Possibilities - A Danganronpa Fanfiction

What IF 1 – You Can't Hold a Trial with Only Two People

The academy's halls were only dimly lit as he made his way through at the speed of fear. It was the only good fortune the remaining students had left that the cafeteria was so close to their bedrooms, as a longer distance would have surely driven any of the remaining survivors into shock before they could make it half way. Makoto himself wouldn't have stepped out if not for his desperate need for a drink, as he wasn't quite up to consuming toilet or shower water just yet. He moved at an odd pace, quickly but nervously, each step little more than a shuffle forward as he tried to make out shadows in the darkness. Not that it would matter if he did. The killer would likely take his life before the scream reached his throat, and even if he succeeded in his attempt, it would be useless in the face of the soundproofed walls of the bedrooms. Crossing the dormitory's main plaza would have only taken mere seconds in times of Hope, but his paranoia stretched it out to ten minutes before he was within the confines of the cafeteria. The doors were hurriedly slammed shut behind him and a chair wedged firmly into the door handles to prevent any other students from following him inside.

"Good evening Makoto."

The scream was instantaneous and long, a terrible, scratchy thing born from the truest fear as he collapsed with arms about his head, praying that his death would be as quick and painless as possible. But it was not to be as a softer hand fell upon his, a second on his shoulder to stabilise him. They prevented him from flailing in panicked defiance, and when he found the courage to look upon his assailant he found a different killer holding him.

"Mu-Mukuro?"

The Ultimate Soldier nodded, and the sight of her loosened the grip of fear from Makoto's chest as she helped him to his feet, dusting him down as she went. There were two killers inside the walls of Hope's Peak, but he knew that this one would never harm him. A soldier protected people, after all. If nothing else, if she were to kill him it would be two years' worth of work straight down the drain. A small, manic giggle escaped him as Mukuro brought him over to the table where fifteen lights of Hope had sat. Now it was covered in papers relating to how each one had been extinguished.

Sakura had been the first to go, found dead in this very room. A bad batch of protein powder containing some nasty chemical had done what no man could and bested The World's Strongest Woman. The elder Kirigiri had ruled it an accident and taken the blame wholeheartedly upon himself, ruling her death a mistake he would pay for when the world returned to some form of normality. Given the stress of his self-appointed position and the weight of the world's future on his shoulders, it seemed that losing even one spark of Hope had been enough to drive him to Despair. They'd found him and Kyoko in his office the next day, the first and only meal they'd taken together there laced with cyanide pills. Things had fallen apart from there as the remaining thirteen students had been left to self-govern themselves in the midst of both the personal tragedy and the one that raged outside. Between the loss of two close friends and the sole authority figure in the school, tempers had frayed and burst as Byakuya and Kiyotaka jostled to take the reins. Makoto had done his best to calm matters, but the edition of Toko and Mondo on each "side" had drowned him out in a wave of screaming, swearing and tears. That matter had been solved shortly afterwards by a midnight crucifixion, Byakuya's broken body mutilated by a thousand scissor cuts. Only then had it become apparent that one of the group wasn't what they appeared to be, that one of the lights sealed within Hope's Peak had blackened and become a member of Despair. Mondo had fallen under fire as the culprit, defended only by Chihiro and Kiyotaka. The investigation had turned up even darker than they had expected, with the security cameras showing Byakuya's murderer as a masked demon in a trench coat, breaking into his room with the slightest of ease.

Camps had formed after that, students teaming up in groups of two and three to watch the night and each other. It wasn't enough, as one week later Celestia's bedroom also became a slaughterhouse, with her and Hifumi sliced up so finely that it was impossible to tell which pile of viscera had previously been which friend. And from there the remaining students had torn each other to pieces as well. Sayaka suffered a head wound died trying to flee, falling on it poorly when Leon knocked her down to reclaim the escape button. According to the survivors, this was enough to brand him as the killer, and Mondo's fury ended him without trial. The act of vigilantism brought them another week of strained peace before Aoi turned up drowned in the swimming pool. Mondo had been so wracked with guilt that it was obvious he would be the next to go, paying for life with life at the end of a rope. The current system had surfaced from then on, every student for themselves with the dead clutching at their backs every time they turned around. Even paranoia wasn't enough to save the others, and now only three were left alive, the two in the cafeteria and Toko, who had sealed herself within her quarters a week prior and refused to answer the door. She could be dead for all Makoto knew, depending on how long she could hold out against her body's needs. Not that it mattered now. It was clear that the killer had wasn't one of the students, had never been. Despair had wormed itself into the walls and was coming for them, and time was its essence. All it had to do was wait for one of the three to slip up and it would take its due.

