Chapter 1: Continuity Error (Daily Life Part 1)

Warning: This is a Danganronpa fic. There's going to be a lot of violence, gore, and blood. And maybe a few other things. You've been warned (somewhat)

I saw Salmoneus also being cruelly punished, who imitated the flames of Jupiter and the thunder of Olympus. He drove arrogantly through the Greek states and the city in the middle of Elis, riding in a chariot drawn by four horses, and he demanded that he be honoured like a god. He was mad, because he tried to imitate the storm-clouds and the lightning that cannot be imitated with bronze and the clatter of horses' hooves. But Jupiter, all-powerful, hurled his thunderbolt through the thick clouds and cast him headlong down with a violent whirlwind.

It was a bright and sunny day. The perfect day to be outside and enjoy the nice cool breeze.

The perfect day to go out and enjoy the wilderness. To play sports. The possibilities were endless.

It would be a great day for everyone but the person currently forced to be outside to enjoy the finest day spring had to offer.

Edison found himself sitting under the shade of a tree, away from the rest of his siblings. His parents had pretty much made him go out and get some fresh air instead of cooping himself in his room all day with his studies.

And yet, he didn't want to be out here. The air around him made it hard to focus on his homework. Not only that, but the sound of his siblings screaming in the background made it nigh impossible to get any work done.

As he began to write one of the multitude of answers down, a scream caused his hand to shake, and the tip of his pencil to snap. Looking up, one of his siblings had just scored a goal. He wanted to give them half a piece of his mind. But the thought terrified him.

He was the youngest of nine siblings, so he didn't want to go start a fight he couldn't win.

Especially when…

"Still working on your homework?" A voice sneered at him.

Looking up at the person in question, the sun shone behind them, so they were cast in an intense shadow. "Y-yeah…" Edison turned his attention back to his homework. "What is it to you, Nikolai?"

He was going to choose to ignore him? Pathetic. "What is it to me? It's pitiful to see you out here doing nothing but working on your work. I thought you were the smart one, so you should already be done."

For a moment, he stopped writing, trying to think of a comeback. When nothing popped into his head, he let out a sigh and continued his writing. "I can do what I want with my free time."

Seems he wasn't getting it. Kneeling down to be at a more appropriate height, Nikolai tried to get a better look at his expression. "But using all that time to just sit under a tree while you could be bonding with family? Are you trying to become an outcast?" He raised an eyebrow, a smug smile on his face. "The rest of us get along plenty, all except for you."

This is why he didn't want to be outside. At least in the house, he could lock himself in his room and not be forced to have these kinds of conversations.

And yet, even if he tried to run, Nikolai would be on his heel just to pester him.

Just when he thought it would never end, another voice called out. "Hey! Nikolai!"

Both boys turned to look at who it belonged to. Another sibling.

Grimacing at the interruption, Nikolai called out. "Can't you see I'm busy right now, Alexander?"

Yeah, he wasn't going to buy that. "The others won't wait. So you can either have your team be down a person, or you can come back."

Contemplating his choices, the older brother eventually relinquished. Standing back up, he turned his body towards where everyone else was. However, his head was still locked on Edison. "You keep wasting your life away doing all of this work. You can train your mind to do whatever you want, but in the end, it'll only be a waste in a few years."

The sound of him walking was almost comforting. And yet, here he was, being berated with nobody to come talk to him in a calming manner. Even the person who he considered the nicest out of his siblings would only briefly acknowledge him.

Speaking of them, he watched as Nikolai and Alexander both left to join up with the rest of his siblings. The only noticeable thing was that after a bit, Alexander glanced behind to give him a saddened look.

Edison's Room

Having been woken up by the sound of an alarm of some kind. Looking around the room, he couldn't really find anything of the sort. Opening up the clock app, he noted that the time was now 7am. Seems the nighttime period is over. "Must be an alarm for the entire station." He concluded as he got out of bed.

After getting ready, he made his way out of his room, only to be greeted by others who had done the same. Although only a few people had made it out on time.

Benoit, Gigi, Gemini, Sakura, and Seira had all made it out around the time he did.

"I thought I told everyone to be up at this time." Gigi wasn't impressed by the severe lack of people.

Benoit shook his head. "L-let them rest… They need it."

Adjusting his goggles, Edison spoke up. "Well, what if they're already down there?"

Gigi shook her head. "I doubt it. It would be a waste to go there before the meeting time. Besides, the people who would get up early are all here." Like her and Sakura!

Benoit slowly nodded his head. "I considered going down early… But I decided to wait till the others were up."

Speaking of others… "Are we waiting for them?" Seira asked.

"No." Gigi wasn't going to bother. She moved over towards the elevator and pressed the button.

Once the doors opened, everyone stepped in.

"So… We're exploring everything… Right?" Benoit spoke up. "How are we doing it?"

"We could probably split off in groups." Seira suggested before a smile formed on her face. "Maybe we could make the groups based on astrological-"

Edison had begun to mix a new liquid inside the flask that turned the entire thing red. "We aren't doing astrology."

Huffing her cheeks, she placed both hands on her hips. "Why not?"

"Yeah. Why not?" Gemini tilted his head to the side. "My name shares an astrological sign."

Oh god no. Edison began to press the elevator buttons faster. "Open open open-" Hey it opened!

Stepping out into the empty cafeteria, they had noticed a few changes since the last time they had been here. "Why did it… change?" Benoit noticed that it definitely seemed more lively now.

Edison was about to say something else, but the sound of the elevator rising could be heard. "Oh. Another group must be up." He noted.

With that being the only explanation, Gemini moved over towards the back of the cafeteria, where there seemed to be some food. "Who's making the food here?" He looked up, expecting for Monokawa or Nova to make themselves known. Instead, there was nothing. "Hmm…" Well, he wasn't going to say no to food. "We should grab some food while we wait for everyone else."

Although, it didn't take long for the door to open to reveal some more people who were up.

The next set of people were Winter, Melody, Michael, and Hae-Won.

"Hmm?" Looking around the room, the tattoo artist noticed that not everyone was here. "Figured as much." She stepped out of the elevator. "We'll be waiting it seems."

Dancing her way over to the food, Melody was excited to see what the food options were. After getting some food, she looked up. "Thank you for the meal." She wasn't sure where the overseers were, but it was clear that they were the one to provide them the food.

Winter, on the other hand, wasn't exactly as pleased with the food. She almost had the consideration to go to the kitchen and make her own. However, seeing someone like Michael grab the food from the station made her reconsider. Given the rich background she had pinned him with having, she hadn't expected him to take it without much care. "Hmm." She hummed to herself before grabbing herself a tray and sitting down next to him. "Tell me how the food is."

He hadn't expected the company, but he should have figured it would be her. "Huh… Will do." He was still a bit unsure of the entire thing. Taking a bite of the food, it wasn't bad! "It's edible, and I can't taste anything off about it. So it should be fine."

Once the elevator opened again, it brought along it the next group, which consisted of Benjamin, Alan, Laki, Ian, and Tatiana.

"We have arrived!" The knife thrower declared before realising how many people were already here. "Wow, almost everyone is here already." She noted.

"Hmm. Guess I didn't oversleep completely." Alan noted, counting everyone. "I thought I would be the last person here."

"Pfft!" She rolled her eye playfully. "Did you forget about May already?"

That was true. "I suppose she'd be the last one to join us."

Laki was the first of this group to run over to the food. "Oh! There's so many options!" She turned her head towards Ian. "What should I have?"

Shuffling his deck of cards, he stopped to take a look at the food. "Just one of everything."

Works for her! Grabbing a tray, she stuffed it full of whatever was available.

Next, Benjamin went to get some food, but he was having some troubles. "Master!" Dolly shook her head. "I don't like that." She crossed her arms. After a few seconds, she spoke up again. "I don't care if you do!"

Still, he took the food anyway with her yelling at him in the background.

Counting the number of heads, and subtracting one, Edison got the amount of people here. "We're just missing five people."

"Of course." Hae-Won had already figured out the five people. Atlas, Dae-Hyun, Gennosuke, Lorelei, and May. "Makes sense for them to be last."

Still, waiting for them after so long wasn't exactly on Gigi's schedule. "I've been fine with waiting for this long, but…" She trailed off. Checking the clock, it had already been half an hour since day had started. "They need to be more punctual."

At that moment, the elevator opened again, revealing the last people.

May stepped out of the elevator, only to stand by the entrance. "I know you were complaining." She took a guess, but didn't bother moving any further.

Gennosuke on the other hand, didn't seem to care too much. "Oh, they have food for us?" He walked over to explore the back area. "And here I thought they'd starve us."

"Alright." Now that everyone was here, time to move on. Gigi stood up from the bench. "Like we agreed on yesterday, we are going to be exploring the rooms in more detail."

"What?" Lorelei had just gotten herself some food. "What the hell are you talking about? We just got here! Let us eat."

Placing a hand on her hip, she shook her head. "You should have been here sooner, then. Everyone else had a chance to eat."

Well, at least most of them did.

Since she had suggested it earlier, Seira spoke up again. "We should figure out how to divide groups."

Edison quickly stood up. "Nononono. You'll do it all wrong."

She frowned slightly. "But you don't have any better idea, so just let me do mine." She turned towards everyone else. "Could I get your zodiac signs?"

"Nononono." The chemist shook his head. "Don't listen to her! She's delusional!"

Gemini let out a small laugh. "As if you even have to ask about mine." He pointed to himself. "Mine shares the same one as my name."

"Oh! I wasn't sure if it did or not." Seira was glad to hear that. "Guess we share the same astrological sign."

Gennosuke spoke up. "Huh, guess the three of us share one."

"As do I." May mumbled.

That was more people than she expected. That was twenty percent of the people here with the same zodiac sign. "Is there… anyone else?"

Slowly, like a groundhog rising from the ground, Laki rose up between the group of four. "Hi." She said in an oddly soft manner.

It was now up to twenty five percent. "Well!" That was good news! "One of the groups could be us five!" She concluded.

"Wait, how many groups do we plan on being?" Alan spoke up.

"Four seems like a good number. Two per floor." Hae-Won mentioned. "There are a ton of rooms, so most groups can probably tackle a few of them."

"If you want to form groups with the same method." Winter spoke up. "I'm an aquarius."

Edison let out a sigh. "We're really doing this, aren't we…?"

After a bit, Seira began to gather the zodiac signs of everyone else. Thinking about it for a bit, she had the rest of the groups figured out. "Group 3 contains Benoit, Gigi, and Ian, who are all Libra's. Benjamin and Dolly can join too because their sign is cancer." She stopped for a moment, contemplating if she should ask the doll if she had a sign, but ultimately decided it wasn't worth it. "And lastly, Edison, who's an aquarius."

Ian frowned slightly, taking a look at the group he was with. "Hmm…" But it quickly turned to a smile. "If that's what you think the best group will be, I'm for it."

"Next group…" Ah, but there were so many different signs left. It would be hard to put them together. She couldn't put Atlas and Lorelei together, since they'd start a fight, no questions asked. "Lorelei, you'll be paired up with Melody, Winter, Michael, and Dae-Hyun." They were Aries, Scorpio, Pisces, Aquarius, and Capricorn respectively. It was the best she could do while keeping the groups together. Though she felt like Lorelei and Dae-Hyun would not get along.

Which left the last group. "Finally…" She trailed off, looking at who was left. Maybe this wasn't going to be the greatest idea. "Tatiana, Atlas, Alan, Sakura, and Hae-Won." Respectively Leo, Aries, Scorpio, Capricorn, and Virgo. It was hard to group all of these people when they had so many different signs. Maybe she shouldn't have made a group of just one sign… Nah! Gemini squad rules.

