AN: Yeah, I'm posting two chapters because I've been too busy to type and missed my deadline of posting a new chapter.
It was two days before anything happened, and John was glad for the respite but wished that reality could have come less violently.
Day 23, 0827 Hours, Cafeteria
"What?" John finally managed, staring helplessly at Monokuma.
The bear had been in the cafeteria when he had arrived with Ferris, John having woken up early enough to run into the chemist in route to the cafeteria. They had a fairly mindless conversation, or more accurately Ferris had had a fairly mindless conversation while john listened to him speak, up until they stepped through the cafeteria doors to find Monokuma and Shi-ru waiting for them. The bear and the penguin seemed to be miming a conversation, both gesticulating wildly, surprising for Shi-ru who was usually fairly neutral, and paid them no mind except for Shi-ru saying, "Wait here for everyone."
And they had waited, the argument between the animatronics ending abruptly when Monokuma pulled out a switch, pressed a button, and fried the circuits in the penguin animatronic, calling in a different one to dispose of the smoking wreck, until all the students had trickled in, before Monokuma announced the next motive.
"You heard me," the bear said gleefully, "if a murder doesn't occur within the next twenty four hours, I'm going to start slicing bits off people every hour! Oh and remember, it will be a random draw, so if one person happens to be really unlucky they might end up without any limbs before someone else gets the ax!"
Before anyone else could react, the situation finally clicked in Jane's mind, and the girl began shrieking, before fleeing the room, her screams vanishing towards the dorms. After everyone recovered from the special effect specialist's panicked flight, Alexander addressed the bear.
"Surely you can't mean to butcher us to death."
"Of course not, I'll stop at the point where there simply isn't any point of you being alive anymore. Namely you'll be bereft of arms, legs, ears, tongue, nose and possibly eyes!" Monokuma said, giggling afterwards.
John felt a wave of nausea but fought it off, feeling no desire to have the meager breakfast he had managed to stomach while Monokuma was present making a reappearance so soon after. He could see that a few of the others had turned green, and Louise had started breathing heavier, although she still looked calm enough. He noticed that Rowland, Ferris, and Barry all seemed to take the motive in stride, none of them displaying outward signs of distress, although Rowland had paled slightly, maybe, he was pretty pale already so John wasn't a hundred percent sure but he was fairly certain the brainiac had paled.
John snapped out of his inner thoughts and noticed that Monokuma had fled, leaving the students to their own devices. He noticed that a few of them had already run off, those that had remained included Ferris and Atsuko, the former patting the latter on the back as she stared off into space in shock, Chloe who had punched the wall in frustration and was now nursing her fist, and Alexander who was sitting down with his brow furrowed, strategizing. Barry also emerged from the kitchen a minute later, with a plateful of food John had no idea how he could stomach.
John looked around the room once again as he realized that Paris was missing, and he was seized with concern for his friend. Glancing at Ferris and Alexander before deciding to locate the students that had fled and try and diffuse the situation before any drastic action was taken. He hovered in the hall for a second, torn between checking dorms or the rest of the school, deciding upon the rooms as they should be fairly easy to check. He ran to Paris's room first as the other rooms were the rooms of dead students or students whose whereabouts he already knew. After pounding on the door failed to retrieve a response, John proceeded to do the same with all the other rooms, excepting Jane's as he decided that she would not answer her door anyways.
The only door that opened at his pounding was Louise's, although upon entering it seemed that the forensic expert had simply failed to close her door all the way. Or had set a trap for him, she would have extensive knowledge on how to disguise her crime and could fudge the evidence. But the murder would still occur in her room and she would still be the top suspect so John discounted the idea and pressed on searching her room. It was a plain room, little details beyond a few pictures of her with family, John guessed as well as one with a boy that looked nothing like her or anyone he knew, who could have been her boyfriend, he had never heard her say she had one but Atsuko might know, that seemed like a bit of gossip she could pounce upon.
After it became obvious Louise had abandoned her room, John left, taking care to close the door properly. He felt a twinge of guilt for invading her personal space like that but he quickly discarded that thought, focusing instead on where the other students might have scattered too. Mary probably ran to the art room, prompting Rowland to follow her, Paris was probably doing the same thing he was while Jane was probably trying to hide somewhere, she may have only pretended to run back to her dorm and snuck pass while everyone else was focused on Monokuma.
Billy and Louise he had no idea where to find, and he knew where Barry, Chloe, Alexander, Ferris, and Atsuko were. That was eleven and he made twelve, weren't there sixteen of them? Oh, right, Adam, Amelia, Wilbur and Perdita were beyond harm now. And there would be plenty of harm in the future, no matter what happened. The time frame was even shorter than the previous motives, adding more pressure.
John began running down the hall deciding to check the entire South Wing before moving on. He passed the cafeteria, looking in on the cafeteria to check and see if anyone had left. Barry was still slowly eating his breakfast, and Chloe was sitting off in a corner, and stood up when she saw him.
"Hey, John," she said, waving him over, "Alexander told me to tell you where they went," she was gritting her teeth as she spoke, obviously troubled, "Alexander is going to the data room to try and squeeze out any data he can, while Atsuko and Ferris went to track down Mary and Rowland."
