Mukuro's room didn't feel like hers at all. But it wasn't supposed to. She locked the door, pulled off her wig, and collapsed on to the bed. Pretending to be Junko was exhausting. But it was necessary for Junko's plan, and that made it worth any sacrifice.
'Why?' Makoto's voice asked. Mukuro shot up to see him before her, limp but propped up by a spear impaled through his torso. 'What… Makoto?' she asked, numb with shock. 'Why?' he asked again, coughing up blood. 'Why did you do this to me?' She stared at him, speechless. 'I… sorry…' she finally stammered. 'I thought… I thought Junko would… I thought she'd let you live…'
'Huh? Why would you think that, big sis?' Junko's smirking face poked out from behind Makoto as she pulled the spear out of his body. Mukuro watched, frozen with fear and confusion, as he fell to the ground. Blood soaked the carpet around him. 'I never said anything about letting him live', Junko giggled as she hugged Mukuro from behind and rested her head on her shoulder. 'Although, now that I think about it, making him go out on a date with a flat-chested smelly pervert like you would have been even more despairingly despairful than just killing him.' Junko sighed, suddenly standing behind Makoto's still-moving body. 'Oh well, it's a bit late for that now.' She raised a baseball bat in the air and slammed it down on Makoto's head. A loud crack rang out and blood ran through his hair. She raised the bat again and slammed it down again and again and again until his head was nothing but a pile of bone, brains, hair, blood, and an eyeball on the carpet.
'Makoto!' Mukuro screamed, bolting upright in bed, her heart thumping hard in her chest. 'Where… am I? Wait… the plane… the cabin… that's right. It was… it was just a nightmare.' She numbly sat still as her heartbeat slowed. 'I'm in the cabin, with…' She suddenly looked down to her left to see Chihiro staring up at her, cowering and terrified.
Mukuro's heart began racing again as she realised what she'd just revealed. 'He heard. He must have heard me. He… he knows.' She stared down at him, not knowing what to say. 'I… didn't hear anything…' Chihiro finally stammered. He was shaking. The sight made Mukuro remember a school hallway littered with the corpses of children, one staring up at her with those same terrified eyes as his life drained out of his body. 'That's not what I want to be anymore!' Mukuro screamed internally, slamming her eyelids shut and trying desperately to conjure up memories of Makoto's smile. All she saw was his eye staring up at him from the mass of meat and hair that used to be his head. Her body and mind went numb. Her stomach tied itself into a million knots. She couldn't breath. The whole world was falling apart. 'He nearly died because of me! Why did I think he'd love me back?! I'm not a good person like him! I nearly got him killed! I killed so many people! How could he love me?! He must hate me! How could he love me?!' She collapsed back onto the bed, gasping for air. Something suddenly started rising out of her stomach. She instinctively turned to face the floor as the meagre contents of her stomach forced their way out of her mouth. She limply flipped back onto the bed. All she could do was try to breathe.
After several long moments, a quiet voice piped up. 'J-just try t-to take d-deep b-b-breaths.' Chihiro gingerly took Mukuro's hand in his own, even as it trembled. 'I… I've h-had p-panic attacks myself… i-it's going to b-be okay'. Dumbfounded, Mukuro looked at her hand. Her first instinct was to jerk its away, but something stopped her. 'His hand… feels nice', she thought as her breath slowly returned to normal. 'It makes me feel… not alone.'
They stayed like that for a few silent, peaceful minutes. The dawn light broke through the darkness
Voices from outside broke the silence. They were speaking Novoselic.
Mukuro's combat instincts kicked in immediately. She grabbed Chihiro and dragged him with her as she got out of the bed and crouched below the window, not caring that she was stepping on her own vomit. 'What -' Any questions he had were stifled by her hand over his mouth. 'Stay quiet', she ordered. There was no trace of panic or anxiety in her voice. There was no room in her mind for anything other than killing the enemy. She wasn't fluent in Novoselic, but she'd learnt enough during Fenrir's operations in the kingdom. The voices - she could only hear two - were talking about searching the cabin and capturing something. 'Capturing us', Mukuro thought. She looked down at Chihiro. 'Stay down and don't make a noise. I'm going to take a look.' He nodded, and she took her hand off his mouth. She slowly rose up until she could see out the window. There were two soldiers in winter camouflage walking casually towards the cabin, without the caution Mukuro would have expected. They were carrying Steyr AUG assault rifles, and had knives sheathed in their chest webbing. They were equipped almost exactly as Novoselian soldiers had been last time Mukuro was in the country, with two exceptions: they had no body armour, and their heads were fully engulfed by Monokuma helmets.
Monokuma. The face Junko had hidden behind when she'd tried to kill Mukuro.
