Mukuro Ikusaba was a woman who had a certain reputation, one that led many to call her emotionless, or even a monster. From her history on the battlefield to the way she carried herself this reputation had done nothing but increase since the first moment she stepped onto the school grounds next to her sister. Of course those whispers didn't bother her, so long as she remained on mission there was nothing in the world that could pierce her carefully constructed defenses against such things. She was the Ultimate Soldier, she had never taken a wound and so long as she was alert that would continue to be the case.

However that wasn't to say that she was utterly devoid of emotion like a robot, rather she only felt very specific emotions, ones that related to her duty. To the squad, to the target, and of course above all else to her sister. When they were children she would often hear jokes that all of the emotion she lacked had been pushed into her sister. There was plenty to doubt about the accuracy of such a statement, but if one judged from a certain point then there would be no doubt that it held a grain of truth. Where Mukuro was quiet and kept to herself Junko was always ready to get into someones face. While she kept her body hidden under full layers of clothing her sister regularly wore a uniform that would show every inch of her body off.

And in her heart she knew that where she loved her sister unconditionally, her sister only saw her as a useful tool.

For most that would be a bitter pill to swallow, but for the Ultimate Soldier it mattered very little. Even if her sister utterly detested her she would stop at nothing to keep her safe. Even if she had to kill everyone in the way of the Despair Plan she would do so without hesitation.

She paused in place for a moment, remembering a look that a boy had given her. A smile that was only between them.

"Some...hesitation." she admitted to herself quietly before continuing her walk down the hall.

After only a few more moments of walking Mukuro paused in front of a door and reached out her hand as if to knock, but found herself pausing prematurely. Yesterday had been marked as the first phase in the Despair Plan, having the student council enter into a 'death game' scenario so that it could be captured and used to further spread Despair. But something had gone wrong, Junko had failed to show up and didn't leave any orders for her. Without orders she had been forced to abort the mission and allow the student council to go home having thought it was just one big prank. Luckily she was known as a rather shy girl she they had allowed it to pass thinking that some troublemaker had talked her into some practical joke.

She had followed what backup instructions she could figure from when she had asked Junko what to do if worst came to worst and the gathering was a failure. Purge the files on the student council and the blackmail and await further instructions. It pained her to throw away such hard work, but in the day and age of technology it was impossible to guess what could be checked, so she had ran a virus to collect the data from the systems they were using into about twenty flash drives and melted them in the schools boiler room.

But it had almost been a week now since her sister had gone silent. She knew that Junko was still alive, because in the event of her death the Monokuma's that were being mass produced would activate and gone on a rampage worthy enough to give her beloved sister a funeral dirge of despair, and seeing how thousands of murder happy monster bears weren't wandering the streets in search of warm bodies to tear apart she could confirm her sisters continued survival.

But that lead to the question of what could cause Junko Enoshima to throw away all her plans and retreat into her room like an otaku on a magical girl bender. There was only one way to find out, and so after gathering her courage Mukuro brought her hand forward and opened the door, pushing into the room and shutting it quickly behind her. The walls of this room had been soundproofed to ensure their conversations would never leave it, so insuring the closed nature of the room was a top priority.

After drawing in a breath that contained all her courage the second Despair turned around and opened her eyes to the room. What she saw stole away Mukuro's ability to process rational thought for a moment. The floor was littered in empty wrappers and discarded cans, the bed was an absolute mess of sheets and blankets and obviously hadn't been used for quite a few days. Makeup scattered the ground, some opened and spilling contents onto the floor and others just fallen. The lights were out, which was unusual as Junko prefered to keep the room bright in order to avoid any sneak attacks.

The first thought that flew into her mind was that a battle had taken place, and before even that thought could fully process there was already a knife in her hand. But upon closer inspection more questions were produced. There were no blood stains despite the mess, the only damage to the walls was from thrown objects, but the scatter marks and indents were to random for anything to have been used as a projectile against another human.

If she had too guess from just a first glance, the damage around her was from a temper tantrum, not a fight.

Mukuro's eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness and found her sister in front of a computer screen, head laid atop the keyboard and fully dressed in pajama's that were indecent by any standards, bordering on lewd if she were to wear them in front of anyone else. Mukuro stalked forward quietly, avoiding each piece of discarded trash and broken bits of glass from thrown objects to stand next to her sister, looking at what she had been writing on it.

