Game Show Despair

A single, blazing spotlight focuses on the wooden chair where windings of rope bind Kagaku to the seat. Just as his eyesight tries to adjust, another click sends a flood of light down on a figure some distance in front of him.

If there was any doubt as to this Monokuma’s specialty despite his white lab coat, it faded once he began to piece together plates of metal and circuitboards. Although Kagaku grunted and struggled as much as he could, the ropes only chafed at his chest and arms as Monokuma quickly assembled a robot some two stories tall.

Kagaku’s forearms finally fell as the robot whirred into life, its eyes glowing red. A new wave of panic causing his own eyes to flare wide, he struggled with renewed effort as the whirring grew louder. With a high-pitched sound cutting through the noise, a laser fired from the robot’s eyes and hit Kagaku head-on.

The laser grows stronger and stronger, the light and sound increasing, until it cuts off. The glare of the light faded and the smoke dissipated after a moment.

Where Kagaku was just sitting is only a pile of ash.

Mina and Florence are repairing their relationship to some degree, though Mina harbors a deep hatred of Florence for wanting Akira dead so badly, then being so happy when they died. As they explore the kitchens, Mina attacks Florence with a kitchen knife, injuring Florence. Florence wrests the knife from Mina and injures her in return. Florence chases Mina into the freezer. Mina escapes through the vent and then seals the door behind Florence, and barricades it with a spice rack.

Florence scrabbled at the door to escape, but it was useless; likewise, she couldn’t climb up to the vent, knocking down shelves instead. Bleeding badly, she surrendered to her fate and began to wander around the rectangular freezer drawing portraits of all the dead students in her own blood and talking to them. Kaizo came last, and she cried over his portrait as she began to lose consciousness, her face smearing some of the blood as she slid away from him to die.

Florence dies of hypothermia, which was exacerbated by her wound.

Satoru believes that committing a double murder would allow them to break the system, but Kagaku is unconvinced until she presents him with a note forged in Momoko’s handwriting that shows the Otome Developer has been bullying Mina.

Using a fake note supposedly sent by Seiji, Satoru lures Rosaire into the spa to kill him, taking a pair of hair-trimming scissors to stab him through the neck. When the time comes, however, the most she can bring herself to do is punch him in the face. While this puts him down for the count for a little while, she abandons the scissors on the floor and flees to stop Kagaku from murdering.

Kagaku, meanwhile, takes a knife from the kitchen as well as some atropine from the spa (while Satoru was still working on the letter to Rosaire). He hides a lethal dose of atropine in a glass of hot chocolate, pouring himself an identical-looking glass and knocking on Momoko’s door to offer him some. Luckily for him, the motive has left Momoko rather desperately thirsty, and he only prompts Kagaku to take a sip before Momoko goes on to drain his glass. They have a bit of a stinted chat before Momoko suddenly drops his glass, clutching at his chest and collapsing.

Victim: Florence Ward

Cause of Death: Hypothermia

Place of Death: Kitchen B freezer

He isn’t sure if the others have been unlocked for investigation, but this one definitely is. Let’s just have a look see—

Victim: Momoko Miyazaki

Cause of Death: Ventricular fibrillation

Place of Death: Momoko Miyazaki’s room

Time Discovered: 12:15 PM

Victim: Satoru Kinzoku

Cause of Death: Blood loss due to several stab wounds

Place of Death: Momoko Miyazaki’s room

What with the debilitating heat, it wasn’t all that strange that people hadn’t been socializing terribly much. Still, there seemed to be a few people in particular that were unaccounted for. Maybe the students were just being paranoid. It wasn’t hard to do that in a place like this, with the sweltering air playing tricks on their brains.

The shattering of glass caught the attention of a few nearby, though it was difficult to locate. Soon enough, though, they managed to find the door to Momoko’s room oddly propped open...

It was hard to feel very good when the bear’s voice came over the speakers “requesting” an assembly, but today seemed worse than usual. What would it be this time? Who would crack?

Were you assuming someone would? Perhaps there was no reason to think otherwise anymore. This life of mutual killing was becoming normal.

The dwindling number of students assembled in Kitchen A near the elevator, where a small ding hailed the bear’s arrival. Either he wasn’t feeling up to teleporting, or he wanted to make a difference entrance this time.

“Morning, bastards! We all know what’s happening, so let’s cut to the chase!”

“You’ve all seemed a little cold lately, avoiding each other and everything. That’s not the kind of behavior I want to encourage in my students! So I’ll just warm things up for you, upupu!”

