"Guys I think the class rep is dying."

The assembled members of class 77 turned toward Kazuichi with mixed looks of annoyance and curiosity.

"What the hell are you talking about, idiot?" Fuyuhiko turned to the Ultimate Mechanic with an annoyed expression.

"Isn't it obvious?" he pointed toward the front of the classroom, toward a board that was blank except for a 'have a great weekend!' message that one of the students had put up. "No big class activity for Saturday, don't you guys think thats a bit strange?"

"Hey even I didn't make my team run laps every morning, a bit of personal time is needed or else people get sick of each other, even a bad coach knows that much." Nekomaru explained, only really half listening to the conversation.

Akane perked up at that. "Well if we aren't all getting together then I am going to get a rematch with you old man, that last fight was just a warm up!"

Peko let out a small sigh. "If you do end up fighting please don't do it near the school grounds, or else we will be forced to help clean it up again."

"Yeah you bastards better not draw us into some dumb situation just because you want to punch each other to death." the Ultimate Yakuza let out a sigh of annoyance at his overzealous classmates.

"I agree, you two shouldn't fight at all, you are friends aren't you?" Sonia asked, looking around the room. "They are friends right, I didn't misunderstand?"

"Tch, its not like I want to fight him because I hate the old man, I just want to prove I can kick his ass." Akane replied with an annoyed roll of her eyes.

"You guys are missing the point here!" Kazuichi bellowed. "What could make our class rep suddenly break the streak of weekend get toge-"

As if the universe had perfectly planed to end his rant mid-breath the door to the classroom opened, revealing a plain looking young man, eyes scanning the room until they landed on Chiaki. "Hey Chiaki! Ready to go?"

The Ultimate Gamer looked up from her handheld and gave a nod, standing up and grabbing her bag before walking to the front of the class. "See you guys on Monday okay?" she smiled to her various classmates and left with the young man.

For a moment there was complete and utter silence throughout the room as the collective group tried to figure out just what the hell had just happened.

"Um, I am not just imagining that the person our class rep walked out with was a guy am I?" Mikan tapped the side of her head. "I fell pretty hard this morning, so I want to make sure."

Hiyoko scoffed and kicked the back of Mikan's chair, causing the Ultimate Nurse to fall in a way that drew the eye, and some blood from Teruteru's nose. "You dumb pig, even if you didn't have eyes you should have been able to tell that was a guy."

Ibuki laughed a bit and shook her head. "Man I thought I was rock and roll, that pipsqueak came into the class without a worry on his face."

"He was like a brave masked stranger, arriving to distract the villain while the heroine delivered the true final blow." Sonia sighed dreamily, lost in her own world.

Mahiru shook her head, finding a small headache building from her classmates usual antics. "Honestly guys its not that we-"

"We should follow them!" Souda suddenly shouted out, returning focus to him.

"What are you talking about you idiot?" Akane asked, raising an eyebrow at the suggestion.

"What if that guy is taking advantage of our class rep, she could be in a totally bad situation." Souda pointed out.

"False," Gundham suddenly called out. "The man who picked up our class rep had no hint of the underworld attached to him, he reeks of a heavenly aura."

Seeing as Gundham had a pretty good grasp over people the rest of the class lost the idea that the guy who had come in had any ill intent. Except of course for Souda, who would always have the opposite opinion of the Ultimate Breeder.

"I still think something bad will happen, just you watch."

"Kamukura-senpai I want to take you on a date!"

"Hm, very well."

Kyoko had dealt with a great number of cases in her time as a detective. Some small, others large. She had found people and animals that were hiding in places where no one else would have been able to possibly discover them, find clues in cases that were so expertly hidden that it took an Ultimate to even recognize that they were clues at all. And yet in all that time she could honestly say this.

She had never investigated someone who had ever trace of their existence erased.

"Hajime Hinata," she put down a few more notes in her log book with a frown, as if by looking at the words they would rearrange and solve the mystery for her. She had spent the last few days asking around, and there were people who knew him. People who could describe him, even people who had him in the background of their pictures. But upon searching for him in the school database, nothing. Searching the internet, nothing. In the current day and age someone who had managed to live and be a teenager not having left any digital footprint was nearly impossible. And as it turned out, it had been.

