Summary: Don't falter now. We've only just begun.

After some more fruitless attempts at searching through the room and trying other doors, Naegi had retreated to the relative comfort of his own dorm to recuperate. Sitting on his bed, the boy sighed, pressing his palms over his eyes. Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out. There was no time to Despair. He could save that for when they survived this next Trial. Time to put his game face on.

He set his bat to one side, then removed the knife from his sleeve and placed it on the table. Fatigue tugged at his eyelids. That was the issue with discovering a dead body at night, he supposed. Monokuma probably enjoyed the fact that they were all tired and not in the right headspace to deal with this. Snatching one of the school-issued blazers he hadn't worn in a while, he cut the sleeve off, then tied it to his waist with some tape. He wasn't going to find a carrying bag for his bat anytime soon, so this would have to do. He added an additional loop with some more fabric to secure it in place, just so that the weapon wouldn't fall out while he was running. Which was more than likely.

Wrap your arms. Knife goes back up the sleeve. Secure it with a second layer of bandages. Maizono's ribbon goes on his broken wrist. Hagakure's bracelet on his left. Kuwata's ring on his index finger. Replace your eyepatch with a fresh one. Ignore the way it burns.

A distinct chime sounded over the intercom system, and Naegi couldn't help but compare it to a death knell. He grinned, an unpleasant, shaky thing.

The monitor in his room flickered to life. "I hope you've had enough time to do…whatever it is, you've been doing! Shall we begin? It's the moment everyone's been waiting for…the Class Trial! Anyways, please go through the red door on the first floor. Upupupupu~"

Here we go.

Naegi pushed the door open before hesitation could overwhelm him. Surrounding the elevator were his remaining classmates, some busy with quiet conversation, while others were simply standing around.

"Ah, Naegi-san!" Ishimaru perked up slightly, and the Luckster refrained from grimacing at the way the Moral Compass' words turned everyone's attention towards his entry. "We were waiting for you to turn up."

He nodded. "Let's get this over with." One by one, they stepped into the elevator, with Naegi bringing up the rear. His fingers lingered briefly on the metal gate before he finally crossed the threshold. No turning back now.

The elevator clunked and rattled. No one seemed to be in the mood to say anything. The Luckster flinched slightly when something warm brushed against his wrist, looking to the side to see Enoshima avoiding eye contact. Despite that, her fingers entwined with his own. Wordlessly, he squeezed twice, drawing comfort from this small moment. He closed his eye, sorting through what little information they had to work with. He hadn't gotten the chance to compare notes with the other members of the Investigation Squad after they had gone their separate ways, so that was first on the agenda. Hopefully, they'd be able to get through this.

If not?

He'd go down swinging.

[CLASS TRIAL, START!]

[ALL RISE!]

They took their places at their assigned podiums, and Naegi tasted something bitter on his tongue at the sight of the three crossed out portraits of their deceased classmates. He had hoped…well, he had tried to make sure they would never end up back down here. But here they were in the courthouse anyways, ready to put the pieces together that would doom the one among them who had stained their hands with blood. He shook his head slightly. No time to be melodramatic. There was detective work to be done.

Ishimaru offered a weak smile. "I know this might seem a bit foolish of me…but would the person who did this please confess?" Naegi winked, not too surprised when no response came and the Moral Compass deflated like a leaky balloon.

"We're not here to pretend this was an accident, like what our previous murderer claimed." Togami cut in ruthlessly, pushing his glasses up with a scoff. "From what we know, this was a cold-blooded murder. A ruthless act of killing, premeditated and planned before being executed with efficiency."

"For the sake of those of us who weren't investigating…" Asahina shot him a glare. "Explain."

"Indeed." Celeste smiled with her eyes closed. " With the fool's track record, it could've been an accident."

Truth Bullet Selected: [Unnatural Circumstances]

"You've got that wrong!" Naegi interjected, slightly amused by the way the unflappable Gambler's eye twitched. "While it might have looked like an accident, there are several parts of the situation that don't make sense."

"I hope you have reasons to back up your statement?" Celeste recovered quickly, but there was an undercurrent of anger in her tone. Interesting.

"Tch. Anyone could've put the pieces of the puzzle together. Go on then." Togami waved a hand dismissively. "Tell them, Naegi. Explain it for those who didn't bother to even try and win this game."

"Not the way I would've put it…" The Luckster sidestepped the insult. "But I will admit, it was a pretty good set-up. A passing glance, like what we all saw at the start, would've made the sequence of events look pretty obvious."

"The blood on the table corner. The way Hagakure-san was lying down. Even the Monokuma File's vague description of his cause of death. But upon closer inspection, things didn't add up." Naegi gestured absentmindedly, pulling up a mental picture of the crime scene before pausing. "Hey. Principal."

