Chapter 3.4 - Des-pair
The elevator whirred and ceased to move, its doors opening before them. The eight students walked inside the too familiar courtroom, but none of them climbed to their assigned stands on the trial circle. They weren't ready, not with the flimsy evidence gathered during the oddly short investigation. There was despair in their faces, the realization that this could be it, the end of the line for the class and their life inside Beacon's Peak Academy.
"Welcome, welcome! What are you all just standing there for? Let's get this show on the road!"
CLASS TRIAL IS NOW I-
"LIKE HELL IT IS!" Ruby heard the cat faunus' distinctive voice coming from behind her, in a very uncharacteristic shout of unfiltered rage.
Before she could turn towards it, however, a fist wrapped itself around her arm, yanking her backwards. She stumbled against the girl's body, and felt the terrorist's other hand veer closer to her chest and neck. When she looked down she found a knife just shy of touching her throat.
"Blake?"
"What's going on?" Their classmates froze, stuck between the desire to defuse that crisis and the knowledge that any sudden movement could end in bloodshed. Blake Belladonna was the Ultimate Terrorist, after all. Killing was well within her area of expertise.
"Ms. Belladonna, what do you think you're doing?" The headmaster made himself heard, although there was no trace of panic in his voice. Unlike everyone else, he seemed to feel very much in control.
"Cut the crap, Monokuma! You either let us finish the investigation or this trial won't be held at all!"
Ruby breathed shallowly, trying her best to keep her skin away from the knife's edge. Her heart pounded incessantly, but she could barely register the conversation around her.
"Didn't we finish the investigation?" Velvet asked, fidgeting her fingers nervously.
"We couldn't find anything else..."
Behind her, the raven-haired girl took to a dumbfounded tone. "Have really none of you noticed one of us is missing?"
"Missing?"
"What are you talking about?"
Nora pointed at each one of them, counting the students out loud. "Ren and I, Velvet, Neo, Weiss, Emerald. That's six, eight with Ruby and Blake."
"That's..."
"Wait." Emerald was the first to realize it. "Where's Sun?"
"Sun? He's right th..." The remaining six Ultimates all came to understand at the same time, their eyes widened in an all-new sensation of horror.
"He can't be dead, we only heard one corpse discovery announcement." Weiss tried to mask her fear behind the usual cold rationality.
Ren disagreed. "The announcement only plays when a body is found by three people. If no one found it, it wouldn't have played."
"Does that mean he's..." The blade close to her skin felt less important, somehow. Had they really lost two people? Not just Jaune, but Sun as well? It was too cruel to consider.
"He is. There's no way Monokuma would let us in here without Sun, the elevator only opens when all students have arrived."
"I cannot confirm nor deny!" The headmaster piped in with a cheerful voice.
"But we checked the whole school!"
"He has to be somewhere."
"We must've missed at least one place. Think, is there any room you didn't look in?"
Velvet shook her head, seemingly less inhibited in that atmosphere of intense focus. "First floor was clear."
"Unless he was in his room."
"Second floor was empty too. Even that little dark room in the library." Emerald reported with an affirmative nod from Neo by her side.
"Ren?"
"I couldn't get inside the physics lab storage on the third floor. That could be it."
"So, we need to check those two places. I suggest we split up, in the interest of time."
"Upupupupupu, isn't that cute?" The stuffed bear interrupted the banter, his inscrutable remark silencing them all simultaneously. "And what makes you think I'll let you do that? We're in the courtroom already."
Ruby swallowed dryly as the blade came even closer to her throat.
"You'll let us, or I kill Ruby." The terrorist's voice didn't waver.
"So what? I'll just punish you, then! We wouldn't even need to hold a trial!" The monochrome villain waved his stubby little arms in the air, getting suddenly very riled up.
"That would be awfully anti-climactic, wouldn't it?" Was there a trace of amusement in her words? "Terrible entertainment. You wouldn't want to do that to the audience, would you?"
"Why you little-" Monokuma slammed his paw against the arm of the throne he was standing in, frustration seeping even through his twisted malformed face. "You think you're so smart, Blake Belladonna, but I'll pay you back for this next time!"
A sound of machinery behind them revealed that the elevator had opened again.
Successful in her gamble, the raven-haired teen released the grip on her schoolmate, letting Ruby breathe freely again. Without speaking any further, she slipped the blade back inside the pocket of her hoodie, and walked into the elevator.