“The temperature on both floors is going to increase five degrees Fahrenheit e-bear-y day until we have a murder! And just to spice things up, I’ve taken away all of your cold food and drink and replaced them with some hot, hot, hot equivalents! Hot chocolate! Hot coffee! Hot curry!”

“You’ll all be so hot this might as well be a shoujo manga!”

The bear laughed before vanishing around the corner, leaving the students to tug at their sleeves and collars as the temperature began to rise.

The elevator had shifted slowly as the surviving students shook the sand and dirt off their clothes. The murder had come, and so they would be returned back to a civilized living place, as promised. Finally, showers, good food, beds, air conditioning...

The elevator doors opened into a kitchen with a brown tiled floor, the white walls stretching to a high ceiling with false balconies on what would be the next floor. Counters lined every wall aside from the doorway to the elevator as well as one opposite it, which seemed to lead into another identical room. Drawers and cupboards were everywhere, including the large island, above which hung large utensils and woks and pans of every type.

“All right, bastards, your modern-day paradise as promised! Let’s see, you can take the elevator back to your rooms to sleep if you don’t want to break the rules and be the next poster child for super-talented shish-ka-bobs.

“Enjoy!”

He vanished, leaving the kids to explore the four nearly identical adjoined kitchens or go back to the first floor if they liked.

Vash wasn’t sure where she woke up, but it was dark, claustrophobic, and stiflingly hot. A muffled ticking noise seemed to come from everywhere at once, like a time bomb counting the seconds to her death. Was it a time bomb? As psychotic as the past few days were, it might as well be. Faintly she could see some sort of blue-tinged light, but huge strands of something cloth-like bound her limbs and covered her face. One got in her mouth, and it tasted like… wool?

Akira’s consciousness surfaced, registering something suspiciously soft around her. What was going on? An execution? What did this have to do with her? Or maybe only the dancing psycho deserved a personalized death? But as she struggled to pull herself one way or the other, she realized the soft strands were burning wherever they touched. She couldn’t avoid them, though, and likewise she could only swallow the bile rising in her throat. Something a lot stranger was going on than she thought. Maybe this did have to do with her talent after all...

With all her strength Vash fought towards the light, till finally she broke through the surface and gasped for air-- or tried to, at least, as the huge strand of yarn tore at the corners of her mouth. Yarn? Surely it wasn’t yarn, but what else could it be? She was bound inside a massive skein of thick cyan yarn, and the ticking she had heard before became the deafening clack, clack, clack of knitting needles, needles that were attached to a hellish machine that filled the room, endlessly knitting and purling away. She didn’t have to wonder who was behind this grotesque scenario, as Monokuma grinned sadistically from the controls of the machine.

Akira was on the urge of vomiting by the time she managed to surface. Gasping for breath and shoving the strands of—yarn?—away from her face, she hissed at the burns that made her arms itch. The ache drumming at the insides of her temples drummed at a beat that matched the clacking behind her. It seemed like two strange machines were clacking in unison, with Monokuma at the helm in the middle. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she struggled a bit to turn and found that Vash was in the tangle not far from her.

Maybe if she could get one hand free, Vash thought as she wrestled against the strangling fiber, maybe she could get out and tear that demon bear limb from limb, and free her friends and maybe live just one more day. Limbs hot with burns and fever, she struggled to disentangle her fingers from the mesh. I didn’t mean to, she screamed silently as blood ran down her face and still the threads pulled ever tighter, I was just trying to protect him. Her ears ached with the chugging and hissing and clack clack clacking of the needles and gears, her eyes watered with the smoke of the furnaces and the despair of never seeing her family again, never seeing her Les again, and leaving her friends at the mercy of the black and white devil watching her from above, and suddenly everything stopped.

Akira’s shoulders tensed, tightening the cocoon of yarn around her chest. As her headache had progressed, her thoughts had become increasingly clipped and incoherent. She could barely put two and two together at the sight of the strands of yellow and pink hair shuffling across the yarn in the breeze of the furnace. But it wasn’t important that she understood. She still knew she was going to die. What else was there to think? People, ambitions left behind? What did any of that matter to a dying animal?

There was a second of eerie silence, then a maniacal laugh as Monokuma threw himself at the controls, and the needles abandoned their scarf-in-progress to skewer the girls’ necks from both sides.

At about 3PM, Rosaire approaches Sachi and asks to borrow a knife in order to help dig and cut up some edible roots he thinks he found on the other side of the island. Although he looks a bit unkempt, he’s an actor after all and manages to be flirtatious enough Sachi doesn’t suspect anything. She lends him a hunting knife.