"Thanks," John said quickly moving to go before he said, "Are you coming with me to try and find the others?"
The survivalist paused before nodding and moving after him forcing him to run at a fair clip as she began covering the ground at a steady lope. John began panting slightly as they reached the nurse's office looking inside quickly to confirm that no one was present, before moving on to the library. They stood at the entrance before Chloe declared it would take too long to search the entire library before bellowing at the top of her voice, turning and leaving after no one replied, forcing John to once again run after her.
They checked the rooms along the way the gym, the store, and found no one. Assuming that Atsuko and Ferris went into the East Wing to search for Rowland and Mary, Chloe turned into the West Wing John panting heavily as he followed. They ran down to the labs, finding the physics lab empty before finding Billy standing in the greenhouse. The behavioral analyst turned and acknowledged their presence with a nod before turning back to look at the sky through the ceiling. A bird perched on the roof surprisingly enough, and was looking at them with beady eyes.
"Good to see at least some things are surviving," Chloe said the dark tone obvious in her voice.
"Yeah," Billy replied, looking to the other two, "I came to at least glimpse some form of freedom and that bird just grabbed my attention, first living thing I've seen since we've been here."
John grimaced at the truth of the statement, before inspecting, or at least trying too, finding himself unable to identify it beyond that it was brown and had a head and wings. He considered that Chloe might know what its species was but decided that it might be better to make sure Billy was alright before moving on to find Louise and Paris since they hadn't seen the soccer player yet.
"How are you holding up?" John asked Billy, realizing it was probably a stupid question.
"We seem to be asking that question a lot, 'Are you alright?,' heh, we might as well record it at this point and just play the recording any time we want to ask it," Billy said, Chloe snorting in amusement, Billy was silent while she did so but continued once she fell silent, "but that would lose the positive effect of the personal concern that is transmitted," Billy sighed, before looking back up, a t the bird and finishing his thoughts by saying, "birds are symbols of hope right? Maybe this is a sign things will turn out for the best for us."
"He seems fine to me, let's go find your girlfriend," she said, before exiting the greenhouse.
John was dissatisfied with Billy's answer, but Chloe was moving away as he stood there, and Billy had gone back to looking at the sky. The bird had flown away and the sun had vanished behind a cloud. He supposed that the hope both had given Billy would linger, though if it was enough to prevent Billy from attempting murder to get out of this situation, John was unsure.
He turned and ran back through the biology lab and into the hall in time to see Chloe vanish into the chemistry lab. As he moved to open the door, the survivalist stepped back through and shook her head. John turned back down the hall and spotted Paris entering from the hall from the one that lead back to the other areas of the school. Hailing her, he and Chloe approached her and she met them halfway, John noticing she was clutching her arm as she approached.
"H-how a-are y-y-ou, gu-ys?" she asked haltingly.
"Your arm," Chloe demanded, "what happened to it?"
"Oh," Paris glanced down at her arm, "I, I r-an into Jane a-and she p-panicked and bit m-e."
"That needs to be cleaned and bandaged," Chloe said, grabbing Paris's arm, "do you know how much, never mind you probably don't, but we should find Rowland, now."
"But-."
"No buts Stutters, we can hand with your boyfriend later."
Paris burned bright red as Chloe began dragging her away, doing her best to protest before both vanished from John's view. Now alone, John debated whether or not he should continue looking for Louise alone or find someone else to search with. Deciding to at least look inside the storage area to see if anyone had taken a cord to track their way back to the entrance with. Stepping inside he saw nothing of note beyond the Shi-ru drone, who was agitated, shifting constantly and looking between the entrance and the maze of shelves. Deciding to at least pump what information he could from the mechanical penguin, John walked up to the robot, and was promptly spoken too.
"I'm sorry, I made it worst," the penguin said.
"How did you make it worst?" John asked.
"I'm sorry, I made it worst," repeated Shi-ru.
John didn't say anything.
"I'm sorry. I made it worst."
"I'm sorry. I made it worst."
"I'm sorry, I made it worst."
John slowly backed away from the obviously malfunctioning machine, Shi-ru still repeating to himself, "I'm sorry, I made it worst," as John fled the room. He decided now would be a good time to seek shelter in a group, the ominous omen of Shi-ru failing outweighing his ability to trust in the omen of the bird, and the little amount of hope it brought.
Reaching the Central Hall, John hesitated before moving back down into the South Wing, deciding to check in on the nurse's office, figuring that there would be a good place to start. As John passed the sealed entrance, Ferris ran past him, the portable radio held over his head, the Monokuma song blaring loudly. John paused as the chemist continued his dash down the halls, watching Ferris weave between rooms waving the radio above his head.
Considering pursuing Ferris, John decided against it, figuring Atsuko wouldn't be too far behind and turned and continued down the hall. He arrived at the nurse's office and opened the door, finding Paris, Chloe, and a Shi-ru drone that was treating Paris's arm.
"Hey," Chloe said, nodding at him.
"I thought you were getting Rowland," John stated, looking between her and Paris.
