Summary: Preparation is key

"So—" Enoshima slapped him on the back, causing him to stumble forward before Kirigiri pulled him back by his collar. "—what's our agenda today, boss man?"

"Boss man?" Naegi sighed, wishing he had just stayed in bed. "Well, the explorer in me wants to check out the fifth floor…but that's still going to be there later. So let's deal with the poisons."

"Logical." Kirigiri adjusted her tie nonchalantly. "Best to get that over and done with. Even if someone did manage to steal a vial, it'll be missing from our list. That way, at least, we'll be able to narrow down our list of suspects for a future Trial."

"Really doin' this, huh…" The Fashionista sighed, but didn't protest. Probably cause she knew that Naegi's mind was already made up. There were many things the Luckster would concede ground on, but matters like this? His life and continued wellbeing were nice side effects, nothing more, nothing less. He rubbed his wrists, focusing solely on putting one foot in front of the next. A couple minutes to decompress would be useful. "Anyway, how're we gonna get all that shit down here?"

"Well—" His fingers twitched. "There's one of those dolly things you use to move furniture around. And chemicals are usually stored in baskets for lessons. Can't really help with getting them downstairs, but with three people it shouldn't be too hard."

"It's a small cabinet." Kirigiri mused, seemingly doing the calculations in her head. "We could do it in two to three trips. As long as we don't have to answer any questions along the way. That would be troublesome." Yeah, there was no good way to explain three people, one of which was supposed to be under lock and key, walking around with armfuls of poison. Very awkward.

Enoshima shrugged. "They've been doing the morning breakfast meeting things, remember? Apart from the fact that some of us don't show up, and others show up late, and the fact that Naegi hasn't been to one in so long people would probably forget he even existed if he hadn't been in so many fights." A brief pause. "I'm fairly certain Prefect Boy is planning some sort of intervention, actually, if he can even work up the balls to speak to you."

He scoffed, somewhat bitterly. "Maybe he should pay a little more attention. We never did learn how long Hagakure-san was left dead in his room." One of many questions that haunted him, and would continue to haunt him long after this whole nightmare ended. One way or another. He still remembered what Ishimaru said to him the very morning after Maizono's death. And if there's one thing Naegi Makoto knew how to do, it was hold a grudge. Quietly, so very quietly. But he still remembered it.

"...yeah." The blonde sighed. "That really fuckin' sucked." An understatement, really, but a somewhat accurate description of events.

"We won't really need the dollies to shift the bottles around." Kirigiri shifted the conversation topic before the mood could get any worse. "Considering our biggest problem is getting them downstairs, rather than across a long distance." She side-eyed him with a small smirk. "Are you sure you'll be able to carry a container?"

Naegi laughed. "I might have to sit out for a while later on, but it should be fine." As long as he didn't drop them. Some of the contents of those vials were the type to rapidly evaporate when exposed to air. He wouldn't want to accidentally create a toxic cloud in the middle of a staircase. That would be quite the issue. The teenager made a mental note to check his shoelaces. He hadn't tripped over them in quite some time…now that was depressing to think about. He shook his head slightly. "Shall we begin?"

"Yeah yeah, don't rush perfection." The Fashionista snarked, already rifling through a drawer. "Oh hey, they kept those weird transparent boxes. This makes things waaaaay easier." She proceeded to begin stacking them on the table nearby. Idly twiddling with his bat, the Luckster grabbed a container and started to transfer the vials with one hand, Kirigiri following suit.

"Well, having a lid on these boxes—" He punctuated his statement by sealing up his first one. "—makes it a lot easier to transport them." Enoshima grunted in response, while Kirigiri continued to fill up her own set of containers. He shrugged. A little bit of silence was nice, especially when shared with decent company. Silence alone, on the other hand…now that was a different story entirely.

"Did I do something to make you hate me, Enoshima?" He couldn't help his grumbling even as they carefully made their way down the stairs. With a little bit of Tetris-playing and a near accident when he stumbled over a bottle and nearly face planted into an open box (both Kirigiri and Enoshima had pulled him backwards before he could even finish falling, much to his embarrassment). Afterwards, however, he had been sidelined by majority vote and was now carrying a single box compared to the four that Enoshima was lifting like they were made of feathers, or the two that Kirigiri had tucked under one arm. And he knew that they had given him the lightest one, considering his arms weren't even trembling from the strain. "I feel like dead weight."

The Fashionista snickered. "On the contrary, Naegi, you couldn't make me hate you if you tried." An awkward beat of silence ensued. "Anyways, at least we can do this in one trip, yeah?"

"It would have been useful to know you had the strength of a gorilla." Kirigiri delivered that line like she was commenting on the weather, and Naegi couldn't help the startled laugh that escaped his throat as Enoshima glared daggers into the back of the poker faced Ultimate's head.