Not long after sunset, Rosaire sneaks up on Akira in an attempt to murder her. He only manages to get the knife stuck in Akira’s headband with minimal damage. Akira gets one punch in before he panics and flees.

The next morning, after dressing in her male clothes and stowing the headband in her female clothes (and the knife in her belt), Akira approaches a nice patch of shoreline to check for fish. After a bit of wading and returning to the sand to dry her feet, she finds Vash (and Kaizo) crossing over towards her. All three had brushed against the same poison ivy plant on the way; it hit Kaizo’s deltoid area, Akira’s upper arm, and Vash’s inner elbow.

Both low on tolerance and sleep and hating each other’s guts anyway, Akira and Vash begin to argue. The fight escalates with a bit of shoving, and Kaizo begins to panic. Partly to snap him out of it and partly just to get him out of the way, Akira slams her fist into his jaw. He stumbles back, tripping onto the sand and tearfully apologizing to his father. Vash roars and slugs Akira in the stomach. Ignoring Kaizo’s cries for them to stop, Akira draws the knife and prepares to slash.

At just the wrong time, Kaizo throws himself between the girls to stop them. Simultaneously, Vash’s fist crashes into his left pterion, and Akira’s knife slashes his side and back open. He twists and collapses, spraying the two of them with blood as his hat flies off from the impact.

Vash promptly begins to panic, backing away and scrambling for anything she could use as bandages. Pulling out the sweater she knit for Kagaku, she attempts to bandage up Kaizo’s abdominal wound.

While Vash is so occupied, Akira sees her chance to stab her and takes it—but Vash reacts quickly enough and socks Akira with a knockout punch, sending her flying back. The knife falls out of her hand on the way, and she collapses a few feet away from Kaizo.

Victim: Kaizo Monogatari

Cause of Death: Blood loss

Place of Death: Northeastern shoreline

Time Discovered: 10:05 AM

The island was miserable. There was nothing to find worth the sweat and grime and insects, and the only freshwater stream tasted worse than the most suspicious water fountain the students had ever tried. Barely any self-care, no easy food, and nothing entertaining, especially after the numbing death they’d witnessed right before coming here.

It was disgusting and generally intolerable, but at least it was peaceful. Despite the promise of a better place to move to, no one had turned to murder. Maybe the bear had finally lost.

All it took to crush that hope was one incoherent student.

Vasundhara Morgenstone pelted into the tent area, stumbling as she cried and screamed and hollered for the others’ attention. Even as they came out to see what the fuss was, she seemed unable to tell them. Her shirt bloody and her face streaming with tears, she finally managed to get them to follow her as she stumbled off towards the shore.

It was then that her state of mind seemed perfectly reasonable.

After the events of Popiko’s murder, the kids didn’t have long to recover before more tragedy would start all over again. It was just settling in that this was real,  that people were actually dying, killing each other, because of the sadistic bear.

Yet there was nothing they could do but listen to him.

“Yoo-hoo! Hey, bastards! Get over here!”

The announcement brought the closest students within a few moments, while others came running and others had to be coerced with threats of injury.

“All right, everybody, time to get moving! And I do mean moving!”

The bear gestured to the elevator and laughed as he explained. The remaining kids were going to move out of the house and into a new environment. They were prohibited from bringing anything but their personal items, so no food or furniture or anything from the house.”

Just as Monokuma was saying this, he noticed a worried expression on someone in the crowd. Rosaire fiddled with something in his pocket, and it’s not what you wish it was.

“WHAT IS THAT, YOU BASTARD?!”

Monokuma leapt over as Rosaire nervously fiddled with a slim bottle of face cleaner in his pocket. Unfortunately his shuffling pulled out a corner of one of the luxury washrags from the bathroom.

”Is that from the—WHAT DID I JUST SAY?!”

His complexion paler than normal, Rosaire opened his mouth but couldn’t seem to react any more than that.

“YOU ARE GOING TO DIE FOR THIS! DIE DIE DIE~”

As Monokuma charged at the French damsel in distress, someone ran to intercept him.

Koichi slammed his heel into Monokuma’s stomach, sending him tumbling backwards. As Rosaire gasped behind him, he stormed after the bear, fist raised. “DON’T YOU FUCKING DA—”

He cut off all of a sudden, his mouth apparently unable to keep working.

The execution starts off as the lights rise in… Is that some sort of concert hall? It looks to be, a line of dancers with the exact same face and a star in the center, surrounded by fans. Popiko sticks out like a sore thumb among the dancers, looking bewildered.