Despair Plan v2.0

Find new way to convert Kamukura-senpai back to the side of Despair

Require new staging ground for a battle

Both sides must have equal chance of victory

NO STACKING THE DECK

HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THAT?

I DON'T KNOW MAYBE YOU SHOULD THINK OF SOMETHING!

THINK OF SOMETHING YOU ARE ME HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO THINK OF SOMETHING YOU WOULDN'T KNOW?!

STOP YELLING AT ME!

FUCK YOU!

NO FUCK YOU!

The conversation continued like that for the next few pages she could read. "This is bad." she muttered lowly to herself once she finished the document. Once Junko had a plan in place it was nearly impossible to drive her away from it until it was properly done. But something had caused her to throw away the first Despair plan, and now the aftershocks of letting go a fully formed plan were coming back to play havoc on her sisters mind.

After a moments internal debate Mukuro carefully nudged her sisters shoulder. "Junko, please we need to talk."

The Ultimate Despair cracked open an eye and let out a grunt of disapproval to the world around her before pulling her face from the desk. "I thought something smelled awful around here," she looked toward her sister and scowled. "What the hell do you want?"

"I...um...that is to say..." she had never quite known how to communicate with her sister, given that the force of her personality tended to overwhelm most people just by being around it. "I wanted to know what my orders are."

That drew a laugh out of the exhausted Junko. "Of course, some smelly jar head like you can't do anything without orders," the smile that played on her lips died rather quickly as she read over her previous notes. "The previous plan fell apart due to outside interference. Without Izuru on our side we lack the staying power to properly destroy the hopes of the students. A mass killing is awful, but without the schools project there to take the blame the odds of a collapse point being reached by using a mass brain washing video falls to under forty percent," she pressed her face into her hands and groaned. "All because of that worthless Naegi and that stupid bimbo hanging on his arm. Spreading their hope and preventing tragedy."

As usual Mukuro only half got what her sister was going on about, as she was simply meant to play muscle. But as soon as she mentioned Naegi her attention became laser focused. "Makoto played a role in stopping the plan?" that suprised her quite a bit, if anything Kirigiri had seemed like a much more likely threat to her goals.

"Just by random chance he took some stupid girl to an arcade that ass Togami was opening. The two of them managed to prevent the..." Junko stopped as she felt the temperature of the room drop down to a perfect zero. There were few things that could frighten the Ultimate Despair, in fact her brain normally processed fear as pleasure. But at that moment an animal part of her brain cried out in fear of being in the presence of something that could snap her neck between its jaws. She felt a vice like pressure on her shoulder, and turning her head revealed the owner of the hand applying that pressure was none other then her sister, wearing an unreadable expression.

"A...date?" Mukuro asked in what could only be described as a bestial growl.

"Thats what I said m-maybe if y-you cleaned out your ears..." Junko could barely push that insult out from her lips as she caught a look into her sisters eyes. Gone was the shuddering fool that she knew her sister to be. Now it had been replaced by the ruthless agent of Fenrir who had made grown men cry like babies.

"I see." Mukuro turned around and went to the door, exiting so silently that Junko couldn't have been sure that she had been there at all.

Junko finally released a breath that she hadn't realized she had been holding as the aura her sister had let off finally dissipated with distance between them. "What the hell?" she looked at the closed door for a moment and shook her head to remove any remaining effects. "Whatever, I have work to do." she returned to her keyboard with hopes that something would change.

Makoto didn't know very much about women. Sure he had a sister, but his sister wasn't exactly the kind of person who would just sit there and let someone pick her brains, even if that person was her brother. Normally the lack of knowledge about the fairer sex didn't raise itself as an issue to him, but recently things had changed in that area.

It was grand secret that he had enjoyed spending time with Chiaki, even after she had stopped seeming so blue about the disappearance of her friend. Playing games with her, talking with her, and even texting her had become things he did without thought at this point, set into his daily routine the same as eating and bathing. But things had been a bit different ever since going to the arcade together. At first he thought it had just been shock from the violence of it all, but she didn't seem overly emotional when he brought it up.

"Man I just don't get girls," he decided while leaning back in his chair, wishing that lunch would hurry up and click. Most of the class were out on personal projects relating to their talents, but seeing as his 'luck' was more about just random happenstance it wouldn't have been fair to send him out just to test it. Instead he had just been given some normal school work to deal with.

"Well of course you don't silly, you are a boy after all," Aoi looked behind her shoulder at him before just turning her desk around completely so they could be face to face. "Whats eating yah?"

