Izuru Kamukura stood alone atop a crumbled building, looking over the cityscape as it all burned to ash.

In this world, he understood there to be two types of people. Those who believed in hope, clinging to their optimism and dreams as the world fractured around them, and those who indulged in the calamity of despair, growing wilder and wilder, sinking into the depths of their own miserable instincts.

Of those who held fast to hope, those of the Future Foundation and the 78th class of Hope's Peak Academy, the lines that were drawn at where they would stop for their goals varied in distance.

Some clung to their individual futures, some to the futures of all, and somewhere in between existed those who held fast solely to their own ideals.

The world turned endlessly before him. The future became the present, then the past. Aspirations and fears alike became inescapable realities. A life was created, set into existence, and then perished in flame.

Hope and despair – neither really mattered to him.

As he watched the Future Foundation break an opening into the fortified past-beacon of Hope's Peak Academy, Kamukura thought it was all rather boring.

"Enoshima!" Munakata called, voice carrying over the thunder of footfall in the halls. "Find Enoshima!"

The troops roared their compliance. Juzo, stronger and bolder than any other person there, shoved through a circle of soldiers in one section of the building and tore the metal door to the control room off its hinges.

Although wary at first, his surveying inside soon revealed the room to be empty. The monitors displaying the security feeds flickered weakly in the dim light, showing footage of his prized Munakata as he approached the fifteen gathered in the main hall. "She's gone," Juzo muttered into his radio, gaze to the ground. "Damn it."

Munakata acknowledged this, pressing his lips together, then clicked his receiver off. The students were watching him cautiously, cries of confusion hushed and then silenced under the threat of being gunned down. One of the boys, the one with a brown ahoge springing from his loosely cut hair, seemed to stand out from the rest. But his attention was focused on one person in their group, and one person alone.

That person took notice, realizing their disguise had failed at last. In an instant, the two met their blades together, Munakata's eyes meeting Mukuro's in a deadlock as his sword pressed against a knife drawn seemingly out of nowhere.

"E-Enoshima?!" Sayaka cried from the edge of the crowd. She was met by the aim of rifles, and so the others dared not follow suit in her surprise.

"You are not Enoshima Junko," Munakata said in finality. "Where is she?"

Mukuro did not respond, striking back with a blow that was blocked by the former student council president. Again and again, the two clashed, trading the roles of assailant and defender. Neither would yield. The soldiers were stunned back in awe, not wanting to risk hindering their leader's movements.

"You're good," she remarked at last, in a voice too low to be Enoshima's. Suddenly, her gaze shifted, and Munakata caught it too late, warning still in his throat. The soldier she glanced at was down immediately, throat slit and drowning as she landed on his back and sprung away again, clearing her own path of carnage to the door.

Munakata dashed after her, yelling orders to secure the others and tend to the wounded. He was only two steps behind her, catching the door as it swung closed, but when he entered the uncharted hallway, he found not even a trace of where she had gone.

He threw his head from side to side. A disturbed locker, a tile in the floor, in the ceiling – anything to give a hint as to where she had gone! The desolate halls gave him nothing to work with, and he slammed his fist into the wall in a rage. With a breath to compose himself, he clicked his receiver on again.

"Juzo," he began.

"You don't need to tell me. I saw."

"Can you see this hallway?"

"No," replied the boxer. "It ended for us after you left the main hall. They even went through the trouble of cutting off their own security feeds… should I order a search for her?"

Munakata thought for a moment. The building was eerily quiet.

"No," he said, sheathing his blade. "They're gone. Prioritize tending to the wounded and securing the remaining students."

He walked down the unidentified hall, passing broken desks and bloodstained walls. Juzo's voice emerged from the radio again.

"What about our agent in the group?"

"They're feigning surprise, still hiding within the others," Munakata replied. He grimaced at an outline of chalk, disfigured limbs at odd angles. "As was prearranged in our plan. We'll separate them once we've got them all in holding."

"Got it."

And Juzo disappeared behind a small crackle of static.

Munakata crept through the abandoned corridor, keeping his hand on the handle of his blade in case anything necessitated it. He couldn't go too far—the other students were still waiting—but the sheer amount of blood in the area suggested that it wasn't a place they had been given access to before. For the sake of preserving their sanity, he would have to reroute them into avoiding this area on their way out.

