AN: Next chapters here, who's ready for the endgame?
Day 34
John left his room only to grab food, he didn't see anyone else at all that day.
Day 35
Again, John only left to grab food. He saw Mary but they didn't talk. Paris knocked on his door and tried to reach him but he didn't feel like talking to her yet.
Day 36
Monokuma forced them to assemble and gave them a new motive that John ignored completely. He didn't think anyone else payed it any attention either. Paris cornered him and forced him to talk to her. He appreciated her concern, but said that he was just taking time to adjust. When she asked what he was adjusting to, he told her the truth.
He didn't know.
Day 37
Nothing.
Day 38
Nothing.
Day 39
Nothing.
Day 40
Monokuma broke.
Day 40, 1230 Hours, the Gymnasium
"You bastards pathetic moping is making me sick with disappointment," Monokuma said, as the four of them stood around him, "This isn't proper despair at all, so you know what, I'm going to give you one last shot at escape."
John looked up, the funk that had been consuming him forgotten. Was this it? Was this finally Monokuma's endgame?
"If you all can find out exactly what this was all about, who I truly am, basically, solve all the mysteries behind this school, then I'll let you go free, BUT! If you fail, then you'll have to kill each other in a battle to the death for only the most determined killer to leave," Monokuma said.
John looked at the others, all looking hopeful and prepared for the challenge. As always the threat of death was looming but now they had a chance that they all could leave. It may have taken awhile but escape was within grasp.
John stepped forward and said, "What happens to you if we win?"
Monokuma paused to think for a moment before saying, "I suppose it's only fair that I am punished in the usual style, but you'll have to succeed at figuring out all that happened for that to work!"
"You better be ready to pay for all the pain you've caused!" Mary yelled suddenly, cracking her knuckles.
"Yeah, you're going to eat it when se bring all the facts to light!" Atsuko said.
"Yes, hold onto that feeling," Monokuma said suddenly, "If you're hopeful and sure of yourself the despair of failure will be just that much sweeter. Your investigation time is ticking so I would hurry up!"
Monokuma fled after saying those words, leaving the four students to figure out a strategy.
"All right, we need to split up and look for anything useful," John said, the others nodding in agreement, "the archive room is definitely in need of a thorough go over, the storage room could be investigated more, someone should go and check out anything else that might be of note," John paused as he thought.
"I'll go and check the files in the archives," Atsuko volunteered before running off.
"I guess I can go rummage through the storage room," Mary said, before sprinting away.
"What are you going to check?" Paris asked looking John over.
"I'm going to go and see if I can't get into Monokuma's room," John said, "I want to see that machine again."
"Ok, I'll come with and check the camera room then," Paris responded, letting John take the lead in moving towards the upper floor.
They ran, the sound of their footsteps keeping the silence away as they ran through the Central Hall into the North Wing and up the stairs that led to where Monokuma's room was. John slowed down as they passed the Principal's Office. He had forgotten about that room; they had spent so little time in it. There were plenty of rooms they hadn't inspected too closely that might contain secrets of one kind or another.
They stopped in front of the room with Monokuma's face emblazoned on the door. Paris looked at John encouragingly, before gesturing for him to try the door. John reached forward, grasped the knob…
And sighed as it failed to turn.
"I expected as much," he said, stepping back from the door.
Paris nodded, before saying, "You think of somewhere else to check?"
"Yes, the office down below," John said, "We haven't inspected it that closely yet."
Paris nodded, before waving and turning away to go and enter the camera room. John paused a moment, wondering what exactly she thought she was going to find in there as all recorded footage was inaccessible. She might have been monitoring them all to make sure that there was no foul play, but that wasn't necessary, right?
John shook his head and turned to go to the office on the floor below. Whatever she was doing there wasn't any way it could harm them, as they were so close to getting out. Only someone in an extremely skewed mental state would do anything rash or dangerous considering they already had a lot of the knowledge of what was happening.
At least, John thought so.
Reaching the room, John threw the door open, revealing the orderly office again. He began rummaging through folders, finding nothing of note, until he found a locked drawer. Stopping a moment, John considered just breaking it open, but that would break school rules which would be stupid to do right now.
John began searching for a key, and hit the power button on the computer so that it would be ready for him to browse its contents. Not finding a key quickly, John checked the computer to find it locked, and requiring a password. John decided to try a few random passwords, none of which worked. John growled slightly and went back to searching for a key, cycling through possible passwords as he continued his search.
Worthless files, pointless things, nothing useful, nothing useful. Not the name of the school, not Monokuma, not Enoshima, none of their names, not Shi-ru nor Shi-cu, not the full input either. God security measures were annoying. Why couldn't anything useful just fall into his lap and give him the answers he was looking for?