"Love it!" Tatiana declared, looking at the group she would be. "I couldn't have asked for a better group!"

Oh! Well it seems like there wouldn't be any complaining.

Now that the groups were formed, Gemini spoke up again. "I'm thinking we explore every room we can, and then we discuss our findings at the end of this."

Gigi nodded her head. "Works for me. We can all meet back up here in a few hours." She pointed towards the elevator. "My group can explore the second floor."

"Who made you leader?" Ian raised an eyebrow before getting an intimidating look from her. "Didn't say I was against it." This could be fun.

Lorelei placed a hand on her hip. "There's a room on this floor I want to check out, so my group can stay here."

And lastly. May let out a yawn. "Can we just explore this area?" She didn't want to have to go back on the elevator after just getting down here.

Gemini shrugged. "Works for me." He opened up his clock app. Well, she never specified a time! But it was fine. "Let's go." He turned towards his group before heading towards the kitchen.

Tau Sector

This was the hallway that the cafeteria led out into, which is exactly where the first group found themselves.

"Tau…" Dae-Hyun read the plaque. "Know what that means?"

"Nope." Lorelei shook her head. "Does it really matter, though? Who cares what the hallway is called."

Michael took a closer look at the name. "Well… It has to mean something. But thinking about it now won't help us…" Still… What an interesting name it was. "Where should we go first?"

Lorelei lifted up her hand. "I have a place in mind! So follow me!" She wasn't going to wait for anyone else as she took off down the hall. Or well, walked at a slightly faster pace than usual. She wasn't going to run.

Omicron Sector

Similar to how the other group had found a name for the hallway they were in, Edison was currently reading a plaque that was next to the elevator. "Omicron Sector…?" He mumbled out, adjusting his glasses. "Now there's a term I know."

"You do?" First time Ian had heard of it. Or at least remembered hearing about it.

He quickly nodded his head. "It's a Greek letter. Basically. Just imagine a circle, and that's Omicron."

There was a bit of silence before Atlas pointed something out. "Hey that's just an O!"

"... Yeah!" It was exactly an O, but with extra steps. "Curious to see if the other areas are named like this."

Gigi wasn't too interested in this conversation, so she thought to move things along. "Alright, I think we can split off from here." She placed a hand on her hip. "Let's meet back up in the cafeteria after."

"Right. We shouldn't take too long anyways." Hae-Won began to walk away.

The first room that was going to be explored was the very room that Lorelei and Laki woke up in at the start of the story.

Stepping inside, the group of five looked around. The first one to speak up was Lorelei. "Still the best room here." They had their hands on their hips. Her eyes drifted over to the large monitors on the walls.

"Of course you would think so…" Dae-Hyun mumbled out as he stepped into the room fully.

The rest of the group took a step in, but they weren't being very talkative.

Until Melody broke the silence that is. "This room is amazing." Even with her 1920's aesthetics, she wasn't just going to ignore technology like that. "What do you suppose this room is for?"

… Michael hadn't been paying attention to the conversation. Soon, he turned his head to look at Melody. "Hmm?" Oh, he should probably respond. "We won't find out until we turn on the monitor."

Before he even had a chance to, Lorelei had moved to turn on the monitor. After a few seconds, it loaded a screen with some text. "Please clock in?" She read out, changing her face to a grimace. "Someone else do this."

Seeing that nobody else volunteered, Michael moved closer to the monitor, noticing a scanner to the side. Putting two and two together, he scanned his watch.

After a few seconds, the screen loaded up an image of a different room. More specifically the kitchen.

Stepping up to stand beside Lorelei, Winter watched the contents of the monitor. "Oh. That's live." She noticed when she saw Gemini and the others step into the kitchen. "Is this to monitor the station?"

"Seems like so, if you want to be a creep." Which she would be for the time being. Looking around the various buttons, she found two. They had an arrow pointing to the left and right respectively. Clicking one of the buttons, it changed the monitor to the next room. Now it was showing the locker room. "Yeah, who wants to be a creep?"

Winter moved over to the buttons, and began to flicker through the various rooms. "Hmm… There's a lot of rooms available to us." They'd be busy all day investigating each one.

"Can this only be used by me?" Michael wasn't exactly sure what he was looking at.

"Somewhat!" The voice came from behind them. Looking over, it was Nova. She was tapping away at the screen on her arm. "This is the first function you'll see of jobs." She approached the group, looking at the monitor. "To use the system, you have to be registered as one of the people who can use this machine."

"How many people can be registered?" Lorelei decided to ask.

"Only a maximum of two people can be registered at once for this job."

Well, he had a job now! Michael glanced over at his watch, looking through it. "And how do we quit?"

Her visor turned blue, and her expression saddened. "Oh? You already want to quit? You just started."

He put down his watch. "No. It's not that. I just want to know for the future."

Well, she couldn't fault him for that! "You can access that in the job app. You'll be given the option to quit your job. After that, you have to wait a full day to be able to accept another one. Fortunately, the watch comes with a timer so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle."

He didn't want all the pressure on himself, so he turned to look at everyone else. "Who else wants-"

"No." Lorelei crossed her arms.

"Absolutely not." Dae-Hyun had gone off to explore some other things.

Winter shook her head. "Watching people like this feels a little creepy."

That just left Melody, who quickly shook her head. "I would be out of my element here."

Guess it was just going to have to be him. "Alright." But he had someone in mind that he could ask. For the time being, he decided it was best to look at each individual camera.

Looking at the next camera showed off the cafeteria. It was hard to imagine that one camera could capture all of this, but the only blind spot was directly under it. But given that it was so low to the ground, it wasn't a problem. From this view, one could see all the tables, the door to the kitchen, and lastly, the entirety of the elevator, including the ceiling it disappears into.

Before he could look at any other, Lorelei spoke up. "Alright there Michael Afton, enough looking at the cameras. There's other things we can look at."

"R-right…" He could always check later. Stepping away from the monitor, he looked at the rest of the group. Up to them to figure out what to do next.

"Is that safe?" Winter pointed out, a little to the side of the monitor, on the floor. What she was pointing to was a clump of wires sticking out from the wall.

Nova shrugged, her expression changing to a joyful one. "If you aren't stupid, it should be fine. Not like they'll hurt you for grabbing them. Just don't get entangled in them."

"What are they powering?" Lorelei placed a hand on her hip.

Before Nova could speak up, Dae-Hyun answered. "I think it has to do with this." He knocked on a panel.

The group moved over to where he was. The one to open it was Lorelei, who had dealt with technology her entire life. "Hmm…" She hummed out. "Seems to be the main power supply to this entire station." She pointed out.

"Yes." Nova confirmed. "It's used to control the station's power."

Now Winter was feeling a bit mischievous. "What's stopping us from messing with this?"

The joyful expression appeared on her visor again. "You are more than welcome to try. However, I must warn you that anything you do won't affect it. Only something of high voltage would actually do something to it."

Melody, on the other hand, didn't want to mess with it at all. "What exactly would damaging this do anyways?"

Nova was going to answer, however her arm began to ring. She took a glance at the screen on her arm. "Oh, it's Monokawa." She tapped on the screen and brought her arm to her ear, almost like a phone. "Yes, what is it, Monokawa?"

Winter tried to inch closer to hear the phone call, but Melody stopped her. "It's rude to listen in."

Nova let out a sigh. "We can't just throw people out of the station because we don't like them. At least let them commit a murder first." Her eyes glanced over to the duo of Winter and Melody. Concluding that they wanted to listen in on her conversation, she decided to wrap this up quickly. "This isn't a video conference. Please do not disturb me in the future." She hung up the phone. Looking at the group, she held her hands in front of her. "My apologies for that. Monokawa isn't used to some of the… people on this station."

"Hey." Dae-Hyun hadn't really been paying attention to the entire phone call fiasco. "What about this door here?" The door he pointed out had a scanner like every other door. Except…. When he tried to scan it, it buzzed. "It doesn't work."

Walking over to inspect the door, she shook her head. "Oh, you don't have access to that room." She held her hands together. "See, this thing is only to be accessed by myself and Monokawa."

"But what's behind it?" Dae-Hyun was still going to ask. "We might not be able to access it, but you can tell us." It was formulated more like a demand rather than a question.

Nova shook her head. "No. I can't tell you. Some things are meant to remain a secret. Please respect that."

He didn't really feel like respecting the person who put them in a killing game. But he also didn't feel like disrespecting the person with a gun either, so he chose to back off. "Fine."

Towards the back end of the room, there was a cabinet of some kind. He approached that one, hoping to find out what was in it- "Huh?" He tried to pull it open, but it wasn't working.

Fear not! For Lorelei was here! "Have you tried pushing?" To give bad advice.

"Shut up." He inspected the handle closer. "It's locked."

"What, with an electronic lock?" They asked.

He checked again. "No… Just… Just a regular lock."

"Huh…" Well it was weird to see something normal here.

Winter approached the group. "Can't we attempt to break it open?"

Dae-Hyun shook his head. "The lock is wedged in there. You need to angle the key a certain way. Hard to break that open." Or, at least he would keep telling himself that so he wouldn't have to break it open.

Lastly, the only other thing in this room were the racks next to the cabinet. They held various things like flashlights.

"Hmm…" Michael took a glance at them. "If the power supply is tied to the power of the station…" His mind was forming a thought. "Then it's possible these are in case the power goes off."

Lorelei frowned slightly. "Maybe." But she wasn't buying it. "But that's all that's here." They shook their head. "Let's just head off now."

Kitchen

Stepping into the kitchen, the certified Gemini Squad(™) took attention to everything that was around them.

"Huh." Gemini hummed out. "We still have access to a kitchen even with food being served to us."

Moving past the group, Seira glanced around. "At least it gives us some freedom when it comes to our meals."

"It's a kitchen, so I don't expect to find anything of much use here." Gennosuke mumbled out as he glanced around.

Raising an eyebrow, the astrologist looked over at him. "Much use… for what?"

Realising the implication one could gleam from this, he raised his hands up in his defense, never losing his smile. "To help us escape. Not for murder."

She was worried for a second, but it seemed unfounded now. "Alright, thank goodness."

Laki was the first one to actually start exploring anything of use. And by use, it was the fridge she took interest in. "Wonder if there's any food in here!" She opened the door . "Oh! There is." Inside, there were various foods. Laki pulled out a carton of milk. She quickly opened it up before drinking it straight from the carton.

"Uh…" The psychic's expression slowly shifted to one of slight disgust. "First, aren't you going to check the date on that?"

"Oh!" The lucky student glanced over at the date. "It's good till November 24th!"

That's when something struck all of them.

"We…" Gemini mumbled out. "Don't know what the date is, do we?"

Seira had begun mumbling things to herself. "Not knowing the date is pretty bad." How will she ever do her horoscopes now?

"Does it really matter?" May spoke up. "The date doesn't change our fate here. And I'm sure the overseer won't let us get sick from drinking expired milk."

Gemini let out a sigh of relief. "Right. I suppose not." He moved over towards the fridge. "Anything else of note?" Peeking inside, he noticed that the back looked different from most fridges. "It looks like the back can slide open…" He stepped away from the door, and tried to look behind the fridge. "Hmm…" That was weird. "The fridge goes into the wall."

Seira had to take a look at this herself. "Why would it do that?"

Putting a single ounce of thought into it, Gennosuke spoke up. "That's probably how the fridge gets stocked. I'm willing to bet that there's a room behind it."

