"What's an ahoge?" Angie blinked twice.
<em>Ah.</em> Kaede forgot about that part. Thanks to the stubborn piece of hair sticking out of her own head, she knew quite a lot about the terrors that originated from the ahoge-verse. But people who were luckily born without the pain were blissfully ignorant.
"It's like this...big antenna thingy that sticks out of your head. Remember how Kiibo had one?" her fellow ahoge warrior explained. "If you were hit by him head on with enough force, you would technically be stabbed and bludgeoned at once, which matched our wound,"
"But how would someone hold K1-BO and hit Gonta with it? Holding K1-BO is like...a battering ram! He's so heavy!" Tenko cradled her head in her arms. "Tenko is so confuuuuuused!"
At that, Shuichi clutched his forehead like he was suddenly hit by a headache. "Pirahnas..."
"Shuichi? You alright?"
"Yeah," he winced in response. "I just...saw something in another reality for a second. I'm alright now,"
That was weird, but Kaede let it slide.
"Leaving that aside, wouldn't Kiibo be the blackened in this case? Despite being unconscious, he was technically the person who murdered Gonta," Kirumi shot a brainwave through Kaede's head, and she stared at the robot propped up awkwardly next to Tenko. She wasn't the only one. Almost everyone's eyes were on Kiibo.
"Well, Monokuma?" Kiyo asked. "What are the new rules of this class trial? Do we vote for Kiibo as the culprit, or do we not?"
Monokuma waved a fan that he had pulled out from somewhere and waved it near his mouth(snout?). "Well, well, this certainly is interesting! I remember when I saw this, how many years ago? Well, last time the <em>tool</em> was conscious and actively murdering, but this is a little harder. Hmmm..."
He immediately started a conversation full of jargon with himself.
"Hurry up! Which one is it?" Tenko yelled, slamming her fist repeatedly on the podium. "Ughh...I need to throw something!"
And without a second of warning, she proceeded to flip Kokichi, who was unfortunately right next to her. Right. She had those handy dandy anger problems now.
Flowers of red started to bloom on Kokichi's previously shiny white shirt as the former Ultimate Supreme Leader winced. Tenko's flip had made him head slam the hard corner of the podium right in the middle of his skull, and blood poured down into his eyes.
"Kokichi!" Shuichi yelled, his hand outstretched, but Monokuma stopped him.
"Hey, hey, hey! You can't do that! Jeez, why can't you kids just stay <em>still</em> for once?"
"But he's seriously hurt!" Kaede shouted at him, watching as real tears welled in Kokichi's eyes, mixing in his blood. Strangely enough, he looked up, like he was trying to return his tears back into his eyes, almost like he didn't want the rest of them to see him in actual pain, which was sort of weird.
"Right, right, I'll get that...MONOKUBS!"
The robo-bear's creed waddled out of some unknown hole, holding a first-aid kit and some curtain shades which were an unflattering shade of blue. "Out of the way, out of the way!" Monokid yelled, pointing to a headband with a red beeping siren on the top. Was it supposed to resemble an ambulance? Kaede thought it just looked stupid.
The Monokubs made quick work of setting up the curtains around Kokichi's podium and in about a minute, a whole setup was done, with a handpainted sign in hot pink words saying: "FIXING YOU KIDS' SHIT--PLEASE STAND BY" cellotaped awkwardly to one of the curtains.
"I worry about Kokichi's safety." Kirumi sighed. "Is it really alright to leave him in the care of the Monokubs?"
"We don't really have a choice with this," Kiyo pointed out.
"Don't worry, don't worry, Atua is watching over all of us, including Kokichi! Atua will make sure nothing happens to him!" Angie grinned, but it was more creepy than reassuring now that she had said it so many times and was also one of the people who had killed a couple of their classmates, calling it Atua's will. Kaede really didn't want protection from a two-faced god.
"Right, I'm here with my verdict, kiddos!" Monokuma announced. "Even though Kiibo is technically the culprit and WILL be the one executed in this case, I'm going to order you to try and find the mastermind of this murder! "
"So we're going to find who did this...for no reason?"
"It's not for no reason! Some of you have got be at least <em>curious</em>, right! Oh yeah, one more thing. I'll set up a separate voting station for the planner, and while he or she won't get executed if you get it right, you suckos will die if you vote for the wrong person! So find the whole truth of this case with your100% energy!"
Shuichi clicked his tongue. "Looks like this case just reopened,"
"We can do it!" Kaede smiled as she pumped her fist, her mind reeling back into investigation mode. Tenko had a point before in that not anyone could just lift an unconscious heavy robot and aim a fatal accurate blow at Gonta's head completely quietly while none of them noticed. There was just so <em>little</em> struggle...something was a little off. Of course, there was the possibility that the killer persuaded Gonta to die in order to revive everyone else...the possibility that Kaede wanted to think about the least, but was the most plausible. In any case, there were 3 suspects currently off her list: herself and Kirumi, since they were the innocents who rang the body discovery alarm with the killer as the 3rd person, technically being the 'innocent', and Kokichi, who was 1: too much of a goddamn shrimp to do anything funny and 2: mute and unable to perform any nonverbal communication.
"Does anyone have any alibis this time around?" Kaede asked. Better to get it started from the basics here.
"Tenko was in her research lab! She was alone though..." Tenko claimed.
Kaede knew that the former Ultimate Akidio wasn't in a good enough mental state to hold her cool, and she wasn't the type to rationally think out long complex murder plans that included bashing someone on the head with a robot. While Tenko was really strong, Kaede doubted that she would be able to beat Gonta in a fight, who was so much taller and all muscle. Of course, no one would be able to, which meant some additional complex plan was put in place to throw Kiibo at Gonta. Which sort of ruled Tenko out even more.
"I was in my lab until I heard the body discovery," Shuichi closed his eyes. "I know it isn't really an alibi, but..."
Shuichi. Kaede had trusted him almost wholeheartedly for the past 2 cases and when he had found the door behind the shelf. He was their brains against the mastermind, the one who could always think up a plan or a hypothesis.
It couldn't be him.
<em>But again, trust is a dangerous weapon.</em>
