The next day, Kyoko walked around the school. She felt bored of waiting in her room and was itching to investigate something. The bear had said all the doors aside from the gym's and kitchen's were locked, and Kyoko checked each door to confirm it for herself. Sure enough, none of the other rooms were accessible.

As she explored, she noticed that Sakura and Hina were eating breakfast in the kitchen, and peeked in on a tired-looking Makoto sitting silently in his room, staring at his open door. Hiro, Byakuya, and Celeste were nowhere to be seen, so she surmised they were in their rooms.

It did not take much wandering before Kyoko made an interesting observation. While the doors were locked, the gates that had once blocked the stairwell and prohibited access to the upper floors had not returned. Meaning that even during Monokuma's little challenge the upper floors were open to exploration. So, Kyoko set about patrolling the halls of each floor, diligently checking each door along the way.

She did not find anything interesting until the final accessible floor. There, she tried the door to the chemistry lab, one of the farthest places from the first floor dorms, and she found to her surprise that it was unlocked. She slowly opened the door, only to swiftly slam it shut as a gunshot rang out, impacting the shut door. She had only had a split second to observe the room, but she felt confident about what she had seen. Hiro, eyes bloodshot, held a bottle of pills in one hand and a gun pointed directly at her in the other.

"STAY AWAY!" Hiro screamed. "I GOT, LIKE, FIVE MORE OF THOSE! YOU WON'T TAKE ME, MAN!"

Kyoko blinked rapidly, trying desperately to make sense of what she had just seen. Clearly, Hiro had taken Monokuma's offer. But he used it to… hide out in the chem lab? From the brief look at him, he had not slept at all last night and was probably intoxicated by some drug he had found in the lab. Had something spooked him?

She debated whether to speak before deciding that Monokuma's prohibition against cooperation shouldn't apply to speaking to someone who had just tried to kill her. "Hiro? It's Kyoko," said Kyoko, uncharacteristically raising her voice so she could be heard through the door. "What's going on?"

"YOU WON'T KILL ME, DUDE! YOU WON'T!" Hiro screamed frantically.

He was frightened of her? What? "Hiro, please, I have no intention of killing you. I just want to talk!" shouted Kyoko.

"NO WAY! GET OUT OF HERE, OR I'LL SHOOT AGAIN! FOR REALS!"

Kyoko hesitated, trying to think of some clever way to approach this. But the man was clearly unhinged at the moment, and the chem lab only had one entrance. It didn't seem like there was any choice but to wait until he came out. "Okay! I'm leaving! Please calm down!" Kyoko replied as she backed away from the door.

All she could hear in reply was a faint sob. She walked wide-eyed back down to the first floor. She wanted to warn everyone, and almost did when she ran into Sakura and Hina, before remembering that she couldn't speak to them. They clearly saw the shock in her eyes, though, as she could see the concern growing in their own. She thought carefully about what she should tell them, and how, before finally jabbing her finger upwards urgently and then beckoning them to follow her as she jogged back to the stairs.

Sakura and Hina glanced quizzically at each other before cautiously following Kyoko up the flights of stairs. Walking up and down the stairs took time, but Kyoko estimated it couldn't have been much more than five minutes before the chem lab door came into view again.

But it was not as she had left it. The door was hanging to the frame by one hinge, bearing scorch marks across its surface. Kyoko carefully walked up and peered inside the room. It was destroyed. Every bit of glass was shattered, chemicals ran together on the ground, and the walls and furniture were charred and discolored.

And at the far end of the room, propped up against the glass cabinet where Kyoko had last seen him, lay the severely broken and burned body of the Ultimate Fortune-Teller, still clutching his pistol while the pool of his blood continued to seep out underneath him.

"Ding Dong Ding Dong!" said the school's loudspeakers as Kyoko dimly noted Sakura and Hina entering the room behind her. "A body has been discovered!"...

…

Kyoko thought quickly and rushed over to the mangled body. A quick search of Hiro's tattered clothing revealed what she hoped it would: the headmaster's key. As stealthily as she could, she palmed the key and snuck it into a hidden pocket in her skirt, disguising her actions by simultaneously prying the gun from Hiro's damaged hands. When she checked the chamber, she noted the gun had only two bullets remaining - so assuming Hiro had been telling the truth about having five bullets earlier, he had fired three bullets in between Kyoko leaving him and him dying. She promptly unchambered the last two bullets and asked Sakura to hold onto the now unloaded pistol, and then enlisted her aid in searching the room for signs of the fired bullets while Hina went to fetch the others.