"Why not just stock it from this room?" Seira pointed out.

Shrugging, the psychic didn't have the best answer. "Probably because they don't want it to be seen. Or maybe that's just where the food is stored."

Next up, Seira opened up the freezer portion of the fridge. "Ah, there's ice in here." She pulled out a pack. "But no ice maker."

Gemini took a peek into the freezer. "Probably going to need to restock that ourselves, then." Easy enough. "Oh!" He pulled out a box of frozen pizza. "Neat. I know what's for supper tonight."

"How many would that even feed?" Seira noted how small the pizza was.

"Me. And that's it." He wasn't going to share. He placed the box back in the freezer. "Besides that…" There was… ice cream! Yum!

"That's enough about the fridge. Let's look at some other things." Laki had already gotten bored of it. "Like look!" She pointed over at the knife rack on the counter.

Gemini felt a bit uneasy. "I'm not sure how I feel about there being knives out in the open."

Gennosuke shrugged. "It's not like we can hide them or anything. One of us would end up knowing where it is. Probably best to leave them there. Besides…" He trailed over towards the fridge. "We'll probably need them if we need to make our own food." He moved a few steps away from the rack. Now he was standing in front of the sink. He turned on the water and it worked perfectly fine. "No problems here." He noted.

To the right of the sink, was the oven. "Perfect." Gemini could cook the pizza now. "Tonight's a feast." And further to the right of that, next to the fridge, was the microwave.

Meanwhile, Seira had begun looking through the cupboards. "There's a lot of non-perishable stuff here. They really are giving us liberty, aren't they?" She crouched down to take a look at some of the cupboards closer to the floor. "Huh?" Was her reaction upon opening the one left to the sink. "What's this?"

Gemini knelt down to take a better look. "Not quite sure." There was a tube sticking out of the ground. He hovered his hand over it. He felt as if his hand was being pulled in, until he pulled back. "I think I know what this is." He stood up, reaching over towards an apple on the center island. He chucked it in, and it was instantly pulled into the tube. "I think it's to throw out trash."

Laki had crouched down too, hovering her hand over it. "Cool! But why would they need something like this?"

"Hmm…" Gennosuke hummed out. "My best bet is that it's the easiest way to get rid of the trash. We're twenty people. If there was only a can, it would get filled up quickly. Wherever this is going can probably hold more garbage."

"What do they do with the garbage when there's too much?" Seira stood back up.

Laki raised her hands up. "They just throw it out the station! We're in space! Who cares about pollution?"

"I- I do!" How could you not care about pollution? "Just because it's space doesn't mean it's alright for it to be polluted!"

"Which reminds me…" Gennosuke trailed off. "Where in space are we?"

Despite being an astrologist, she never considered that. "I- What do you mean? We should be near Earth, right?"

"Someone would notice." May pointed out. "I have no recollection of this station at all, which means it's new. Someone would notice a new station. If you were one of the few groups capable of building a space station, and suddenly one of them appeared out of nowhere, you would start asking questions."

Gemini couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Wait wait wait wait. Are you implying that we aren't circling the Earth right now?"

The academic prodigy turned around. "Well, we could." She let out a yawn. "I just find it odd… is all…"

This was starting to give the escapist a headache. "Let's not worry about that right now. Is there anything else that's worth exploring in this room?"

"No, I think we covered pretty much everything." Gennosuke did another look through the kitchen, opening some of the cupboards. "The only other thing here is that we have plates and bowls."

"Just the island here." Seira pointed out towards the chairs surrounding the island countertop. It didn't have anything on it besides a bowl of fruit. She grabbed one out from the bowl. "I think that's pretty much it."

"Oh!" Laki called out, inspecting the wall. "Look at this!" She was looking at a target carved into the wall.

"That… Doesn't look like it's supposed to be there…" Gemini noted.

"Tatiana." Was the short answer Gennosuke gave. "She was probably locked up in this room. I could imagine her carving a target out of boredom."

That made… a lot of sense actually! No need to think anymore about it. "OK!" Gemini placed his hands on his hips. "I think we're finally able to go check out the cafeteria itself now. I'm guessing nobody else has bothered anyways."

With that, they had cleared one room.

Cleaning Room

Benoit and Gigi were back in this room again.

"Hmm…" Benoit had already noticed some things were different. "Why is everything like this…"

While the room had been a mess when they had woken up, it was mostly cleaned up now.

Of note, most of the cleaning chemicals were stacked neatly along the wall, while some of them were locked behind a glass case.

"It is strange." Gigi's first stop was the glass case. "Why would they be here?" She crossed her arms.

Benoit decided to take notice of the ones they freely had access to. "Um…" He decided the best he could do was read the labels off them. "They seem to be relatively safe…"

"Relatively?" Dolly got closer. "Tell me hot stuff, what classifies as relatively safe?"

Standing back up, he adjusted his clothes. It felt weird talking to a doll, and yet here he was. "It… Well… It's non corrosive." He finally explained. "Probably shouldn't drink it, but it won't irritate your skin."

Edison moved over to investigate them by himself. "He's right. They're all… relatively safe!"

"Please stop using those words." Dolly deadpanned.

Ian stepped up to stand next to glass. "How do we open it?"

Even if Gigi didn't have keen eyes, she would have noticed it anyways. "There's a scanner next to the wall. That's probably how you do it."

For a second, he was tempted to test that out, but figured it was a bad idea. "Hmm…" He would prefer if someone else were to explain it to him. Letting out a few coughs, he called out. "Nova!"

They waited a few seconds, and nothing.

Edison shook his head. "We don't need her here. I'm your resident chemical expert." He pressed his face against the glass. "Let's see…" He tried his best to read the labels. "Ah! These are relatively dangerous!"

"Cease." Dolly was looking at him.

Ian looked around. "Are we able to break the glass?"

"D-don't do that!" Benoit took a step back. "It's such… a mess to clean and someone could… get hurt."

Well, nevermind. If someone was going to be so vocal about it. "Fine. But at best we're just going to have to wait till Nova gets here."

"Just scan your watch." Gigi tried to order him.

He wasn't fond of being told what to do. "How about you scan your watch?"

"Fine!" Dolly yelled out. "I'll do it!" She approached the scanner and scanned her watch.

After a few seconds of silence, Ian spoke up. "Benjamin has the watch."

"Master! He's calling me a faker!"

Suddenly, the door opened up, and Nova was standing there. "Sorry, you called for me? I was busy giving an explanation to another group."

Finally, someone who had the answers. Ian pointed to the glass wall behind himself. "What's this?"

Right, she figured it was going to be about that. "Those chemicals are dangerous, and thus, locked behind a glass so nobody can use them… Unless you're assigned to the job, that is."

"Hmm…" The gambler had moved over to the scanner next to the glass case. "Is this how we assign jobs to ourselves?"

"Exactly." Nova nodded her head. "Once you scan your watch, you will register yourself for a job."

An idea was forming in his head. "Do you need to be opened to the job app to do so?"

"Nope. Just scanning your watch without turning it on will be fine."

That's all he needed to hear. Quickly grabbing onto Edison's arm, he pulled his watch into the scanner.

"H-hey!" The boy tried to protest, but he had absolutely no control.

As soon as the watch hit the scanner, it made a dinging sound, before registering his name onto the screen.

"Huh?"

"Oh how generous!" Dolly called out. "Get to cleaning, boy!"

He quickly moved his watch away. "Hey! I didn't ask for this!"

Ian shrugged. "I just got you a job, you should be happy."

"Master! They're selling like hotcakes! You need to find something!" Dolly began to panic.

Gigi let out a sigh, pointing her black glove at Ian. "Let's not force anyone to do anything."

Letting out an annoyed sound, the chemist scanned his watch, opening the glass case. "We should be able to check them out in more detail now." He glanced to where Nova was, only to see the door close. They wouldn't be able to ask her anything else, unfortunately.

Ian reached into the shelf, grabbing some of the various chemicals. "This could definitely kill someone if used right."

A whistle sound could be heard before a yellow card was pulled out. "If you're going to think about murder, do it when we're not around."

"Don't do it at all!" Benoit added shortly after.

"Are you…" A small smile appeared on his face. "Carding me? Sorry, I'm not a soccer player." He put the bottle of chemicals down. "Nice try, though."

To test out his watch again, Edison scanned it. This allowed the glass case to close, blocking them off from the chemicals once again. "Pretty useful, I guess."

Gigi crossed her arms. "I'm not sure how I like the idea of only one person having full access to it, but it's probably for the best." She would just prefer if she was the one to have that access. Wanting to test something out, she scanned her own watch, but only got an error message. "Only one person at a time can access this." That was unfortunate, but Edison didn't look like he would kill anyone. Then again, that was a problem in itself.

Dolly and Benjamin had broken away from the group to go explore the back part of the room. "Hey master! Open the closet!"

Since the doll couldn't do it, Benjamin was forced to open it himself. Instead, there wasn't much. Just a mop bucket, a mop, a broom, a hose in the back, and various other cleaning supplies like gloves and such.

Stepping into the room, Dolly pointed out the mop. "Look! It matches your hair!" The ventriloquist made no reaction to the insult.

The room itself was on the smaller side, being about a seventh of the previous room's size.

For a few more seconds, Benjamin just stood in the room.

"Now now master. Don't just mope around." Drum noises.

"Are you two done in there?" Gigi called out. "There's nothing else in this room, so we'll be heading to the next one."

"Aw…" Dolly seemed disappointed. "But we were having so much fun there."

Ian raised an eyebrow. "How much fun can you have with a bucket?"

Edison quickly shook his head. "You can have endless fun with a bucket!"

Gigi left. She wasn't about to entertain a bucket discussion.

Locker Room

Stepping into the locker room, this was the room that Edison and Seira had been locked inside of. But given that neither of them were here to at least explain what they had found so far, it was up to the group of five to sort things out themselves.

"A locker room?" Atlas glanced around. "But not the kind that would be for sports…" The lockers were too small for such a thing.

Stepping past him, Hae-Won decided to take a look at some of the lockers. "Hmm…" The first thing she had noticed was the finger scanner. On each locker. "This is probably how we open them." Wasn't a difficult conclusion to reach. However, given that none of them had claimed a locker yet. She placed her finger on the scanner. After a few seconds, a faint blue light emanated from the scanner. A clicking sound could be heard, and the locker door swung open. "Seems simple enough."

Standing beside her was Atlas. "I don't need any of this." He had a room if he really wanted to store things in.

Alan on the other hand began to count every locker. "There's only about twenty lockers. So one for each of us." He hummed out in thought. That's when he noticed that the path turned to the left. "Ah, there's more here." He walked off on his own.

Moving around the various lockers, Tatiana had an idea she wanted to try. She scanned her finger on one of the lockers, causing it to open. "Let's see how well these lockers are made!" She moved over to the next one to scan her finger. However the sound of buzzing could be heard instead. "Ah! We can only have one active locker at a time."

"Obviously." Sakura had already figured as much. "There'd be no point to having multiple lockers. Especially when we're only twenty people to begin with."

Twirling her knife, she eventually struck a pose, pointing the tip of the blade towards the security guard, who was unphased. "I don't want to make any assumptions on the matter! If we make any form of assumptions, we strike a chance of lacking on key details."

Still, it wasn't like this was a bad assumption to make. Letting out a heavy sigh, Sakura shook her head. "Whatever. How much space do these have anyways?"

"Huh…" Tatiana stepped aside, not wanting to be the one to answer that question.