"I-I remained h-her t-hat Shi-r-ru would help i-if we g-got injured," Paris said.
"Yep," said Shi-ru, finishing his task and moving away from Paris, a pink bandage on her arm.
"What's wrong with the storage room Shi-ru?" John asked after a minute.
"What?" the penguin responded, who was busying himself with putting supplies back.
"There's something wrong with the Shi-ru in storage, he's unresponsive and just repeating the same thing over and over."
"No," Shi-ru responded, "That's not right; I have a comprehensible knowledge of what's happening with every unit…"
Shi-ru stared off into space for a second, before abandoning his task to vanish.
"W-hat w-was that a-bout?" Paris asked.
"He realized something was horribly wrong," Chloe said, "that was definitely panic before he left."
"Shit," John said, "shit, we need to find everyone, now!"
"We can't split up," Chloe said, "too vulnerable, hope that average thing of yours pans out because we're probably the two fastest runners here."
Before John could respond, Chloe was hauling Paris to her feet and they were moving, and John had no choice but to join them. He managed to maintain their rate, surprised that he wasn't choking for breath yet.
"Damn," Chloe shouted suddenly skidding to a stop in the Central Hall, causing the others to follow suit, "which way?"
John felt both of their gazes turn to him and he resisted the urge to tell Chloe to pick the way since she was leading them.
After a moment he said, "The storage room, we'll check where the Shi-ru was malfunctioning."
Chloe winced and said, "That'll take a long time but your call man."
Once again they took off running, John matching their pace. The arrived at the storage room quickly and entered to find the Shi-ru had been replaced with Monokuma, who giggled as they ran past him, Paris pausing to grab a cord, taking off again without attaching it to her belt. They began the tedious task of maneuvering the aisles, using the cord Paris had grabbed to mark the ones they had already searched.
John paused to catch a quick breath looking at the ground as he did so. He did a double take as he saw a strange liquid pooled on the ground. Droplets led off in two directions, showing two possible ways, one way being where they had come from. It was purple, at first and was slowly turning red. Calling Paris and Chloe over, John followed the blood back to where it originated.
Day 23, twenty minutes earlier, the Cafeteria
Ferris sat in the cafeteria, staring at the radio. Atsuko had run back to her dorm for the time being and he was now alone, having found Rowland early, and met with Alexander to strategize. Alexander was going to try and grab whatever useful information he could from the data on the various computers while Rowland had run off to the storage room to try and find something of use.
He and Atsuko had spent some time searching the East Wing before they had given up on finding any of the wayward students. They had seen Paris entering the West Wing so they assumed John was with her at this point and instead had gone back to check the South Wing again. Atsuko had vanished into her dorm so Ferris had wandered back into the cafeteria, Barry now eating lunch, he thought.
Ferris hit the power button and once again the Monokuma song came blaring on. Ferris sighed, not sure what he had been expecting. He pushed the radio sideways out of boredom and stopped to think about the events of the past two days. And a fact clicked in his mind they had never moved the radio outside the cafeteria since they had got here. Oh, they were so stupid.
Grabbing the radio he began running out of the room, dashing down the halls. Where to start where to start, South has turned up nothing so far so West then East? It wouldn't take long.
He passed John, and began weaving to avoid him, still weaving afterwards because his mind was elsewhere; listening for any change in the radio's output. Through the Central Hall to, where was the farthest point west? In the storage room, that place was huge; he would simply have to keep going until he reached the far wall.
Ferris entered the storage room, still carrying the radio above his head. He noticed the storage Shi-ru was saying something and that Monokuma was also present and seemed to be messing with the penguin, but Ferris turned his gaze to the cord that was retracting and noted it before he dived into the aisles himself. He began running west, and continued to do so, weaving through the shelves. He heard a change in the frequency, static instead of the song and veered off to follow where the radio changed.
He heard voices and thought he might be reaching where the other person who had been coming back, a small voice in his brain telling him that he should have passed them long ago. He kept running; that meant that the cord was cut most likely. He was nearing the voices, voice now, and his mind sent a signal to slow down, just as the voices went silent.
Ferris crept around the corner and saw…
Day 23, the present, Storage Room
Rowland was leaning against the shelves, the unit taking his weight and holding him up. John walked around the brainiac, stepping around the small pools of blood. Rowland had either been leaning on the shelf when he died or slid down, giving John a good view of the wound in the back of his neck that was bleeding still. A slack cord led off behind some shelving in the distance.
Day 23, the past, Storage Room
Ferris grimaced at Rowland's corpse, judging that he had died when a few minutes ago, and all he had been hearing was someone talking to them self, and he had juxtaposed the voice that was fighting the Monokuma song on the radio to the location of the other voice. He heard footsteps and began to turn towards them, the radio beginning to slip through his fingers. Ferris then made one of the most important choices of his life.
Day 23, the present, Storage Room
John looked around, trying to locate Ferris as the announcement declaring Rowland's death went off, but to his growing horror, Ferris was nowhere nearby. The chemist was missing, Rowland was dead, and there was a killer at large that needed to be found.