'What is it? What's going on?' Chihiro whispered. 'Crawl into the bathroom, as fast as you can. Lock the door', Mukuro answered, speaking quietly rather than whispering. He looked up at her for a second, then did what she said. The voices grew closer - they were just outside the door now. Mukuro straightened up and stood beside it, her heart pounding as Monokuma's face flashed through her thoughts. 'I'll kill her. I'll kill her. I'll kill her.' The door swung open and the soldiers walked in. They still seemed off-guard, as if they weren't expecting anything remotely dangerous. They didn't sweep the room properly, and walked right past Mukuro. As soon as she was behind them, Mukuro stepped forward. She grabbed the closest soldier's throat with her right arm and started crushing their throat. They instinctively dropped their rifle and reached up to tear her arm away. Her left hand reached for their knife and plunged it into the side of their neck. As their blood sprayed out of them, the other soldier turned and raised their rifle. Mukuro dropped their comrade and charged at them. Before they could get a shot off, she closed the distance and stabbed them repeatedly in the stomach. They dropped to the floor, the Monokuma helmet staring up at her. 'I'll kill her! I'll kill her! I'll kill her!' Mukuro kept stabbing them again and again and again as tears ran down her face. She let out a raw and hateful scream, while her sister's betrayal played over and over again in her head.
After several seconds, she stopped, numbness creeping into her body and her mind once again. 'What… am I doing? I'm not supposed to… what's happening?' She stared at the soldier's mutilated torso. She'd never done anything like this before. 'I'm… supposed to be a professional… not someone who lets their emotions get in the way!' She shifted her eyes to the helmet. 'Junko… what did you do to me?'
One of the soldier's radios squawked, breaking Mukuro out of her trance. 'There'll be more coming. I need to move.' She stood up, her bare feet stepping into the still warm blood around the bodies. She glanced over at the first soldier. They seemed to be close enough to her size to suit her purpose. She stepped over to the corpse and removed the helmet, revealing a pair of dead eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. The soldier had been a young woman around Mukuro's age. Now she was just another bag of dead meat. Mukuro paused for a moment, then started pulling the corpse's gear off. 'Finally, some proper clothes, even if they are bloodsoaked'. Once the body had been stripped, Mukuro stood up and starting undoing her blouse. Then she stopped. 'The last time I put these clothes on… she was still…' Static and garbled words spat out of the radio again. Mukuro snapped back to the present and removed her clothes, then pulled on the Novoselian uniform, boots, webbing, and hydration pack. They weren't an ideal fit, but they were serviceable, would stop her from freezing to death, and carried a good deal of ammunition, equipment, food, and water. 'But still no body armour. Why not?' She picked up one of the rifles and made for the door, but stopped as she saw something out of the corner of her eye.
Chihiro's clothes were lying on the floor, dried out from last night. 'I… I forgot about him?' Mukuro swore. How could she have done that? Fighting was her ultimate talent. Killing the two soldiers shouldn't have disoriented her at all, much less enough to forget about Chihiro. 'What's happening to me?' She took a step towards the bathroom door, then stopped and picked up Chihiro's clothes. The memory of his comforting hand was still vivid. 'He doesn't need to see any more dead bodies', she thought as she walked towards the bathroom and knocked. 'It's okay now. Open the door.' The door opened after a few seconds, but she blocked it before it could open far enough for Chihiro to see outside. He peaked out at her, trembling from fear and the cold. She passed his clothes through the small opening. 'Put these on, knock on the door when you're done.' He opened his mouth to speak, but she shut the door on his face. While she waited for him, she pocketed as many rations from the other corpse as she could and stripped it of its hydration pack. She glanced at its rifle, but shook her head. 'We need to move fast, I can't let his weakness slow us down.'
The knock came after a few minutes. Mukuro stood beside the door. 'Alright, come out', she ordered. The door swung open, and she quickly stepped in front of Chihiro. 'Close your eyes and hold my hand. Don't open them until I tell you to. Got it?' Again, he opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. He shut his eyes, placed his hand in hers, and she turned to lead the way. 'That feels… better, now.' She swiftly pulled him past the pools of blood surrounding the corpses, opened the door, and stepped outside into the snow, lit orange by the dawn. She looked back at Chihiro letting go of his hand with some reluctance. 'You can open your eyes now.' He did so, looking up at her with scared and confused eyes as she gave him his hydration pack. 'Take these and keep yourself hydrated. We have to go that way' - she pointed where she'd seen the parachutes descend the previous day - 'and find Makoto and the others, then get out of here. Enemy troops will be looking for us, so we have to be fast. Understood?' After a moment of silent terror, Chihiro nodded, slipped the hydration pack over his shoulders, and fastened it. Mukuro checked him over, fed his drinking tube through the straps so that it sat against his chest, then nodded. 'Let's go.'