After a few seconds, Hae-Won spoke up. "Not too much room. Enough to fit a few objects and also some clothes. Not anything useful."

"Hey guys…" The voice of Alan called over.

After a few seconds, the four of them rounded the corner. He was standing in front of a rather large monitor. "Hmm?" The tattoo artist walked up closer to inspect it. "What's this doing in the locker room?"

Well, ever curious, Alan turned on the monitor. After a few seconds, it loaded up the two rows of lockers. "Hmm…" He had some ideas. "Seems this is to keep track of which locker is whose." He had noticed both Tatiana and Hae-Won's name appeared respectively where they claimed there's.

"Hey…" Atlas noticed something. "What about this thing here that says current location?"

That… didn't make any sense honestly. The only location should be the locker room. But he had a theory on his hands. "It's possible we can send these lockers to another location. Which would explain why they're even here."

"You'd be right!"

Suddenly.

Otter.

Floating behind the group of five was Monokawa. "This locker room serves more than just the purpose of storing objects. It serves the purpose of sending them across the station." He floated over towards the monitor. "It makes getting certain items around much easier. Wouldn't want to be seen carrying around incriminating evidence, you know?"

Wait a second… That meant. "Another thing I can't use?" Atlas pointed out. "This is starting to get repetitive really quickly."

The otter stared at him for a few seconds with a blank expression, before the sound of a phone call could be heard. Soon, a clicking noise could be heard.

"Yes, what is it, Monokawa?" It was Nova. Seems they were having a phone call.

"Is it too late to throw someone off the station? They're too much of a hassle." He eyed Atlas with a dark aura.

The sound of a sigh could be heard. "We can't just throw people out of the station because we don't like them. At least let them commit a murder first."

That's not the answer he wanted to hear. "But! Just look at him!" He extended his arms out like Nova could actually see him.

After a bit of silence, she spoke up. "This isn't a video conference. Please do not disturb me in the future." And then a clicking sound.

"You get to live, kid. Consider yourself lucky."

He felt anything but. "Yeah, whatever."

Wanting to get back on track, Sakura decided to steer the conversation back towards this room. "Are we able to know what rooms contain these types of lockers?"

The otter shrugged. "Calling them lockers isn't exactly the truth. See, this is the only room with lockers. The other rooms would have a deposit box. Which means you can transfer all your items there, but you can't bring them back here via the same method."

"So once we transfer them elsewhere, we'd have to bring them back manually?" Tatiana was getting the gist of it.

"Pretty much. They're more of a one way ticket than anything. It isn't meant to store multiple items." He floated past them to look at the monitor.

This was making a lot of sense. "How do we transfer items?"

"There's two methods. Each room that has one of these deposit sites also comes equipped with a finger scanner. Using them should bring all the contents to your locker."

Made sense. "And let me guess!" Tatiana wanted to take a crack at it. "We can also transfer them while in this room."

Alan slowly nodded his head. "I would assume so. This monitor also has a scanner."

Monokawa was happy! Because it made his job at explaining much easier. "Exactly. You can always choose to move it while in this room." He floated over towards the locker that Tatiana had claimed. He was just small enough to fill up. "Send me to one of the rooms on the ground floor."

This is something she had to see, so she quickly closed the locker. "Where should I send him?"

Thinking for a moment, Alan pointed over towards a random room. "Just there should be fine."

Scanning her finger, Tatiana chose the random room that Alan had pointed out. "Here we go!"

"Hey." Atlas had realised something. "Why didn't we just leave him stuffed in there?"

The room grew quiet as they realised they probably could have fixed one of their problems right now.

As amusing as it was, Hae-Won wasn't going to give the thought any credit. "He would have gotten out anyway. At least with this, we get to see how it works."

On the screen, it showed an animation of the contents of Tatiana's lockers being deposited on the lower floor.

Even after the explanation, she tried to see if she could retrieve the contents again. "Nope. I can't."

"We'll have to keep this in mind if a body ever drops." Sakura crossed her arms.

The knife thrower didn't like the sound of that. "When a body drops?" She repeated, letting out a nervous laugh. "Fret not, for a body will never drop."

Letting out a sigh, Hae-Won shook her head. "No, she's right. It's something to keep in mind. Although, I guess it doesn't matter at the moment." Not like there'd be any reason to use this room yet.

"Anything else in this room?" Atlas took one last look around. But the only other thing that they could notice in this room was the bench between the rows of lockers. "At least we have somewhere to sit." He mumbled out. He began to walk away.

Meanwhile, Alan was still looking through the computer. "Hmm…" Although, no matter what he did, he wasn't able to get something different from it. "This room doesn't seem like it'll offer anything else." Which meant they needed to move onto the next room.

Ultimate Talent Manager Station

Melody would open the doors to this room first. "This is where me and the tall fella woke up." It still looked almost exactly the same as when she first saw it. "It doesn't fit with anything else." She pointed out. "The walls just feel different."

"Hmm…" Dae-Hyun stepped into the room, looking around. "..." Huh?

The room itself did not match the atmosphere of the rest of the station. It almost looked like it was a room pulled right out of an office building. The walls for one didn't look metallic. Shelves lined up the sides of the wall with the only thing of note being the desk on the left side of the room.

Lorelei placed a hand on her hip. "This room is dumb. Let's just leave."

… "No." Dae-Hyun took a step forward. "We aren't leaving this room." He made his way over to the desk.

In the corner nearest to the door, there was a tube protruding from the ceiling. It reached halfway down the wall before opening up. Under it seemed to be a platform that was tilted towards the center of the room. Next to it, was a scanner. Michael walked over to it, tapping the tube. "What's this for?"

"I don't know, but you could probably fit in it." Lorelei stood beside him.

Melody shook her head. "Now that wasn't very nice."

He crossed his arms. "She might be right, though…"

As the three of them checked out the rest of the room, Dae-Hyun approached the desk at the back. The desk was plain, not having much to offer but a few drawers. Looking through them, they contained paper and pencils. On the desk itself, was a computer. It was currently on.

The chair in front of the desk was an office chair with wheels.

On the desk was also a picture frame. There were two people in the image. Noticing this, Dae-Hyun quickly grabbed it. Not so subtly, he opened up the frame, removing the picture. After that, he stuffed it into his pocket.

"What was that about?" It wouldn't go unnoticed by Winter.

He plopped himself down onto the chair. "It's nothing." He reached over for the mouse.

Winter came over to see what he was doing. "What's with this?" He hadn't investigated the other room like he was right now. "Did something catch your fancy?"

He didn't answer her. Instead, only staring blankly at the screen in front of him.

Getting rather impatient with the silence, the love guru decided to take a look for herself. "Huh?" This wasn't like any ordinary computer. And not in a good way. There was only one thing that could be opened, which was the program Dae-Hyun was hovering over right now. There were three names, with the fourth one being illegible. The only other words she could find on the screen were "Bright Honor."

However… He just hovered over the options he was given. Seems he was going to be staring at it for a while.

While he was doing that, the other three decided it was best to take a look around.

Michael stopped by the shelves, pulling out a random book. "How to be successful, for dummies…" He read the title out. "What kind of room is this anyways?"

"Right? Like at least the last room made sense to have here. But this is literally just an office. It's the most boring fucking place on this station by a mile."

"H-hey." Melody didn't want them to insult the room. "You don't know what this room has to offer yet." Neither did she, but was going to choose to remain optimistic.

Having flipped through several different books, Michael let out a dejected sigh, putting the most recent one back. "I don't think any of these books will contain anything of value." Which was a disappointment.

After a few seconds, a strange sound could be heard. "Do you?" Melody took a look around the room.

Without any other warning, Monokawa came crashing out of the tube, hitting the slanted platform, before falling out towards the center of the room. "Ow!" He called out before quickly floating up. "I've always wanted to do that!"

"M-Monokawa!?" Michael took a step back. "What are you doing here?"

"Good question!" You know how it went. "Oh, I see you're here now!" He floated over to Dae-Hyun, looking down at him. "I see you found your Ultimate Station."
"Ultimate station?" He shook his head. "What a dumb name."

"What's an Ultimate Station?" Michael thought the entire place was a station, so he was unaware there were rooms like this.

Turning his attention towards everyone else, the otter let out a sigh. "I'll only tell you if you relay the information back." Not giving them a chance to answer, Monokawa continued. "All twenty of you each have a room designed specifically for you. Like right now, it's Dae-Hyun's Ultimate Station. They're basically centred around your talent and past."

"Past…" He mumbled out, looking at the screen. "Do you want to tell us how it works?"

He shook his head. "And ruin the fun? You should experience it yourself."

"Wait…" Michael spoke up. "You said we all have one, right?"

Floating over to him, a dark expression overtook Monokawa's face. "That's right. Can't run away forever, you know." And with that haunting warning, Monokawa floated back up the tube.

"Huh…" The mystery man wasn't sure how to react to any of that, so he just took a few steps back.

Suddenly, however, the entire room began to shake. "H-huh?" Melody quickly moved towards the wall. "What's going on here?"

Soon, the walls flipped entirely, removing the boring shelves. The design of the walls changed, as well as the ceiling itself. The only thing that stayed the same was the floor.

The new room almost looked like it was backstage at a show.

Melody let her heart settle before taking a look around. "This looks like…" Well she had seen some before, but they were just in an office.

"It's where actors get their makeup ready." Dae-Hyun revealed, standing up from the chair.

"Hmm…" Winter had decided to sit down in the seat now. "Ji-Hae Myun." She read off the name that was there. "Who's that?"

"Nobody you need to worry about."

Now that the room had shifted completely, where the shelves once were, was a table and mirror. In front of the table was a chair.

Melody sat down on the chair, looking at herself in the mirror. "Right." The lighting on this spot definitely helped highlight the face to better apply makeup. On the desk, there were various open beauty products. The tap dancer picked up some. "Oh, and there's even perfume." She sprayed herself. "It doesn't smell bad." She turned to look at Lorelei. "You want some?"

"Pfft, as if. I don't know what brand that is." She quickly stepped back.

Well, there were some other things on this table, like the hair dryer plugged into the wall. She grabbed onto it. "This place is just amazing." She could make a few trips here.

Michael had moved over to the other hand of the room, inspecting the dresser that was now there. Opening it, he was greeted with several different costumes. "Ah… This really is for an actress." He pulled out a random outfit, which looked like an archeologist outfit from an old movie. "Hmm." He put it back. His attention shifted over to the mannequins with various wigs on them.

Lorelei walked up beside him. "Imagining what you would look like with hair, huh?"

He was a bit taken aback by that. "I- I have hair." He gripped onto his hood. Not to take it off, but just in case she was getting some funny ideas.

"Yeah, yeah. Keep telling yourself that. We all know you wear that hood because you're bald." She turned to look at Winter. "Are there any other choices?"

The love guru had opted to let the others do the exploring while she checked out the computer. "Yes, there's some more." She clicked on the next option, which shifted the room again.

This time, they were on a stage that rose up from the ground. The room's light changed to a dark blue to emulate the light an outdoor stage would normally get.

The center of the room was the end of the stage, where a sole microphone stand stood. The microphone was attached to it, with the cord running towards the wall.

Next to the stage were several large speakers.

The stage was about three feet higher than the rest of the room. Off the stage, there were several barricades to block off the audience from advancing any further.

The audience being Michael at this point. "Huh…" He wasn't sure what to say.

