Summary: It's hilarious how much you're enjoying yourself.
To say that Naegi Makoto was embarrassed after his chat with Enoshima was an understatement, but just with the other roiling feelings within his head, the Luckster managed to suppress it (with great difficulty). He had gone into that talk with the intention of getting an ally, but had gotten completely sidetracked in the process. Nonetheless, it had been a welcome change from the doom and gloom of the past…had it been a week? He counted the days on his fingers. Nearly. For the briefest of moments, his face twisted into a grimace that wouldn't be out of place on depictions of a demon. Naegi clasped his ribbon for a couple seconds before letting go. There was no sense in mourning the time that had been lost to this forsaken school. What mattered most was making use of the days to ensure he didn't spend too long here. As much as the facilities and free food made Hope's Peak a five star hotel (with the bonus touch of death), he had made a promise. And his family was still out there.
Circling the grounds, the Luckster chanced upon Fujisaki, tucked away in a corner of the laundry room. A more callous person would've forced her into a conversation, but seeing the way she looked ready to hide inside one of the washing machines, he only lingered long enough to give her a somewhat awkward pat on the shoulder. Unlike most of the others, the Ultimate Programmer hadn't done anything to garner his ire. And while he wanted nothing more than to comfort her, the fact that the Luckster couldn't even solve his own inner turmoil dissuaded him from doing so. Naegi made a mental note to check on her tomorrow. He understood the way grief could cling to your very essence and drag you down. But holding on to that terrible feeling was unhealthy, and could even prove deadly in this new world of kill or be killed. Wondering absentmindedly if he had anything within his collection that she might enjoy, Naegi stopped by the dining hall to soothe his grumbling stomach.
Nodding briefly to Celeste, who was busy shuffling a deck of cards, his hoodie somehow managed to get caught on one of the chairs, leading to him very nearly introducing his face to the floor for the first time in weeks. Grumbling to himself, the Lucky Student carefully entered the kitchen, rifling through the goods present before chowing down on two apples and another bottle of water. Selecting two cans of coffee, he slipped them into a pocket before exiting shortly after, gaze briefly falling on the still missing knife. He was, ironically, somewhat thankful that another level of the school had opened up, or he would've been constantly stressed out by reminders of what exactly had happened just days ago. Circling around the tea-sipping goth, his mind was already locked onto the next thing on his long list of tasks when she called out to him.
"Naegi-san." He faltered on the next step, slowly turning to meet the gaze of the amused Ultimate Gambler.
"Ludenberg-san." The Luckster inclined his head, watching warily as the other teenager daintily placed down her tea cup. A quick look around indicated that her new servant was nowhere to be seen. A relief, really.
"Please, Celeste is fine." She gestured regally towards the chair pulled out on the opposite side of the table, and while his well-honed danger instincts suggested a strategic retreat, Naegi quashed them with a sigh. Best not to antagonise the eccentric lady. Nodding slightly, he sank into the chair, leaning forward with his elbows braced on his knees, hands folded underneath his chin as he stared down the red-eyed beauty.
"Forgive me for my rudeness," he began slowly, noting the way she preened at the attention, "but for what reason did you call me over?"
"Fufufu…" She gestured to first herself, then to the Luckster, and finally to the deck of cards lying innocently between them. Ah. So that's how it was.
"Tell me, do you know what matters most when gambling?" He hummed, stalling for time while searching for an answer within the depths of his mental library.
Naegi snapped his fingers exaggeratedly. "Strategy, I would assume."
"Hmm…half correct. Whatever the game you may play, you must have a mind for strategy. This naturally increases your odds of winning." She paused to take a sip of tea, reminding him of a porcelain doll straight out of a horror movie. "However, the most exciting part of gambling is that there is a power which can overwhelm any strategy."
He suppressed a chuckle at the attempt to be subtle, knowing that the hint would have flown over his head if this conversation had occurred a month ago. "Luck."