A pair of steaming cups was placed on the table, breaking Makoto from his thoughts. Mukuro had made tea for him, the drink of choice for calming shattered nerves. Two sugars, too much milk, just how he liked it. For someone who claimed to be an emotionless mercenary she remembered a lot of little personal things like that. Then again it would have been impossible for her not to, seeing as she almost been a second shadow during his time at Hope's Peak, forever saving him from falling down the stairs once a day or from yakuza come to claim his organs in the name of Yasuhiro's debts. But even the Ultimate Soldier had limits, and despite her best attempts and patrols the killer continued to slip past her. Suddenly, as if sensing his thoughts, Mukuro stood up, an odd expression on her face as she went over her findings once more. Not quite worry, but as close as a human without fear could get.

"I know who the killer is."

Everything happened so fast after that, as Makoto was left to dangle in the wake of Mukuro's drive, hanging on despite his powerlessness and her gentle plea to stay behind. He had to see things though to the end. The shotgun retrieval, the twin blasts that allowed them entrance to the killer's lair, the flash of light that shook his vision and robbed the killer of hers, and Mukuro's effortless binding as she brought her to justice. By the point time had caught up to him Toko Fukawa was bound and Mukuro was listing off each of her crimes one by one, ignoring her pleas for mercy.

"You knew, of course, that the back room of the library contains a wealth of information on things the public at large is not meant to know. Including all the public and private records pertaining to Genocider Syo, the serial killer who serves as your second identity. A persona that serves Ultimate Despair."

A second identity? It seemed a stretch, but how else to explain that the perpetually weak and nervous Toko would slaughter her friends? It raised the question of how a shut-in had been able to pull the wool over their eyes for so long, but those that dealt in Despair often abandoned common sense.

"Wait, how can that be true? I thought Genocider Syo always wrote a certain phrase when they committed a murder."

Makoto wasn't the kind of person who could get invested in the acts of serial killers, but he had gleaned a great deal on the subject from whenever Byakuya would decide that he was worthy of being talked at.

"That is true. Blood Bath Fever, usually done in the victim's blood. However, this is only true for murders claimed in her name, and her targets within the academy could only be dedicated to Despair. With one exception. Byakuya Togami was murdered by laceration and displayed as a crucifix with scissors to hold him still. Makoto, your reasoning was partially correct, but not wholly. Genosider Syo has a second calling card."

Mukuro reached into a breast pocket on the flak jacket she had worn to the encounter and retrieved a series of photographs, each one depicting a young man slain in the same style as Byakuya. As Makoto shuffled through them, she knelt down and tore Toko's skirt, revealing a silver pair of scissors strapped to the tally-marked leg, identical to the murder weapons holding the young men up. It was all the evidence she needed.

"You removed one of the only students that could overpower you by poisoning her, but overlooked me as I was forbidden to use my arsenal by the late headmaster, so that a school environment could be maintained during this crisis. Jin Kirigiri was willing to blame himself, but we all knew that Kyoko remained suspicious. You somehow obtained cyanide pills from a member of Ultimate Despair on the outside, or had them on your person when the school was sealed. Either way, with both detectives deceased there was no-one else to follow the events that followed with logic, nor to handle the clashing personalities of the Ultimate Students. With this achieved you murdered a young man you were attracted to, as befitting of your M.O. After that you were free to murder as you pleased, and created an atmosphere of fear that manipulated the survivors into splitting apart, making them easier prey when you came to silence them. Toko Fuwaka, I find you guilty of fourteen counts of murder. Would you prefer execution by blade or bullet?"

The monologue had to have been the most Mukuro articulated herself, and yet her voice never rose and no emotion showed on her face as she passed judgement, her calm demeanour as terrifying as it was comforting. By comparison, Toko was screaming at him now, begging and pleading that she'd done everything she could, that she'd never blacked out, and anyway, shouldn't there be a fresh tally mark on her leg, so how could she have killed Byakuya? Her ranting was drowned out by a gunshot, the final word on the matter. Makoto should have cared, even a little. But he'd seen each of his friends die in turn, with more than one promised as the end of the killing. Losing another one did nothing to ease the never-ending fatigue that swamped his bones, the tight grip in his heart. Even now he felt like a rabbit trapped in the jaws of a wolf, resigned to waiting for it to bite down and put him out of his misery. Something soft took his hand, and when he looked up it was into pale grey eyes, Mukuro's emotionless shell peeling away in the face of her sole friend.