Lorelei, on the other hand, jumped at the chance to take center stage. She grabbed onto the mic. "Alright everyone." She twirled their fingers around the wire of the mic. The sound bounced off the walls as it came out of both speakers. And yet, she didn't seem to care at all. "Who's ready for a show?" A live audience that wouldn't have the time to escape her singing? Fucking perfect.

Before she even got the chance to sign, however, she felt the ground below her slowly fade into the ground. Soon enough, the room had changed once again. This time, they seemed to be on a talk show now.

"Huh…" The desk Winter had been sitting at was moved to the back center of the room, and all lights were on her.

Dae-Hyun had taken the second seat that had made itself available. "You get used to it." Wouldn't be the first time he was in the limelight, after all.

Of note, the table they were at now took about half the length of the room. It had two mics, both with long wires going towards the back of the room. Several cameras were pointed at them. Overhead, there were light fixtures.

Closer to the door, where Michael was now sitting, was the audience area. "Why do I keep getting pushed around…?" He mumbled out, not liking this room.

Melody had moved over to sit next to him. "Aww, don't you worry, mac."

That was the first he ever heard that term. "Where's that from?"

Her eyes sparkled slightly at the thought of talking about talking about things, but noticing his expression, she felt like maybe now's not the best time. "What's eating you?"

Huh… "Nothing at the moment." And hopefully never. He didn't want to be eaten.

While those two had a conversation a century apart, Lorelei was left as the sole person even trying to take a look around. "Is there any way to change the lights?" She noticed that it looked like a typical light system, which meant that there might be a lighting control console.

"No." Dae-Hyun shook his head. "There wouldn't be one here. It'd be out of reach for this room."

The cyber security specialist let out a yawn. "This room is boring. Can we go back to the stage?"

Winter shook her head. "We still have one last room to check out." She moved the mouse over to click on the garbled mess of text.

"Wait!" Dae-Hyun tried to stop her, but she had clicked on it already.

It only lasted a second, but the room shifted very quickly. The colours got a bit darker than the other rooms. However, before anyone could have a chance to figure out what kind of room they were in now, the room returned to its original state.

Standing by the computer was Dae-Hyun, holding the plug to the computer. "That's enough of that." His voice was stern. He reached over for the mouse, unplugging that too, before hastily stuffing it into his pocket. "We're done with this room."

The other three wanted to protest, but Winter was the first one to say anything. "You heard him. We're done here. We can probably return to the cafeteria now."

Melody couldn't help but frown. She had quite enjoyed how this room was going until the last few moments.

"Whatever…" Lorelei rolled her eyes as she left the room.

Soon, Winter and Michael followed, leaving only Dae-Hyun and Melody.

"Do you… Do you want to-" She had begun to say, but he walked past her instead, ignoring her completely. "Ah…"

Cafeteria

Stepping out of the kitchen, they moved to the cafeteria. The only room that everyone had seen so far. "I'm not sure there's much to explore here." Gemini pointed out.

Seira shook her head. "It wouldn't hurt to take a look around anyways. We might find something new."

"Right!" He had to check everything this place had to offer. "Taking a look around… There are four large tables. Each with a bench on both sides."

"That seems like entirely too much space." Gennosuke shook his head.

May shrugged. "It might not have been made with us in mind. Building a space station solely for a killing game seems a bit pointless."

"Hmmm?" The psychic pulled out his lollipop. "Are you implying that this place wasn't made for us?"

"Well…" Seira would need to agree with the short girl. "That seems like a lot of money to spend on just a killing game."

"Nope. No killing game." Gemini chose to remain optimistic. "I'm sure after we investigate all of this, we'll find a way out."

"And miss out on the game?" Laki felt like she was the only one here who was going to enjoy the game.

"There's two more areas I want to check out." Gemini moved over to the first one. Where they were served food this morning. "Ah, it seems like there aren't any yet."

Checking his watch, Gennosuke shook his head. "It's only a little past 10. I doubt they'll be serving us any more food until noon. Besides, we have a kitchen."

Getting closer, he decided to investigate the actual counter. From the looks of it, there were panels where the food was placed this morning. "Hmm…" He tried to slide them open, but they were locked. "I guess when it's time to eat, they open up to give us food."

"Where does it come from?" Seira stepped over to get a closer look. "It can't be from the same place, right?"

"If it were…" Gennosuke hummed out, covering his mouth. Then he flashed a smile. "Isn't it best to not think about it too much? It won't do us any good, you know?"

"Ah! How could you just brush it off?" Seira was shocked. "Aren't you supposed to be intellectually curious?"

At first he was confused on what she meant, but looking at her a few seconds longer, he understood. "As a Gemini?"

"Hey that's me."

"I suppose if you believe in astrological signs, sure." But he wasn't one for that. "Not everyone can fit into a broad category."

Well, she didn't want to hear any of that.

Sensing that things could turn hostile at any point, Gemini decided to break it up. "We can talk about astrology another time. Let's not let the Gemini Gang disband before a full day has passed." He pointed over to the other thing on the counter. "This next thing could be important." What he singled out wasa coffee machine.

Seira pulled out the empty pot of coffee. "You'd think something like this would be in the kitchen. Why here?" She placed it back. "Oh!" She moved to the side. "There's also one just for tea."
"Hey!" Gemini got a bright idea. "May, you should have some coffee."

She glanced his way before shaking her head. "No thank you. It wouldn't do anything anyways." So just eternally drowsy, it seemed.

But that seemed to be the only thing that was on this side of the kitchen. The only other side… was the elevator. Walking over, Gemini stopped to look at it. "It doesn't look too bad of an elevator."

The psychic let out a small chuckle. "I don't think we should be complementing the elevator here." After a few seconds, he noticed something. "Hmm? The elevator shaft is a bit weird." Taking a step closer, he was able to make out small details. "There's large spikes going along the entire elevator shaft."

"Cool!" Laki placed her hand against the spike. "It makes the elevator look more intense, doesn't it."

"Huh… Guess so?" Tilting his head to the side, he looked over at what the other three had to say.

Seira was trying to figure out why that would be. "It might just be to make it look more intimidating?" She suggested.

That could be it… but it didn't feel right.

The escapist moved over to grab onto the spike. The edges of it didn't seem like it would hurt. "Well, no point in worrying about it." Now that Gemini was actually on this side, there were a number of things he could see. For one, there was a large vertical monitor on the wall to the left. "I guess I didn't notice it because it was off before." It was on, but it wasn't displaying anything.

"This might be for announcements." Gennosuke pointed out.

"But can't announcements just be done on the intercom?" Seira had other ideas.

The escapist shrugged. "We won't know until it's used, so let's not worry about it, alright?"

"What does this do?" They had left Laki completely unattended, which was quite possibly the worst decision they could have made. By the time they turned around to face her, she had slammed down on a button by the wall.

In an instance, the wall she had been standing in front of opened up completely.

"Woah." Gemini took a step forward. The wall hadn't really been a wall. Instead, it was shutters covering a large window.

"Huh." Seira was amazed to see the other side. "Is this the center of the station?"

On the other side of the window, was a large, mostly empty, circular room. The only thing of notice was the large room suspended in the air by eight different steel cables, each connected to one of the corners. The steel cables were then attached to the walls.

"What's the point of that?" Gennosuke had no idea what he was looking at. Taking a step forward to get a better look at the floor of the circular room… He noticed that there wasn't any floor. "Huh?" Where a floor would normally be, instead, was machinery.

"This is probably what's keeping this place running as a station." May pointed out. "It probably helps run all the utilities. If something happens to that… Well I don't think this space station is staying in one piece."

That made the room above it all the more concerning. "Then why is there something suspended over it?"

The academic genius didn't have the answers for everything. "I'm not sure… Probably so it could be used as a threat."

That wasn't a good sign. Placing a hand on his hip, Gemini turned to the others. "Alright, I think that's all we'll find here. I think we should find a different place to explore."

"Agreed." Gennosuke flicked the empty lollipop stick to the side. "But did you have any ideas?"

In fact, he did. "I have but one idea."

Vacant Rooms

"Why are we back here?" Atlas had thought they were going to explore a completely different area.

Alan was the one taking the lead here. "Because I thought it would be best if we investigated this room too." If he had to make a guess, he would have to assume that most people just went to sleep. "Who knows what secrets a room like this is hiding."

Sakura narrowed her eyes. "I can guarantee you it's not hiding anything."

"Nonsense!" Tatiana blurted out, stepping forward. "There's tons of secrets at every corner!" She looked around before spotting Alan's room. "Alright. Open up."

"Open up-huh-" While he had made the suggestions, he hadn't expected them to try and get into his room.

Patting him on the back, Hae-Won moved past him. "You wanted to explore the rooms, right? Thanks for volunteering yours."

This… wasn't great, but he couldn't just say no. Letting out a sigh, he moved over and scanned his watch. It opened up freely.

"Actually!" Tatiana wanted to try something. She moved over to the next room and scanned her watch. The sound of buzzing could be heard. "Just wanted to make sure. We can't open someone else's door."

The group stepped into the room… only to see it was kind of a mess.

"Dude…" Sakura grimaced looking at the surrounding area. "We've been here for a day. How can it be in such a sad state?"

The conspiracy theorist quickly stepped further into his room, turning to face everyone else. "I had a hard time sleeping, alright?"

Behind him on the wall, there were several things written into the wall, and the bed was also a complete mess, with the blankets being on the ground.

"Tsk." Atlas moved past that. "That doesn't matter. I still don't see why we need to be back here."

Right, well they wanted to look through his room, so it was time they did just that. Sakura stopped right by the bed. "I was worried that the beds would be low quality, but I was almost able to get a good night's rest."

Hae-Won nodded her head. "Yeah. They were definitely made for comfort in mind. At least they'll let us rest as we want."

"Pfft, rest." Atlas shook his head. "If they wanted us to rest as much as we wanted, they wouldn't have had an alarm blaring at 7 in the morning."

Placing a hand on her hip, Sakura shook her head. "I disagree. Waking up at a set time is good. It would have been better had everyone been up by that time."

"Well…" Alan had been fixing his bed the entire time. "It isn't really fair, given that most people might sleep at different times. I didn't go to sleep till about one in the morning."

Glancing at the wall with all the markings again, the security guard let out a sigh. "Please. Take better care of yourself, or I'll be forced to knock you out cold."

"What kind of tough love is this?" Alan took a step back and fell onto his bed. "She's going to kill me!"

"Fear not!" Tatiana took a step forward. "For we shall act as witnesses! She won't get away with it."

For a moment, Alan's voice dropped the paranoia. "I'd prefer if you dealt with it before I die."

Hae-Won was just going to let the three of them mess around. "I think I know where the alarm came from." She pointed out towards the alarm clock on the nightstand. "Looks like an alarm clock, but it's missing the time."

"Probably because they want the only time to be on the clock app." Sakura pointed out. When she opened up the clock app, it showed it was just past 11. "I'm not sure what the reason for this is."

Atlas moved over to investigate it himself. "What the hell? There's no buttons on this thing. How do we turn it off?"

"We don't." Hae-Won shrugged. "The only way to turn it off is probably to destroy i-"

With one fell motion, he tried to kick the device across the room, but it was stopped quickly by the wire that was used to power it. "Huh." He hadn't noticed that since it seems to blend in with the colour of the wall. "I guess we can just destroy the wires."

"Wasn't there something about destruction in the rules?" Tatiana pointed out.

Alan had finally finished making his bed. "Ah, that was about the destruction of surveillance cameras. So unless that's a…" Then an idea grew in his head. He moved over to investigate the object. "Hmm… It doesn't look like it's a camera."

Sakura already had to deal with him yesterday. "There doesn't seem to be any cameras in this room."