The young man blinked in surprise, having utterly forgotten he wasn't alone in the classroom today. The pool was undergoing its monthly cleaning so the water had been drained out to allow a full scrub down, which meant Aoi was in the same situation as him. "Its nothing I didn't mean to say that out loud."

"Cooome on Naegi it is super boring just sitting here and romance drama is the best." she tilted her head to the side. "Well maybe not the best. There is swiming, doughnuts, Sakura, oh school activities and field trips are pretty fun too. But I mean it is still pretty cool you know?"

Instead of answering Makoto just gave a nod and debated internally if talking to Aoi was such a good idea. The Ultimate Swimmer was known to be a bit spacy on the best of days, but she was honest and straightforward, and that did mean he could ask her anything without worrying too much. "Okay, you see there is this girl I have been hanging out with."

"Is is Kyoko?" she asked.

"What?"

"Because if its Kyoko I probably won't be able to help out too much."

"It's not Kirigiri." he answered.

"Okay continue."

Makoto let out a small sigh before getting back to his thoughts. "So I have been spending time with this girl, but recently it feels like things have changed." he saw from the look on Aoi's face that she wanted him to continue. "I mean we have been meeting and hanging out for a few months and it was really nice, like having someone you could talk to about anything or just not talk and game with."

"When did it start to feel like things were changing?" Aoi asked without any of her usual silliness. Despite her spacey nature she took the feelings of her friends seriously, and it was obvious to see that Makoto was having real trouble here.

He looked down. "Well did you hear about the explosion at Togami's new building?"

That drew a snort from Aoi. "Unless you had earplugs you can't get him to shut up about the lawsuits he is trying to bring against everyone because of it."

"Well I was there, with Chi...Nanami. She is a big fan of games so I thought it would be fun for us to spend the day there. But then the fires broke out..." the image of the man jumping through the glass out of fear, the sight of others considering it to escape being burned, it still sent a chill through him even now.

Aoi put a hand on his and offered a warm and comforting smile. "Do you think maybe she is feeling shaken from that?"

He gave a shake of his head. "No, I mean she doesn't seem like it anyway, plus we already talked about it a few times."

"Hm," it was the most likely candidate for the reason, but that didn't mean it was the only thing. Some people were just able to get past that stuff quickly and others held onto it. "And there hasn't been anything else since then?"

Makoto thought for a moment before the image of them getting out of the car shot back into his mind. Their lips meeting, the blush on both of their faces. "Well we...um..." he blushed a bit and looked down.

"You?" Aoi tried to lead him on.

"We may have...I mean she...kissed me." he finally answered, his face bright red from admitting something so personal.

"Oh!" Aoi blushed a bit at learning something so private, but suddenly everything started to click into place. "And did you talk to her about that?"

He gave a shake of his head, turning even more red. "I mean it was probably a mistake so I didn't want to embarrass her." before he could continue Aoi brought down her fist on the top of his head with an annoyed scowl. "Ow! What the heck Asahina?"

"You dummy she is probably upset because she likes you but thinks you are rejecting her feelings!" Aoi couldn't believe how thick Makoto could be sometimes. From the guy who could read Kyoko's emotions to the guy who couldn't tell a girl kissing him probably meant she had feelings for him!

"But I thought it was just the stress making her do something weird, I mean there is this other guy she was talking about..." Makoto tried to defend his position with one part of his mind while the other mentally went over the information Aoi was giving him. Was it possible that Chiaki liked him? Well he knew she liked him enough to hang out everyday, and to bring him meals, and even to go out with him on a day off.

Aoi rolled up her notebook and slapped it on the top of his head. "Probably a tactic to scare away weird guys from approaching her. But if she kissed you that means something!" the meal bell finally rang out and Aoi slammed her fist down on the table. "Now you go out there and tell that girl how you feel, or else I am going to make you train with Sakura and me!"

"Y-yes ma'am!" he shot out of his seat and burst out into the hallway as fast as his legs could carry him. Training with those two would lead to his death.

Aoi watched him go and shook her head, leaning back in the chair. "Man, all the dependable guys get snatched up pretty quickly huh?" she giggled to herself and stood up. "Oh well, the bakery near here still sells baked goods, so I should be fine." she whistled to herself and exited the classroom as well.

Makoto finally paused his mad dash from the classroom at the elevator, watching the numbers tick down as it began its decent, all the while thinking about what he was going to say when he saw Chiaki. "Kirigiri always said that if you hit a snag you should make a list right?" he closed his eyes and focused on Chiaki.