John paused for a moment to look around on the off chance that the universe heard his pleas and decided to drop what he was looking for directly into his lap. It didn't because that sort of thing only happens in bad fiction or through pure dumb luck. John was certain that he wasn't living out a story told by the likes of that stupid director who always had those sucky plot twists and he wasn't Atsuko who was supposed to be lucky.
Maybe something great happened for her while he was standing around waiting for cosmic answers.
Why was he wasting time standing around again?
Oh, right, he was hoping for divine intervention so he wouldn't have to waste time, which is what he was doing right now.
Was he becoming more absentminded lately? John could swear he didn't use to think about so much so deeply that basically amounted to nothing.
Focus.
…
No, really, focus.
…
Did it use to be this hard?
…where was the door?
John knew something was wrong. He couldn't think properly. The thoughts slid across his mind, making it impossible to actually act upon them. Was he swaying? Or was it just his vision going wonky. He felt wonky. Was wonky even a word? Wonky, wonky, wonky. Wooonnkkyy. What a fun word. Wooonnnkkkyyy. Heh, what was he worried about?
He should really get to bed, he was sure that Jamie, James, he meant James, ha, he was so sleepy that he was becoming confused. It was a good thing his, his, sibling was so understanding, but John still wanted to, to respect their life choices. Wonky.
The door, that was the first thing. Find the wonky door. Wonky. If Jam-es saw him he, yeah, he would help him. Very good kid, wonky. Wonky.
Heh, wonky, wonky, wonky, won...ky?
Who was that dragging him backwards? He let his head loll back, and he saw a girl. He wondered who she was, her hair was pretty. He reached out to touch it and she slapped his hand away. He blinked, before reaching out again and was slapped again. He looked at the rest of her face, and was curious why she had her shirt pulled over her mouth. He wondered why. The air was different, John wondered why.
…
…
Fuck.
John sat up. And regretted it. He turned sideways and threw up. He heard someone call out in distress as well as someone cursing loudly. He felt someone begin to pat his back, which he appreciated. Slowly his vision settled, and John managed to look around and see that they were all assembled. They were in the nurse's office, and the others looked worried.
"What…happened?" he finally managed.
"Monokuma turned on all of the fucking bobby traps," Mary said, scowling at the sick on her shoes, causing John to mutter a quiet sorry, which she brushed off, "there's some kind of animal in the storage room now, I had to lock myself in the cold storage until it left."
"The ceiling almost crushed me," Atsuko offered, "I was lucky I had left some of the files up high open or I wouldn't have noticed until it was too late to escape."
"The halls were rigged with spears that pop up in a pattern fortunately, so the damn thing is giving us some chance at least," Mary said after a moment of silence passed by.
"He never…said he…wouldn't activate all…that…crap," John said, still trying to get his lungs back in functioning order, "are…you alright…Paris?"
Paris looked towards him from where she had been staring off into the distance.
"Yes, there, was a trap in the camera room, and the spears, but I saw what happened with Atsuko and Mary, and you were just staring off into space…" she trailed off as she went back to looking out into the distance.
They were all silent as they waited for something else to happen.
"We…can still do…this," John said, slowly pushing himself up.
Mary, Atsuko, and Paris all looked to him, before looking at each other. They seemed to communicate silently as John balanced himself on his elbows, still groggy from whatever that gas had been. Why had he been so fascinated with the word wonky?
Maybe he wasn't as recovered as he thought.
Deep breaths, purge the air and worry about long term damage when you're not stuck in a now fully operational death trap where the other three people could very unlikely snap and shove you into one of them for the chance at escaping. That would still be in effect, so that if someone could in any conceivable way be shown in any light as a murderer then they would be and the trial would be forced so that Monokuma could have his field day.
They had to get all the information they could before Monokuma could do anything like that.
He looked up and at his friends as they finally finished their nonverbal deliberation and turned to him.
"You sure you're alright?" Atsuko asked, voicing the overall concern of the small group.
"Yeah, just need…to completely purge the gas from my lungs," John said, pushing himself off the table, reaching over and grabbing onto Paris for support.
"…we should still split up, and arm ourselves in case we run into more of those…creatures Mary talked about show up," Paris said, shifting John to a different angle that was easier for her to support.
"The weapons, Monokuma…gave us should work," John said, letting Paris control his movement.
"Alright, visiting our rooms is a priority then, we split up then and go and check out the same rooms?" Atsuko asked, Mary nodding in agreement.
"Only if you think there is anything more in there," John said, still breathing heavily.
A plan reached, they moved outside of the safety of the nurse's office into the waiting death trap of a school.