"That's what they want you to think!" He pointed over at her. "But there's cameras everywhere else, right? What if a murder happens? How would they know who did it?"

Sakura narrowed her eyes. "I'm sure they have cameras to see who goes into the room."

"Oh!" But he wasn't done just yet. "But what if multiple people enter the room-"

"Enough!" She called out, drowning out his rambling. "I want to finish exploring this room." She stepped over towards one of the only two other things of interest. There was a closet. She opened it up, only to reveal the same exact outfit Alan was wearing, but in spades. "Huh… Guess that's the same for everyone." There were some other outfits in there, but there was only one pair of those ones.

Quickly, he closed the doors. "Don't you know it's rude to look at other people's stuff?"

"And yet you wanted us to go looking in a room." Tatiana pointed out, twirling her knife around. "That sounds like some form of karma."

Hae-Won moved past them, checking out the last door. It was the bathroom. "Doesn't have a shower though."

"From what I heard." Tatiana placed a hand on her hip. "There was a shower room on the bottom floor."

"Huh?" Atlas didn't like the sound of that. "Why would they have a separate shower room? That doesn't seem like a good idea."

The tattoo artist stepped in. "It seems to have everything else we'd need." She looked at the mirror above the sink. "Ah, there's even a compartment here." She opened up the mirror, revealing some other hygiene stuff like toothbrushes. "At least they expect us to care for ourselves. Could be worse."

Atlas would have complained, but he was still in the other room. He hadn't even bothered checking the bathroom. "Is that everything we can see in this room? I don't think we still need to be here."

"Right, right." Alan let out a small sigh. This is what he gets, huh. "Let's just find another place to go."

Motive Room

Stepping into the room, Ian glanced around the area. "What's this weird room? Nobody mentioned this one."

The room was divided in three. With the main section being the middle one. It had a table in the center. On both sides, there was an entrance to another room. The lights in this room were a bit dimmer than the normal ones.

"Seems like a game room." Gigi concluded, noticing the table in the middle. "But I'm probably way off."

The entire room had an off putting vibe to it.

Benoit hung by the back, away from everyone. "Are you sure this room is safe?"

Ian moved further into the room. "If this room isn't safe, strike me down." He kept taking steps forward before stopping right in front of the table. "Seems fine to me."

"Huh…" Edison had stayed by the door. There was a display on a plaque. "Motive room?" He repeated the words. "Like the motive app?"

Gigi's expression soured slightly. "Looks like motives are going to be more important than it first seemed. If it has an entire room dedicated to it."

Ian decided to investigate the table he had been standing in front of the entire time. "Weird." He noted, checking the display. "There seems to be different table options."

"What's it set to right now?" Gigi had to see this with her own eyes.

"Cards games." He pulled the deck out of his pocket. Shuffling the cards, he dealt them perfectly the six spots at the table. "Want to play a game."

"I'm not in the habit of gambling. Sorry." She was not sorry. She moved past the table to examine the back of the room. "Hmm…" She placed a hand on her hip. On the back wall, there was a monitor. Looking around for any sort of controls, she found nothing. "Can't turn this on." Nor could she see any wires out of it. "Is there a remote anywhere?"

Edison spent some time looking around, but he came up empty handed. "No. I don't think so."

"This is called the motive room, right?" Ian pointed out, sitting across from Benjamin and Dolly, holding his cards in his hands. "It might not be active until a motive is."

"Do you have a five?" The doll asked him.

Raising an eyebrow, he looked at her. "This isn't…" Ah whatever. Guess they were playing a different game. "Go fish."

While this was happening, Edison slipped into the room on the right. "Interesting!" It was pretty dark, but he could still make out most of the things in the room.

Not that there was much in this room anyways. The one thing he did find was a banner. On the banner, all it said was Truths. "I like the truth." He nodded to himself. Besides that, it seemed to be more of an empty room. Turning towards the entrance, he spotted a door that was stuck to the wall. "Oh?" He tried with all his nerd might to get it detached from the wall, but it wasn't working.

Gigi had followed him into the room. "What are you doing?"

"Hypothetically speaking…" He trailed off. "I'm losing to a door."

Well, she was going to do this better than he would. Actually taking the time to examine the area around the door, she noticed a button on the side. Clicking it, the door swung close, taking Edison with it.

Well, she hadn't expected it to close with that speed. "Are you alright over there?" After waiting for a few seconds, she didn't hear a response.

On the other side, Benoit had managed to catch him. Slowly, he put him down, flinching from the pain in his arms. "E-Edison?"

Standing on his feet, he nodded his head. "I'm fine!"

After a few seconds, the door opened up. "I asked you if you were fine"

"Huh?" He hadn't heard any of that. "Are you sure? I didn't hear a thing."

It didn't long to piece together what the problem was. "I think the rooms here are soundproof."

"Huh? Why would they need to be…?" Benoit mumbled out. This was turning out to be a weird room.

"Do you have the library?" Dolly called out to Ian.

"That's Clue. Go fish."

Shifting his attention towards the other end of the room, Benoit stepped into the other side. It was almost similar to the room Edison had gone to explore. The only difference was that the banner said Ideals instead. "Ideals…?" He mumbled out. Well, that's not what he believed in! Turning towards the door, it didn't take long for him to find the same button Gigi had found. After pressing it, the door slammed in an instant. To avoid getting hit, he quickly stepped back, almost falling down. Once the door closed, he couldn't hear any of the sounds on the other side. It really was soundproof. Stepping back over towards the door, he hit the button, sending the door slamming open. "This side is empty…" He noted. "And the door works the same way. I couldn't hear anything."

"Why would there be two sides?" Gigi closed one eye, looking off to the side. "And if this is the motive room…" And the soundproof rooms. "Might be team related." She finally concluded.

"A team related motive?" Edison repeated. "How would that work?"

"Uno!" Dolly had only one card left.

"That's- whatever." Ian realised it wasn't worth pointing all of these out.

"Either way." Gigi opened her eye, placing a hand on her hip. "It does us no good to worry about this now."

"I think that's everything in this room." Edison gave it another quick look. Oh wait! "The table." He walked over. "You said you could switch the table, right?"

Without even looking at him, Ian began hitting the button multiple times. Nothing happened. "It's not active yet." The reason he didn't bother looking at Edison was because he was counting his pairs. "I win." He declared.

Dolly let out a sigh. "I was always bad at Risk." She was never going to get the game right.

"Are you two done messing around?" Gigi crossed her arms.

Ian tilted his head to the side. "As a referee, I thought you liked watching games."

"There's a time and place for this. I'll watch games after we find a way out of here." Although, with the way things were going, it was looking bleak.

Showers

The last place that the Gemini Squad(™) was going to explore was the shower room. "This is where I woke up." Gemini pointed out, standing in front of the two doors, each with a scanner. "Didn't know there was a second one." Maybe the doll was too much of a distraction.

"Should we split up?" Gennosuke suggested. "It'd feel weird to go into the wrong shower room."

Seira glanced between the two doors. "I… don't think that's an issue." To prove her point, she moved over towards the guy's shower room and tried to scan her watch. It did not allow her entry. "See."

"Ah, that's good. Nobody can peep in." That was a relief.

"But…" Laki trailed off, an idea forming in her head. "What if we entered with a guy who scanned the door."

"..." Seira grabbed her arm and moved over towards the other door. "I think it's best if we don't do tha-"

"We should." May spoke up. "It would be pointless to explore the same room twice, right? There probably aren't any differences between the two."

Gemini scanned his watch. "Let's just do this. I think it's getting close to the meetup time anyways."

Gennosuke raised an eyebrow. "We don't have a meeting time." And into the room he disappeared!

The showers were left pretty much the same as the last time he had been here. In total, there were about ten showers on the right side, with a bunch of sinks on the left.

"The shower room is pretty sad." Laki frowned, looking around. She moved over to the first one, opening the curtain. "They're also pretty small." Barely enough room to walk around in. The shower head was directly connected to the wall, so it wasn't able to be removed. There were some compartments on the side for soap and shampoo. Lastly, near the bottom, there was a single knob to turn on the shower head.

"Pretty basic." Gemini noted, with a frown. "Oh well, at least they provided us with it."

On the other hand, Seira had gone to explore the other side of the room. "A lot of sinks here." There were about six sinks in total. All seem to have hand washing soap available.

But that wasn't what caught her interest from this side. No, it was something else entirely. "What's this?" She moved over to the corner of the room. There, a weird tube jutted out of the ceiling, stopping roughly halfway down the wall. The tube wassee-through, and only opened up at the bottom. Below the tube,was a platform. Next to it, a scanner.

"Hmm?" Gennosuke was curious too. Looking at it, he shrugged. "Seems like stuff falls out of the tube. Or maybe." He stuck the wrapper of the lollipop into the tube. But when he let go, it only fluttered down. "Ah, I thought that maybe it could have been a garbage disposal, similar to the kitchen." But it didn't seem to be the case.

Gemini moved over to check it himself. "Maybe it's the opposite." He suggested. "Things are dropped off here?"

Seira noticed the scanner, and moved her watch towards it. However, she only got a buzzing noise in return. "That didn't seem to help."

Rubbing the back of his head, the escapist shrugged. "Look, I'm not claiming to know how things work."

"It would be wise to bring this up with everyone else when we meet back up." Gennosuke turned towards the door.

"Speaking of which…" May spoke up. "Don't you think it's time we head back?"

The psychic let out a sigh. "You just want to go back to sleep, don't you?"

"It's not that… I just think we've found everything we'll be able to already."

Seira nodded her head. "I think this should be it for today anyways. We explored a lot." Three rooms was a lot.

Quickly, Laki got out of the shower. "Hey they work." She said, drenched in water. "Are we going now?"

Well, this place was a bust. "Yeah… We're leaving now." Not that he expected much from the showers to begin with. He hadn't found an actual way out of here the first time.

Exit

Lastly, the last room that still needed to be visited was the intimidating large room. "Hmm…" Hae-Won was staring directly at the large circular door. "From what I've heard, this is the exit."

"This thing?" Atlas raised an eyebrow. "Like hell. This just leads to outside. No way we can get out of here safely."

Alan moved over to the door to investigate it. "I'm not even sure how to open this…" He placed his hand on the door, but nothing happened. "I guess it's so we don't accidentally open it, huh."

"Maybe there's a puzzle to it?" Sakura suggested.

If that was the case, this sounded like the perfect job for him. Fixing his glasses, he took another look at the circular door. "From the looks of it, it's probably a puzzle that involves spinning certain parts."

Sakura scanned the top of the object. "Some of those parts are high in the air. How do you suppose we reach them?"

Tatiana took a step forward. "Let's make a human ladder, of course!"

"Fuck that." Atlas took a step back. "You're free to do whatever the hell you want. I'm going to go look elsewhere." No way he was going to work with this.

Hae-Won let out a sigh. "Fuck it, let's try. I doubt we'd reach it, though."

Quickly, they formed a ladder in the correct order. Sakura was on the bottom, with Hae-Won next. After that it was Alan, and Tatiana all the way on top. "Let's see…" She called out, a smile on her face. "..." She didn't even try to reach. "Too high."

Alan let out a sigh. "So this whole thing was pointless?"

Quickly dropping to the ground, Tatiana didn't seem to mind. "Well, it was worth the try, at the very least. Maybe if we got more people, we'd be able to."

"No." Sakura shut that down quickly. "I'm not sure how many more people I would be able to lift…" She moved her arms around. "Felt like I was going to let everyone fall there." She had never carried that many people, so it was making her sore.

