AN: The guide/artbook for "DanganDJ D4Ronpa: Head-cat-ster Monochio and Its 6 Despairs' Killing School Transfer of Hope's Pinnacle" is up, posted by "DanganDJD4Ronpa" on Fanfiction .net, AO3, and Wattpad (though only the latter two have art/pictures and they're in the later chapters of the book).

Everything is also cross-posted on DeviantArt, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, and Youtube under either "DanganDJD4Ronpa" or "D4DerpJockey".

[Taken from Chapter/Trial 3, there were almost two deaths, Aoi Miyake and Ibuki Niijima. Aoi managed to survive, but only just barely, and is unconscious, unable to participate in the class trial. Ibuki, meanwhile, is dead, charred corpse found beside the electric fence surrounding Hope's Pinnacle. This is the Debate Scrum to determine whether or not to talk about Aoi's case, and then what clue could be contained within it.]

"Can we… talk about Aoi now… please?" Tsubaki's voice, which was quiet and small, suddenly seemed loud in the deafening silence.

"Tsubaki?" Rika looked at her, eyes wide and concerned. "But… Aoi is still alive, isn't she? What good would talking about her be?"

"Seriously, Rika?" Saori slapped her forehead and glanced apologetically at Tsubaki.

"No, Rika has a point," Noa said. "Unless we can say for sure that Aoi's attacker and Ibuki's killer are one in the same, talking about Aoi won't really help. I mean, I'm still willing to, of course! I want to know what happened too, but we can't automatically assume that the two incidents are related. After all, a lot of us got knocked around and beaten up last night, so maybe whoever Aoi ran into was just… a little further down the rabbit hole." She smiled grimly as she touched the bruise on her face and a cut on her arm. She was far from the only one with such injuries.

"But we won't know that unless we talk about Aoi," Hiiro said softly, delicately.

"No!" Tsubaki interrupted, startling all of them. "Regardless of relevance to the case, I want to know what happened!" She slammed her fist on the railing of her podium. The students' heads were like metronomes moving back and forth as the debate continued.

"All right, all right. Enough already." Monochio's face and voice were monotone. "Order in the court. Order in the court. If you all want to be so split about it, let us at least be civil and engage in a proper Debate Scrum."

"Oh, not this again!" Esora sighed as the large, tile DJ disc in the center of their circle of podiums started to spin. Saori clutched at the railing of her podium, looking ill the second the ground started moving. As the large, tile DJ disc rotated, every podium was pushed out into two, opposing lines. Then, the disc spun in reverse, pulling the two lines back together so that they were face to face.

"Regardless of what anyone else says, I want to talk about Aoi!" Tsubaki insisted passionately, arms crossed.

"Forgive me for questioning you, for I empathize with your motive, but… is Aoi even relevant to the case?" Rei asked, hand on her chin.

"As Tsubaki said, I believe that relevance should be irrelevant. Aoi is our friend no matter what!" Miyu cried passionately.

"But friendships don't matter in class trials!" Muni argued. "What we need is evidence!"

"If you want evidence, what of Aoi's wounds?" Hiiro asked. "I cannot deny…" she looked away, "I wish to find out what happened to Aoi too…"

"But can the wounds even be evidence?" Yuka asked. "We can't know which, if any, came from more than one assailant!"

"Well, the only way to know for sure is to discuss it!" Dalia insisted.

"If we discuss it, and it only leads to another dead end, that puts a huge time-crunch on us," Maho winced.

"The time-crunch will be there regardless of what path we take," Saori replied grimly. "At least this way, we have a line of inquiry."

"A line of inquiry?" Esora asked, sounding genuinely surprised. "What concrete clue are you looking at?"

"Not a concrete clue!" Marika cried excitedly, suddenly understanding. "It's the question of where we found Aoi!"

"Where, huh?" Rika closed an eye and tapped her chin. "But, we found her in the forest! Just like everyone else! How does that help us?"

"It's a part of the forest farther away from where most of the fighting took place," Noa interjected, slowly changing her stance as a look of understanding washed over her.

"But farther away or not, couldn't she just have been moved?" Towa tilted her head, confused.

"If she'd been moved, there would've been marks!" Rinku cried excitedly, also starting to understand.

"The fact that there were no marks means whoever attacked Aoi did it in the isolated location we found her, but is it possible to determine a culprit from just that? We could've all pretended to be unfamiliar with that part of the forest." Kyoko held her in as she thought.

"Of course it's possible," Shinobu grinned. Like Noa, she used to be on the fence about discussing Aoi, not wishing to waste time, but also not wishing to overlook something of potential importance to the class trial. Now, they had their clue. "We have a lot of alibis already, and that part of the forest was far away from most of the action, so… process of elimination."

Unintentionally, hope was restored to the group as a new path forward opened up to the surviving students. The only one capable of such a heinous crime had to be someone no one else remembered seeing, and it had to be someone who came into contact with Aoi that night, obviously. Taking into account the location in the forest where Aoi was discovered, there were only three students who would've had the time required to get there and back after subduing a classmate. Hiiro, Noa, and Maho.

AN: This Debate Scrum is slightly different than the canon game in that the entire sequence of clues/discussions is connected while, in V3, it's clue/phrase/line by clue/phrase/line. I just wanted to give myself an extra challenge and try something slightly new.

Also, in this Chapter/Trial, Monochio has its "Flat Affect Junko" personality. As the name entails, that means it speaks in complete deadpan and has 0 facial expression. It's a sharp contrast to the First Chapter/Trial when it was basically Cat!Monokuma.

ooo

[Taken from Chapter/Trial 4, Aoi IS the victim this time and Shinobu suspects Dalia, but first, she has to push through Dalia's attempts at evasion and prove Hiiro and/or Yuka innocent in a Mass Panic Debate so they can focus in on Dalia].