By the time everyone else arrived, Sakura and Kyoko had found two bullets embedded in the far wall and a third on the ground near the door, which Kyoko surmised was the one fired at her. The last bullet could not be found, which, Kyko reflected, most likely meant either that the bullet had embedded into a target that took it out of the room or it had been destroyed in the explosion.

It was obvious that there had been an explosion, but the cause was unclear. It could have been chemical, created by mixing particularly volatile ingredients in the chem lab. Or it could have been some kind of bomb.

As the investigation continued and the students began to interrogate each other about what happened, it also quickly became clear that no one had seen or interacted with Hiro since everyone had met in the gym the previous day. Makoto had left his door open and kept an eye on the hall, which at least showed Hiro must have either snuck out in the early morning when Makoto had fallen asleep or avoided his notice some other way. Also, everyone claimed to have avoided the gym since the announcement, and there was no evidence to suggest anyone was lying about that.

And that was about the extent of the investigation. Makoto pointed out that the headmaster's key was missing, to which Kyoko feigned surprise. Celeste wondered what motive Hiro could possibly have had to act so erratically, to which no one had any answer.

Once Kyoko was satisfied she had obtained all the information she was going to get here, she turned her focus onto the other students. It seemed like everyone - except Byakuya - was glad to finally be able to talk to one another again without fearing for their life. But these feelings were easily overwhelmed by the despair of knowing yet another one of their group was gone forever. No one had particularly liked Hiro, but no one had disliked him either - he had just been a pleasant person to have around. The school felt much emptier without him in it.

Kyoko moved onto the next stage of the plan she had quickly concocted. She approached Celeste, who was deep in thought in a corner of the room. Glancing around, Kyoko confirmed that whatever audio sensors were in the room and had survived the explosion would most likely be unable to hear them over everyone else's chatter.

"Celeste," she whispered as she reached the gothic girl. "I need your help."

Celeste looked at her with a thoughtful frown and nodded.

"I need you to distract Monokuma. Once I leave the room, get his attention, ask him whether the explosion came from one of him, when he's going to take the gun back, whatever you can think of."

Understanding lit up in Celeste's eyes. "You found it, didn't you? Okay, I got it covered."

"Thank you," Kyoko replied, before turning and approaching Makoto instead. She raised her voice. "You found Hiro's room key, right Makoto?"

Makoto stammered out his response. "Ye-yeah. It, uh, it was in his pants."

"I think we're done with the chem lab," Kyoko announced. "Let's go check out his room, see if we can find any sign of what made him go crazy."

"Oh, um, right," said Makoto. "Okay."

The two of them walked out the door and made their way over to the stairs. Kyoko could hear Celeste yelling for Monokuma in the distance. She was on a time limit now.

"Hey, Makoto," Kyoko spoke up as they walked, grabbing his attention. "Inconvenient timing, I know, but I actually need to use the bathroom. Go on without me. I'll join you afterward… if there's still time."

Makoto actually blushed. It amused Kyoko how sensitive this kid was. Sometimes a lady needed to sit on a toilet. It wasn't a big deal.

Makoto stammered out an acceptance and darted downstairs. Meanwhile, Kyoko walked in the opposite direction. There were two locked doors on this floor, and now Kyoko had the means to open them. She wondered if Hiro had already used the key to peek behind those doors, and had seen something that had made him go crazy. A frightening thought, but also, all the more reason she needed to check the locked rooms before the trial started.

She started with the headmaster's office. She still held out hope she could find some sign of her father. The key fit snugly into the lock, and with a click, she turned the key and opened the door.