"Is that all that's here?" Alan hadn't noticed anything else when they had first entered the room, so.

His question was quickly answered when he looked over at where Atlas was standing. "These fucks have their own statues." It was pathetic. On either side of the room was a statue for Nova and Monokawa. "Hmm?" He glanced down, looking at the label. More specifically the Nova one. "The label is scratched off." He noticed. The only thing that was legible was Nova's name.

Sakura knelt down to take a look at the Monokawa one. "This one is the same… except… One name." She narrowed her eyes, trying to think if she had heard that name before. "Kaye? Does anyone know who that is?"

The group stood there for a few seconds before they all collectively shook their heads.

"Nothing I'd know." Tatiana frowned slightly. "It doesn't sound like any performer I know."

"Kaye… Kaye…" Alan kept mumbling to himself. "Nothing rings a bell right now, but I just feel like something is scratching at my brain." He took out his pencil and wrote the name down on the palm of his hand. "Could be something worth looking into more."

"Nothing else seems to be here." Hae-Won noted. "We should probably head back down to the cafeteria soon. Everyone else is probably almost done anyway."

Exploring this room had only left them with more questions that they didn't know what to do with.

Omicron Sector

After exploring the motive room, Gigi had one last thing she wanted to check out. "I noticed this while walking around before." She stopped at an intersection in the hallway. The hallway seemed to turn to the right, breaking away from the circle. "We can go down this path too." She stepped down the hallway until they reached a large metal door blocking off the rest of the hallway.

"Hmm…" Edison moved over and tried to scan his watch. "Nope. Doesn't work."

"I wonder…" Ian trailed off. "It's possible that this is to go further into the station."

Dolly pouted slightly. "And they want to block it off?"

"I…" Benoit spoke up slightly. "I think there's one on the opposite side of this hallway."

"That's two different directions we could go." Gigi closed one of her eyes. "The question is when they'll let us go there."

A smile slowly formed on the gambler's face. "I can think of one way it would open."

"Cease." The referee walked away. "That's not going to happen."

"Is that all we have to do here?" Edison turned to look at the rest of the group. He checked his clock. "We should probably join back up with the others, then."

With the group all in agreement, they marched on over towards the elevator.

Tau Sector

"Dae-Hyun." Melody called out, trying to catch up to him. And yet, he was keeping a decent pace ahead of them.

Winter let out a sigh. "It's probably just best to let him go for now." There was no point in chasing him if it was only going to make him angrier. "We should see if we've missed anything important.

"Oh…" The tap dancer turned back towards the others. "But what else is there to explore?" She tilted her head to the side. "I thought we checked out everything."

Walking past them, Michael took notice of the only thing that hadn't been looked at. "It might not be important… but." He was standing at a four way intersection. "We have two paths to go down."

"I know you can't see because of the hood." Lorelei added. "But they don't lead anywhere. They're dead ends. Not worth looking into."

Still, the mystery man walked down the hallway to reach the other end. "Scanner…" He noticed. Trying his watch, it didn't work. "Figured." If it was that easy, someone would have explored it already.

"Same here." Winter called out from the other hallway. "We should ask Nova about this."

"If she ever bothers answering the question." The cyber security specialist shook her head. "Let's just go to the meeting place." She turned towards Melody, who hadn't moved from the spot she had been staying. "Are you coming?"

"Oh! Right." She put on a smile. "I was just thinking. Let's go tell the others what we found!"

Cafeteria

After everyone had the chance to look around, everyone reconvened in the cafeteria. Well… Everyone but Dae-Hyun, who seemed to be missing at the moment. Entering, everyone else was hopeful that someone found something that would help them. But given the silence that the room found itself in… it seemed unlikely.

"I'm just going to skip to the point." Gennosuke placed his hands in his pockets. "There is no way out, is there?" The following silence only further confirmed what he already knew. "Alright…"

Still, wanting to remain hopeful over the situation, Gemini spoke up. "Hey, we might not have found a way out. But surely we had to find something right?"

"Yes." Sakura called out. "We did find some things that would be worth keeping in mind."

Alan stepped up. "If we can go first, that would be great." Taking a deep breath, he felt it was best to keep the last piece of information they found for last. "The first room we investigated was the locker room."

"Oh right." Edison nodded his head. "That's where I woke up. But nothing was working. What's the deal with it?"

Hae-Won was the next one to speak up. "You register a locker by scanning your fingerprint into the scanner. It can be used to store items. There isn't too much room, but it should be enough."

"Don't we already have rooms…?" May mumbled out. "Why would we need lockers?"

"Ah-HA! That's the nifty part!" Tatiana called out. "With this room, you're allowed to send the contents of the locker anywhere in the facility. We tested it on Monokawa! At his request, of course."

Winter let out a small laugh. "It seems you sent him our way, because we saw him falling out of a tube."

"Are all rooms available?" Seira asked her.

She shook her head. "Nope. From the looks of it, we could only access two rooms on the ground floor, and zero rooms on the top floor."

"There's no point for the top floor." Sakura explained. "We can already access all of those rooms without any hassle."

"Furthermore." Hae-Won continued. "You only have access to one locker. If you try and claim another one, you get an error message."

Lorelei covered her mouth. "Pfft, wait. Does that mean Atlas can't use this room at all? Pathetic."

He took a step towards her. "You want to go, bitch?"

"You aren't going to do anything. Besides, someone would just stop you."

Sakura took a step forward. "Let's not resort to violence, or else you'll answer to me."

He didn't need the entire room to be against him, so he backed off. "Whatever. Let's just move onto the next room. Our personal rooms." He said that with the enthusiasm of a walnut.

"You went to explore those? But we all saw what was in it." Winter pointed out. "Seems like a waste of time, honestly." She flashed a smile at him.

"That's what I said…" The soccer player mumbled out.

Sakura placed a hand on her hip. "Admittedly, it was a waste of time. We didn't find out much besides that Alan is a lunatic."

"H-hey!" He took a step back. "Just because I was trying to write down my thoughts doesn't make me crazy."

Hae-Won shook her head. "And yet your wall was covered in writing."

"It's only been a day, and he's already lost it." Ian raised an eyebrow. "I'm almost impressed."

"The real thing of note is…" Hae-Won didn't want to let them get too off track, even if she helped. "There are no cameras in the room, and an alarm."

"Yeah." Gigi remembered the alarm very well. "It goes off at 7am sharp."

Atlas shook his head. "First chance I'm getting, I'm destroying the thing. I wake up on my own time."

"Sure, be late." The referee rolled her eyes. "This is why it took so long to start. Breakfast starts at 7, so why can't you be there for that time?"

Feeling like she was in charge of keeping the conversation going, Hae-Won moved onto the last location. "Lastly, we took a look at what I can only assume to be the entrance." She crossed her arms. "There was a large circular door, but opening it with our current tools is impossible. However, it's the only way out we've managed to find."

"What makes it impossible?" Gemini raised an eyebrow. That just wasn't a word in his vocabulary when it came to escaping.

Tatiana let out a sigh. "We all stood on top of each other, and we still couldn't reach what we needed."

Feeling like he was in the best place to answer, Alan took the lead of the conversation. "The door seems to be a large puzzle of sorts. That's how the lock works. I think if we align all of the circles, we should be able to open the way forward."

May let out a sigh. "But there's a chance we all die if we open it."

"Duh! Like Nova would make this easy." Lorelei rolled their eyes. "But if you do try it, make sure I'm locked behind a door. Wouldn't mind some of you being ejected."

Michael shook his head. "I'd prefer if nobody got ejected. Please don't mess with it."

"We also found one last thing. The exit had two statues. One of Nova, and one of Monokawa. They both had plaques on them… But they were mostly scratched off. We couldn't make the text."

"Except…" Hae-Won trailed off. "The Monokawa had the name Kaye. Anyone know who that is?"

Most people just shrugged. The only person who seemed to have a reaction was…

Seira. "Kaye… Kaye… Kaye…" She repeated a few times. "It… sounds familiar."

"It does? Who is it?" Alan needed answers now.

After thinking about it, she shook her head. "I… Don't remember… It must have been from years ago."
Gemini let out a small sigh. "No point in worrying about tha now. Maybe something will jog your memory soon." Now, it was his turn to take center stage. "As you might have noticed… Something has changed about the cafeteria." He had a smug smile on his face.

Everyone looked around and found… Nothing!

"Nothing changed." Gigi narrowed her eyes. "Can you get on with the point?"

What? That didn't make any sense. He quickly shot a glance towards the window… only to realise that the shutters were closed. He snapped his fingers. "Laki, show them."

"On it boss!" She quickly pressed the button, opening the shutters once more.

Now everyone was amazed at what they saw.

"What… What is that room?" Michael took a step forward.

Seira shook her head. "We're not quite sure." She placed a hand against the glass. "We're not even sure how to access it." Her eyes moved over to look at the machinery below the station. "And this seems important."

Edison adjusted his goggles. "It seems to be what's keeping this station functioning."

"We already figured that out, but thanks." Gennosuke shook his head.

"Gah-" Well there was no use for him then!

"Not only that, but there's a few other things this cafeteria has." Gemini pointed up to the monitor. "I'm not sure what this is for, but it might be used by Nova." Then he pointed over to the counter. "And that's where we get served food and the likes. But the food only seems to come out at certain times." At the moment, there was food out. "..." Wow, that was quick. "That's all the cafeteria really had to offer."

"Hey there!" Laki called out. "You're forgetting about the cool elevator design!" She moved over to show everyone. "The elevator has spikes along the side of it."

"Relatively small ones." Atlas added, narrowing his eyes. "They don't seem practical."

"Alright! Now we're done with the cafeteria." Gemini let out a sigh.

"We also took the time to explore the kitchen." It was Gennosuke's turn. "Pretty normal, all things considered. It had all the normal kitchen appliances."

"Except the fridge was weird!" The lucky student added. "There was something weird with the back."

She was just all over the place, so Seira was going to try and explain better. "It's possible that the fridge leads to another room that's meant for restocking."

"And then we found a place to get rid of trash. Like… a trash chute of some kind. It sucks in trash and sends them elsewhere."

"Do you know where?" Hae-Won asked.

He kept up his smile, but shook his head. "If we knew where, we'd tell you."

"The idea that the trash is just ejected into space did come up." Seira pointed out, before shaking her head. "However, I don't like the thought of that. I find it better to assume there's a dedicated room for receiving all the trash."

"Besides that…" Gemini placed his hands on his hips. "We're free to make whatever we want as long as we have the ingredients. But we should be careful. We don't know what the date is, so we can't make a good judgement on whether or not the food is expired."

Ian shook his head. "I'd be stupid for them to leave us expired food. They should replace everything when they need to. Anything else we'd like to know?"

"Knives!" Laki exclaimed. "And lots of them!"

Seira let out a sigh. "There was a knife rack on the counter. We should keep an eye on those."

Tatiana shook her head. "It's right next to the sink, no? Anybody could just clean the knife after using it, so I don't really see there being a point."

Gemini didn't want them to start trying to argue about knives, so he moved onto the last room. "Lastly, the showers…" He trailed off. "Actually it's pretty simple. They're divided into guys and girls. Your watch can only open the corresponding door. Soap and shampoo is provided."

"Oh!" Laki jumped back in. "There was also a weird tube thing."

"That's what was in the room we found." Winter began to explain. "It's likely connected to the locker room."

Well, that was it for them. "Who wants to go next?" Gennosuke looked around.