The others followed, swept away by the current of events, and she did the same. The elevator clanked and ascended, as it did after every trial, although this time not to carry them away from a death but towards one.
Weiss was the one who broke the tension, bridging the clear distance between the Ultimate Terrorist and the rest of the class, and demandingly stretching an open hand in her direction. Blake grimaced, but placed the knife in her hand. The heiress then spoke. "We have two rooms to check: Sun's bedroom and the Physics Lab. Who's going where?"
She pondered on the two options. Those were the only two possible final resting places for the faunus thief, the only ones they hadn't investigated yet. That is, of course, unless there was a secret room hidden somewhere in the academy, one that none of the remaining students knew about, probably belonging to the elusive puppet master behind it all.
"I'll take the lab." Blake was the one who made up her mind first. Immediately after, Neo waved her hand to signal she would head there too.
"Then, I'll check his room." Emerald picked her side, and Velvet swiftly moved to her side.
Weiss took their side too. "I guess you can tag along with me."
Leaving only Ren, Nora and Ruby to split up, the blacksmith turned to her. "Ruby?"
"I'll check the physics lab."
Blake shifted her weight uncomfortably. "Are you sure?"
She only nodded.
"Okay, then I don't mind going too. Ren, you'll investigate the room? You're the only boy, after all."
He shrugged almost imperceptibly. "Sure. We don't have his Scroll, but I guess we can ask Monokuma nicely to unlock it."
The doors opened before them, and the two groups parted, one remaining on that floor and the other taking the stairs up. They paced briskly through the halls, the room seemingly so much farther than it had ever been before.
"Blake?" She cleared her throat, and tried to get her thoughts in order. There were a lot of questions pestering her, and not a lot of time.
The girl moved her head to the direction of the call, but avoided her gaze, never ceasing to walk on.
"What did you mean by audience? Is... someone watching us?"
Blake pointed at a camera mounted on the wall they were passing by. "Yes. We're being broadcasted through the surveillance footage. I had my suspicions, but Monokuma just confirmed it, otherwise he would have no reason to take the deal."
Neo turned completely pale, evidently unhappy about the thought of having her actions before the cameras exposed to an audience, although what kind of actions were having her so livid were anyone's guess. Nora, however, wasn't ready to buy it just yet.
"But if the world ended and stuff, how would they even get a TV show going? Stations are probably not working anymore..."
"There are emergency channels set up in case of widespread disaster. He probably hijacked it. That's what we would've done..."
"But why? What's the point?"
"It's a scare tactic, showing what you're capable of to dissuade any opposition. Or maybe some cabal of rich people take pleasure from watching this. I really can't say." It seemed like the terrorist had put some serious thought into it. That level of perceptive suspicion probably came with the job.
They reached the physics lab, and hastily stormed in, making way to the back door. Blake grabbed the handle and twisted it.
"Locked." She confirmed what they all had been expecting. Ren wasn't lying.
"Now what? We need to get in there."
"There has to be another way in and out."
"What about the vents? Sun was always checking those out."
"That's... an idea. Not like we have another one. There was a vent entrance in the rec room, right?"
The four girls left the lab behind, and returned to the crime scene. Jaune's lifeless and headless body was still there, every bit as unsettling as the first time she'd seen it. On the wall, as promised, was a vent opening, just large enough for a person to crawl through.
"Neo, can you go in? You're the smallest." The blacksmith unexpectedly took charge, earning an eye roll from the petite student.
"Oh sure, send in the one person who can't scream for help." Yet her eyes didn't appear annoyed, but rather amused, and she skilfully climbed through the entrance.
After she vanished into the tight, dark tunnel, they waited. Waited for what seemed like an eternity, their gaze transfixed into the vent, hoping that it would lead them to the missing boy's location. Their fates depended on it.
"Why didn't you trust me?"
"Huh?" Blake quickly turned, caught unaware by the sudden question.
"Before we got on the elevator you asked me if I trusted you. I did. I wish you had trusted me too." Her tone was more sad than it was accusing. It was a feeling she was all too familiar with, always being the young and displaced one, always being protected instead of relied upon, always treated like a child.
Nora kept her lips sealed, fully aware that this was not her business to meddle in.