She had expanded her web to various interests classmates has noticed him enjoying and found strange things. Comments that were responded that that simply showed 'deleted by owner'. Of course this in and of itself wouldn't be too odd, as some of the place she looked had multiple posts like that, but on others it was only that one, and the responses to what the person had said were all positive, so being deleted out of spite for others opinions wasn't a motive. Besides even deleting ones profile would still leave the message so as to not leave blank space. No someone would have had to go bit by bit in order to remove each post.

In other words someone had tried to turn Hinata into a ghost, someone who had most likely existed but couldn't be proved to have specifically been anywhere. But why would someone go to such lengths just to get rid of a reserve course student? That was the question that currently plagued the Ultimate Detective.

No matter how she looked at it a young man with no criminal connections, or famous/infamous parents or friends suddenly disappearing into nothingness simply made no sense. The amount of effort it would take just to go about something like that was mind boggling. It took time, effort, and money to erase someone from a world where everything was recorded.

But she did take heart in knowing her enemy was all knowing. They hadn't erased the reserve student from pictures that had him in them by accident, which meant they couldn't check everything. Also no gag order had been put on the various students that had been in the same class, but randomly talking about one student probably wasn't a big enough leak risk for them to go that far.

She had theories on the how, but that wasn't important until she knew why. Why was Hajime Hinata so important that they would go so far as to even need a how? Who had he crossed?

Kyoko pushed herself away from the computer and put her hand against her eyes. The only clue so far was that there weren't any useful clues.

"Maybe," she typed into her computer again and brought up a file that contained a number of reserve course students, pulled off of the less secure source that contained a number of student files. Her father really wasn't the best with passwords, even someone who wasn't computer savvy like her could have guessed it. HopesPeak1234. It was almost depressing.

Once she got the basic idea of how the files were set up she began to make one of her own for Hajime Hinata, inserting a picture and enough information to make it seem just about right, and then inserted it into the rest of the Reserve Course files. From then she kept a careful eye on it, and after ten minutes the file was suddenly deleted.

"Hm, someone is going a long way to keep you hidden, Hajime." she logged off the computer, which she had gotten onto with another students information before stepping back outside. This was going to be a bit more difficult then she had first assumed.

"Man, Hope's Peak is awesome but its nice to be able to get out sometimes you know?" Makoto smiled at his traveling partner, the two having taken a seat on a bullet train to the outskirts of the city. Apparently the central parts of the city tended to get rather clogged up in terms of foot traffic, so the business owners wanted to draw crowds to more locally owned businesses that tended to exist near the fringe parts of the city.

Or at least thats what Byakuya had told him, seeing as it had been his notion to open it and his families money that helped open the business. His exact words had been something like 'I want to draw money away from competitors in order to create investment opportunities from self starters, if we can make the outskirts as big of a draw as the central city the Togami family will shine even brighter.'

Makoto didn't exactly get all of that, but after letting Byakuya make his speech he had managed to score two free tickets and armbands that would let them skip the lines to enter, so it wasn't that much of a pain to listen to Byakuya wax poetically about how amazing his family was.

Chiaki simply nodded in response and returned to her game, which in and of itself might have seemed rude to others. However Makoto knew the truth behind the matter, when it came to really public settings the Ultimate Gamer tended to retreat to the place she felt most comfortable, her games.

That was fine though, as Makoto had gotten used to the odd bits of silence between the two of them and simply enjoyed the ride. Even with the bullet train it still took a bit to arrive, but once they got to their destination and stepped out the view of the city was rather amazing. Even this far from the center a number of large buildings shot forth from the ground like urban trees, and standing among them was the newly created 'Megacade', the first entertainment only skyscraper, which was to say it was a massive building thats sole purpose on each floor was providing entertainment. Each floor contained things like movie theaters, restaurants, bookstores, and its newest addition on the fifth floor and sixth floor, the words largest arcade, containing not only hundreds of arcade cabinets, but even sold spaces for consoles and virtual reality games. It was a unique place, and with the Togami seal of approval it was no doubt top of the line as well.