"Yes, Makoto-kun?"

"There's a pretty large screen over there that wasn't here before." The teenager flicked his fingers, ignoring the incredulous looks on some of his classmates' faces. "How about you put his room on the projector?"

"Well since you asked so nicely~" Monokuma raised a remote lazily, pressing a button and causing an image of the current Trial to be projected onto the screen. "Whoops! Wrong channel, let me just—" the display flickered rapidly, showing what looked like a war-torn city, then a giant Monokuma trampling on an armoured vehicle, before moving to a photo of Hagakure's dead body before Kirigiri moved it around. "—there we go."

"Looks like he tripped on something, no?" The Luckster shelved his new questions temporarily. "But things don't line up. There are several inconsistencies in this scene alone, much less the information we found from our investigation. Kirigiri-san?"

The purple-haired teenager inclined her head. "The low elevation of the table along with Hagakure's height means that even if he did fall backwards and die after smashing the back of his head into a sharp corner means that he shouldn't have collapsed like this. In fact, this picture actually shows that his head was above the corner he supposedly killed himself with."

"Which could be a possibility if he suffered a traumatic brain injury and expired later on—" Naegi pointed out. "—but then he would have fallen forward, or died in his sleep. This sort of position implies that he fell unconscious from the blow and then…I'm rambling. Doesn't really matter considering what we found."

"And what did you find, Naegi-dono?"

"Well, long story short, the key Hagakure-san had in his hand didn't fit his lock." A ripple of surprise went through the room. "So even if he did fall victim to an accident, someone went through an awful lot of trouble to swap out their own key with his, and lock the door behind them."

"This is good and all, but we're back where we began." Owada shrugged. "We know he got murdered. That's about it."

"It's important to establish the background and make sure everyone's on the same page." Fujisaki put in their own two cents. "Especially since not all of the people here were part of the investigation."

"Yeah yeah, I get it." The Biker Gang Leader sighed. "Well, let's get to the important parts I guess. How'd they break in?"

Naegi frowned. That was the question now, wasn't it? "We have no clue whatsoever."

"Perhaps someone picked the lock?"

Mental note: make sure more people participate in the whole searching for clues thing. Would save them a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth.

"Fujisaki-san?"

The Programmer nodded. "The short answer is that it's impossible. The amount of time it would take to pick the lock doesn't match up with how frequently Naegi-san and Kirigiri-san apparently wander around at night."

"So you're saying the most likely suspects are those two?" Celeste hummed. "Interesting."

"I won't deny that." Naegi closed his single functional eye. "But you have to understand that none of us have verifiable alibis, given that the murder happened at night. Everyone's a suspect in this case."

"All except you, Naegi." Enoshima looked like she wanted to cuff him across the back of the head. "Given that we've narrowed it down to right before your little arson trick, there's no way you had time to kill Hagakure, go over to the gymnasium, get your eye slashed and then show up looking like you were half-dead."

"It also defeats the purpose of burning the money in the first place." Kirigiri added on. "Especially after the price you paid for your defiance."

"Not to burst your bubble or anything, and thank you for the support…" Naegi did appreciate it. "I didn't kill him, that's true. But if I had, following through with my plan would've been the perfect disguise. Even discovering the body afterwards would have been—"

"Oh quit setting yourself up as some fuckin' evil mastermind!" Owada snorted. "You're one cold-blooded son of a bitch, yeah, we get it. But you and I both know that if you thought that far, you wouldn't even have uncovered the body in the first place. We'd be hearing about it from Monokuma."

The Fashionista barked out a startled laugh. "He's got you there."

"Can we cut the drama? Yes? Yes. Excellent." Togami released a long-suffering sigh. "Now, does anyone know how someone could've entered the victim's room?"

"Well…" Yamada adjusted his glasses. "Hagakure-dono could've let them in?"

"Unlikely." Ogami shook her head. "There were no signs of a struggle. Judging from the time of death, whoever killed him must've ambushed Hagakure-san in his sleep." She scowled. "Coward."

"In that case…do we really have n-no clues left?" Fukawa looked seconds away from spontaneously combusting from stress. Naegi resisted the urge to facepalm, remembering the key Kirigiri had pocketed with a pang of embarrassment. Probably should've checked that before being stuck in here. Foolish of him. He eyed the poker-faced teenager, wondering if she had already verified who the key belonged to. Remembering the shit she tried to pull in the first trial, it wouldn't surprise Naegi if they were all running in circles while she withheld the truth. He resolved to be more thorough about the whole thing if there was a next time. They couldn't afford to be careless.