"I couldn't afford the risk. We all would've died otherwise." The cat faunus avoided her gaze, instead fixing hers on the dead body present with them.
"I would've helped! I don't want everyone to die either." She felt stupid having to say those things aloud, like her basic humanity was in question. But again, that was the nature of the game they were playing wasn't it?
"I'm sorry."
Clap Clap
The sound of palms hitting against each other came from behind them, startling the distracted trio. At its source was Neo, who had just come in through the door.
"Door's open."
"Did you find Sun?"
The mute didn't respond, nor did she make any attempt to scribble or sign back. She merely walked out, expecting them to follow. Something had gotten her at a loss for words, despite how little that seemed to differ from the usual.
In a hurry they jogged to the laboratory once more, and found that the once Locked Door was indeed now open. There was a bubbling anxiety building in Ruby's insides, a feeling of gnawing emptiness that craved to know what was inside that small room. She just hoped she was ready for what she'd find. But, as always, she wasn't.
DING DONG DING DONG
"A body has been discovered. Get your detectives hats out, because we'll be holding a trial soon!"
The storage room was a lot redder than she remembered. The floor, the walls, the green cabinets - there was blood everywhere. Splashed, coated, splattered, a gruelling sight that tore right through her stomach. It took all she had, and then some, not to empty its contents right where she stood. The smell didn't help either, a stench of iron and death that felt like it would stick to one's clothes no matter how many times they were washed.
At the center of that painting in gore was the body of a boy, headless just like the previous one. It was placed with the chest down, drenching the underside in deep red.
"Sun..."
She looked away, unable to bear the sigh of that twisted thing, and glanced around to her companions. Neo had her back towards the whole scene - she no doubt had gotten enough of a look when she crawled in to open the door. Nora was sitting down just outside the entrance, her deep breaths clearly audible through the room. Blake was the only one looking straight at it, her fists clenched and her face contorted into a heavy scowl. The dark-haired woman briefly closed her eyes, and her fist flew towards the wall to her side, leaving a slight dent in its surface.
But just like before, like every corpse they'd found so far, there was no time to grieve. They had to swallow the pain and keep the investigation going. Finding strength within her that she didn't know she had, the Ultimate Sharpshooter took a step forward and began working.
The first thing to note, even more than the corpse itself, was obviously the Gorey Mess all around them. It was so much blood, more blood than a human could survive losing, but also pieces of flesh and bone in the mix. It looked more like a slaughterhouse than the storage room it had once been. It was hard to even imagine what had transpired inside that room.
The Second Body was lying face down, well, if it still had a face that is, in the middle of the pool of blood. His denim shorts were stained with red goo, as was his white vest, and, just like the previous one, his neck ended suddenly with a shapeless landscape of shattered bone and ruptured muscle. The blood had already dried up, same as the rest around it, meaning the death wasn't fresh, although that much they knew already.
After she finished that preliminary analysis, Ruby helped the cat faunus flip the corpse over, failing miserably at keeping her hands untainted in the process. As suspected, the slice across the neck was there too, but turning the boy around allowed them to find something else: numerous Slashes across the Stomach. The wounds visible through the open vest weren't too deep, just enough to pierce the skin. There were six knife cuts total, but there was no discernible pattern to them.
The girl let out a shocked gasp when her eyes caught on to Blake was doing, poking her fingers into one of the wounds.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to figure out if they were post mortem." The black-haired girl frowned dissatisfied, and removed her fingers from the corpse. "I can't tell anything with all this blood around."
She thought for a moment on the information gathered, comparing it to the other body they'd found. "Do you think Jaune had this too? We didn't check under his clothes...
"Good point. Hey, Nora?" Blake raised her voice so that the blacksmith could hear from outside the room. It seemed she wasn't handling the scene very well, although in all fairness, Ruby didn't quite understand how she was keeping it together herself.
"Yeah?" A ginger head poked through the door frame, her eyes cautiously avoiding focusing on the massive pool of blood.
"I need you to check something in the Rec Room. Lift up Jaune's shirt and see if he has something on his stomach."
The words were spoken like a command, but Nora took them with relief. At least it was a reason to run away from that horrid storage room. "Ok, be right back."
"Wait, wait!' Ruby remembered something, quickly reaching into the boy's pocket and taking out his Scroll. "Bring this to the other group too, please."