"Indeed." She clapped twice, giving him an approving glance. "I'm sure one such as you would be well acquainted with this force of nature, built into every one of us at the moment of conception. Call it what you may. Fate. Destiny. Even random chance. Whatever name you give it, the situation remains the same."
"Huh." Naegi had adopted a more relaxed posture by this point, but he was thankful she couldn't see the way his hands clenched beneath the table. "So what you're saying is that your Talent is actually the Ultimate Good Luck?"
"Well, not necessarily." She closed her eyes briefly. "After all, you possess that title, not me. Regardless, I have been programmed to have good luck when it comes to gambling. This is why I have never lost."
The Queen of Liars gave him a close-eyed smile, and all he could think about to hold on to his shaky composure were the various pieces of information Naegi had extracted from the internet and his own research. He took a breath, exhaling it slowly through his teeth in a hiss. Now was not the time to get upset over the curveballs evolution had decided to throw at the human population.
"I suppose you want to play a game then, to test your Luck against mine."
Her eyes widened in mock surprise, but her hands were already shuffling the deck of cards once more. He shrugged slowly, watching as two cards were slid over to him face down before two more were placed in front of her.
"While I would enjoy a proper match, I do not wish to teach you the games you probably have never played in your life—" Just because it was true didn't make it any less rude to say it. "—so let us go with something simple. I suppose even you must know how Blackjack works?"
"Yep." He drummed his fingers on the cards, not bothering to turn them over just yet.
"Good. I require the time before our curfew to take a shower, so we shall stick to a single round. Feel free to draw cards. I will stand." She interlaced her fingers, watching him with a curious gleam in her eyes. He blinked slowly. As things were, it was likely the two cards she held in her hand were a natural blackjack.
Naegi sighed. To hell with it, he supposed. "Deal me three more, would you kindly?"
Celeste giggled, but did so nonetheless. He took them face down, lining the five up in a neat row before looking back up at the Ultimate Gambler. She flipped her own, revealing the Ace and King of Spades. Welp. There went his non-existent chances of winning. She looked completely unpertubed by the cards, even though she hadn't looked at them in the first place. It was a guess, but Naegi was pretty sure this wasn't the first time it had happened. He flipped his own one by one, under the watchful gaze of his opponent.
Ten. Jack. Queen. King. Ace. All Hearts.
A small noise of surprise escaped his throat before he could stop it, but the undignified sound didn't seem to faze the Gambler, who was now examining the cards with narrowed eyes. She retrieved the deck, quickly glancing through the cards before looking back at him like he had turned into a cryptid since she last saw him. Which he hadn't. He hoped.
"Interesting…" She murmured, clearly mulling over something that he wasn't privy to. Naegi offered a tight smile, sweeping the cards to one side.
"It's my loss."
"Indeed." Her mind was elsewhere, even if she was still sitting in front of him. "You may leave now."
Taking the opportunity without protest, he stood up, neatly pushing his chair in before bowing slightly to bid Celeste farewell. Hopefully he could make his escape before—
"Naegi-san."
—she snapped out of her daze…
"Yeah?" He met those ominous red eyes with a shiver tracing down his spine.
She smiled, and he wasn't ashamed to admit that it made all the hairs on his arms stand up.
"I will allow you to be graced with my presence in the future."
"How magnanimous of you…" He grumbled, but nodded sharply. "Call me if you need me then."
He had resigned himself to a lifetime of misfortune, punctuated by minor inconveniences that never ceased to give him another story to tell.
If Naegi could do anything to alter that, even slightly, it would certainly aid in his continued survival.
The Luckster's sleep was, or lack thereof, was punctuated with increasingly turbulent dreams. His body was tiring itself out by this point, but his brain refused to let it get any semblance of rest. In between quick naps not lasting longer than thirty minutes and screams dying before they could even consider emerging, Naegi had managed to cobble together some semblance of emotional stability. For now. He huffed, almost completely unfazed by the graphic nature of the nightmares he was subject to — his imagination lacked the ammunition necessary to stop repeating the same scenarios, even if they turned out to be increasingly dramatic variants. Rolling over onto his side, the teenager closed his eyes for the seventh time in the last hour, consciously uncoiling every single tense muscle across his body, a thought exercise that distracted him long enough to allow fatigue to drag him down into the depths of slumber.
