look even worse on that pale skin.

"Komaeda-kun, are you okay?" Nanami asked him. The concern was clear in her voice, and Kamukura wondered what it was like to worry about another person. Inconvenient, most likely, since Nanami could have attempted to escape by now if she hadn't been worried about her classmate.

Izuru observed as Komaeda slipped out of consciousness in Nanami's arms. "He truly does have good luck."

Nanami looked up at Izuru, looking so lost and confused. Komaeda truly should have prepared her better for what she would have to face. He couldn't help but think that the side of hope must truly be doomed, if their greatest hope was this helpless girl. It was really a shame, as he would have preferred Enoshima to not win so easily. Still, he had known going into this that it was unlikely to truly interest him. He noted that during all of this chaos, Mitarai had left the room. The appearance of other students must have prompted him to finally go and get help.

"Kamukura-kun, why didn't you shoot him yourself? I thought we were besties now, but you were going to just let him get away with trying to shoot me?" Enoshima pouted at him. Izuru just stared blankly at her. "Ahh, you're so mean sometimes! It's okay though, I'll always forgive you!"

"Enoshima-san, why are you doing this?" Nanami questioned as she gently laid Komaeda on the floor and got to her feet.

"I am simply doing this because despair is my passion. It was quite easy to mastermind all of these events, you see," Enoshima explained to her, suddenly calm and analytical.

Nanami seemed to give up on talking to her, as she turned her attention back to Izuru. "Hinata-kun, I know you can't remember, but I'm your best friend, and Komaeda-kun is your boyfriend. You've always been a good person, and I know this isn't what you want!"

She looked determined at this moment. He could still see that she was scared and out of her depth, but there was a resolve visible on her face that Izuru had not expected. It became a little clearer now why she was seen as the hope of her class. Maybe she was not completely useless after all. He didn't know what she expected to accomplish with her words, though. The person he had once been was gone. What did it matter, if he had friends and a boyfriend? If anything, that made Izuru think even less of his former self. He had thrown these loyal people away, just to become this.

"Enough of that, it's time to watch a little movie!" Enoshima interrupted.

Before she could do anything else, though, a woman ran into the room and ignited a fire extinguisher. She seemed surprised as she looked at Izuru, which indicated this was yet another person who had known his old self. As he heard Nanami greet her as Sensei, he wondered why a Main Course teacher would have ever interacted with a Reserve Course student. She did not appear to have any relevant skills that would assist her in this situation. Mitarai must have been desperate enough to request help from the first person he came across.

"Nanami-chan, get Komaeda-kun out of here!" the teacher ordered.

"But I can't leave you behind!" Nanami argued.

"I'm your teacher. It's my job to protect my beloved students," the woman insisted.

Nanami gave in, though she made eye contact with Izuru one last time. He watched as she dragged Komaeda out of the room. He could easily stop them, but Enoshima had not indicated that she required him to. That meant that the teacher presented a more interesting and important target. Filling the teacher with despair would make it easier to control her students. She might think that she had just sent her students to safety, but they were in more danger than ever. She would fall to despair, and take all of her students along with her. Izuru wouldn't be surprised if Enoshima ended up killing one of them in order to encourage a greater despair. Nanami would be the best choice for that, since she seemed to be greatly admired. It almost seemed like a waste, though, as she just maybe had the potential to be interesting.

For now, Izuru would continue on as he had so far. He would go along with Enoshima's plans unless a more appealing opportunity presented itself. He doubted that anything like that would happen, though. Everyone else was just too boring.


Noiz: Here's another fic set in my Danganronpa AU! It was challenging to write from Kamukura's perspective, honestly. As you can likely tell, I am not perfectly following the events of the anime. Back when I first got into SDR2, I had imagined that Junko had spent time individually manipulating all of them. Then the anime revealed she didn't really know most of them, and simply turned them to despair through killing Nanami. So I'm going to go with a mix of headcanon and actual canon for this series.

I'd originally started writing this last summer for TSoS: Another D8, for the prompts [Answers] and [Dissonance]. Better late than never I guess?

I have lots of plans for this series, so I'm super excited to write more in the future!

Thanks to the wonderful Aviantei for beta reading this! You're the best!