The next group to step up was Gigi's. "We didn't find too much use, but we did get some more insight on how jobs work." She pointed out to Edison. "We found a cleaning room that was filled with nothing but cleaning supplies. The safer chemicals were left out in the open, but the corrosive ones were locked behind glass."

"Yes." Edison adjusted his goggles. "The only way to get through to them is to have a job as a cleaner."

"How nice of you to volunteer!" Dolly called out. "He's now our short janitor!"

"S-short?" He turned to look at Dolly. "Oh yeah? Well you're short!"

Ian let out a sigh. "If you had two Dolly's stacked on top of each other, they'd be taller than you. A doll shouldn't be able to compete."

The liquid inside the flask began to turn a dark colour.

"A-Anyways!" Benoit tried to move on to continue explaining the room. "You need… a job to open up the glass, but there's… only one spot available." Which Edison has. Way to go Edison.

"Oh!" Dolly jumped back in. "We also found a closet in the back. Inside, they're were other cleaning supplies like mops, buckets, gloves, and the likes."

"But that's not the room that's worth talking about." Gigi continued on. "We found a room called the Motive Room."

"That's not ominous…" Gemini mumbled out.

"It seems to be… some kind of game room." Ian explained poorly. "There was a game table with several different potential games, but none of it worked."

"Oh, and there were two other rooms contained there." Edison mentioned next. "They were labelled Truth and Ideals."

"The rooms are soundproof." Gigi added on. "And the doors can be locked with a press of a button."

Benoit quickly nodded his head. "Yeah… They slam really quickly… So don't close the door while someone is standing there."

"I was almost killed!" The chemist said with a rather carefree voice.

"Lastly…" Gigi continued on. "There was a monitor in the back of the room. If I had to guess, it's related to future motives."

Alan hummed out in thought. "But why have a motive room if we already have a motive app?" He went to open it, but stopped himself. "It just doesn't make sense…" Although his mind began to drift into some thoughts. "Wait… It could be that some motives we need to see the results of others… So to bypass the rule, they included that rule."

Gennosuke let out an annoyed sigh. "Then why have the rule in the first place?"

The conspiracy theorist wanted to say something, but he held his tongue on the matter. "Maybe this is something we can think of later."

"And finally." Winter spoke up. "It's our group. We found two interesting rooms."

"Hey…" Seira looked around. "Wasn't Dae-Hyun with you? What happened?"

Melody frowned slightly. "He ran off on us, so…" She wasn't able to talk to him. She'd have to go find him later.

"We don't need him!" Lorelei called out. "I'll take charge of this. We found another room that requires jobs." She pointed over to Michael. "For starters, we found out how to access the cameras around the station. And he's connected to them."

"Oh?" This got Sakura's attention. "Are you saying that we can monitor the station?" Ah, but the other job only had one slot. "And Michael has it…?"

"Fret not." Winter shook her head. "There's a spot for you too. Two people can be assigned to it."

That saved her the effort of getting Michael fired. "I'll register myself after this meeting is done." She crossed her arms. "Continue."

"We found two other points of interest…" It was the employed man's turn now. "A power box which seems to be powering the station."

Lorelei placed a hand on her hip. "But we can't exactly mess with it. Only high voltage will be able to affect it."

"And we can't forget about the second door." Melody began to explain. "But the dame won't let us through it."

"Nova?" Alan hummed in thought. "There's a door she doesn't want us to explore?" Oh he was getting ideas now! "There might be something important behind it."

"The scanner for the door didn't work, though." Lorelei shook her head. "So we're shit out of luck."

Hmm… That caught his interest. "Why… Have a scanner in the first place if it's not going to work for us?"

Gemini tapped his chin. "Right. It's just begging us to find a way inside, isn't it?"

"And then we found another interesting room." Michael added. "We found an Ultimate Station."

"Ultimate Station?" Edison repeated. "I thought this whole place was an Ultimate Station."

"They work differently." The cyber security specialist shook her head. "Ultimate Stations are specifically for us. We found Dae-Hyun's."

Hae-Won took a look around. "Is that why he's not here? How bad could it have been."

Michael lowered his hood more, obscuring even the darkness. "Something about the room set him off… We don't know exactly what it was."

"But if we all have Ultimate Stations…" Sakura trailed off. "Just how big is this station? That's only one room and we've already found a lot of rooms."

Alan thought for a moment, he was mumbling to himself, not sharing his thoughts.

"What was his room?" Gemini was curious on how one would work.

Being the one who actually used it, Winter spoke up. "It started off as a plain office, but using the computer, you could change it to another room completely. There were a total of four rooms you could access from the computer. They seemed to be made for different talents. We had one for an actress, a vocalist… And…" She had to think about it for a moment. "It looked like a talk show host."

"You said four rooms. What was the last one?" Sakura didn't want them to withhold any information.

"Pfft, like hell would we know." Lorelei rolled their eyes. "Dae-Hyun unplugged the computer and marched out with the mouse. We couldn't stop him."

"For the rooms themselves." Melody decided to provide her insight. "The office didn't have anything of interest besides the computer and the tube. But the actress room had a lot of fun things." She tapped her feet a bit. "Lots of good makeup."

"There were also costumes and wigs." Michael mentioned.

"The next one was a stage." Lorelei continued. She pretended she was holding a mic. "A pretty good setup if you ever want to sing."

Placing a hand on his hood, the mystery man shook his head. "Please don't. The speakers made it too loud."

"Lastly." Winter wanted to wrap it all up in a bow to finish off. "The radio show had two microphones and some light fixtures above. There didn't seem to be much that would cause harm in this room."

Sakura let out a sigh of relief. "That's good to hear. We don't need anyone getting any funny ideas here."

"One more thing I want to mention." Michael was going to take the liberty to mention this now. "We found two points where we might be able to access more of the station."

Gigi nodded her head. "As did we. That seems like it totals four separate ways we could go."

Now that almost everyone was gathered, Ian decided he wanted to share his idea. "It's possible that the areas will open up after a trial."

Seira quickly shook her head. "What an awful thing to say." But then again, he was a Libra, and they were known to be emotionally detached at times. He was a shining example.

Alan shook his head. "I wouldn't say it's an awful thing." He hummed out in thought. "Because it's likely the truth."

"Tsk! We'll never let that happen!" Tatiana declared, twirling a knife around. "There's too much working against the killer right now."

Sakura nodded her head. "Right. We are twenty people. There's not much space. And there's a security system. One wrong move and the killer would be exposed right away."

It was odd. "Why give us so much like this already…?" Gennosuke crossed his arms. If they wanted them to kill, they were making it difficult to do so. "Ah, what do I know?" He flashed a smile. "They did mention motives, so we'll see how they force our hand."

"Is that all?" Laki tilted her head. "We should have gone through everything we needed to, right?"

"Sounds like it…" May let out a yawn. "Are we free to go do what we want to now?"

Gigi couldn't keep them here forever. "Yes. Everyone is free now." Still, she wanted to add stuff. "Just don't stay up too late, and try to be up early tomorrow."

Atlas raised an eyebrow. "Who are you, our mom? What would being up early even accomplish?"

She placed a hand on her hip. "Being up early gives us a routine. And if everyone gets up at the same time to eat, it's easier to track when something wrong has happened."

"Preparing for the worst again, aren't you?" Ian shook his head.

The referee crossed her arms. "I see no problem with that."

He had to hold in his laugh. "Well, I won't follow whatever schedule you have for me." He waved goodbye to her. "See you all tomorrow."

"Sleep time." May said as she followed Ian towards the elevator.

One by one, everyone else slowly began to head off.

Only a few people had actually stayed behind.

Gigi, Gemini, Benoit, Tatiana, and Sakura.

"Hmm…" The knife thrower hummed out. "We found a lot, but there's still so much we don't know.

"Yeah." The escapist nodded his head. "Like a way out." However, what one of the groups found was promising. "You said you explored the circular door."

"Yes." Sakura confirmed. "But it sounds like a bad idea, so don't try anything stupid."

He let out a small laugh. "Trying out stupid things is my middle name." It just meant he should check it out himself. He waved goodbye to the group.

Benoit let out a sigh, shaking his head. "There really is no way out… is there?" Not to mention everything that was found.

"Tomorrow, I talk to Nova." Gigi crossed her arms, closing one eye. "She needs to start explaining this motive stuff soon." She took a glance at her clock app. "We should all be heading to bed soon. It's almost night time."

Tatiana shrugged. "Is there really a reason? It's not like we can't roam around."

"It's best to stay on the safe side." Sakura reached out for her flashlight. "Nighttime is a dangerous time, and it's best if we don't give anyone the opportunity to kill."

Benoit nodded his head. "I… I agree. Let's meet up in the morning." Some more rest would do them some good, given that they weren't able to figure much else today.

The group of four all left to head to the elevator.

Several minutes later, the night time announcement began to play. "We have entered the nighttime period." Monokawa began differently than his last one. "While the night is young, remember that so are you. Wouldn't want to waste it now, would you? But worry not, for tomorrow is a new day, and with it, comes new surprises. See you all tomorrow." Quickly, the station grew quiet.

And that concludes Chapter 1 Part 1! Whew, that was a pain to write. Didn't think I was going to jump into this chapter that quickly, but here I am. This definitely turned out longer than I ever thought it would. 20k is not a small amount, after all. This could probably end up being my longest chapter for a long time. Then again, it makes sense since you start off with so many different rooms, and so many people. I can see the chapters getting shorter when more people start to drop.

Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! It only took longer than I thought it would because I ended up writing a lot of words for Trial Part 2, so that I could know how I wanted to structure some of the stuff for this chapter. Hopefully the rest of the Daily Lives is easier to figure out. Especially since I can focus more on character interactions instead of describing rooms! Expect the next part to not be as long.

Special shoutout to SilverMar- actually nah, I give him too many shoutouts. Shoutout to Nekoja (the creator of best girl Gigi) who opened up their own Danganronpa SYOC called Honeymoon Havoc! You should apply there too. My character Mary Bishop made it in!

Participants Remaining: 20

Edison Thompton - The Ultimate Chemist [SilverMark16]

Benoit Chevalier - The Ultimate Physiotherapist [Epifanio Therion]

Seira Natsume - The Ultimate Astrologist [WolfieRed23]

Winter Hibiscus - The Ultimate Love Guru [Grandma Sue]

Giustina "Gigi" Giulio - The Ultimate Referee [Nekoja]

Gemini Strela - The Ultimate Escapist [secretnobody]

Benjamin Mason - The Ultimate Ventriloquist [NSPunny]

Alan Buteaux - The Ultimate Conspiracy Theorist [zendroxp]

Lorelei Kaiser - The Ultimate Computer Security Specialist [CandleFire45]

Michael ? - The Ultimate ? [Omakin]

Melody Eleanor Hopkins - The Ultimate Tap Dancer [Prince PokePersona]

Kim Dae-Hyun - The Ultimate Talent Manager [oddlyillregular]

Lakshmi "Laki" Krishna - The Ultimate Lucky Student [Sempi]

May Summers - The Ultimate Academic Prodigy [KadachiNova]

Ian Santiago - The Ultimate Gambler [Animeboy15]

Tatiana Novak - The Ultimate Knife Thrower [ExtraMeme]

Atlas Constande - The Ultimate Soccer Player [ComplicatedYetSimple]

Gennosuke Yagami - The Ultimate Psychic [theotakureader101]

Kim Hae-Won - The Ultimate Tattoo Artist [Weekaro]

Sakura Gambino - The Ultimate Security Guard [PROJECT DRAMA]