Kaito raised his hand. "What happens if there's a draw?" he asked Monokuma. "If the votes are tied, what happens? "
"Well, if the votes are tied, I'll just go ahead and execute the blackened!" Monokuma responded.
"Then <em>hypothetically speaking</em>, if every single one of us voted for ourselves, then we'd be able to finish this class trial without doing any work!" he spread his arms. "Right?"
12 pairs of eyes immediately bore onto him, and Kaede noted that this was an <em>ono</em> plan: the type of thing that sounds really plausible the moment it hits your ears, before you notice the simple loophole that can rip the plan into shreds and reluctantly push it away, before agreeing with everyone else that she knew it was stupid from the start.
"This blackened has murdered in order to get out of here, Momota. Murdered. You're going to have to admit that he or she isn't going to just give themselves in. They'll just vote for someone else, which will get everyone else executed. It's a huge risk <b>and</b> a leap of blind faith, something we really can't take." Kirumi argued.
"She's right, Kaito. Let's just...sort out the facts and try to figure this out. We hosted an investigation for a reason, and we have evidence to work with. We can find this blackened," Shuichi said placatingly, trying to calm his friend down.
Kaito nodded sheepishly. "Yeah, I guess so..."
"He's just saying really stupid things to stall the class trial, since it's so obvious that he's the culprit and he wants to rig the votes! Right, Momota-chan~" Kokichi cupped his chin in his hands and looked in the direction of the Ultimate Astronaut. "Right? Right? Riiight?"
Kaede's brain reluctantly brought up a height chart and a truth bullet: statistically, Kaito and Gonta were the only people able to commit the murder, but she also knew in her heart that they were the least likely people to murder.
<em>But someone else did, didn't they?</em> the voice in her brain said.
"I'm not the culprit and neither am Gonta!" Kaito roared. "Neither of us have any motive, anyways! The temperature and puns and everything weren't bothering me at all; I even started some late-night training with my sidekick! Right, Shuichi?"
Shuichi looked a little embarrassed at that last part. "Y-yeah...the point is, neither of them has any motive-"
"But someone else did," Maki said bluntly. "We all saw it with our own eyes yesterday. Miu Iruma."
The tense silence proved that everyone agreed. "She looked real distraught because all of her gizmos were broken," Angie said. "But Atua has saved everything and brought it up in His kingdom, so Miu is probably having a lot of fun with them now~"
"I knew that she was unhappy, but if I knew she was driven to the point of murder, I would have stayed by her side longer, kept her in more comfort! T-This is my fault! She's done nothing but make me feel good and support me and do maintenance and stand up for me, even if it got her picked on, a-and-" Kiibo pounded his head on the podium base.
"Stop picking on yourself Kiibo--you couldn't have seen this coming. No one could have, and even if we could we all would have acted differently, there's no doubt about it. There's no use wallowing in the past anymore. Miu had a motive, a murder weapon, and a plan to go with it in the looks of it. If we can get in her head one last time, we might be able to do her justice." Kaede walked around and put her arm on her robotic friend's shoulder blade. "We're all here for you,"
By doing so, she had a painful flashback to another set of tears, another pat on the shoulder.
<em>I'm sorry I couldn't get to you fast enough, Miu. I'll make it up to you here.</em>
<hr>
"Does <em>anyone</em> remember what happened this morning? How did only 3 people get to the cafeteria 15 minutes after our usual meetup time?" Kaede placed her hands on her temples. She felt like she was missing something. Why hadn't <em>she</em> gone down to the dining hall? She had slept in. She didn't usually sleep in. There was usually something. Something...
"Ugh!" Tenko punched the podium. "Tenko knows that there was something missing today that usually isn't missing, but she doesn't remember what!"
"The stress of the motive has begun kicking in...I need a nap..." Himiko groaned.
"You always need a nap." Ryoma pointed out.
"Can all of you...just...sheesh for a minute? I need to think!"
<b>HANGMAN'S GAMBIT START!</b>
Kaede floated in her dark hazy subconsciousness, trying to remember what had been different that morning._______ ____________
Shiny letters floated in front of her peripheral vision like the answer was coming back to her.
<u>MORNING</u> ____________
Right, it had something to do with the mornings, obviously. But what was it exactly?
<em>"Rise and shine, Ursine!"</em>
<u>MORNING ANNOUNCEMENT</u>
"It was the Morning Announcement! It didn't sound this morning!"
That was the answer they had been looking for. Someone--probably Miu--had sabotaged the Ultimate Academy's sound systems and managed to prevent everyone else from waking up, which was an incredible feat.
"I'm sort of surprised you didn't execute her on the spot for messing with the controls. Isn't there a rule against that or something?" Kokichi put his hands behind his head and turned to Monokuma.
"I didn't detect any physical tinkering with the system loudspeakers, so it was an internal malfunction! My Kubs should have been able to deal with that lickedly-split quick! As for the morning announcements, they should have fixed that already, right?"
He looked over in the direction of his 5 Kubs, who were sweating profusely. "Yeah, about that pops..." Monokid put both of his paws together. "The Monokubs Executive Board actually decided not to start up the morning announcement this morning due to an anonymous note suggesting doing so,"
"IT-SAID-IT-WOULD-HELP-EVERYONE-GET-ALONG," Monodam added.
"WHAT?!! Y-You can't do that!" Monokuma turned blue and sweaty all of a sudden. "You just aided a murder! We need to talk about our no-touchie policy when it comes to mutual killing games later, kiddos."
"There's a no-touchie policy?"
"Yeah! Technically, all of you are headmasters jointly with me, so you're also restrained by the rule that the Headmaster never directly commits a murder! And refraining from casting the morning announcement also counts as aiding the blackened! We're here to referee a fair and clean killing game, not to help the killer!"
"Sorry, Pops!"
Everyone exchanged dark looks all around. This was the decisive piece of evidence in Miu's murder plan--now what was the other killer's? Was he or she another schemer trying to commit murder and escape the motive? Or was it just a poor victimized sod who was just minding their own business when they were pounced on by Miu and were just acting in self defense? Why bother with the entire dining hall business anyways? Were Kaito and Gonta <em>really</em> the only people who could have committed the crime?
