As diligent as M4 and RONDO were, even the sharpest of eyes had to close eventually, whether to blink or to sleep, and with an Ultimate Prankster in their midst…

I feel like I can't talk to Haruna or Miyu about any of this, Kurumi was bitter as she snuck out of the dorms. One of the hardest things about losing Miiko was trying to relearn her place in Lyrilily. She knew Haruna and Miyu still loved her very, very much, but it felt different now, awkward. None of them knew how to comfort one another after something like Miiko's execution. Plus, it's obvious Haruna likes Miyu more than me.

That much was always obvious, because Kurumi was always with Miiko, but now that Miiko was… gone… Kurumi swallowed.

Third wheel. The thought drove her from her bed, or rather, Miiko's. There was no rule against sleeping in one another's rooms or dorms, and Kurumi wanted to cling to Miiko as closely as possible. She tiptoed by Miyu and Haruna's rooms, glaring at them resentfully.

The Ultimate Prankster went to the second floor, then the sixth. She wasn't there when Saki was attacked, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why Monochio had turned her into a literal rocket scientist.

I don't care about what SHE saw, I just want to see if there are any other Implememor-Es that might have Miiko in them! Kurumi tried to justify her actions, coming dangerously close to doing the same thing Saki did just hours earlier. The only difference, Kurumi remembered the rule.

That was why she went to the second floor first. One of the classrooms focused on robotics, and Kurumi noticed a remote-controlled car on the teacher's desk. That was just one of many treasures, both scattered across the second floor and in her dorm room, that she would use to circumvent Monochio's rule.

It took hours, but in the dead of night, all Kurumi had was time. In fact, because of how violently Monochio burst onto the sixth floor to chase after Saki, it carved a swath of destruction in its wake that made it far easier to see into the sixth floor without actually going out onto it. Even from where she stood in the doorway, Kurumi could see the computer Saki had once been at.

Implememor-Es were scattered all over the place around it, and Kurumi immediately sent her remote-controlled car in, cords tied to the back and a ruler taped to the front. They were a net and a plow, to make collecting the Implememor-Es even easier. She had a few tricks up her sleeve to help her get the ones that were still plugged into the computer, but about half of them were already torn out or on the floor.

"Thanks for the help, you dumb, ugly fuck!" Kurumi smiled creepily as she scooped up her prizes. "You made my job that much easier!"

Once she had a decent-sized handful—more than enough to start—she raced back to the second floor and into the computer lab near the staircase, immediately to the right. She was even luckier than she realized, for had she not seen the Implememor-Es plugged into the computer on the sixth floor, she wouldn't have understood how to get them to work with the computers on the second.

Thank you, Saki, thank you!

ooo

There was still a bit of setup and setback, the computers in the second floor lab far inferior to the ones hidden on the sixth, but Kurumi's VJ skills came in handy, and she was eventually able to force and wiggle the Implememor-Es into the second floor computer ports.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Kurumi wiped her forehead on the back of her hand. I knew it would be difficult, but good God!

It was a good thing being a prankster made her so good with her fingers and sleight of hand. The only extra held she'd needed was an adapter on a couple of the Implememor-Es that were unintentionally damaged in Monochio's rampage. Luckily, Kurumi already knew where to look. There was a small school store on the first floor in one of the lounges. The currency, of course, was Monodiscs, and Kurumi had more than enough after their Implememor-E scavenger hunt earlier.

There was a vending machine selling various types of chargers, cords, and adapters, and once Kurumi found the one she needed, she slipped a few Monodiscs into the machine, and out popped the adapter. The securer connection to the computer meant that the visuals of the Implememor-Es were now sharper and clearer than before, so it was a purchase well worth its price. Once everything was set up and assembled, Kurumi sped through Implememor-E after Implememor-E and she did not stop until she finally found the one that would've been Miiko's.

Miiko! Kurumi's heart stopped in her chest when at last that familiar, tiny girl with the short, bright blonde hair came into view. There were three main students in her memory: Sonia Nevermind, Gundham Tanaka, and Korekiyo Shinguji. In many ways, Miiko was already like a perfect mix of Sonia and Gundham, a proper young rich girl with golden hair, but also a Hellish fiend with a fondness for furry friends and serial killers.

In fact, one memory Kurumi watched involved Miiko holding Gundham's "Four Dark Devas of Destruction". While Miiko smiled gleefully at him, holding the quartet of hamsters out to him, he reared back in sheer shock.

"Wh-what witchcraft?! Th-that this… this… this child should seduce the Four Dark Devas of Destruction away from me?!" But what started off as jealousy eventually became friendship when Miiko showed just as much interest in Gundham's interest for the dark arts as she did in Gundham's animals. Combined with her love of Sonia, and her love of horror movies with Sonia, Gunham could not hate Miiko forever.