The redhead nodded wordlessly, picked up the device and took off without looking back.
The inspection of the corpse was now done, so they moved on to the area surrounding it. There was a lot out of place in that storage room.
Firstly, the most evidently displaced objects were the Toppled Bookshelves. The two large green cabinets were lying on the floor, instead of against the wall where they'd been before. Part of them was on top of the blood pool, dyeing their undersides red, and at that point of impact was some clear damage to the sturdy metallic structure, like they'd been thrown against the floor rather than dropped on it. By the left side of them was a small concentration of Spilled Powder, which seemed to further confirm her idea. The powder was a soft salmon color, and its blast area included some of the floor and the side of the leftmost cabinet. A few pieces of glass were visible amongst the spillage, probably from the container that had broken out of its storage, causing that little mess.
Behind the cabinets, on the white untainted wall at the back of the room was a Vent Entrance, the one Neo had used to unlock the room from inside. Ruby didn't recall said entrance from her first visit, which could only mean one thing: it had been hidden behind the cabinets. Furthermore, if the room was locked from the inside, it meant the killer had to have used that very same vent to escape.
Near the corner of the room, slightly removed from the crimson mess, sat yet another oddity to her eyes: a Cart. Made for transporting heavy objects, it wasn't hard to imagine what it could have been used for. The fact that a Bloody Tarp rested on top of it only made the fact more obvious. The tarp was crudely folded, and its once transparent surface was almost as red as the tiles on the ground.
Ruby stepped back, feeling a headache start to form from all that information being drilled into her skull at once. It was hard to piece all of it together instantly, and she was sure some of the assumptions she had just made were wrong.
Speaking of wrong assumptions, she fingered her pocket, suddenly remembering that there should be another autopsy report available on their scrolls. A few button pushes later and there it was: Monokuma File N°4.
The body was found at 11:20 AM in the Storage Room attached to the Physics Lab.
Time of death was 12 AM of the same day.
Death was caused by a cut to the throat, which in turn led to bleeding and asphyxia.
Additionally, severe trauma was inflicted on the neck and head.
"...That's the exact same file."
"He's toying with us."
DING DONG DING DONG
"Time's up. All students are to gather near the red door on the first floor immediately. And make it quick, I'm getting bored here."
"Already? That wasn't enough!" Ruby shouted at the monitor, even though she knew Monokuma wasn't going to answer.
"We were on borrowed time. Let's hope the others found something worthwile." The Ultimate Terrorist headed out towards the lab. Neo quietly followed along, and, with a sigh of resignation, so did she. They would have to make do with what they already had.
Just before they reached the door to the hallway, however, somebody else bolted through in the opposite direction. Velvet ran past them and into the storage room.
"Oh..." They heard a disgruntled noise, followed by the clicking of her digital camera.
After snapping a couple pictures, the rabbit faunus came out again, not looking too thrilled about what she had just found in there. She walked to the three of them, and pointed at the device hanging from her neck. "Needed pictures so the others could see the body too."
The four students left the physics laboratory and climbed down the stairs back to the ground floor of the academy. They pondered silently the meaning of all those new clues, and their connection with the old ones. One of the remaining eight classmates was the murderer, and whoever it was enjoyed playing games with them. It was probably not going to be a conventional class trial.
When they found the imposing red door, the other four were already waiting. The photographer showed them the photos of the crime scene. Emerald voiced disgust, Ren said nothing, and Weiss stared at the small screen intently, wishing it was enough. Nora had already seen plenty, so she refused to look at it altogether.
Besides that most basic of exchanges, there was little to be said. The door opened, and the students stepped inside, then into the elevator. Although there were eight of them, the same as the last time they'd been to that place, it felt like a lot less. The further their numbers decreased, the harder it was to look at whoever was standing to your side and be sure you could trust them.
One among them had killed. Not just once, but twice. Jaune, the Ultimate Lucky Student, an anxious but friendly and sharp boy that had stood by Ruby's side when she had lost all that she had left. Sun, the Ultimate Pickpocket, a carefree faunus who, despite his talent, was always honest and warm. Their deaths couldn't go unavenged. They had postponed it enough, it was time to face the truth, no matter how hard it was, how much it hurt.
And so, the elevator whirred and stopped, opening the way for the third Class Trial.
TO BE CONTINUED
Students Alive - 8