But, as he managed to reach that tenuous tightrope between the waking world and his dreams, the abrupt rapid knocking on his door kicked the Luckster straight out of the daze he had worked so hard to drift into. Cursing under his breath, Naegi contemplated the possibility that there was some cosmic entity turning his life into a practical joke before dismissing it entirely in fear of going down a rabbit hole of paranoia and conspiracies. Wouldn't want Hagakure to think he had a kindred spirit after all. Stretching his neck, the teenager snagged his baseball bat before approaching the door, standing to one side as he opened the door in one swift motion.
A white sleeve attached to the hand that had been responsible for that infernal series of sounds hovered in the air briefly, as though its owner had been interrupted mid-swing, and Naegi relaxed a fraction before schooling his face into as blank of an expression as he could before meeting the eyes of the Ultimate Moral Compass.
"Ah, my apologies for disturbing you at this time of night!" Ishimaru beamed at him, seemingly having forgotten their last interactions. The Luckster's hand twitched imperceptibly, and he ached to drive it straight into the face of his classmate. That could wait, he supposed. Social faux paus aside, Ishimaru hadn't done anything to incite the same time of cold rage that Togami had so arrogantly dragged to the surface.
His mouth twitched briefly into a smile at the memory, which promptly died an early death when he noted the pompadour standing to the left of his visitor. With more calm than he truly felt, Naegi scanned the Ultimate Biker Gang Leader from head to toe, noting with some curiosity the almost subdued way Owada allowed himself to be judged, albeit on a surface level. Nonetheless, he did take a step back, offering an invitation for them to enter with a silent gesture of an arm while also putting more distance between himself and the person responsible for the bruises scattered across his torso. It wasn't like he would be able to stop either of them, so might as well be polite.
"What's the matter?" He probed the unlikely duo warily, nerves thrumming with the anticipation of a conflict.
"Well!" Ishimaru puffed up like a self-righteous peacock. "The two of us required a witness for our match!"
"Match?" He tilted his head, bemused despite the thickening tension between the two polar opposites. "What exactly are you doing that requires a witness?"
"Simply put—" The prefect was cut off by his opponent's rough voice.
"This guy talks a looooot of shit for someone who comes from one of those prissy rich schools." Owada jerked a thumb in the Moral Compass' direction, and Naegi was treated to the sight of an offended Ishimaru. "So I called the prick out."
"What he neglects to tell you is that I did not take such slander lying down!" Ishimaru looked fired up, for lack of a better term, and it might have been his imagination, but there was some sort of white aura now enveloping the teenager. "I refuse to be insulted by someone who can't even follow proper hair regulations, much less style their hair in a fashion that went out of date decades ago!"
"Oi don't diss the hair you bastard!" Owada snarled, cracking his knuckles threateningly before remembering that they were enacting this spectacle in front of someone else and coughing awkwardly into a fist. "But yeah, in order to settle this once and for all, we decided to duel each other, man to man!"
Ignoring the somewhat sexist comment at the end there, Naegi stiffened at the mention of a duel. Unconsciously, his hand strayed to the bat at his side. Hopefully it wouldn't need to be used anytime soon. "Define a duel for me."
"It's incredibly simple!" Ishimaru interjected before Owada could finish opening his mouth. "With the opening of the bath house, we now have access to a sauna!" Ah. Well, it wasn't what he was expecting by any means, but the mild nature of it certainly removed a burden from his shoulders.
Naegi crossed his arms. "So you need someone to serve as evidence for whoever wins this competition, yeah?" And provide an alibi for their whereabouts in the event that something disastrous happened once more, but he doubted that either of them was thinking that far ahead.