From a purely physical aspect she was a super cute girl, the kind that pulled off the naive cute girl look without even trying. But beyond that she had one of the sharpest minds he had encountered outside of one of the ultimate's whose special ability was tied directly to their level of intelligence, and beyond that she was kind to everyone around her. She liked games which was pretty cool, and even through they were most of her life she liked exploring other hobbies and learning more about the world. He was still kicking himself for showing her the animated series behind Legends of Gladria after having expounded on its virtues. Of course the last time he had watched it he had been to young to realize how awful it was, but they still got a laugh out of it.

Thinking of her laugh brought a smile to his face, but then the matter at hand came back and he went back to business.

Did he like her? Yeah that much was easy to say. But he liked everyone so that wasn't exactly saying much. Just because you like someone doesn't mean you should end up going out with them. "So the real question is, do I like her more then I like other people?" with that thought he mentally ran a list of everyone he knew and compared them to Chiaki. His classmates were all interesting people, and he had no doubt that sitting for a lunch with them would be fun every once in awhile. But then he extended that time frame and saw one by one the scenario's fell apart. Some would end with him getting frustrated at being overdosed by their personalities, or them getting annoyed with him.

"So if I had a choice I would spend time with her over everyone else." with that much figured out he could begin to piece together his own feelings a bit more quickly. Ever since he had arrived at the school he had felt slightly inferior to the people around him, and while he still managed to make friends it was difficult getting them to lower their natural barriers created by their talents. But there wasn't any sort of barrier between Chiaki and himself. The two of them seemed to just click.

"We're both naturally optimistic," he realized, a smile growing on his face. Finally he had come to understand his own feelings, and with that in his heart he knew what to do next. The elevator finally touched the last floor and he exited the doors with a confident smile on his face.

Chiaki sat at the usual bench with her game system in hand, fighting through a wave of enemies while on the hardest mode, meaning that one missed dodge would be her doom. It was nice to have something that held her attention away from the world and its utter confusion for a few moments, even if with her skill even this sort of thing could only hold her for so long.

Over the past week the Ultimate Gamer had made her peace with the kiss and her feelings. At first she had felt a great deal of guilt for what she felt for Makoto, even if the exact reason why didn't make much sense to her. Of course she had loved to spend time with Hinata, being with him had been the highlight wof her day. Honestly if they had continued to hang out she could have imagined him in the place of Makoto, during that kiss. But she had made some peace with the fact that he had removed himself from her life, and despite her interest in knowing what had happened to him she didn't know what it would lead to. At this point could she still have the feelings she carried for him before?

After asking those questions she had come to the conclusion that she probably wouldn't. He would still be a great friend, but she couldn't see those feelings being the same, not after having met Makoto. His quiet confidence, his positive outlook, and the kindness he wore about himself. If ever the words 'a man who carries his heart on his sleeve' could have been used to describe someone it was him.

The kiss she had given him after the explosion had been a rush of emotions, but it wasn't something done just on accident or because of the stress. No the feelings behind it were much more genuine then that. But since that kiss she had failed to move forward on it, and for his part Makoto had done his best to not bring it up at all. It hurt, but part of her accepted it, because at least she could still keep her best friend.

She sighed a bit at that thought, right until a shadow was cast over her vision, distracting her just long enough to take the hit she had needed to avoid and cause a game over. When she looked up from her screen she saw Makoto looking down at her, with an expression she hadn't seen on him before. "Hello, Makoto." she greeted him with a small smile on her face, waiting for him to take his usual seat.

But despite their tried and true routine he simply stayed there, looking at her for a moment before drawing in a breath. "Chiaki I like you." the words spilled out of his mouth, and the instant they had he developed a bright blush on his cheeks.

The look was equally reflected on Chiaki's own cheeks. "I..um...like you too Makoto."

Makoto brought a hand into his hair and let out a sigh of frustration. "No I mean not like but...man I suck at words." he drew in a breath and looked down at her for a moment, as if trying to commit every detail of her face to memory before leaning forward and pressing his lips to hers in a gentle kiss.

For a moment Chiaki had no idea how to react to the sudden contact between the two of them. Her first kiss had been with Makoto, and during that whole time he had just seemed in total shock. Acting on more reflex then anything she put her arms around his neck and pushed herself into the kiss, returning it with innocent movements. The kiss might have only lasted a few seconds, but to the two of them it seemed like all the time in the world. "Wow..." Makoto looked down at her, red as a beet but wearing a smile fit for a fool.