"Man, his family really doesn't go in by halves." Makoto shook his head and offered Chiaki his hand. "Come on, the crowds are going to be huge."

Chiaki looked at his offered hand for a moment, a light pink blush coming over her cheeks before she took it in her own and allowed herself to be pulled away into the maelstrom of people. In her head she was forced to continue a narrative that there was nothing weird about holding hands while trying to get through a crowded area. Nothing was strange about looking at the person holding your hands and thinking how nice it felt to do so. There was nothing at all different about holding Makoto's hand from holding anyone elses.

Eventually the two of them found their way to the front of the building, only to see a massive line that wrapped around the entire block, full of excited people, most of whom were young adults that had probably skipped their Saturday classes for a chance to enter the arcade section of the building. Thankfully the wristbands that Makoto provided to the bouncers at the front of the building got them through quickly, and they were even escorted to the employee elevator so that they wouldn't have to deal with the lines for the public use lift.

When they finally arrived the sight that met them was beyond the expectations that either of them had held. Of course they had thought that some of the advertising would be only that, something to really get people excited for the opening of a massive arcade. But seeing it now, two floors that were connected by a spiral staircase and smaller lift exclusively used by people going between these two floors and both floors filled with arcade cabinets. Beyond just the existence of a countless number of the cabinets was the fact that even those whose age made it difficult to find them in anything less then awful states looked just as clean as the most advanced game there. To the side was a small bar with servers giving out glasses of soda and snacks for free due to it being the opening day. The music was modern hits from a variety of genres, seemingly chosen by those who were within the arcade to ensure that it fit the atmosphere better then the radio blaring.

To Chiaki, who loved games and felt connected to them in ways other people didn't understand, this place was like heaven. She turned and gripped Makoto's shirt, pulling him down so they were face to face. "We need to play everything." her voice was like one who was speaking in a prayer, low and pleading.

"Yeah, lets do it!" Makoto said with a hint of exasperation. He was used to this kind of behavior from dealing with Aoi, who tended to explode like that around water parks.

So the two of them rushed into the massive hoard of games and began to go one by one, playing only a single life on each so that they could get the full experience of each game. Of course seeing as Chiaki was the better gamer of the two Makoto decided to amend a 'single life' to 'however long Chiaki makes it' so he wouldn't be left sitting around with nothing to do.

Besides that he had felt strange during the first few games when other people would jump in and end up playing next to Chiaki. Those sorts of feelings weren't exactly normal for him but he hadn't the time to explore them because during those times that someone else got on Chiaki had faced some misfortune that was followed by a game over.

Of course this didn't hurt the pride of the Ultimate Gamer, arcade cabinets were deliberately unfair, a perfect run was something that only people who practiced day after day on the same cabinet would be able to accomplish.

That being said despite bouncing from game to game the two were having the times of their lives, while up above on the second floor another couple were getting ready to begin their 'date'.

"I still fail to see the importance of us being here." Izuru stated while looking over the crowds with eyes filled with boredom. Despite having agreed to being dragged out of his hole in the ground he was absolutely miserable in this kind of setting.

Junko gave an overly dramatic sigh and shook her head. "That's because I am waiting for the maximum amount of people, you don't throw the bowling ball before all the pins are set up," she tilted her head to the side and broke out in a grin. "But seeing someone get hit with a bowling ball while they are trying to set up pins is a rather funny idea, don't you think so Kamukura-senapi?"

He gave a grunt in response and returned to observing the crowd.

Makoto doubled over for a moment as he drew in a breath, looking over the first floor of the arcade with a grin. They had managed to clear out every shooter, racer, fighting, and brawler on the entire first floor, moving through years of gaming history as they did. The second floor would have less gaming cabinets and more actual consoles, and as someone whose family hadn't exactly had the finances for that sort of thing he knew the odds of him being able to keep up with Chiaki were low. It didn't bother him too much through, because the only game left was his personal favorite.

"Boogie Boogie Rebellion?" Chiaki asked, looking toward the game in front of her. It was a large screen set up with a small floor with four arrows going in each cardinal direction. From what she could observe about the game one played by moving their feet on the arrow in time with what appeared on the screen. It seemed straight forward enough, but she had never exactly been the best at exercise or workouts.