"Yep. It won't take long, so…you mind helping a guy out?" He had to admit, to be so lacking in shame as to demand something of someone you had injured on two separate occasions was a somewhat admirable trait…if you were a scumbag. Still, the idea did hold some merit. He wasn't going to get any proper sleep in the near future, so maybe forcefully tiring himself out could work?
The Luckster sighed, nodding twice before gesturing for them to lead the way. At the very least, it would be interesting.
It was somewhat awkward being fully clothed while Ishimaru was stripping down, which was why he averted his eyes to question why Owada wasn't doing the same. Upon receiving an answer he was half-listening to (something about pride?), he pointed out dryly that the way saunas worked made wearing clothes a one way trip to the hospital for treating burns. When the Biker Gang Leader still wasn't convinced, he quickly slapped together a reasonable excuse about the event of a tie, and how it would, theoretically, have been his win instead if not for the presence of attire. That won the teenager over far quicker than he expected, and seconds later his vision was being obscured by the jacket Owada had thrown over his face. While the Lucky Student was here of his own volition, he resisted the urge to snark about feeling like a clothesrack.
The next hour was more boring than he had hoped, but the occasional comment from within the sauna room was enough entertainment to keep him there rather than leave and never come back. That and his own worries about how defenceless the duo were. His eyes dimmed, gaze growing cold as he watched the door clinically, mapping the three different ways someone could block the sauna and leave the duo to suffocate within. Or how one of them could pass out from heatstroke. Normally he'd argue that they'd bow out long before such a possibility could come into being, but judging from the increasingly incoherent rambling about eating hot soup and ramen (he made a mental note to cook that soon), he'd have to check in every five minutes to make sure he wasn't guarding two corpses. Although if that was the case, would it be a suicide or a murder? He tapped his bat against the floor, mulling over the thought. What exactly would happen if someone killed themself? He shuddered at the thought, shelving it temporarily. No need to think too hard about something like that.
The chime of the school intercom caused him to jerk forward, very nearly falling headfirst into the open-air bath (he could use this place rather than his own in the future) before he managed to stabilise himself with the assistance of the wall. Already tuning out the generic night time announcement, the Luckster wondered if either of the two would notice if he went back to grab clothes for a quick shower. Unfortunately, testing one of the taps indicated that water was cut off here as well, so he'd have to do so earlier. Wouldn't want to dirty the whole place for everyone, even if it would inconvenience Monokuma. Sighing to himself, Naegi leaned the bat against the wall before sitting down, cushioning the back of his head with his hands.
Glancing around for any visible surveillance cameras, he retrieved a folded set of papers from one of his pockets, concealing it with his body even as his eyes began to methodically scan the words for information. After all, even if he couldn't see any cameras, that didn't mean that Monokuma wasn't spying on them. Someone willing to throw teenagers into a Killing Game probably lacked the basic human decency that involved not spying on people taking showers.
He resisted the urge to facepalm as a new string of muffled shouts escaped the sauna. This was going to be a long and boring process.
Thankfully, both for his own patience and the continued survival of the two hot-blooded idiot teenagers he was now forced to take care of, five minute intervals passed by quite quickly with the assistance of the groundbreaking information he had been processing during the waiting time. After another hour, however, the sounds from within had faded from indignant boasts and the occasional demand for him to shut up to slurred words. Neatly refolding the papers, he slipped them back into their temporary home before tentatively opening the sauna door.
The blast of heated air stunned him for a fraction of a moment, unpleasant memories long buried poking their heads out ever so slightly before they were swept aside in favour of hurriedly dragging out the limp forms of his classmates. They protested, albeit half-heartedly, and he did have to dodge a slow swing from Owada while resisting the urge to knock the Biker Gang Leader out. Naegi sighed for the umpteenth time, feeling like he had aged thirty years over the course of a few days. It was a lot harder to keep people alive when they were so determined to send themselves down the fast track to disaster.