Chiaki for her own part could only let out a sound of agreement and a nod, moving to sit back while forgetting she still had Makoto's neck wrapped in her arms. The sudden movement sent the Ultimate Lucky Student off balance and caused him to trip forward, and land his head face first into her lap, which seemed to have a bit of a bouncing effect and caused him to fall onto his back. "Are you okay?" she asked with concern before hearing a sudden laugh.

"I don't think I've ever felt better!" Makoto laughed and pulled himself up to a sitting position, looking up at her with a sense of pure adoration in his eyes. "So I think that I...I mean...I really like you."

Those words caused Chiaki's vision to go blurry for a moment, which seemed strange to her because she felt happier at that moment then she could remember feeling at the end of even her favorite game. "I really like you too." she set her game aside and following the madness that seemed to have gripped the two came off of the bench and wrapped her arms around him. "Makoto..."

He wrapped an arm around her and smiled. "Chiaki."

The two held each other there for a moment before standing up and sitting back on the bench, their hands resting on each other for a moment. This was their moment together. But it was not as private as either party thought.

Kyoko held a number of files in her arms as she walked out of the building, trying to will away the allure of sleep for a few more hours to go over the massive amounts of information that had been given to her over the past few days. Despite having hit a roadblock under her own power it seemed getting some help from her classmate had managed to leap her over it and advance her to new stages of this little mystery. But with each answer came new questions. Like after having discovered the program that had deleted her entry about Hinata Alter-Ego had discovered more encoded programs meant to further block anyone from looking into it.

There were programs meant to imitate his voice to call back home at set times, times apparently set so his parents would never be near the phone. If a call was sent from a former student the number would simply give a a message that the number had been disconnected. That meant the disappearance hadn't been the result of his family going out of the way to remove him, but rather it all lead back to the school itself. 4

Feeling quite confident in the new information she had procured she had made her way to the usual meeting spot, but before she could get much further she paused to see Makoto walking toward Chiaki with an odd smile on his face. The two talked, and then he leaned forward to kiss her.

The moments their lips connected Kyoko felt as if someone had stabbed her with a hot knife, and without realizing it she was stepping away from the area and into a building, clutching the files with shaking hands. Eventually her feet lead her to an empty classroom, shutting the door behind her and pressing her back against it.

She tried to think rationally about the scene she had just witnessed, trying to bring to mind what about it would bring about such a reaction from her. Kissing itself wasn't tied to any trauma she had ever experienced, as she had watched other people kiss before without suffering any ill effects. On top of that when she was younger she had kissed a few boys to test if it would bring about any of the feelings that detectives would often go through in stories when around members of the opposite sex that were aesthetically pleasing.

So that meant the kiss between them had effected her personally because it was the two of them. She didn't hold much opinion about Chiaki, so that left... "Naegi." she whispered his name and felt tears sting at her eyes as she slid down into a sitting position with her back pressed against the door. Her head hung forward and a few rouge tears fell from her face and too her knees.

Mukuro watched from the shadows as the kiss happened, and without a word moved from them and into the building just opposite of Kyoko. The only way anyone would have known she was there were from the indents that her fingers had made by pressing into the stonework of the wall. With a single movement she pulled out her phone and accessed the schools database, pulling up Chiaki's name from the registry of classes. It wasn't too difficult with such a limited amount of ultimate students. For a moment the Ultimate Soldier looked at the face of the girl, before the phone was obliterated in her hands by pressure she hadn't realized she had been exerting upon it.

"So this is...Despair?" she dropped the broken phone into a nearby bin and looked at her now empty hand, the one that bore the symbol of Fenrir. "Fenrir guiding principal number one, never let anything stand between yourself and your target." those words were gospel to her, and made her life what it was. She knew what she wanted now, and knew what stood in her way.

"All I need to do is remove her, once that is done the rest will be easy." a mad smile broke across the girls face as Despair consumed her heart.

She had her goal now, and luckily for her she had a sister that would be more then happy to help. And once the Despair touched Makoto he would be all hers.

Well that got dark near the end didn't it?

But joking aside thanks to all my readers who have patiently waited for another chapter. I intend for this fic to be done by the end of the year, maybe a bit before depending on how life works out.

Please favorite if you enjoy the story, follow for more, and review to let me known your thoughts and feelings. Every review means the world to me.