"Yeah, back when my sister and I used to go to the local arcade this was always one of the most fun, don't worry about messing up its pretty forgiving." he slid through the songs, but realized with the selection picking something out would take way longer then he would have liked. "Do you mind if I just put it on random?"

Chiaki gave a nod in response, so Makoto hit random and took the stand.

What came playing was the exact opposite of what either of them would have chosen for themselves, a high energy pop song, all about two lovers trying to reach each other. Their surprise to the song was shown by the twin blushes that graced their faces, yet when the time to play began they cast away their worries and moved to the song, hitting arrow after arrow on the song as they rose up. This was a game that both parties could say they were equal in, with Makoto's experience and Chiaki's skill the two of them expertly navigated he ever changing series of steps needed, hitting greats and perfects without missing a bit.

"Now Switch!" the machine called out, dipping the volume of the song for a moment.

The two effortlessly switched places, seemingly moving as if they knew exactly how the other would progress, catching up as the arrows once again shot forward, moving to the beat of the song of the two lovers. Just as it seemed the song had reached its end the machine called out "Bonus Round!" and the song kicked into a verse that wouldn't appear for players who scored anything less then a near perfect game, wrapping up the story of the lovers by having them seal their vows with a kiss.

By the time the final line came out both Makoto and Chiaki were deeply out of breath, but smiling none the less once the announcement came from the machine. "Good Game!"

A sudden cheer exploded through the room as the crowd that had gathered to watch them during their session congratulated the two.

"That was awesome Chiaki!" Makoto laughed and pulled the smaller girl into a hug, filled with the rush of endorphins that only a good work out could provide.

For a moment the Ultimate Gamer froze in the embrace, but with shaky hands she put her own arms around the young man and gave him a hug in return. If she had been more romantically minded like her friend and classmate Sonia she imagined that she might be drawing comparisons to how he smelled to something pleasant, but all she could think in her straightforward mind was that he sweat the two of them had produced made them both feel soggy, but she seemed to be able to ignore that while hugging him.

"Bah, way to hopeful for me," Junko drew out a detonator with a shiny red button at the top of it. "Would you like to do the honors Kamukura-senapi?" she turned to look at the long haired man, but found his attention was focused on the two people who had been playing the dance game. His expression was somewhere between his bored resting face and...fascination if her talent wasn't betraying her.

"Oh well, more for me." It was normal for a girl to become jealous at the sight of a guy they had invited on a date to be looking at another girl. In order to refocus their attention some women would do something flashy or eye grabbing in order to return the focus back to themselves. And if one thing could be said about Junko, it was that she knew how to be flashy.

She pressed down on the detonator in her hand.

And then the world went to hell as the sounds of explosions, the smell of smoke, and shards of broken glass reigned supreme.

Hello again loyal and first time readers, this is the part where I ask you to kindly favorite and follow if you are interested in seeing more of this story, and review if you want to see the next chapter come out. Bellow this are just some personal ramblings from me as the author, so feel free to read on or not. Thank you.

I don't know what I was thinking deciding to just repeat what was the hardest part of this chapter with the class I have more difficulty writing for. I do hope it came out okay, or at least readable and able to get a few laughs. This chapter had some unique difficulties for me, as I had to show that the bond between Makoto and Chiaki was growing in a normal way that teens of their age might experience, a little to fast and yet still insufferably slow as neither party really knows what is going on.

First time relationships, crushes with people who are perfect for you, those kinds of things are from which I draw experience. The rest of it is guesswork.

If there is a single disappointment in this chapter its that I am not more experienced with song fic, so I could add lyrics to make the DDR scene a bit more...romantic? Energetic? Something like that. I am bad at matching movement to music, so if I ever decided to go through and edit this story I might actually pull in someone experienced with that sort of thing to coach me. But that is for other matters.

Anywho tune in next chapter for an opening battle of Despair and Hope as Makoto and Chiaki are thrown into Junko's attempted seduction of the Ultimate Talent into the path of Despair. Will a Lucky Student and a Gamer be able to turn the tides of chaos, or will they be consumed by the flames?

Find out next chapter aye?