"Right." He leaned back and twisted, a series of pops echoing as he did so. "I'm making the executive decision to consider this a tie before either of you expire in there. Complain to me about it in the morning if you've somehow managed to recover by then. See ya." The Luckster was not ashamed to admit that he drew quite a bit of pleasure from their muffled protests, adjusting them so neither would accidentally roll into the pool and drown before leaving with a jaunty salute that they couldn't see. Better to have them able to berate him than remove that chance entirely.
The change from somewhat stifling air to the cool, ventilated halls almost made him stumble mid-step, knees buckling from what he assumed was a mix of fatigue, his still throbbing injuries and a host of other issues not significant enough to talk about separately, but culminated in the Lucky Student swaying on his feet like a drunkard. Hopefully he could manage to get back to his room in time. It certainly wouldn't help his state of being if the teenager had to sleep on anything other than a relatively soft surface. Rattling the gate to the dining hall idly as he went by, Naegi noted that it was locked shut, but pulling a little harder shifted the barrier in a way that reminded him of the faulty electronic lock he had to deal with in junior high. Smiling despite himself, the Luckster plodded through the corridors, enjoying the silence.
Unlocking his dorm and surveying the room briefly for any signs of disturbances, Naegi slipped off his shoes before shutting the door behind himself, relocking it with a satisfying click. Staggering through the last few meters that separated him from his one sanctuary in this pit of Despair, the Luckster made a noise that would probably have gotten the police called on him, rubbing his face into the pillow with a blissful expression.
"Upupupupu…how lewd, Naegi-kun~" The surge of adrenaline coursing through his veins fired off every synapse in his brain as the teenager rolled off his bed, snatching up the baseball bat with both hands and swinging before he could stop himself. Unfortunately for his room, the sudden jolt coupled with Naegi's own half-asleep state meant that it never connected with its intended target, instead catching on a bedpost and sending a bone shaking tremor up his arm. He bit back a sharp curse, turning his irritation onto the one responsible for it all.
"Monokuma."
"Yes?" The bear giggled into his hands, squirming with a blush on his cheeks like a bashful schoolgirl. It only served to send a pulse of revulsion through his system.
"What. Are. You. Doing. Here." If it wasn't obvious enough, Naegi was not in the best of moods. He dropped the baseball bat with a metallic clatter, kicking it across the room in order to separate himself from the temptation of inflicting a gratuitous amount of violence on his tormentor.
Monokuma sighed, shaking his head almost disapprovingly. "My my, Naegi-kun. It's almost like you don't want to talk to your beloved headmaster." The teenager rolled his eyes, selecting the most deadpan stare he could express before levelling it straight at the animatronic. The bear deflated, scuffing the floor with a small kick like he was disappointed.
"I just wanted to check in on my favourite student. After all, it would be a shame if anything happened to you." A low growl escaped Naegi before he could stop himself, but the not-so-subtle threat gave him the cold fear he needed to approach this situation with a relatively clear mind.
"Let me guess…" The Luckster snarled. "The next motive."
"Bravo!" Monokuma clapped rapidly, producing a handful of confetti from nowhere and tossing it in the air. "You're not as dimwitted as you look!"
"Cut the crap." He punctuated the statement with a slash of his hand. "What is it?"
"Puhuhuhuhuhu~" The bear placed his hands to his mouth, chuckling with glee. "Now why would I tell you before the rest? You'll just have to find out tomorrow!"
"Why you—" Was it too late to throw the bear into several walls? "—so you did come here just to mess with me!"
"Naturally!" The black and white robot appeared to be getting a lot more excited over Naegi's visible agitation. "Anyways, that's all I had to say. Toodles~" And with that, the bear waddled into the bathroom. The teenager didn't bother pursuing. He had probably vanished into one of the hidey-holes peppering the school. Naegi took several deep breaths, clutching the edge of his mattress before gradually releasing it.
He buried his face in his hands, fatigue long gone.
"When does it end?"