However, before any sort of music can start, there’s a terrible grumble followed by a burst of flames from the stage. It must have been some sort of pyrotechnics error, but fire has started to spread around the stage, and the dancers all leap off. Popiko, still stunned, follows suit. An exit sign glows on the other side of the hall, and it looks like she’s going for that. But the crowd is leaving, too, and she soon finds herself surrounded by people. She’s small, terribly small, and despite all her pushing and squirming, the crowd overtakes her, forcing her to the ground.

Crack, crack. The sound of feet trampling her hits your ears, and her panic cries follow just behind. But what’s this? Something is happening in front of her. There’s a girl, short black hair messed and ruffled, decked out in white, nearly glowing. She… Looks so much like Popiko, and the crowd is parting around her. Her limbs are  twisted at impossible angles, blood running down her face. This girl… Doesn’t look like she should be alive at all. Popiko looks just as shocked, and a hand reaches out, shaking slowly.

“Ri-Riho… H-Help…”

The girl glares, stepping back.

“You didn’t save me. Why should I save you?”

As the girl slowly vanishes, the crowd picks back up, and the last thing you see before the crowd overtakes her is Popiko’s horrified expression.

It’s only a minute before you’re taken back to the stadium. It’s burnt up, no sign of its former beauty and glitz to be seen. And only feet from the exit, color among the scorches, is a tiny, crumpled body with purple hair.

Popiko knows what it’s like to be starving, and as much as she tried to hide it, she was terrified at the prospect of it happening again. After a few days, it became too much. She would have eaten anything. And so she chose to take the first step, leaving a note slipped under the door to Chouko’s room asking her to meet her at the spa in the late evening (without signing her name- she realized Chouko’s gullible nature, and figured she would show even without knowing who she was). Leaving an hour before the note said to arrive, Popiko poked around in the spa, getting a few strands of wig hair caught in a shelf door without realizing it.  Deciding how she would do it, she found a hair straightener among the supplies, and plugged it into a wall near one of the spa tubs, waiting.

After Chouko’s arrival, Popiko asked her if she would help pick out a couple of spa products. As Chouko got close enough, Popiko went on the attack, using her agility to grab the straighter and hit Chouko across the face with it (clumsily knocking over a bottle of green hair dye, staining a small section on the back of her dress)- not very hard, but the surprise and burn from the heat left Chouko stunned long enough for Popiko to push her, sending the poor girl backwards into the tub. One of Chouko’s glasses lenses broke on impact, along with an arm bending to make a depression on the right side of her head and some bruising on that side. It wasn’t a very deep or large tub, mind you, but does that really matter knowing that Popiko then proceeded to toss the (still plugged in) hair straightener into the tub with Chouko, producing a fatal electric shock?

Taking a few minutes to catch her breath and let herself calm down, Popiko unplugged the straightener to take it out of the tub, setting it beside the tub and plugging it back in. At this point, she was highly delirious, high on the adrenaline of killing somebody, and the only thing she could focus on was her hunger. She bit into Chouko’s neck, only stopping after she’d torn off skin. So, yes. She literally resorted to very brief cannibalism before she was snapped out of it. Pulling herself together, she pushed Chouko’s body so that she was sitting in a more refined position in the tub and disrobed her, wrapping a towel around her midsection as if she had been casually taking a bath when the straightener happened to fall in. Stepping away from the tub (straight into the green hair dye, where she left a footprint) Popiko threw in a handful of lavender aromatic bath salts to aid the impression and removed Chouko’s hair ties, throwing them in the garbage bin. Realizing Chouko’s clothes were sopping wet, she took a little time to run a hair dryer over them, leaving them only damp enough for the steam of the spa room to have done it.

Popiko left the room, closing the door behind her to leave Chouko’s body alone in the spa.

Victim: Chouko Akaishi

Place of Death: Spa

Cause of Death: Systemic electrocution

Time Discovered: 10:41 PM

“Upupupupu...”

The bear appeared in the spa once the other students had been gathered to the scene of the crime.

“Somebody finally got murdered! Took you long enough!”

“I guess I didn’t tell you what to do after a murder, huh? Whoopsie! It’s not like you really needed to know beforehand, anyway...

“But now it’s time for you to investigate! That’s right, you bastards aren’t allowed to just mope! You have to catch the murderer! Which was one of your own, of course, upupu...”

“After a short investigation period, we’ll hold a class trial. You get to present evidence and press witnesses just like in a real trial! And if you catch the murderer, that person will be eliminated! If not... Everyone else will be executed, and the murderer will be allowed to graduate.