As he walked back into the main hall, his eyes scanned over the remaining fourteen present. Again, that loosely dressed brown-haired boy caught his attention. Munakata found himself meeting eyes with him, before raising his head to address them all.

"We are the Future Foundation," he announced to the anxious students. "This killing game is over."

Hmph.

Izayoi Sonosuke vaulted off of a broken chunk of concrete, sending dust flying into the air as the rubble destabilized and shifted beneath him. His weapons fell out of his sleeves and into his fingers, briefly, before they were flung at the malefactor trailing behind.

It was futile. His blades were met by her own. Pekoyama deflected the kunai with ease and sent them off to either direction away from her. She shifted her weight on her feet and came speeding at him again. Izayoi sprang onto a foothold, pulled himself up by a protruding pipe, and dashed off onto the second floor exposed by the massive damage to the side of the building.

From behind, he heard her follow after him, cutting down the sharpened metal he threw again and again to dissuade her. The inside of his jacket carried a seemingly limitless arsenal, but even so, having to lose his forgings like this was a waste.

He struck down a grate cutting off part of the building and wrought the remaining obstruction aside. Considering the scraping edges of the metal, he was grateful for his gloves. When Pekoyama tried to pass through the gap he had made, he drew two blades from his waist and locked them with hers.

"You dare cross blades with the SHSL Swordswoman?" she asked coldly.

He only needed time. He had succeeded in his mission in eliminating the despairs of a certain ward as other members of the Future Foundation infiltrated the academy. Now, all he needed to do was escape.

"If the situation calls for it."

He kept her blade trapped between his own. While he could keep her occupied like this, he was sure to lose in actual combat.

"Your courage is admirable." Pekoyama regarded him with a smile. Like all despairs, her eyes seemed feral in the low light, where their kind belonged. "Die along with it."

At once, she freed her own blade, jerking his up into the air. Izayoi released the grips on his weapons, trading his last two swords in exchange for steady footing as he was forced to retreat again into the wreckage.

As he ran down the unknown hall, a familiar voice cried from his receiver.

"Yoi-chan! Where are you?"

He took his receiver and held it to his mouth, but could only manage a grunt as he was forced to avoid another of Pekoyama's strikes. Each time she missed, she cut down columns, tables, anything and everything around her. What did it matter, what she destroyed? For them, destruction was bliss.

Again and again, with increasing difficulty, he dodged her as he tried to answer. He had studied her moves countless times—all of the Future Foundation had—but the despairs were wild—impulsive. They didn't do their research, but were better at learning as they went. He was seeing that principle in action now.

Above them, he heard the whir of helicopter propellers. His ride was close.

"Go to the damaged side of this building," he finally yelled into the radio.

"Huh? O-Okay, but Yoi-ch—!"

And as Pekoyama struck again, nearly taking his hand this time, he was forced to leave his transceiver rattling on the ground.

He tried to lead her on a loop through the floor, back to the place where they had entered, but Pekoyama was no fool. Instead of chasing, she went back the way they had come and reached the place before him, where she found the helicopter hovering, waiting.

Izayoi saw Pekoyama across the gap of destruction. In the back of the helicopter was Ruruka Andou, calling his name, reaching a hand out towards him, and Pekoyama seemed to realize her value in the blacksmith's eyes.

She crouched, preparing her sword behind her, ready to leap and take the entire helicopter down with one precise strike. With his primary weapons gone, the blacksmith could not stop her in time.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Gunshots broke the despair-caught girl's concentration. From the other side of the helicopter, Koichi Kizakura adjusted the aim of his gun and readied himself to fire again.

"Well?" he called, as Pekoyama snarled under his sights. Knives she could deflect with ease, but bullets were a bit more troublesome. "Need a lift?"

"Yoi-chan!" Ruruka cried. And at the pleading of his lover's voice, Izayoi took a running start and leapt, entering the back of the aircraft with a thud.

"Go!" Izayoi yelled. The pilot nodded and the helicopter began to move, Pekoyama left defending herself against Kizakura's shots as they pulled away and out of her reach.

The three department heads watched her grow smaller and vanish as they flew out of the forsaken city. Izayoi sighed and buckled himself into the seat behind the confectioner. Perhaps if they were better equipped, they could have faced her and attempted a capture, but as they were now it was impossible.

The Ultimate Despairs were a force to be reckoned with.

Even in their states, they were still Ultimates, after all.