"Ohhhh, but Saori is right, isn't she?" Marika tapped her chin. "Only someone of great height or strength could've been able to carry Aoi's body all the way up to the rooftop and then hurry back down before being caught, whether by one of us, or the rampaging Izanami!"

So, who were the tallest survivors with no alibis? Panicked, three voices cried out at once.

"N-no, wait! I promise it wasn't me!" Yuka cried, waving her hands desperately.

"So, I suppose I am a suspect now?" Dalia sighed and shook her head, left hand holding her right elbow as her right hand held her face.

"You can't honestly think I killed Aoi, can you?" Hiiro asked dejectedly, managing a weak scoff.

"I got into a scuffle with Izanami!"

"I was trying to protect everyone!"

"I admit, my… claustrophobia… flared up again…"

"She threw me into several students, and a couple of the VR lab's monitors!"

"I don't remember seeing or hearing Aoi during that time."

"I do remember hearing Aoi, but…"

"I definitely couldn't have carried Aoi anywhere on my own after that."

"I think I must've been out of the VR lab by the time she emerged from the Simulation."

"She ran right past me, crying out for Tsubaki…"

Of course, everyone paid close attention to all three debaters, but the first student to reply decided to fire off a little white lie, perjury…

Consider it… a cheat code! "I agree with that!" Shinobu pointed at Hiiro.

"Huh?" Hiiro blinked in surprise.

"I saw you curled up on the floor near the VR!"

"Huh?" Hiiro was still confused, and this time, so was everyone else. By the time Hiiro was curled up on the floor, it was already pitch-black in the VR lab and the battle with the angry Undead Goddess was underway!

"Yuka can confirm this," Shinobu insisted, looking determinedly at the girl on her right.

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" Yuka chuckled nervously, shrugging, palms up.

"While everyone else was headed into the VR world, I wanted to watch it from a different perspective, so to speak. Kyoko came with me so that we could act as one another's witnesses—"

"If I recall correctly, you invited me," Kyoko teased. Shinobu made a funny face while Esora and Yuka looked at one another, grinning like idiots.

"—and Yuka saw us as we were leaving," Shinobu managed to continue as though nothing had happened, even though more than just her unit was smirking now. Lucky Shinobu, Yuka unwittingly came to her aid.

"Oh! You're right! I do remember that!" she cried.

"So at first, we stayed put when the blackout occurred," Shinobu said. "I'm assuming it was Monochio's attempt at sabotaging us so we wouldn't actually be successful resurrecting anyone." The Ultimate FPS Gamer shot the feline freak a look that could've killed faster than any bullet.

"Waahhh! What a big, fat, meanie-head you are!" Monyochio wailed, raising its paws to its eyes as it "wept". Shinobu's deadpan expression did not change. "First, you accuse me of lying and cheating when I didn't! Then, you didn't even have the common courtesy to call me Monyochio! You're nyo fun, Shinyobu, nyun at all!" The adult-child/kitten whined. Was it trying to make each personality more insufferable than the last?

"Unless you can prove that, I don't think anyone will just take your word for it," Shinobu said grimly, arms crossed. Monochio, she added with an internal smirk.

"Oh, are you inviting me to join the class trial? Sounds like lots of funsies!" Again, Monyochio raised its paws to its eyes, but this time, it separated its toe beans such that two were above its eyes and two were below. As Monyochio called it, this was the Kawaii Kitty Paw-er Pose.

"No," Shinobu snapped, but her stern gaze was no longer on the headcatster. "Don't tell me you all forgot the Mass Panic Debate so soon? We can confirm Yuka's alibi because she was so injured during her fight with Izanami that there's no way she's the one that carried Aoi all the way up to the rooftop in such a short timeframe. And like I said, I did see Hiiro. Just as Kyoko and I reached front of the VR chairs, where the rest of you were, some of the helmets briefly flickered back on and I saw pale purple hair."

"R-right!" Kyoko nodded when she caught Shinobu staring intently at her. "That is, I remember some of the headset lights coming back on." But they were too dim for me to see anything, let alone the floor, let alone pale purple hair, so what is Shinobu doing? Did the Ultimate FPS Gamer somehow have IRL night vision?

No, Shinobu would've said something about it by now, at least to Peaky, Kyoko thought. But even if she couldn't see what Shinobu saw, she heard the conviction in Shinobu's voice and decided to trust her.

While Kyoko watched Shinobu, Shinobu watched the only one of the three involved in the Mass Panic Debate without a clear, supported alibi.

AN: If Shinobu chose the Truth Bullet, they would've eliminated Yuka as a suspect because of her injuries first and been able to segue right into her asking why Dalia didn't back her up on that when Dalia was the reason Yuka got yeeted in the first place (Dalia was the one Yuka was trying to protect).

Because Shinobu chose the Perjury Bullet, there is a Debate Scrum in the next chapter where the characters interrogate her about what she and Kyoko were doing behind the scenes alone together for so long, and all right before a blackout that even rendered Monochio incapacitated for days (unlike all other Trials, this one did not occur immediately after the murder).

Also, because Monochio is in its "Juwunko" phase, that's why it insists on being called Monyochio (no one complies, so it's another "Who are you calling Chairman?!" joke), and does the Kawaii Kitty Paw-er Pose, which is just the Photon Maiden pose and, in turn, is a reference to Junko's personality with the sprite that has her holding a hand over her face in the shape of an L.