"You're lucky my hands aren't free right now…" She growled, looking like she was two steps away from kicking the other Ultimate down the stairs. Kirigiri, of course, was completely unbothered by the very explicit threat to her life.

He descended the final flight of stairs, ignoring the way something in his broken wrist twinged with each step, and came face to face with the Ultimate Writer. Naegi blinked. Fukawa blinked. Before he could open his mouth however, the other teenager had already run off shrieking. "Somehow, I'm not surprised."

"She's been on a hair trigger recently." Enoshima commented, shrugging slightly despite the tower of boxes in her arms. "I think she knows that you know that she's a killer. That was a mouthful."

"Eh, we still have to interrogate her at some point." He tilted his head, straining his eye briefly to check if anyone was lurking nearby. "Let's hurry this up before someone comes to investigate the screaming."

They had just gone past the infirmary when the doors opened, Ogami poking her head out with a look of confusion on her face that only intensified when he gave her a cheery wave. "Yo, Ogami-san."

"Ah…good morning, Naegi." The expression she was wearing could only be described as someone who thought that they were still dreaming.

"Heyo~" Enoshima somehow managed to balance her items on one hand in order to mimic his gesture while walking past. "How's Goth Lolita doing?"

"Good morning, Enoshima-san. And as for how Ludenberg-san is doing…" Ogami blinked. "Recovering. She protested a little when I ended up staying in her room for the night, but stopped complaining when I pointed out that the alternative was leaving her door open. And how was your night guarding Naegi?"

"Eh." The Fashionista offered a grin as she walked past. "We actually left Naegi once night time hit. Didn't see a need to keep watching him. Besides, I gotta get my beauty sleep."

"...well, I suppose he has proven that any form of night time wandering he does is with good intentions." The Ultimate Martial Artist seemed surprisingly okay with that knowledge. "And a good morning to you as well, Kirigiri-san."

"Good day, Ogami." The final member of their little trio inclined her head in a greeting as she walked past. "Let me express my appreciation for what you've been tasked to do."

"No need, no need." She waved a hand politely. "It's only fair that I try to atone for my misdeeds. If you don't mind me asking…" The Martial Artist gestured to the boxes. "What exactly are you doing this time?"

"Contingency plan." / "Hiding murder weapons." / "Locking away some stuff."

"Right…" Wisely, she chose not to ask for elaboration. "Will I see any of you at lunch?"

He shrugged, already halfway to the Despair Hotel. "We'll see." There were places to be and things to do and all that. He could live without a couple meals.

"Don't worry too much!" Enoshima called over her shoulder, picking up the pace just to nudge Naegi's ankle with the tip of her shoe. "We'll definitely be there at some point."

"Especially since Naegi over here refuses to eat regular meals." Kirigiri quipped, following behind them at a more sedate pace. "Did you know that he's already gone a week without eating in here?"

"I resent your accusation." The Luckster had more pressing priorities at that point, like the fact that it took half an hour to get out of bed in the morning, slipping into microsleep at the worst possible moments and the very real chance of people dying while he was too busy doing something like "rest".

"Heh." Ogami laughed, and it honestly sounded like a mountain was rumbling for a moment. "You two have your work cut out for you. Very well, I'll see you later."

"Toodles."

Unlocking the door, he stepped into Maizono's room after a brief moment of hesitation. He closed his eye, willing away the Pop Sensation humming cheerfully on her bed. When he opened his eye again, however, his mind had replaced the ghost with a broken body, hands scrabbling at the knife in her chest. The Luckster resisted the everpresent urge to shudder. Ignoring the feeble groaning, he set down the box on the floor before ushering in his partners in crime, and closed the door behind them, making sure to lock it.

"Right—" he attempted to work out the kinks in his arms with a muttered curse. "—here comes the boring part. So let's leave the stuff we haven't sorted out over here," he gestured to a section of the room, "and then shift the catalogued stuff over here. Sounds good?"

"This is gonna take forever…" Enoshima complained, but began to pull bottles out of her crates. "Kirigiri, you're on note-taking duty. You seem like the pencil-pusher type."

"How flattering." Her tone was drier than a desert. "Regardless, I suppose it's fine. Naegi, you'll be organising them into categories. I trust you know how to sort them?"

"I'm not really experienced with poisons." He tilted a bottle, attempting to read the label. Tetrodotoxin? The hell was that? "But I can try. It should be fairly simple to separate the lethal ones from the ones that are more likely to make you throw up."

"Check the icons." Enoshima murmured, tapping the side of a dropper bottle. "Pictograms are hella useful to discern what goes where. We can look through the ones that you're more confused about later."