"I'm sorry. That you had to see that."

He couldn't have cared less at this point, and let her led him out, away from the body. Only within the relative security of his living quarters did a spark of will come back to him, pulling him to his bed where he could crash out, shut down and pretend that he'd never left in the first place. But he had, and now Toko joined the ranks of those claimed by Despair. And now Mukuro hung awkwardly in his room, still as unaccustomed to social situations now as when they'd first met, a condition not helped by the end of the world. He shifted as far over as he could, patting the duvet to let her know it was fine to lie with him. She did so, leaving the tools of her trade by the door but going stiff as a board the second they were together again. Some small part of his mind pointed out that teenagers of opposite genders didn't share beds for a reason. He didn't care; such things were as far out his mind as they could be. He just stared into the darkness of the ceiling, letting the lightless abyss stare back into him. Mukuro spoke first, her quiet voice so much smaller in the dark.

"I'll try and fix the power tomorrow. The emergency generator isn't very good."

They'd repaired the main generator three times now, and three times it had shut out. Toko must have done that, to heighten the Despair of their situation. It had certainly worked, given how paralysed he'd been just walking to the cafeteria. Makoto made a noise that might have been confirmation. The bed shifted beside him, nervous arms pulling him into an embrace that he couldn't be bothered to resist. Mukuro's voice was above him now, his head buried in her chest as she cradled him.

"We're going to survive Makoto. We're going to live. Just you and I, Like Adam and Eve, until Despair burns itself out. I'll protect you, I promise."

Maybe it was the first close human contact he'd had in weeks. Maybe it was just because they'd reached the end of the murders one way or another. Maybe it was because it was Mukuro here with him, the soft yet unbreakable girl doing her best to hold him together when all he wanted to was give up. Whatever it was, it broke the unfeeling barrier he'd placed on his heart since Sayaka had died so pointlessly, and he cried endlessly into the night.

"Everything's been going quite well recently, you'll be happy to know. The Future Foundation called, and I pretended that the headmaster was disposed at the time, and that we were all happy and well. It's not really a lie, I suppose. Is it a lie? I'm happy, and Makoto is… getting there. What do you think?"

Junko Enoshima didn't reply. She didn't even open her eyes, as they'd been closed a while now. But she was still as pretty as the day Mukuro had laid her to rest, a month in cold storage preserving her beauty as if she'd just been shot. But it was necessary. She wouldn't change the plan, even when it became apparent that Makoto had a high chance of dying in the Mutual Killing Game, with Mukuro looking out for him or without. So she had to be disposed of. It had been a long time since Mukuro had felt anything towards a kill, and the uncertain Despair that had taken her had almost convinced her to join her sister in eternal sleep. She'd even cried, which had surprised her most of all, having thought herself long done with tears. But it was necessary. To keep him safe. The other had to go for the same reasons. Junko had said that a closed circle of people would always turn on one another, provocation or not. So she had killed the warrior and the detectives who might have stopped her. She'd killed the heir who read all about murderers and had no qualms about committing the deed. She'd killed the gambler who could murder and muddle the truth about the act, and her thrall so he wouldn't try to avenge her. The idol and the sportsman didn't have the will to stay calm under pressure, but they killed each other before she could. She killed the swimmer so that the biker would fall and take the rest with him, and had picked them off before they could think about escaping for real. The author was the last, and now that her scapegoat was dead she had a perfect world. Just her and Makoto. The Ultimate Soldier with Ultimate Luck at her side, an undefeatable pair. She would protect him and he would smile at her, and one day they would fall in love and start creating so much Hope to offset the Despair in her heart. She hoped the children would inherit his eyes, the ones she could stare into forever and feel her heart kick as though he was giving her that smile for the first time…

"I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I dear sister? We need to fix everything first. I suppose I should get going so that we can work the garden together. He'll like that, I think. Maybe… I'll just have to learn along the way. I've got all the time in the world now, thanks to you."

She leant down, pressed her lips to Junko's forehead.

"I love you Junko."

There was no confirmation of the fact. There never would be, only the cold click of metal as her younger sister returned to her "grave", now joined by Toko three slots over. That was Junko's way of handling love. And now Mukuro had her way, a long, considered path with no outside interference. Just her and Makoto on a mission of love and life and Hope.

"If everyone except you and Makoto dies, you'll be able to spend the rest of your school life together." – Monokuma, Danganronpa IF