Truth Bullet Selected: [Hagakure's Habits]

"I'm not sure if this will help," Naegi began, ignoring the way heads snapped towards him. "but Hagakure-san left his key in the lock when I visited him. If we assume it wasn't a one-time thing, does that open up an alternative possibility?"

A few minutes of tense silence passed. The Luckster ignored the way he could now hear his heartbeat thudding in his ears.

"Ah! Shit, there was something on the floor, right!?" Owada perked up, eyes glinting with a hint of desperate mania. "Right!?"

Truth Bullet Selected: [Scraps of paper]

"Yeah." Naegi tapped his trembling fingers against his podium. "The rubbish bin was empty, but there were scraps of paper on the floor. Plus a newspaper for some reason. Why?"

"Look, this is a long shot." The Biker Gang Leader wiped away some sweat from his brow. "But if he left his key in the lock, I remember a trick my buddy taught me at one point that could've been used."

The pompadoured teen swallowed. "If you have something long enough that can fit into the gap, you can push a key out of its lock with a little bit of luck. Push a piece of paper underneath the door frame to catch it before you do so, slide it back out and you'd now have a way to access a previously locked room. I've done it myself a couple times."

"...why exactly did your friend teach you how to do that?"

"Welllll we might've been locked in a room at some point. For some reason." Owada averted his eyes.

Naegi shook his head to rattle loose the sarcastic response he had to that statement. "Well, on the off chance that that really happened, we now know what the killer did to get in. That explains the entry strategy. And narrows down our pool of suspects."

"The only sort of equipment any of us would have to perform such an action…" Fujisaki placed their fingers to their chin. "The tool kit the boys were given. That makes the most sense."

"So just the boys then…"

"S-still doesn't rule h-him out!" Fukawa pointed a finger at Naegi, shaking like a leaf in the wind. The Swimmer seemed to be two steps from backing the clearly terrified Writer up before Fujisaki cut in sharply.

"We've been over this! Neither of you two have alibis we can convincingly prove either, remember? None of us do!"

"If we're talking about males, that's Togami, Naegi, Yamada, Owada, Ishimaru…and you, Fujisaki. You're a suspect as well. That's a one in six chance. Anyone feeling lucky?" Celeste tittered.

"We can't just pick one and guess." Enoshima crossed her arms, fingers twitching slightly. "Even disregarding inherent bias, the blackened is decided by a majority vote. We could very easily tie it. Some of us could get lucky. But we sure as hell aren't gonna all be lucky."

The Luckster rolled his eye, before wincing as the moment tugged at his injuries. Note to self, don't do that again. "She's right. And before we waste any more time on this, I'd like to offer a more compelling argument. Especially since I'm now pretty sure who did it."

He turned, and made his accusation. "It's you. Isn't it—"

OMAKE: When Worlds Collide [1]

"So…" Naegi began awkwardly. "You're me, from another universe?" When he went to school today, he wasn't expecting a crack in reality to form in the middle of their classroom, spit out a dusty teenager and seal back up. Guess there was a chance for anything to happen.

"Seems like it." His counterpart was…unsettling. Bandages were wrapped around his fingers, there was a bat hanging loosely by his side (suspiciously stained red) and his left eye was concealed beneath a plain medical eyepatch. "Damned harlot…knew she was plotting something."

"Sheesh, Naegi-bro, guess you're an emo in this other world." Owada laughed. His classmates had been observing "Naegi" with fascination and a hint of wariness. Class 78 was no stranger to dangerous people, especially when you have both the Ultimate Soldier and Martial Artist walking around. But something about this version of the Luckster had caused Ikusaba to pull a gun on him. Naegi would've immediately started begging for mercy.

"Naegi", on the other hand, had disarmed her with a knife through her hand, a feral snarl etched across his face.

"Not an emo." The other Luckster sighed, sending the Biker Gang Leader a warning glare. "Just tired. Need any help, Mukuro-chan?"

"N-no." The normally unflappable Soldier stuttered, and Naegi couldn't help but blush at the affection that was clear in his counterpart's words. "Naegi" shrugged, twirling the pistol he had acquired as he continued disassembling it on their teacher's table.

"I must admit—" Togami adjusted his glasses. "—this version of you seems very different, Naegi."

The alternate Luckster chuckled, a bitter sound that sent a shiver down his spine. "You gotta do what you gotta do to survive."

"And the eye?" Kirigiri was as professional as usual, but even he could read the curiosity in her voice.

"Naegi" tapped it with a sigh. "A bear took five carving tools to the surface of my left eye. Hasn't been the same since."

…eh?