The headmaster's office was a mess. Documents and books scattered everywhere. But otherwise, it looked like an ordinary office. She wished she could examine the office at length, but there was no way she could do so without the mastermind noticing her absence, especially if she wanted to unlock the data center too. So she scanned the room, looking for something that stood out. A spiral notebook was displayed prominently on the headmaster's desk. She hurried up to it and flipped through it. She found that the notebook was a student registry for a "class 78", and it contained profiles of herself and all the other students she had been trapped with. But… there were 16 names listed on the first page, not 15. She quickly turned to the extra student's profile. "Mukuro Ikusaba," she read. "The Ultimate Soldier." She scanned the wall of text quickly. It described her background as a soldier prodigy. She flipped the page, noting that the next page contained a small picture of an unfamiliar woman and a report of the headmaster's suspicions that Mukuro was secretly an "Ultimate Despair."

Well. This registry seemed important. Especially if there were more secrets hidden in the profiles of the names she recognized. She was tempted to just grab Mukuro's first page and run, but that seemed… uncharacteristically shortsighted. But she couldn't just fit the whole notebook up her skirt, and walking around holding it in her hands was just asking for a Monokuma confrontation. So she quickly tore every page off of the notebook. There were only around 20 pages, and they were thin enough that she could easily tear two at a time, so after about ten seconds she had each page. She crumpled them up and stashed them in her skirt pockets, then darted out of the room. After a quick scan to see if she'd missed anything obvious, she closed the door again. She didn't bother to relock it - the mastermind would know someone had unlocked it as soon as they spotted the torn notebook anyway. Perhaps she could send others to investigate the room later, see if they could find anything she missed and maybe make it harder for the mastermind to know who exactly had been the one to break in first and steal the registry.

She could hear Monokuma faintly yelling in the distance. Good. She should still have time for at least a peek into the data center. She hurried over, inserted her key into the lock, turned it, and opened the door.

She was met with a barrage of screens. She realized with a start that these must be live feeds from every surveillance camera in the school. She could see Celeste and Monokuma arguing from the perspective of the camera in the Chem Lab, and Makoto snooping through Hiro's room from the perspective of Hiro's bedroom camera. It was obvious that this was what the mastermind used to spy on them. Kyoko froze, desperately searching for any sign of the mastermind in the room. She found none. But then, where was the mastermind? Well, at least that suggested the mastermind had not been looking through the camera in the headmaster's office, and wouldn't know what she had done. Hmm. A door embedded in the wall on the opposite side of the room caught Kyoko's attention. It was covered with an enormous image of Monokuma's face. Perhaps the mastermind was through there? Kyoko glanced around, noting that there was no sign of a microphone or the detailed controls that would be necessary to command Monokuma. There was no way that the robot bear had some sort of complicated AI - the mastermind was obviously not Chihiro. That meant it was an animatronic, needing precise instructions, especially to engage in conversation. So… there was only one logical explanation. The mastermind was currently controlling Monokuma from another room, almost certainly the room behind that Monokuma-emblazoned door.

Kyoko's heart beat ridiculously fast. The mastermind was almost certainly *right there*. All she had to do was walk over and open the door, and the nightmare was over. She quickly weighed her options. Would there be any downside to confronting the mastermind now? She was confident she could handle most people in hand to hand combat - there was no way the mastermind was Sakura, after all. What if the mastermind had a gun? Well, Kyoko could always just run away if she couldn't get the drop on them. The mastermind would probably chase her and try to kill her before she could tell the rest of the class, but they were all - minus Makoto - just a couple rooms away.

No, this was it. She mustered her courage and marched across the room… only to realize with a start that the Monokuma door had no keyhole. Kyoko sighed lightly. Of course, why would the Mastermind be stupid enough to offer up a key that would allow them to confront him? There was no handle either. She pushed against the door experimentally. It didn't budge. So, there was most likely some sort of control on the other side that unlocked it. The only way she could confront the Mastermind now was if she could force the Mastermind back into this surveillance room. Hmm.

As she strategized, she noted that she could no longer hear distant voices. It was time to choose. Did she take the risk and lie in wait here? Or did she call what she had already discovered enough of a win and walk out? If she walked out, she could tell the others what she had learned and recruit Sakura's help for the final confrontation - but the Mastermind could catch wind of what had happened and never emerge until he had used Monokuma to reclaim Kyoko's key. If she lay in wait, she might be able to subdue the mastermind while they were unaware - or she might be subdued herself and killed, leaving her classmates without any idea what she had discovered or what had happened to her. It was an agonizing choice.