But halfway through the video, the Implememor-E glitched, the screen turning to static.

"Huh?! What's going on?!" Kurumi sat up in her chair, scowling at the interruption, tapping the computer screen angrily. Then the it switched to a dark red sky. Gone was the gorgeous, sprawling academy. All that remained was a skeletal city, littered with husks and corpses of the dead, man and machine alike. Kurumi recoiled, wondering briefly if it was one of Miiko's horror movies. Then she heard… that voice and was chilled to the bone.

"Well, well, well! Lil sis! Long time no see! Let me guess… you finally got yourself in a spot of trouble you simply can't escape without my help! So at last—at long, long, last!—…You come crawling back to me." The boy managed to affect smug amusement, patronizing melodrama, near-hysteria, and an absolute deadpan all in the span of one run-on sentence. Even though a part of Kurumi wanted to swear that she'd never seen or heard this boy before in her life, another part of her, sleeping deep inside, was certain that he was one of the most important people in her past…

This was the potential power of unedited Implememor-Es. They weren't just in the security room for storage, but to keep the students secure from them. Implememor-Es transmitted memories through the flash of their lights, hence the name, so the stronger the light, the more people that could be impacted by the memory. The reason none of Monochio's worked like that was because its Masterminds were attempting to develop Implememor-Es that were far more specific. The Implememor-Es in the security room were still in the process of being refined.

But still, why didn't I… remember at least SOME of this… when I saw Haruna's motive video…? Kurumi thought, dazed and clutching at her heart, blinking through tears. She could see a darkhaired boy in white and black checkered clothes, wearing a chess piece around his neck on a white string. It was a black knight with a black king's crown glued on top of its head.

Kurumi and Miiko stood before him, Kurumi in a black and white dress, also wearing a chess piece around her neck. Unlike the boy, her string was black, and she wore the white bishop, a tiny dove carving she made in carpentry for theater tech glued atop the bishop.

"Kokichi Oma…" Both Kurumis whispered at the same time.

"Kurumi Shiratori!" Kokichi replied glibly. "DICE doesn't kill. Or didja really forget that so soon? I'm not like your girlfriends!" he teased.

"Just like how Miiko and I never hurt anyone with our pranks?" Kurumi interrupted with a scoff, hands flying to her hips.

Did he really think he and his gang of gangsters were somehow morally superior?! Just because Haruna had… done some things… didn't make all of Lyrilily bad. In fact, that was why they were trying to save Haruna at all! It wasn't just for their reputation, none of Lyrilily wanted to see any other in so much pain. And Kokichi, you know that damn well, you smug little fuck!

They weren't asking for him and DICE to give up their lives for the cause, or even to help join the fight at all. They just needed help getting through the city safely. Haruna was going crazy with power and paranoia, and her overly strict laws over that section of the city made it such that three, sweet, cute little schoolgirls were rather easy targets for all kinds of trouble, and having a band of seven young men in clown masks wielding weapons that may or may not have been real was helpful. Even if it wasn't Haruna's laws, it was the effects of the Tragedy still rippling through.

"Yeah! Miiko may be the Ultimate Horror Enthusiast, but she wants everyone to have fun with it, not actually be hurt by it!" Miiko nodded, hands on her hips, pouting at Kokichi just like Kurumi in the Implememor-E.

Present-Day Kurumi's eyes widened in surprise. Ultimate Horror—?

She didn't get to finish the thought before something large, hard, and metal collided with the back of her skull. Her head slammed on the keyboard in front of her and the combined force of the two blows knocked her out at once.

While her attacker retreated, keeping an eye out for other late-night wanderers, a second student darted in and snatched the Implememor-Es.

"What was she doing here?" The attacker demanded.

"Are you surprised?" The accomplice asked, smirking even though she knew the other girl couldn't see her in the dark.

"That was close! That was way too close!"

"Well, either way, we stopped it." The accomplice shrugged. "I suppose that is on us for not repairing that door sooner though…"

"We were unable to get away from the others!" The attacker scoffed. "It is hardly our fault!"

"Fault or not, this is what it got us." The accomplice gestured to Kurumi's still form, a splotch of pink already forming on the back of her head.

Without another word, she strode away. The attacker watched her shadowy outline retreat with a scowl. She returned several minutes later with a syringe. Kurumi was still unconscious. Good.

I'm sorry to have to do this, Kurumi, but… I don't know what you saw… The accomplice became a second attacker, injecting Kurumi.

"You don't think that's going to incriminate us?" The first attacker scoffed, eyes flashing warily.

"No, no one else is supposed to have any access to it," the second replied, pocketing the empty syringe. "Now, let's go, we have even more work cut out for ourselves tonight…" Alongside their original goal, the duo needed to repair the door faster, and inform Monochio of how close one of its students came to uncovering the Masterminds' secret lair.