"Gotcha." The crossbones indicated acute toxicity, there were more explosive substances than he was comfortable with…and there was a Monokuma symbol on this one, which probably meant it was really lethal. "I think there are a couple laxatives in here actually. Might be fun to put one of them in Togami-san's food."

"He'd definitely try to kill you after that one." The Fashionista giggled, gently prising the bottle he was inspecting from his fingers. "Let's save that for after we get out of here, okay?"

"Mkay." He muttered, already feeling his mind detach from the situation. Ricin goes here, this one came from dart frogs, and there was botulinum…it was a sobering reminder of humanity's incessant need to kill itself off. "There are doubles in here. Monokuma stocked up well."

"Not surprising." Kirigiri balanced the notepad on her thigh, and a brief glimpse of the elegant, meticulous table that she was sketching out sated his curiosity. "It would be impractical to only have one of each poison. For identification purposes, of course."

"Yeah, it would be pretty easy if someone used the one bottle of a really specific poison to kill someone and got caught with it in their trash can." Enoshima responded, emptying the second-last container. "It really does like to watch us suffer."

"At least it's still playing within the boundaries of the game." He shot a glare at the camera watching them silently from the corner of the room. "For all we know, as soon as we leave the room it could just steal one of these as a present to someone."

"Didn't think we'd ever see the day someone was grateful for Monokuma's presence." Enoshima chuckled darkly. "But yeah, we're gonna have to check on these pretty often to make sure none of them go missing. Hopefully it'll be more amused at the ingenuity rather than take out its anger on us." He could feel her gaze burning into his covered eye. "No offence, Naegi, but I kinda like having my vision."

"I'm going to take you apart, piece by piece~"

He shrugged, loosening his grip on a pill bottle before he could shatter it. "None taken. On the bright side, I might be able to use both eyes again in a couple days."

"Unless you get into another incident." Kirigiri murmured, tearing the page from the notepad and continuing with her writing. "The main reason you're so battered is because you manage to throw yourself into combat before your wounds even begin to heal." She didn't bother looking up. "Your wrist has barely recovered. If you continue at your current pace, you'll cripple yourself for good."

Naegi winked cheekily. "A sacrifice I'm willing to make."

Omake: When Worlds Collide [15]

Hinata Hajime sighed as he sat down on his usual bench, slumping bonelessly into the wooden seat. This…this had been a weird week or two.

There were ominous rumours coming from the Main Branch, whispers of human experimentation and death, of a confirmed killer walking the grounds, but most importantly, the theory that the Reserve Course was simply Hope's Peak's cash cow. He grimaced. The yakuza girl had thrown a fit the moment that specific idea started making its rounds, and for once, no one had the heart to stop her. The teenager rested his head against the back of the bench, biting back a curse.

He hadn't expected much, and a part of him had been expecting this sort of thing to happen since the very beginning. Because why would they allow normal, useless students to study at a school that regularly churned out pioneers? Because they believed in them? Thought that anyone could be an Ultimate? Hinata snorted. Fat chance.

"Mind if I sit here?" A gloved hand tapped him on the shoulder, and the Reserve Course student snapped his gaze to the side, nearly falling over in shock. A small, tired-looking teenager smiled at him, and Hinata idly noted the colour of the tattered blazer wrapped around his waist. Ah, an Ultimate. He fought back a sneer, nodding silently. "My thanks."

The other teenager sat down with a sort of grace that made him decidedly uncomfortable, carefully unwrapping a lollipop from his pocket. Sticking the candy in his mouth, the Ultimate twirled another one, voice slightly muffled. "Want one?"

"No thanks." He may dislike the boy already, but he was raised to be polite. Hinata sat there silently, feeling completely out of place. And that was how time passed for minutes, before the other teenager spoke up once more.

"Say…" The Ultimate murmured, casting him a glance. Was the eyepatch a fashion statement or something? "Imagine, if you will, that for some reason, you wound up sitting next to someone you knew would destroy the world."

"Ah…like killing baby Hitler?" It was a rather popular thought experiment.

"Exactly." He absentmindedly wiggled his bandaged fingers. "Would you murder someone, knowing that one day, they'd grow up to become one of the worst things the world has ever seen. Cut out all the theories, and what ifs. You know they'll become a monster if you keep them alive."

"Well…" That removed most of the uncertainty that came with that sort of scenario. "I'd probably do it."

"Is that so~" The air seemed to suddenly get heavier. A single grey eye watched him coldly. "But what if that person was you?"

"Excuse me?" Was this some sort of sick joke—

A hand clamped down on his shoulder. It did not feel like flesh. "What if I told you, that in two months, you'd lose your humanity? That in five, you'll kill your first person? And that in nine, you'll cause The Tragedy out of boredom?" The grip tightened painfully.

He smiled, and it was like glimpsing the face of Death.

"What then, Hinata Hajime? Should I kill you where you stand?"